Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

City Nears 30-Year Rent Stabilization Deal at Crown Heights Complex

 The former Brooklyn Jewish Hospital located on Prospect Place between Classon and Franklin avenues in Crown Heights is now a six-building apartment complex.
The former Brooklyn Jewish Hospital located on Prospect Place between Classon and Franklin avenues in Crown Heights is now a six-building apartment complex.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

CROWN HEIGHTS — The city is close to making a deal to ensure 700 apartments at a large Crown Heights apartment building remain rent stabilized for at least 30 years, representatives of the landlord and the city’s housing department told tenants this week.

In the deal, current residents of the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital complex will live under rent-stabilized leases — subject to annual increases determined by the Rent Guidelines Board — with rent and income requirements for future tenants constrained by New York’s area median income, according to the city’s Housing Preservation and Development agency and owner Alma Realty, which both met with tenants Monday night.

The building’s tenant association organized the meeting to clear up questions from residents about the more than one-year-long negotiations between Alma Realty and the HPD that aim to give the landlord an Article XI tax break in exchange for keeping the complex rent-stabilized.

Talks about the tax incentive followed public outcry from local elected officials and tenants after some residents received market-rate rent hikes from Alma in the fall of 2014. (Those hikes have effectively been reversed as the deal is hammered out; rents have increased 1 percent in the building since 2014, Alma officials said.)

Now, Alma officials assured the dozens of tenants in attendance at the meeting Monday that the six-building complex on Prospect Place between Classon and Franklin avenues will enter into a regulatory agreement over the summer, assuming the City Council approves the Article XI resolution. HPD said the deal will likely be considered by the Council as early as June 9.

“Effectively, once the Council passes it, then you know it’s going to be done,” said John Mavroudis, a manager at Alma Realty.

Tenants of the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital complex met with representatives of HPD and Alma Realty at the CNR healthcare facility on Classon Avenue on Monday night. (Photo credit: DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith)

A few logistical hurdles — including transferring ownership of the six properties within the complex to a Housing Development Fund Corporation, or HDFC, and re-registering all 700 units with the state’s rent stabilization agency — must be overcome before the deal is complete, Mavroudis said.

But when the paperwork is done, all apartments at the former hospital will be rent stabilized for 30 years — and beyond that, if tenants or their children stay in the building, according to the agreement and rent stabilization laws.

Future tenants who move into the complex during that 30-year period — depending in which building they live — will be required to make less than 120 or 150 percent of New York’s area median income (AMI), HPD officials said, or less than $103,560 and $129,450 for a family of four. Four of the complex's six buildings will have an income cap at 150 percent of AMI; the other two will be set at 120 percent of AMI.

► INTERACTIVE: What is AMI?

Upon hearing about the details of the rent stabilization deal, tenant association member Mariano Munoz said he and his fellow tenants are “breathing a little easier,” but worried that the income requirements for future residents seemed “pretty high.” On that point, he hoped tenants could have negotiated with HPD and Alma to lower the income range on behalf of future neighbors.

“It’s key to having affordability beyond just us,” he said.

Taier Perlman, a four-year resident of 523 Prospect Place, agreed with Munoz, saying she thinks the income requirements should be wider to reflect Crown Heights’ “history of being more low-income.”

But, at the same time, she thanked Alma and HPD for their “good-faith effort” in the negotiation — and, particularly, her tenant representatives who continued to push the effort forward, even when residents weren’t sure what the outcome would be.

“We didn’t know what to expect, frankly,” she said after the meeting. “This is wonderful news. But through the whole process, it’s been sort of like, ‘Is this going to work out for us?’”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that the income requirements for future tenants in the complex would range from 120 to 150 percent of New York's area median income. Those AMI figures (120 and 150 percent) are not an income range, but instead represent income caps for future tenants, depending on the building in which they live.