Tag Archives: Nydia Velazquez

by | May 13, 2013 · 5:21 pm

Fighting for Preservation in Ridgewood, Queens

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Tenants living in 6 buildings in Ridgewood, Queens are caught in the middle of a complicated foreclosure and bankruptcy case which will determine the future of their homes. While the courts continue to drag out the 5-year-and-counting foreclosure, tenants suffer from horrible living conditions with no one to turn to.  Check out Friday’s video from Channel 11 News demonstrating the unsafe living conditions tenants face on a daily basis. 

Here are tenants allies and adversaries in the fight for affordable housing preservation:

Steven Kates, Landlord: Mr. Kates is fighting the foreclosure in bankruptcy court. However, he never could be trusted: he lied about the number of units in the 6 buildings to take out an unreasonably large mortgage! Tenants are fighting to make sure that he does not get to keep these buildings. 

Stabilis Capital: The original lender, Washington Mutual, collapsed in the 2008 financial crisis.  Chase, who took over the failed bank, sold the debt to Stabilis — a private equity company we’ve seen lend on other severely distressed properties. We hope that Stabilis will come to the table to meet with residents and advocates to work out a deal that will benefit tenants and NYC’s affordable housing stock.

CATCH: Tenants have asked CATCH, a nonprofit preservation developer to purchase their buildings, rehab them, and rent them at affordable levels. Tenants want to have a voice in the way their buildings are managed, and CATCH runs buildings they own through “mutual housing,” which ensures resident-input. However, in order for CATCH to buy the buildings, they will have to purchase the note at a discount and wind their way through bankruptcy court.

Elected Officials: Tenants have found a great deal of support from their elected officials, including Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez and City Councilwoman Diana Reyna. They hope that through political pressure, Stabilis will discount the mortgage on these six properties (which they likely bought for a discount from Chase) and sell them to CATCH. With the help of Councilwoman Diana Reyna, tenants are asking HPD to remove these buildings from the lien sale list. The liens are a crucial tool that will give the tenants some serious leverage in the bankruptcy case.

Queens Legal Services: Tenants are represented by Queens Legal Services to help make sure that immediate repair needs are met. While the bankruptcy case has made legal matters a little confusing, attorneys are strategizing to get repairs done as soon as possible.

Stay tuned on this exciting fight to preserve affordable housing in Ridegwood, Queens!

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by | July 27, 2012 · 2:06 pm

Friday News Update: Direct Action Edition!

Happy Direct-Action Friday! Have you been feeling apathetic? Disconnected from social movements manifesting in your neighborhood? Today’s news on three bits of activism taking place in Brooklyn:

1. Tenants in Williamsburg and Greenpoint are standing up for themselves and demanding an end to illegal evictions throughout these famously gentrified neighborhoods of high-paying hipsters.  Tenants complain of living for years without heat or hot water, and that landlords are using all sorts of tactics- as extreme as fire- to force low-income tenants out.  Wednesday, community leaders and tenants gathered to protest landlords who engage in illegal harassment.

Evelyn Cruz, a representative of congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, told crowds at the rally that hipsters are welcome to join in the fight for justice in the community.  She said (as reported in an article in Capital NY):

Any hipster that believes in justice, any hipster that believes in progress, any hipster that believes that hardworking low-income tenants deserve a decent and affordable place to live, we invite you to join this coalition,” she told the crowd.

2. A second tenant action has been gaining momentum, particularly though the support of Occupy Sunset Park and Take Back the Land.  Tenants in three buildings on 46th St. in Brooklyn have been on rent strike for weeks in attempts to improve the atrocious conditions they have been dealing with for years. We actually learned about these buildings and met with tenants when we were  researching buildings in foreclosure with Astoria Bank. The buildings remain in foreclosure, but the debt has been sold to Seryl LLC.

Tenants cite fear of fires and electrical blackouts, issues with the boiler, mold, and rodents as the major concerns in the buildings and the reason for the rent strike. If you’re interested in getting supporting the tenants and being involved in their fight, Occupy Sunset Park is holding vigils from 6:00-7:00 pm every night on 46th street between 5th and 6th ave.

3. An awesome display of video activism has brought even more concrete evidence to illustrate how racism is embedded within NYC’s Stop and Frisk policy.  David Galarza, an activist (also in Sunset Park), captured a horrific scene of a police officer body slamming Sean Pagan, 19, on video during a Stop and Frisk.   An article in the NYTimes states that:

Mr. Pagan, who is Hispanic, said the officers at the precinct house where he was taken joked and laughed about his body-slamming.

Without the video, he said, he would not have known how to draw attention to his arrest. Even his mother did not believe his story until she saw the video, he said.

“It would’ve been his word over mine,” he said. “He would’ve said I was resisting and going crazy. It would’ve been brushed under the rug.”

We hope that these courageous acts throughout Brooklyn inspire you to have a direct-action filled weekend!

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by | April 8, 2011 · 12:09 pm

“Sen. Schumer, Christine Quinn Push Feds To Pressure Bank That Owns Shoddy Housing”: The Village Voice

As published in the The Village Voice by Elizabeth Dwoskin

Image courtesy of The Village Voice

A consequence of our sucky economy: The city estimates that around 125,000 housing units will go into foreclosure over the next two years.

In many cases, owners (including banks) are trying to unload these buildings, and while they wait, living conditions deteriorate drastically for tenants, with landlords racking up housing code violations for lack of heat and hot water, for toxic mold outbreaks, leaky roofs, and rodent infestations.

Conditions have gotten so bad, in some cases, that city officials have taken a lot of flak from advocates (and from journalists), and these buildings have become PR problems for the city. And so, over the past year, officials have been playing a bigger role, by being a middleman between tenants, banks, older landlords and prospective ones.

Today, city and state officials, and Senator Chuck Schumer, took things a step further by asking the federal government to force a big bank that owns many foreclosed and distressed properties to come clean about their finances and sell the properties to a responsible buyer.

New York Community Bank is one of the most active providers of loans to landlords that buy multi-family dwellings in the city. According to the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, the bank controls the mortgages on 34 foreclosed buildings, which are home to 800 families. 328 buildings that are owned by the bank and home to 6,000 families are in very shaky condition: they have more than three hazardous health and safety violations per apartment. Until recently, the bank owned five properties that were on the city’s worst buildings list.

Last month, Mutual Housing Association of New York, a real estate company that has the support of the city’s housing agency and tenant advocates made a bid to buy the 34 foreclosed properties. According to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, New York Community Bank turned the company down, saying the offer was too low.

Schumer, along with Quinn and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, say that the FDIC — the federal agency that supervises financial institutions — should force New York Community Bank to come clean to buyers about the actual state of the finances, living conditions, and repairs needs of the buildings. Though no one has said it outright, the implication here is that the bank is fudging the numbers to make the distressed buildings more attractive to a higher bidder. The other implication is that the city has not had the pull with the bank that it would have wished.

The New York pols say that what they are asking for is well within the power of the federal agency. Because many of these mortgages were securitized by Wall Street, and are therefore implicated in the wider economic crisis, Schumer and Velazquez had inserted a section into the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill — passed by Congress last summer — that makes the federal government take some responsibility for the problem of distressed mortgages on multi-family dwellings, which afflict big cites like New York.

Schumer said today in a press release: “Here is a perfect example for the FDIC to take into consideration as they help build a framework for this program. The message here should be clear: residents of affordable buildings throughout the City should not be the victims of never-ending cycles of overleveraged gambling by predatory equity investors.”

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by | · 11:10 am

“Group asks FDIC to help 34 Bronx buildings”: Crain’s New York Business

As published in Crain’s New York Business by Daniel Massey

Housing advocates, tenants and some of New York’s most powerful elected officials Thursday called on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to force New York Community Bank to evaluate the finances and living conditions at 34 rundown Bronx buildings in foreclosure, and then disclose information on building repairs that are needed.

The move to pressure the FDIC to get involved is the latest salvo in a three-year campaign by officials and advocates to hold banks responsible for loans they made on multi-family properties that ended up falling into a state of disrepair. An amendment inserted into last year’s Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act by two New York politicians, Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Nydia Velazquez, gives the FDIC the power to intervene.

“We’re asking the FDIC to investigate the practices and actions of NYCB and force NYCB to make documents public so we can actually see whether there is enough money at the table to make these buildings livable,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. “There are 800 units and 800 families at risk.”

An FDIC spokesman did not immediately have a response to the statement from the officials and advocates, made at a press conference Thursday at a Bronx building that was recently sold. Tenants in the Bryant Avenue building, where the morning event was held, are contending with dangerous conditions, officials said. Problems include a broken elevator, toxic mold and a carbon monoxide leak from the boiler.

New York Community Bank officials did not respond to a call seeking comment.

The bank last month sold the debt on eight dilapidated Bronx buildings to Bronx 8 LLC, a joint venture led by Townhouse Management Co., at what is believed to be a small discount on the mortgage’s $16 million face value. The city had backed a nonprofit developer, the Mutual Housing Association, and had been working on putting a financing package together for the group, which had offered $8 million.

Townhouse President Mitchel Maidman said the receiver on the buildings has been working diligently to make repairs and remove violations. “I don’t get this question of whether we paid the right price or the wrong price,” he said, declining to provide the specific figure, but saying it was less than a rumored $14 million. “We paid a fair price and if we get title, we will preserve the assets and make them very nice housing and an asset to the community.”

NYCB has a large portfolio of distressed multi-family loans. Those include mortgages on 328 buildings—housing more than 6,000 families—with more than three outstanding code violations per unit that pose serious health and safety risks. Of those buildings, 34 are in foreclosure, with a total of 800 apartments. Advocates worry they will be sold to the highest bidder without vetting the buyers’ ability or willingness to rehabilitate the deteriorating properties.

“NYCB’s irresponsible lending practices helped to create one of the most distressed housing portfolios in New York City,” said Dina Levy, organizing and policy director for the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. “Their response has been to dump troubled loans for maximum profit, leaving tenants living in squalor and taxpayers to clean up their mess.”

Mr. Schumer, Ms. Quinn, Rep. Jose Serrano and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. were among the officials who called on the FDIC to compel New York Community Bank to examine the conditions at the 34 buildings.

In addition, a half-dozen housing groups have written to the FDIC asking the agency to consider the physical distress of the housing that is in the bank’s portfolio, as well as the bank’s practices related to disposition of troubled loans as part of its ongoing Community Reinvestment Act evaluation.

By pressuring the bank to disclose financial and living conditions, officials and advocates hope to create a level of transparency so potential buyers will understand the true value of the buildings and the amount of money needed to make repairs.

“New York Community Bank is currently the most active provider of multi-family loans in New York City, and this makes their actions important to the health of our city’s housing stock,” said Benjamin Dulchin, executive director at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development.

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