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Out of 3,000 apartments on Roosevelt Island, only 900 charge market-rate rents. The rest are government-subsidized buildings or developments built under the Mitchell-Lama housing program, with one building as a co-op. Passed by the New York legislature in 1955, this program offered developers low-interest mortgages and tax abatements in exchange of rent caps (landlords can only increases rent if profits fall below six percent.) But at the same time, the Private Housing Finance Law allows owners to take their buildings off the Mitchell-Lama program after 20 years by repaying the mortgage and complying with a number of procedural requirements.
Since 1998, Manhattan has lost 2,724 units of affordable housing, according to the Office of Land Use, Housing and Development appointed by Manhattan Borough President Virgina Fields. Nearly 6,000 units belong to owners who had already applied to opt out of Mitchell-Lama.
National trends are not encouraging to Roosevelt Islanders either. In a report released by the National Alliance of Housing and Urban Development Tenants, an organization representing 2.1 million families nationwide, more than 250,000 units of affordable housing have been lost since 1996. This occurred "following Congress' restoration of owner's ability to 'prepay' (i.e. pay off after 20 years) their 40 year HUD-subsidized mortgages and raise rents to high market levels," testified Ms. Louis Sanchez, president of NAHT, during a Capitol Hill hearing on October 2002. "They're trying to turn this into a 'rich club' island," said Julie Palermo, president of Roosevelt Island's Chamber of Commerce and owner of Julie's Sports Bar, the only bar on the island. Palermo recalled a time when her son Johnny was six-years-old and she found him playing in his room with friends from Africa, Germany and Israel. "This is what America is all about, I thought to myself, and this is where I want my kid to grow up until he's 18," said Palermo. However, she fears that if rents start to go up, the social diversity in which she wants Johnny to grow up will swiftly start to dwindle. "Sure, my business would benefit from wealthier clients, but what good would that be if I would still have to move out because I couldn't possibly afford to pay market rate?" Mathew Katz, president of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association, estimates that of the 9,500 people living on the island, around 7,500 live in Mitchell-Lama or other government-subsidized housing. "This is a planned community, designed from the beginning to host a mix of housing and parks and to be economically and socially diverse," said Katz. "If these buildings start going private, our community will be destroyed."
This kind of atmosphere is what has kept globetrotter and Boy Scout Master Geoffrey Kerr on the island for 25 years. "Roosevelt Island is a wonderful cross between the city and the suburbs. You're away from all the hustle and bustle but you're five minutes away from Bloomingdale's," said Kerr in his British accent. "It's also a very diverse place, one where the poor hobnob with the well-off, etc. But if rents aren't kept affordable, this will change the nature of the community, it would become more like an [Upper] East Side community." However, for this to take place on Roosevelt Island, Mitchell-Lama building owners must take action. Most important is obtaining a ground lease extension. In 1969, New York State's Urban Development Corporation leased the island from the City of New York for 99 years. This means that landlords would have to negotiate their ground lease extension with the Roosevelt Island Operating Cooperation (RIOC), a nine-member board appointed by the governor that functions as the island's governing body.
Dick Lutz, publisher of the Main Street WIRE, explained that the RIOC holds a key role in determining the conditions under which building owners decide to opt out of the Mitchell-Lama program. In Roosevelt Island's only newspaper, Lutz outlined two possible, though extreme, scenarios. One: RIOC grants the lease extension but asks for rent protections. Or two: RIOC extends leases to building owners but asks a) for lots of cash upfront, or b) for a high annual ground rate. At present, however, it is difficult to estimate how the RIOC will deal with this matter. Thanks to the Maple Tree Group, a group of islanders seeking self-governance for Roosevelt Island, the majority of RIOC board members will now have to be residents. The members won't be elected by other residents, they will still be appointed by the governor. But so far, Governor George E. Pataki has failed to do so.
To this, Lutz responded that "this point of view certainly has validity. I'm not at all sure it's right to change the rules of the game just because the game is nearly over. In an ideal world, the low-cost housing unit going out of Mitchell-Lama now would have been steadily replaced over the years so that the supply would remain more or less steady," he wrote in an e-mail. "It's a very difficult balancing act between the rights of the owners and the needs of the tenants, with questions about the reliability of state guarantees thrown in for good measure." In the meantime, Katz and his association are busy trying to sign up residents for a rally to Albany, where they intend to show mass support for a Senate bill that would extend rent-control laws for expired Mitchell-Lama buildings. Nevertheless, Katz was at best unsure about residents' participation. In his view, there's not enough awareness of the issue. "It's difficult to motivate people here," he said. But as Dolores Green, president of Roosevelt Island Senior Association, suggested, this may have to do more with denial than with motivation. "To be perfectly honest, I think we're not discussing Mitchell-Lama because we're terribly afraid," she said. "It's like, in our heads, we won't live to see it happen. Seniors live with fixed incomes, and the prospect is very traumatic."
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more than 20 years, Roosevelt Island's affordable housing has
attracted a wide variety of residents from many countries and backgrounds.
The island's ethnic, cultural and social diversity has tinted its
community life with a sense of small town cosmopolitanism. However,
the happy marriage between low rents and decent housing on Roosevelt
Island may soon go down the river. And with it, several residents
fear, so will the island's characteristic diversity.
hat
community is a warm, welcoming one. Unlike the rest of the city,
the pace here is much slower; people greet each other on the street
and store owners refer to customers by their name. Main Street,
with its non-threatening buildings, frequent courtyards and green
spaces, offers a sense of urban coziness that, together with the
river breeze, gives the island a resort-like quality. It's the perfect
setting for celebrating Roosevelt Island Day on June 14th, when
residents go out and plant flowers everywhere, enjoy a free breakfast
provided by the Residents Association and participate in several
community activities and public concerts. <Click here to take
a photo tour of the island
nother
nagging question surrounding the Mitchell-Lama buildings is the
issue of fairness. One common argument of developers is that they
would have never built under the Mitchell-Lama program without the
provision to opt out of it after 20 years. Also at risk, according
to developers, is the public's trust in governmental policies if
the guarantees provided by the Private Housing Finance Law are not
respected.