The Mamdani administration is raising the rent on a city-supervised co-op in The Bronx by more than 30% \u2014 angering residents who blasted the mayor over his affordable housing promises, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n
Residents of Tracey Towers \u2014 an 871-unit Mitchell-Lama development<\/a> serving middle- and moderate-income families \u2014 were told during a Wednesday tenant meeting that their rents would go up by 30.59% over the next four years.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that this is very frustrating, particularly with an administration, a mayor that ran on affordability and rent freezes,\u201d Councilman Eric Dinowitz, a Democrat who represents the district, told a group of nearly 100 distressed residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tenants at a Mitchell Lama complex are irate over a proposed 28% rent hike despite the Mayor campaigning on affordability. Michael Brochstein\/ZUMA \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n Dina Levy, the Mamdani-appointed head of the city\u2019s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said the rent increase would go toward covering the Jerome Park complex\u2019s mortgage and ongoing operating costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou speak about affordable housing, affordable for who?\u201d one irate woman shouted after Levy took about 20 minutes of questions about repairs to the two buildings.<\/p>\n That prompted another tenant to shout, \u201cThere\u2019s the question.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The first tenant continued, saying, \u201cI worked for the city for 37 years, and I\u2019m still here, and I\u2019m living in this building. My husband also worked for the city for 20 something years.\u00a0<\/p>\n The buidlings rent is hiking 28% over 4 years to cover mortgage costs. Angel Chevrestt<\/p>\n \u201cAnd now, you can\u2019t afford to live here. You can sit in your cool office and propose a 28 percent increase? How? It\u2019s not affordable to me anymore,\u201d she said, drawing applause from the group.<\/p>\n Rent will jump 15% next year for tenants, who pay an average of $1,344 for a 1-bedroom and $1,680 for a 2-bedroom apartment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rents will then climb 5% in each of the following two years, and finally 3% in the fourth year, with increases compounding year-over-year, for a total 30.59% rather than the 28% presented.<\/p>\n Mitchell-Lama buildings are owned and operated by private companies but are strictly overseen by the HPD. Unlike the city\u2019s over one million rent-stabilized apartments \u2014 which Mamdani has promised would see a rent freeze \u2014 Mitchell-Lama developments have no legal statutory cap on rent.<\/p>\n The HPD is required to balance the revenue and expenses of the buildings \u2014 most of which date to between 1955 and the late 1970s, and are completely separate from NYCHA, which provides public housing owned and operated by the city and subsidized by federal dollars.<\/p>\n A number of renters weren\u2019t happy with City Hall, as the mayor has loudly touted his pro-tenant, anti-landlord agenda, including with the promised rent freeze. He also launched the Mayor\u2019s Office to Protect Tenants, led by his controversial Democratic Socialists of America comrade Cea Weaver<\/a>, which held a series of \u201cRental Ripoff hearings\u201d<\/a> where tenants aired grievances against their landlords and living conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t believe in the politicians. They\u2019re going to say what they want to say to get the vote,\u201d 68-year-old Anotonietta Grillo, who has lived in the building since 1974, told The Post after Wednesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that this is very frustrating, particularly with an administration, a mayor that ran on affordability and rent freezes,\u201d said Dinowitz. LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cHow can you say we\u2019re going to have affordable housing when everything goes up?\u201d<\/p>\n Tony Taylor, 79, the former president of the tenant association at the development, let Levy have it during the meeting \u2014 including about poor living conditions at Tracey Towers.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time you guys come here and propose an increase, it\u2019s to address the same issue, and\u00a0 it never gets done,\u201d he said.\u2029\u201dSince I\u2019ve been here, my rent\u2019s gone up 500 percent, and nothing has changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we first moved in, it was a nice development. We had good service. But day after day, nothing happens,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo what\u2019s your guarantee that if you take and get a 28 percent increase, and repairs don\u2019t get done, do we get our 28 percent back?\u201d<\/p>\n Levy countered that the rent spike wouldn\u2019t go toward capital improvements on the complex \u2014\u00a0 erected in the 1970s and owned by Tracey Towers Inc. \u2014 but rather \u201cbecause this building is three years delinquent on your existing mortgage and is not covering your current operating costs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow that happened, I do not know, and I\u2019ve been here for five months,\u201d she added. \u201cBut what we don\u2019t want to see is this building going to foreclosure and not be in the Mitchell-Lama program anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Levy noted that HPD was allocating $35 million to fix the dilapidated building\u2019s faulty elevators, leaky roofs, and more.<\/p>\n But the repairs raised separate concerns, as buildings have historically misallocated funds. A March audit of 15 Mitchell-Lama complexes by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, found $2.3 million in misspent or inadequately reported money.<\/p>\n While Levy erroneously claimed during the meeting that Tracey Towers hadn\u2019t seen a rent increase in 10 years, rents were actually raised a total of 22.21% between 2022 and 2024. There were no increases from 2015 to 2022.<\/p>\n Dina Levy spoke with the disgruntled tenants at a meeting Wednesday. Reuven Fenton<\/p>\n One tenant who has lived at the towers since 1999 was in tears over the revelation that her rent will skyrocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you increase my rent, I\u2019m going to be homeless, because my social security is so much less now. When I pay my rent now, I only have $100 to stay in New York,\u201d 64-year-old Augustina Kwarteng said during the meeting.<\/p>\n Taylor, the former tenant association president, told The Post after that he is on a fixed income \u2013 and that his pension and social security checks don\u2019t increase when the rent does.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I retired, back in 2009, it was affordable. Now I\u2019m right at the envelope. I\u2019m pushing the envelope now,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat do I do? \u2029Do I take my meds? Do I eat? Do I buy new clothes when my clothes get old? \u2029Do I recycle stuff? Where is the equity?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n About a third of the building\u2019s renters will be exempt from the increase due to their Section 8 vouchers based on income eligibility and the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) \u2014 which protects seniors from rent increases if they make less than $75,000 per year.<\/p>\n HPD said in a statement to The Post that many Mitchell-Lama complexes have fallen into financial distress, despite being a \u201ccritical piece\u201d of affordable housing stock.<\/p>\n \u201cThe city and HPD are committed to supporting the fiscal stability of this development, helping tenants access rental assistance programs, and preserving these homes for the long-term,\u201d the spokesperson said Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHPD and city staff will be directly engaging tenants to ensure that as many disabled and senior residents as possible take advantage of rent increase exemptions (SCRIE),\u201d the rep said.<\/p>\n Mamdani has long been lobbying for the city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board \u2014 which oversees yearly increases on the rent-stabilized housing stock \u2014 to impose a freeze. But Landlords have warned against it \u2014citing inability to pay basic maintenance upkeep due to skyrocketing insurance costs.<\/p>\n Insurance and fuel costs are expected to rise nearly 11% in 2026 alone, according to the rent-guidelines board index of operating costs. In the past five years, landlord insurance costs have nearly doubled \u2014 increasing 99.9% since 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mamdani administration is raising the rent on a city-supervised co-op in The Bronx by more than 30%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[433,128,25779,68,2907,57,9,24,63,129,131,130,58,82],"class_list":["post-255765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-affordable-housing","tag-bronx","tag-department-of-housing-preservation-and-development","tag-exclusive","tag-housing","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}