EAST HARLEM — A tenant association of a building where half the residents are behind on their rent is suing the city after they got kicked out of a co-op conversion program.
In May, the department of Housing Preservation and Development sent tenants of 240 E. 119th St. a letter notifying them that they would be removed from their Third Party Transfer program, which is meant to give low-income tenants a chance to own their apartments as co-ops.
HPD cited low attendance at mandatory training sessions, tenants not having current leases, and 54 percent of tenants being in rent arrears.
The tenants, who filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court Tuesday, are blaming their noncompliance issues on a nonprofit that manages the building.
According to the lawsuit, the nonprofit SoBRO — which is not named in the lawsuit — issued defective lease renewals, miscalculated rents and failed to make repairs.
“We want to get rid of SoBRO,” said resident Anibal Lopez, 72. “We want to be a co-op.”
SoBRO denied the allegation and said it spent millions on renovating the building. It also worked with both HPD and the tenant association to get the building converted into a co-op, the nonprofit said. Unfortunately, the residents were not able to reach any of the conversion milestones, the orgainzation added.
“HPD bent over backwards to try to accommodate them,” SoBRO President Phillip Morrow said. “It’s been a struggle with that building. The fact of the matter is that it is very difficult to get people to fill out paperwork. A lot of them didn’t want to do it.”
The lawsuit claims HPD’s decision to remove the building from the co-op conversion program was arbitrary because tenants were not informed of how long the evaluation period would be.
To become a co-op, buildings must meet attendance and rent-collection standards of at least 80 percent of the tenants. The building had a 58 percent attendance record and 46 percent of rents collected, according to a January letter from HPD.
While those numbers increased to 64 percent and 77 percent the next month, they were still under the 80 percent requirement, according to another HPD letter.
The tenant association’s lawyers did not respond to questions about the case.
If the building is removed from the program, residents will lose the opportunity to own their homes and their apartments will become rent stabilized.
“It’s a difficult situation,” Morrow said. “We did everything we could, but it just didn’t look like it was going to happen.”
