From left: St. Mark's Bookshop, a Brooklyn bodega, Brooklyn BP Marty Markowitz, Stuy Town and Jimmy McMillan

Some of the most powerless New Yorkers are tenants of buildings in limbo because of a recent sale or foreclosure. Some work fruitlessly to disrupt the free market system real estate developers fancy. Either way, the Village Voice released its list of the “100 Most Powerless New Yorkers,” and considering the city’s relationship with the real estate industry, its little surprise that real estate-related stories have a significant presence on the list. [more]

William Koeppel and 350 East 52nd Street (building credit: PropertyShark)The latest lawsuit to emerge from the dust of the controversial J-51 tax rulings at Stuyvesant Town was filed by tenants of 350 East 52nd Street against landlord William Koeppel, Crain’s reported.

Tenants of the 132-unit building allege Koeppel “wrongly treated … plaintiffs and the putative class members as market-rent tenants” even after accepting J-51 tax benefits for building upgrades. The tenants are being represented by William Gribben, a partner at Himmelstein McConnel Gribben Donoghue & Joseph. [more]

Stuyvesand Town and City Council member Daniel GarodnickThe New York state appeals court ruled today that tenants in the blockbuster lawsuit at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village will be able to pursue millions in rent overcharges, tossing a move to dismiss the case by MetLife, the original landlord of the Manhattan complex (note: correction appended).

In 2007, Stuy Town residents, led by tenant Amy Roberts, filed a class action suit against Tishman and the previous landlord, Metropolitan Life, alleging they illegally deregulated apartments while receiving J-51 tax benefits, which are designed to help landlords renovate apartment buildings in return for keeping rents affordable.

The decision means that thousands of current and former tenants will be able to pursue more than $215 million in excess rent that was paid to previous landlord Tishman Speyer or MetLife, which had sold the complex to Tishman.
[more]

From left: Attorney Sam Himmelstein, Stuyvesant Town and 56 Seventh Avenue (source: PropertyShark)

[Updated 2:47 p.m.] A New York state appellate court ruled yesterday that the landmark decision to protect rent-stabilized
tenants in the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village case should be applied retroactively, a move
that could open the floodgates to millions of dollars in rent overcharges at other developments.
The new case, in which the court actually upheld the landlord’s lower court victory, involved a
Manhattan couple looking to overturn a prior rent-decontrol ruling at 56 Seventh Avenue in the West
Village. The tenants argued that the Stuy Town case, called Roberts vs Tishman Speyer, where Roberts was a tenant, should allow them to have their market-rate apartment rents refunded in the form of overcharges.

“The Court of Appeals, when they decided Roberts , specifically left open the question of retroactivity,”
said attorney Sam Himmelstein, who represented the tenants in the new case. “Landlords have been
making motions to dismiss these cases saying that it shouldn’t be applied retroactively. Even though we
lost the case, it’s a massive victory for tenants at large.” [more]

There’s an antique collection of storage trunks — and potentially a community of insects and vermin — in the bowels of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. But in its latest issue, the New Yorker reported that property manager Rose Associates has begun sending letters to tenants asking them to claim their belongings, as CWCapital, which took control of the property after Tishman Speyer defaulted, tries to make better use of the space in advance of a sale.

The 110-building complex has offered tenants trunk storage space since the 1940s. [more]

New York City Council member Dan Garodnick, who represents Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, said a bill being kicked around the state senate ignores thousands of harmed individuals, lost affordable apartments and the law. In an interview with the Village Voice, Garodnick shreds the bill that would allow landlords who illegally deregulated apartments while taking tax breaks from the city to simply pay back their taxes and avoid further penalty. It would save landlords hundreds of millions of dollars, while tenants whose rents were illegally raised would lose their right, protected by a 2009 state appeals court ruling, to recover money. [more]

Academy Award-winner Dianne Wiest, who starred in “Hannah and Her Sisters” and more recently, in HBO’s “In Treatment,” has joined a group of tenants at her 229 West 78th Street home in a rent-stabilization lawsuit against their longtime landlord. According to the Post, the actress and her cohorts are taking a page out of the book of the Stuyvesant Town & Peter Cooper Village apartment complex, claiming that their landlord illegally charged them market-rate rents because the 100-unit building was simultaneously getting a J-51 tax abatement from the city between 1993 and 2004. [more]

From left: City Council member Daniel Garodnick, Rose Associates’ Adam Rose and trees in Stuyvesant Town

Special servicer CWCaptial Asset Management is set to remove hundreds of trees from the sprawling Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village residential complex, according to the Wall Street Journal, after residents complained the greenery posed a safety threat. The trees, which former owner Tishman Speyer began planting at the 11,200-unit residential community in 2006, allowed “for somebody of ill will to hide and potentially perform a criminal act,” said City Council member Daniel Garodnick at the time. But while residents butted heads with Tishman Speyer over the arboreal plantings, Adam Rose, co-president of Stuy Town property manager Rose Associates, said he agrees with the tenants. [more]

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension plan otherwise known as Calpers, is shifting its strategy away from residential real estate investments after getting badly burned on several boom-era housing deals, Bloomberg News reported. Perhaps the most infamous of those deals was Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, in which Calpers lost a $500 million stake after the complex was turned over to creditors last year. Yesterday, the pension fund’s investment committee voted to move roughly half of its real estate investments from “higher-risk” assets like housing into commercial property, in order to avoid falling victim to real estate booms and busts in the future. [more]

The attorney to a group of tenants at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village has withdrawn a motion to block the complex’s landlords from raising rents on lease renewals beyond the 2.25 percent and 4.5 percent agreements outlined by the Rent Guidelines Board, following a court order soliciting an outside agency to advise on the legal rent-setting formula for the 110-building residential complex.

The State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the agency that administers the Rent Stabilization Law, is set to “give the judge an advisory opinion on the proper legal formula by April 1,” according to Alexander Schmidt, a partner with Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, the firm representing Stuy Town’s tenants in Roberts v. Tishman Speyer Properties. TRD [more]