We’re working hard to avoid taking the collapse of the north wall of the Renwick Ruin as a metaphor for the state of Roosevelt Island.
Perhaps the most serious problem – one that could stay with us well into this new year – is the State of New York’s continuing threat to turn Roosevelt Island’s affordable housing into unaffordable housing, and its longest-time residents into refugees seeking somewhere else to live. This comes about by virtue of the Empire State Development Corporation’s deeds falling seriously out of synch with the Spitzer’s administration’s words on the subject of affordability in housing. It’s a mystery how the executives and bureaucrats in that agency can still be employed there when they surprised everyone – including the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), supposedly in charge of delivering on housing policy – with stupendous increases in tax-equivalency payments (TEPs).
There’s an accompanying mystery: DHCR now seems to be assenting to a continuation of the threat. Owners and tenants at Westview and Island House, and cooperators at Rivercross, are faced with filing a lawsuit – potentially costly at disastrous levels – to bring the State of New York into line with the intentions of its Legislature and the action of the New York City Council, which acted together over a period of two years to remove the threat of those very increases.
Does someone in Albany actually believe that, in giving local legislatures the authority to extend tax-equivalency abatements, the State Legislature intended to single out Roosevelt Island’s Mitchell-Lamas for detrimental and exceptional treatment? Does someone in Albany – does the Governor – actually believe that an agency of the State of New York should whimsically wield the power to destroy affordability here? The Legislature said no. The City Council agreed. The threat was removed. Except here. Does somebody in Albany – does the Governor – actually believe that this threat should still exist today?
It’s absurd. Absurd on its face.
And yet the Commissioner of DHCR says (see our page 1 story) that she has stopped attempting to have these errant tax-equivalency increases rescinded. While speaking, along with the Governor, of a need to preserve every possible affordable unit in the State, she appears to be assenting to the destructive policy of Empire State Development (ESDC). What actually appears to be happening is that she has adopted ESDC’s blunder as a straw man she will set aflame only if the Island buildings agree to remain affordable [pick one] (a) forever, (b) to the second generation of buyers, (c) some how, some way.
Bad move. The Commissioner should stand at the Governor’s desk and demand elimination of the ESDC TEP hike. Period. The Governor should publicly discipline ESDC for cavalierly acting to the detriment of affordable housing without talking with the State agency in charge of housing. And that should happen immediately – before it is necessary to engage the gears of high-cost, high-risk legal strategy.
Perhaps we can take the Renwick collapse as a metaphor for a State housing policy that is crumbling badly, as least as far as Roosevelt Island is concerned.
Two words for Governor Eliot Spitzer: Fix this.
And one more: Now.
DL