RSS Feed
|
||||||||
|
Anxious Starrett City Tenants Fear Ouster After Sale
"This is ground zero for gentrification," said Bertha Lewis, executive director of New York ACORN, a community group that led more than 1,000 people who rallied at the Christian Cultural Center on Flatlands Avenue not far from the complex. Monday is the deadline for bids in what could be one of the richest real estate deals in New York history. The price could top $1 billion for Spring Creek Towers, a Brooklyn complex widely known by its original name, Starrett City that opened in 1974. Its 140 acres, just east of Canarsie, resembles a small town with about 12,000 people living in 46 towers surrounded by schools, churches, synagogues, parks and a shopping mall.
Lewis said the sale demonstrates a new tactic being used by developers. "In New York and across the country, we're seeing developers who once wouldn't even nod at affordable housing but now have a new strategy: to go after large complexes like Starrett and swoop up thousands of units at a time," Lewis said. Then, she said, they raise rents and cut services. "This is a whole new ball game. There's gold in it." A spokesman for the complex owners, Starrett City Associates, said the sale wouldn't change the affordability. "We are convinced that Starrett City will continue to be an affordable, subsidized development, with over 90 percent of the tenants qualified for rent subsidies," said spokesman Martin McLaughlin. Trump has a limited partnership in Starrett City Associates, "a very small percentage,'' noted McLaughlin, who did not know exactly how much. The ownership group is chaired by financier Disque Dean. Lewis' group, ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - is a national organization of low- and moderate-income families with more than 350,000 members in 103 cities. Real estate analysts predict Starrett City Associates will get more than $1 billion for the property, which was renamed in 2002 after the Spring Creek that flows by. The majority of tenants in the 30-year-old development pay from $200 to about $400 for a federally subsidized apartment. These families, who live on an annual gross income of about $20,000 to $40,000, said they're afraid a new owner eager to bring in the high purchase price will make changes forcing them out. Once sold, Starrett City could leave New York state's Mitchell-Lama program, which since the 1950s has provided land and lucrative government financing to developers in exchange for building low- and middle-income housing that is state subsidized. About 2,000 Starrett City tenants pay up to $1,200 rent under that state program. Affordable housing has become a hot political topic in New York, where prices for working-class apartments have skyrocketed, driven by last year's $5.4-billion sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two Manhattan complexes where rent stabilization kept most apartment prices below market level. Some tenants at those complexes now face rent increases of more than 30 percent in a Manhattan real estate market that is squeezing out all but the well-to-do. Bidders for Starrett are likely to come from among the same real-estate heavyweights that competed for Stuyvesant and Peter Cooper - Related Cos. and Apollo Real Estate Advisors, plus pension funds, investment banks and foreign investors. McLaughlin said that as of Friday there were a dozen bids submitted. Brooklyn's borough president, Marty Markowitz, announced his support for the Starrett tenants in his recent state of the borough address. "I've got a message: This won't be Stuy-Town II," said Markowitz, who was at Saturday's noontime rally at the Christian Cultural Center along with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. New York's new Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, who campaigned on the promise that he would protect the working class, is another powerful tenant ally - with leverage. Last week, the governor reiterated his campaign promise to keep rents affordable at Starrett City. While running for governor last fall he said there is "a need to create even more affordable housing." Spitzer also stated that he is willing to commit state resources when owners share the long-term goal of affordability for low- and middle-income tenants. State officials hold Starrett's $234 million interest-free mortgage and can approve or reject any new owner. And development of vacant land on the site - another buyer draw - also requires state and city approvals. Neil S. Friedman contributed to this story.
|
for larger version       |
|||||||
