Investigation into a member of Co-op City’s board of directors getting pushed to the top of the waiting list for a sought-after townhouse may not be the only scandal plaguing the 25-building development in Baychester, the Daily News reported. Now, applications submitted by two other board members for a pair of two-story townhouses may need to be re-examined to see if their stated incomes qualify them for the townhouses at the complex, a 320-acre housing cooperative managed by Riverbay. One board faction has brought in Riverbay’s lawyer to investigate. There are also rumors that there is a movement among that board faction calling for an outside independent investigation, according to the Daily News. The next step may be to bring in the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which oversees the Mitchell-Lama complex.

[NYDN, 1st item]

[more]

Bronx’s Co-op City, a 25-building development in Baychester, is investigating allegations that a board member was pushed to the top of the waiting list for a sought-after townhouse. Though Co-op City is comprised mostly of apartments, it also has 236 smaller townhouses, with a five-year waiting list, sources told the New York Daily News. The complex is a 320-acre housing cooperative managed by Riverbay, which is overseen by a 15-member board of directors and one state housing representative. The board — whose members live there — voted Tuesday to have in-house attorney Jeffrey Buss investigate whether Riverbay’s sales department broke any rules by transferring the townhouse to a new owner who also is a board member. Last week, several board members called for a probe into the transfer, claiming that Riverbay sales director Steve Gold may have given board member Leticia Morales preferential treatment. Morales moved into the townhouse a month ago, and denies any involvement in being bumped up the list, while Gold has been suspended pending the probe. A spokesperson for the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which oversees sales and transfers at subsidized Mitchell-Lama developments such as Co-op City, said the agency is reviewing the allegations. [NYDN]

[more]

Laurence Gluck was within his rights when he began charging market-rate rents at Independence Plaza North, the state’s housing agency has determined. Gluck, who took the 1,339-unit building at 80 North Moore Street in Tribeca out of the state’s Mitchell-Lama housing program after purchasing the property in 2004, began destabilizing rents gradually in a deal with tenants and the city, but by now, now one-bedrooms rent there for as much as $3,800 per month. A tenant-led case at I.P.N., charging that Gluck should not have been allowed to deregulate rents because he was still receiving J-51 tax abatements at the time, has been brewing at I.P.N. since 2005. But while the case was reminiscent of the one lost by Tishman Speyer last year at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, in I.P.N.’s case, the city mistakenly continued to grant Gluck tax breaks for two years after he removed the building from the Mitchell-Lama program. After he stopped receiving the abatement, Gluck repaid roughly $17,000. In April, Judge Marcy Friedman of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan asked the state’s housing agency, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, to issue an opinion on the case. Friedman can now accept or reject the agency’s decision.

From left: vrbo.com has a nightly rental on the market at M127; units are rented on a nightly basis at Dexter House; a NYC hostel listed on tripadvisor.com

Illegal hotel operators are about to get a rude awakening with four state bills that, if enacted, would make it clearly illegal to rent residential apartments on a nightly basis, and would beef up city enforcement of the issue. Internet travel sites have enabled an explosion of illegal hotels in the city, which activists say diminishes the city’s supply of affordable housing and erodes the quality of life for neighboring residents. The Westside Neighborhood Alliance has a database of 297 hotels it suspects are illegal — mainly rent-stabilized or single room occupancy apartments in Manhattan that the group claims are poorly maintained, crammed with hostel-style bunk beds and rented to hard-partying tourists. The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement has cracked down on some of these hostels recently, primarily because of safety and over-crowding concerns since they present a fire hazard. Assemblyman Richard Gottfried introduced one of the four bills yesterday that would authorize the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development to shut down these hotels from an affordable housing standpoint, rather than the agency currently charged with enforcing these violations, the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal. “HPD just has a much larger enforcement budget and more man power,” said Michael Kaplan, Gottfried’s deputy chief of staff. “The city, as far as I can tell, has not been very supportive of the idea,” he added, so HPD would have to voluntarily take on this role. “The better solution would be to improve DHCR, not to try to shift work to HPD without providing any funding for new responsibilities,” said a city source, who requested anonymity. [more]

201 West 92nd Street (source: PropertyShark)

A New York State Supreme Court Judge approved a request by Istar Financial to appoint a receiver at an Upper West Side tenement complex owned by Adorama investor Mendel Mendlowits, who is facing foreclose proceedings at the properties.

Judge James Yates ordered attorney Peter Weiss to take over as receiver of the rental buildings while the foreclosure works its way through the courts.

The judge further ordered that Walters & Samuels, a Manhattan-based property management firm, oversee the properties. Istar, a Manhattan-based commercial real estate lender, filed suit earlier this month to foreclose on the site at 201 West 92nd and 200 West 93rd, after Mendlowits allegedly defaulted on a $46 million mortgage, failed to pay $329,950 in taxes and signed a commercial lease for a pet shop without the prior consent of the lender. [more]

The recent ruling in favor of tenants at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village initially put the city’s landlords on the defensive, but now property owners are asking if the city might owe them money because of the decision. Frank Ricci, director of governmental affairs at the landlord trade group Rent Stabilization Association, said he has fielded calls from “dozens” of landlords asking if the city might owe them for overpayment in taxes. And in recent weeks the law firm Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman raised more questions in a bulletin, including whether the city must pay landlords for lost tax abatements. Adding to the potential chaos, Stephen Meister, a partner who specializes in real estate law at the firm Meister Seelig & Fein, said he had spoken with building owners who might want to leave the city-run J-51 tax abatement program altogether. [more]

L+M Development Partners’ new affordable
housing complex in Brownsville will celebrate its opening with a ribbon cutting today. Also, Coldwell
Banker Real Estate launched an interactive billboard in Times Square
that displays home listings. And at the Rialto condo in Williamsburg, buyers now only have to
put 10 percent down. Click here for the full version. TRD [more]