A lot of us felt that big monied interests would win out and that the Court of Appeals would decide against tenants and for Tishman Speyer/Blackrock in the J-51 case.
You can read more about this ruling at the NY Times.
This is a HUGE win for tenants--not only in Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village, but in the city.
So, Jerry and Robbie Speyer--YOU LOSE!!!
Get the latest up-to-date info about this ruling and its possible results at the "newsreel" sidebar on the right.
29 comments:
Time to update the current value of PCV/ST. Latest quote in the press is now $1.99 billion. Down from $2.11....
Fuck you Tishman Speyer! You dirty, crooked bunch of lowlifes! I hope all your investments go south. The Chrysler Building and Rock Center deserve much better than to be owned by a couple of Shylock-like dickheads. They and their friend, Bostonian Bloomberg, have taken the dignity and class of this city and used it as toilet paper. Get out of our lives and stay out, you FILTH!
I wonder if anyone thought of making Rob or Jerry halloween masks? They would go over specially well in Stuyvesant Town. Robbie, especially, looks like he wears his halloween mask year round!
I was very disturbed to read in T&V that in at some cases when conducting these "inspections" of apartments to determine whether or not there were any illegal walls (and whatever else they were hoping to find), sometimes these "inspectors" entered apartments without knocking, ringing the doorbell or using the intercoms (which were probably broken). I think that is a terrible thing to do because it is almost like Gestapo tactics. Imagine if some of those elderly tenants who were subjected to this kind of treatment were Jewish of Eastern European descent and had childhood memories of terrible things; imagine if some of the tenants were immigrants from countries where brutal home invasion tactics were commonplace. What terror TS's tactics must have visited upon such people. Also, I wonder what would happen if they entered the apartment of, say, a police officer or corrections officer in such a manner and found themselves looking down the business end of a service revolver. What's that I smell? Clean underwear, guys? It seems to me that TS and its agents are as short on intelligence as they are on compassion and common decency.
Yeah...I bet there's not one single firefighter, nurse, teacher and whatever is called middle class these days in ST...this whole rent-regulation shit has got to be fixed...
If you like it, you shoulda put a (income) cap on it
I know. With all those billions, you'd think his face wouldn't look like a turd but it does.
Of course, so do most of our grounds.
Never mind. Guess it all makes sense...
While the current victory is sweet, I think that we are going to have to be ready for the backlash from the RE industry and lobby when the Rent Stabilization law sunsets in 2011. They will do ANYTHING fair or foul to make sure that law is not renewed (especially if Lord Mayor for Life Sleazebucks succeeds in buying a third term) and we have to make sure that they don't get their wicked way! We better start preparing for the battle ahead.
Now that the illegally deregulated apartments have to be put back into the rent stabilization system, I sincerely hope that after paying the MRers whatever they are owed for overcharges, TS will not renew their leases but will instead do the decent thing and rent these apartments to people who were on the waiting list that was abolished back in 2001 by MetLife. Of course, hoping for TS to do the decent thing is like whistling into the wind. They only do the right thing if and when they are forced to do so. It is my sincere hope that the NYU bunch will be kicked out soon because they certainly don't belong in a rent stabilized community. They belong in a dorm and this property should never have been used as a dorm.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/building_chaos_CX1eoVgePo3dmHqwBfCXEK
Fine mess you got yourself into, Robbie!
You are right. They belong in a dorm an not in my home.
That said, you cannot evict these people illegally--which is what you are prescribing.
Alternately, we should SUE TS for the degradation of our living environment and the pain and suffering associated with it!
They don't have to illegally evict anybody. They can simply refuse to renew NYU's leases because they do not fall within the guidelines for rent stabilized apartments. Same with a lot of the market rate tenants when their leases are up. If their income, etc., doesn't fall within the requirements for leasing rent stabilized apartments they should not be allowed to renew.
The NYU situation would have to be addressed legally because the deal TS made was to make apartments available to NYU in bulk. Those apartments wouldn't have existed in bulk under stabilization.
One would think that current tenants with incomes that are above the stabilization guidelines ($175,000 for the past 2 years) wouldn't be entitled to stabilized leases, but how that will be handled by DHCR is unknown.
The whole situation is a giant bureaucratic mess at this point.
You seem to be missing the point. This ruling addressed the issue of 'vacancy' and 'luxury' decontrol. Income and vacancy are no longer an issue as long as J-51 is at hand.
Who did you think this ruling applied to?
And while we're at it, how about the NEW management re-establishing the policy of having no more than 2 unrelated people on a lease and banning pressure walls which would restore this to an apartment community and not a dorm. I'd also love to see dogs eliminated from the community, but alas, I think Pandora's box might have been opened.
"You seem to be missing the point...."
I don't think I'm missing the point. There are a lot of details related to the decision that will need to be decided by various legal and bureaucratic bodies. Yes, the court said that apartments cannot be DE-controlled under J-51, but it didn't address the issue of who would actually be qualified for stabilization.
Under the law, tenants with incomes over $175K for 2 consecutive years don't qualify for a stabilized apartment, therefore there would never have been a DE-control proceeding against them, nor would they have been granted a lease for the stabilized unit. Did the court intend for Roberts to provide a "backdoor" into stabilization for high income tenants who would normally be excluded ?
There are issues that need to be decided.
What is REALLY REALLY important is that we get the RS laws renewed in 2011. Everything else is moot without that!
This whole thing is such a mess and is going to take literally years to resolve. If ever there was a more damning reason to get rid of Bloomberg I can't think of it. He and his pals precipitated this debacle with their insatiable greed and total contempt for New York City renters, especially those of us in rent regulated apartments such as PCVST and Riverton. Laurence Gluck is as vile a crook as the Speyers. They're all of the same filthy, vile ilk. I include Trump and his ugly daughter in that group!
Then move. All you people do is complain. They serve free food on the floors and ceilings and still you want more.
I love the way they serve pizza!
Reply to John Monel:
Rats on the floors and roaches on the ceilings are not considered "free food" you should know better.
Skibumonel and Tennis123 are one and the same person who has already been thrown off the other blog. Get a life!
Skibummonel (a/k/a Tennis123) contributes nothing, but reduces the quality of this otherwise excellent blog. He is to STR what the goat perverts are to LL. Just an annoying and worthless distraction from the real message of the blog.
What is that whole 'goat' thing? I just don't get it.
Time to update the current value of PCV/ST yet again! According to Fitch on Friday October 30th:
"Fitch has lowered its value estimate of the property to $1.8 billion based on second quarter 2009 (2Q'09) financials and a cap rate of 7%."
Thanks. The number is now lowered.
Gee, if it goes any lower I may buy it myself! I suspect that another group of hungry vultures are circling. Maybe this would be a good time for the TA to think seriously about putting in a bid.
Question: what is the fastest way to lose $3.6 billion?
Answer....
One thing's for sure: Rob Speyer doesn't have to spend money on a Halloween mask. He was born with one!
And ,according to Fitch, that valuation does not include any reduction in value as a result of the possible requirement to repay about $200 million in rent overcharges.
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