Our landlord, BLACKSTONE, can't handle Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village. There is a lack of enforcement of certain "rules," and no amount of notice to this alleviates the problems. We are continually being told half-truths and fabrications. And we have no viable Tenants organization, despite our TA asking for dues all the time. So far, the politicians have proven to be basically useless. A typical New York story.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Cuomo: Sorry, Bill, Your "Game Changer" for Affordable Housing at the Sunnyside Yards is a NO GO
Cuomo treats NY like its his own personal private corporation. Clearly there needs to be better checks and balances implemented in the government process to keep REBNY owned political dictatorships from operating. What a pile of sh*t.
It will be Status Cuomo where businesses profit and people lose everything --- homes, minimum wage increases, human rights because these politicians are being childish and egotistical instead of being professional and grown up. One down - let's hope two more to go soon from the three men in a room.
This is why REBNY spent a lot of money buying upstate politicians.
No wonder. Last week's election reverted state politics in New York back to "status Cuomo"—the dynamic in which the governor, Democratic Assembly speaker and Republican Senate majority leader negotiate bills and budgets.
Republicans retook the state Senate for the first time since 2010, Democrats increased their Assembly majority, and Mr. Cuomo won re-election while distancing himself from the state's liberal activist wing, led by the Working Families Party and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The upshot is that business interests, which backed Senate Republicans and Mr. Cuomo, will have an easier time blocking bills to increase the state's minimum wage, publicly finance campaigns, raise property taxes, subsidize undocumented immigrants' tuition and give New York City control of rent regulation.
"I'm disinclined to do anything [Mr. de Blasio wants], because it's foolish economic-development policy," said Sen. John DeFrancisco, a powerful Syracuse Republican. "I don't believe in any of those issues, because that's what's killing New York state."
Mr. de Blasio also needs Albany's approval for aspects of his plans for affordable housing and struggling public schools. But he angered Senate Republicans by raising money and dispatching top aides in a failed effort to defeat their candidates.
Looks like Cuomo is going to continue to block or impede anything de Blasio wants to do, just because he's a mean-spirited SOB. No doubt de Blasio will have to give up body parts to get anything he wants. I'm making no judgment as to whether what Hizzoner wants is good for us or the city, just pointing out that lots of political maneuvering is likely.
"After 30 years, the developers could technically ask for the units to become market rate, but any switch would be at the discretion of NYCHA, which has vowed to keep the units affordable.
“NYCHA is in control here,” the spokeswoman said."
These are the types of people, cash parkers and money launderers, that RE wants to build higher for and note they do not shop at the supermarket of let their toes touch the same ground as any real New Yorkers.
Barnett also benefited from the flood of new money into New York from rich foreigners who need a haven for their cash. George Constantin, president of Heritage Realty Services, represents a wealthy European family that paid $30 million for an apartment on the 59th floor. He says his clients, whom he declines to name, plan to use it as a pied-à-terre during their periodic trips to the U.S. He says they intend to take full advantage of the hotel room service. “That’s a real asset,” says Constantin. “These people don’t want to go to the local supermarket. They want to make sure everything is there when they arrive. You can say on Monday morning at 9 a.m. you want a gallon of orange juice in the refrigerator, and it will be there.” For some of Barnett’s less sentimental clients, their apartment is just another asset that they hope to flip for a profit. According to CityRealty, four buyers closed on their apartments and immediately put them on the market at substantially higher prices.
DO NOT BUILD HIGHER INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE INSTEAD LET RE MAKE GOOD ON THEIR THREAT TO WALK AWAY AND LEAVE NYC IF THEY ARE DENIED TAXPAYER MONEY GIFTS CALL THE BLUFF
"....Along with the views, Barnett tempted buyers at One57 with something else: a tax break. In its condominium offering documents, Extell told buyers they would receive a 10-year abatement because the tower qualified for an affordable-housing tax exemption. Strange as it sounds, the city had for years allowed developers of luxury buildings to purchase tax-savings certificates from builders of actual affordable housing. The luxury developers could then use them at their shimmering towers. Extell told its customers that this would be wonderful for them:
The buyers of the six-bedroom, six-bathroom penthouse duplex on the 89th and 90th floors, for example, would see their annual real estate taxes fall in the first year from $205,883 to $18,415.
Barnett concedes his clients can afford to pay the full sum, but he says the abatement is invaluable when he’s trying to close his deals. “What I’ve found is that wealthy people are willing to put down a lot of money,” he says, “but they don’t want to have that constant payment out. They’re very, very focused on carrying costs. It matters psychologically.”
There was only one problem. Barnett says he was stunned to discover after he’d begun selling units that the abatements no longer applied. They’d been phased out in 2007 as part of an effort by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg to end the subsidies in many parts of the city where the real estate market was booming. (He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg Businessweek.)
That put Barnett in a bind. Extell told buyers that it would reimburse them for the abatements if they were no longer available. But the company had good news: The New York State Assembly was considering a bill that would restore the abatements. In January 2013, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that reestablished them at One57 and the luxury buildings of four other developers. He did so shortly after his reelection campaign committee deposited two checks totaling $100,000 from companies sharing addresses with Extell affiliates.
New York State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat who represents Manhattan’s East Side, says she had little choice but to vote for the abatements. They were tucked into a larger bill that enjoyed broad support because it amended the regulations governing the state’s less expensive loft apartments. Still, she lambasted the tax breaks for Barnett’s condo owners on the Senate floor. “They’re being purchased by foreign oligarchs who won’t even live here,” Krueger says. “They’re just buying these apartments as investment property. We’re building these billionaire towers in the sky that will sit empty.”
A photo and articles on the De Blasio / Cuomo "Build Higher" paid for with taxpayer subsidies while not having to use the same door or live in the same building as the taxpayers
http://ny.curbed.com/tags/227-cherry-street
The Extell Amenity article is ridiculous - it is a mini-mall multiple dwelling so you never need to go outside while you are in what used to be the greatest city in the world.
Let's all hope Preet stops this taxpayer subsidized Cuomo / Extell welfare program.
Cuomo and REBNY are creating a divide in New York that otherwise would not exist and does not exist amongst the people upstate and downstate. Cuomo is creating tension where there is none organically. A governor who is creating a civil war. For what - his business friends to get richer and the international wealthy to like him?
>>DO NOT BUILD HIGHER INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE INSTEAD LET RE MAKE GOOD ON THEIR THREAT TO WALK AWAY AND LEAVE NYC IF THEY ARE DENIED TAXPAYER MONEY GIFTS CALL THE BLUFF<<
"Bharara nailed the biggest fish first. Skelos is next followed by Cuomo, Libous and Maziarz, who are in the “on deck” circle."
"The cesspool we call the New York Assembly is about to flushed out,” Paladino predicts. “If federal investigators do their job right, the criminal element in Albany will be exposed and it’s been a long time coming.”
It is disconcerting to see Preet Bharara stand alone in taking down those who feed at the public trough while our other eunuchs, charged to protect the public trust –the US Attorneys, the State Attorney General and County District Attorneys –conveniently look the other way.
Bharara nailed the biggest fish first. Skelos is next followed by Cuomo, Libous and Maziarz, who are in the “on deck” circle.
One thing is for sure: when Carl Paladino makes a prediction, more New Yorkers will be paying close attention."
"Tenant advocates were heartened to hear Mr. de Blasio call for Albany to strengthen the city's rent laws, but were concerned that the mayor did not go further in his comments.
"We have lost 300,000 to 400,000 rent-regulated apartments over the last twenty years to vacancy deregulation," said Michael McKee, treasurer of Tenants PAC. "And without the repeal of vacancy deregulation, the city is going to lose far more affordable apartments over the next ten years than can possibly be built or preserved. If all we do is simply extend the rent laws, by 2024 we will have far fewer than one million rent-regulated apartments remaining, and that will be devastating to New York’s working and middle class families."
Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York in responding to the Mayor's speech tells the Mayor get in bed with Wall Street and RE, bend over, take some money in exchange for your dignity -- because in bed with Wall Street and RE is the ONLY way to achieve his housing goals. It's Kathryn's way or the highway because there is no other way.
De Blasio should tell Kathryn "Screw the Status Quo!"
" Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York, in a statement. "While it was not explicit in the mayor's speech, I trust his administration understands that forging partnerships with the development and financial industries is the only way to accomplish his housing goals."
Tighe and Spinola had Cuomo in the middle then Spinola and Speyer had deBlasio in the middle at the liars ball gala and now this facebook page with Spinola and Banks with DeBlasio in the middle. REBNY owns DeBlasio too. So much for his campaign pledges and promises.
Agree Get rid of air rights and Call their bluff. Let them leave. There are plenty others who will develop here without screwing New Yorkers. Doubtful they would leave anyway but if they did good riddance.
What was Brookfield given for its near million dollars? The Big U and Stuy town too?
If these committees and Hochul’s are included, Cuomo’s four-year fund-raising totals are significantly higher. The top donors to these committees include James and Marilyn Simons ($1.78 million), Litwin ($1.5 million), Brookfield Financial ($813,500), George Soros ($750,000), the Related Companies ($589,700), Vornado (at least $560,000), Rudin Management ($547,500) and Tishman Speyer ($520,800) FU.
I think de Blasio is a busy fool and a useful idiot. Unfortunately, he's useful only to his REBNY and Best and Brightest pals who OWN him. To the rest of us, he's useless.
Cuomo seizes every opportunity to publicly rebuke and slap DeBlasio around. He gave DeBlasio 15 minutes notice before shutting down NYC subway and bus service this past weekend. Likewise, 15 minutes after DeBlasio's speech Cuomo's staff was publicly undercutting his proposals.
Agree 6:29. REBNY declared "build higher build denser" dictate in 2013. It became de Blasio's motto. REBNY wrote the words coming out of de Blasio's mouth on development and housing plan. Build "denser" fits both definitions, closely compacted and foolishly, stupidly, empty-headed. AND Cuomo's corrupt NY is putting the whole State in ruins.
Upstate and downstate the infrastructure is crumbling, people are struggling but hey, Chobani, Schumer and Cuomo's baby is....well... another bad decision of money wasted but the scandal ridden company is raking in big bucks while Albany keeps minimum wage factory workers down. Cuomo cannot get out of his own way. He is all ego. No leadership qualities. His RE buddy's buildings are reflective of him - demanding and desperate. Desperate for attention. Demanding of the space they take up --- instead of a natural Commanding presence. These new skyscraper hotel / pied a terres are like knock-off Waldorf / Plaza / Carlyle homes for the very wealthy )eg some kids of people on the De Blasio best and brightest list who grew up in the Carlyle Hotel. Its a lifestyle for the rich and famous and that is who all this "build higher" is for. These generic sky-cutting, sun-blocking towers shadowing parks and people are absent noble, grand architecture of the Plaza, Waldorf, and Carlyle too. This is RE greed, short term money making bad decisions all around. Unless you measure success by a few in the close circle getting richer as coffers get larger.
The Best and Brightest list needs to be reconfigured with diversity reflective and worthy of New York. All New York. Good ideas come from everywhere, not just those with fat wallets. Some with fat wallets have level-headed good ideas and some just have fat heads. This "build denser" has nothing to do with housing people. It has to do with building houses - houses which will sit empty and not support local businesses or the local economy. A dense large number of empty large apartments that builders will make billions from constructing and politicians will make millions from enabling. Let's not forget that those empty, spacious apartments will rise above so to be untouched by the warehouse housing for the working class seniors densely crammed together down below.
All the neighborhoods in NY should come together online and oppose the REBNY Empty Housing Scheme.
Upstate and Downstate are experiencing the same RE problems. Stuy Town isn't the only NY development property that needs an audit on money and infrastructure. RE practices across NY State need an independent serious fed level investigation.
Louis Ciminelli - More than ten years ago, the Buffalo-based developer won a $1.4 billion contract to repair and rehabilitate the crumbling, vintage buildings of the Buffalo school district.
The project is now in its final, $175 million phase, but it’s hit a snag: $41 million can’t be publicly accounted for.
Earlier this week, Buffalo school board members Carl Paladino and Larry Quinn called for an audit of the last phase’s expenditures and darkly suggested that payments to Ciminelli should be withheld if he isn’t cooperative. There is, of course, the distinct whiff of insider Buffalo politics here. Paladino and Quinn are both developers, and for years, they have been locked in a bitter rivalry with Ciminelli, who most recently scored the contract to develop the $750 million RiverBend/Solar City project.
But when you can't account for $41 million in taxpayer money, you have a problem.
The russians financed Forest city Ratner's barclay center and the chinese financed the housing in atlantic yards. A DNC in NYC would not be made in America.
RE Forest City Ratner developer dodges Renaming Atlantic Yards to Pacific Park Brooklyn so a google search wouldn't tie the plans proposed to the actual construction and connect it with the years of scandal.
It has been in “significant violation” of federal Environmental Protection Agency standards for three years, according to the agency’s Web site. It also faces at least 23 open city Department of Buildings violations.
“If it’s not up to code, that’s not good,” said state Sen. Marty Golden, a Brooklyn Republican.
Golden noted he’s not opposed to bringing the convention to New York — he just doesn’t want the city to “get caught with our pants down.”
Here's another group to add to the haters of the Barclays Center's faux-rusted facade: the Department of Buildings. Why? Apparently, thousands of the bolts used to hold together the 12,000 unique panels were a weaker type of bolt than should have been used, and they need to be replaced. But Forest City Ratner wasn't forthright about the problem with the DOB, who seemed none too pleased when the Times asked a rep about the bolts. However, the issue was noted in a nine-page letter that Forest City sent to the department on Sept. 14?the same day the DOB issued Barclays its certificate of occupancy.
From the business plan to the construction quality to the neighborhood QOL decrease -- NYC is on the wrong track. Sounds like PCVST. And almost every neighborhood in NYC. Before Ratner does anymore construction a thorough investigation and better DOB practices need to be implemented as this is just what was caught and is probably the tip of the iceberg.
Feb 5, 8:46 am: You said it perfectly and beautifully. Thank you. I agree with every word you said and I hope your message gets to the ears of those who can actually do something about it. Sadly, I don't think there is any good will in the folks who could do something about it, but if Preet Bharara forges ahead and pulls in all the Big Fish (and the squirming little fish), there may be some hope for this once-great City.
"Cuomo’s four-year fund-raising totals are significantly higher. The top donors to these committees include ... Brookfield Financial ($813,500)"
Hey Preet: Please investigate the phony Garodnick-TA-Brookfield partnership betraying ST-PCV tenants. Speyer misused Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy our historic, middle class community. Brookfield will misuse that same Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy what’s left of it. ST-PCV tenants have no honest representation. We are being victimized again.
Instead of building more and more luxury buildings (most of which will not be fully occupied) why don't they just build more affordable housing buildings? My guess is because in order to be affordable, the RE/Developer mafiosi wouldn't be able to charge exorbitant rents. If they could get the tax breaks like MetLife did when it built STPCV, wouldn't that be an incentive. One thing's for sure, we do not need humungous, ugly skyscrapers with a few units available to middle class people who manage to win an overweighted against them lottery - and then have to go through poor doors and not dare raise their eyes to look at the majority of the tenants. Will forelock pulling, hat tipping and little curtseys from the ladies become the rule? New York is become less and less a desirable city to live in because it has lost and continues most of what made it an interesting, dynamic city and is taking on the ambience of an overcrowded strip mall and the quality of life is going further and further down the crapper. I've even heard tourists express disappointment that it is not what they expected and reminds them too much of "home!" What a stigma this city is getting if it reminds folks from the flyover states of home!
The shoddy Barclays convention center would get a sister in Queens that would replace Jacob Javits. NYC would become a low-class city of convention centers and mini-mall-amenitied skyscrapers and all riff raff that comes with pied a terres for people like Jeffrey Epstein.
A convention center instead of the communities, the best ethnic restaurants, diversity, safety of growing up with neighborhood friends replaced with ....a convention center ..... This is cray like Bloombergs failed football stadium in Manhattan legacy he tried to build.
"Cuomo comes back to the convention-center thing
"Jimmy Van Bramer, the councilman whose district encompasses “every inch” of Sunnyside Yards, has expressed concern about the de Blasio plan and on Wednesday reacted to the Doctoroff proposal with horror.
“I have never had one person come to me in western Queens and tell me that what we really need is one of the largest convention centers ever built smack dab in the middle of our neighborhood,” he told Capital.
SHOCK Politicians and RE Developers Committing Crimes Together
Malcolm Smith guilty of trying to rig NYC mayor’s race
By Rich Calder
February 5, 2015 | 12:32pm
Smith, the feds say, turned to Moses Stern — a crooked Rockland County developer-turned-federal witness — and an undercover federal agent for money and help pulling off the botched scheme. In turn, Smith allegedly promised them $500,000 in transportation funds for a project in Spring Valley, NY.
"And sadly, this was just one of many pockets of corruption this Office has uncovered in New York, which has become the ‘show me the money’ state," Bharara said in a statement. "It should not be asking too much to expect public officials at least to obey the law."
Bharara said the "give-and-take of the political process" shouldn't be about "the giving and taking of bribes."
“This Office will continue the vigorous prosecution of political corruption until every public official understands that violating the public trust will likely land you in prison,” he said.
I'm a senior and I just filled out an application to be entered in the lottery for "affordable housing." I don't think I will be considered even in the unlikely event my name comes up in the lottery. The reason: with my social security and small pension, I am still above (though not by much) the maximum allowable income for a single person.
This affordable housing is obviously not meant to be affordable to middle class (lower middle class, in my case) people. It is meant for the really poor, especially those with families.
I'm not saying poor folk should not be housed affordably, but what I am saying is that the middle class are always left out of the equation. No doubt a lot of the families who will qualify for the affordable housing will not even be from New York, probably many illegal immigrants will qualify, but hard-working, tax-paying middle class New Yorkers will be deemed ineligible.
The best way that affordable housing can be saved and become truly affordable for the middle class is for the rent stabilization laws to be renewed and extended and a lot of the units that were illegally destabilized by the trickery of landlords such as ours, should be retroactively restored to the RS status and become part of the RS housing stock.
That probably wont happen and I think New York City is going to become a densely-packed, overbuilt, dark and shadowy city inhabited by the very poor and the affluent and probably a great many those folks will have come from somewhere else e.g., illegal immigrants and hipsters from the flyover states. Plus, of course, the absentee oligarchs who money-launder their assets through empty glass perches in the sky. The average middle class New Yorker is just not welcome in this City any more.
" It seems that time and time again our system is positioned to advance those who are connected, while the rest of us foot the bill.
The system created here on Long Island has been so fundamentally skewed and poised to benefit a collective elite few, that the rest of the region’s residents just sit there and pay their taxes, continuing to feed the machine. This very same machine is so corroded with cronyism and patronage that the system doesn’t work.
Our indifference is beginning to hurt us. The system is broken, but only because we allow it to be.
ALL NY STATE NEEDS TO STOP FOOTING THE BILL...TO STOP FEEDING THE CORRUPT MACHINE OF A SYSTEM THAT IS RIGGED..TO STOP LETTING OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS HELP A BUNCH OF HEDGE FUNDERS BUY A 90MILLION DOLLAR PENTHOUSE FOR FUN AND KICKS AT ONE57.
RE proudly brags of pushing the middle class out of Manhattan and caters to illicit moneyed clients:
"In fact, if you’ve recently been outdone by an outrageous all-cash bid for an apartment, there’s a decent chance that, behind a generic corporate name, there’s a foreign buyer and an offshore bank account."
Buildings around Times Square and the Financial District are being marketed heavily overseas.
One development project on John Street is “crowdfunding” $50,000 financing shares via the Prodigy Network, a marketing firm with offices in New York and Bogota.
The Related Companies is using a federal program that promises green cards to foreign investors to raise cheap capital for its Hudson Yards project. (A website features a rendering and the slogan “Your Gateway to the U.S.A.”)
Shortly before departing on a road show to Monte Carlo and other redoubts of European wealth a couple of months ago, one broker told me about his most adventurous strategy: buying, emptying, and renovating brownstones in Crown Heights. An Australian investment fund has done something similar in Bushwick."
RE is not building houses for people to live in they are outright laundering money for international criminals.
"And so New Yorkers with garden-variety affluence—the kind of buyers who require mortgages—are facing disheartening price wars as they compete for scarce inventory with investors who may seldom even turn on a light switch.
The Census Bureau estimates that 30 percent of all apartments in the quadrant from 49th to 70th Streets between Fifth and Park are vacant at least ten months a year."
NYC does NOT have a housing shortage. NYC has an empty housing surplus. Thanks to the RE Pol relationship.
"To cater to the tastes of their transient residents, developers are designing their projects with features like hotel-style services.
And the new economy has spawned new service businesses, like XL Real Property Management, which takes care of all the niggling details—repairs, insurance, condo fees—for absentee buyers. “I feel like foreign investors have gotten a bad rap,” says Dylan Pichulik, XL’s boyish chief executive, who recently took me to see a $15,000-a-month rental at the Gretsch, a condo building in Williamsburg, which he oversees for a Russian owner."
"With a little creative corporate structuring, the ownership of a New York property can be made as untraceable as a numbered bank account.
And that makes the city an island haven for those who want to stash cash in an increasingly monitored global financial system.
“With everything that is going on in Switzerland in terms of transparency, people are being forced to pay taxes on their capital that they used to hold there,” says Rodrigo Nino, the president of the Prodigy Network. “Real estate is a great alternative.”
“Sometimes they come in with wires,” says Luigi Rosabianca. “Sometimes they come in with suitcases.” Most of the time, the motivation behind this movement of cash, and buyers’ desire for privacy, is legitimate, but sometimes it’s not.
An inquiry by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington-based nonprofit, has uncovered numerous cases in which New York real estate figured in foreign financial- and political-corruption scandals. "
More typically, though, foreign buyers are searching for a favorable investment climate and the identity protection provided by an LLC. Rosabianca’s client, the Italian, lives in Nigeria, where her husband is in the oil business. But she said she was still a tax resident of her home country, giving me a knowing look. Italy taxes its citizens’ overseas assets—if it can find them. “To invest in Italy now is terrible,” she said. So the Italian spent most of her Sunday in taxis, bouncing from Gramercy to Tribeca to the High Line in search of the right place to store her wealth."
Will Anyone Sleep in One57? The development, still under construction, has closed sales on 25 units to date. Of those, more than half were purchased by corporate entities.
“The Wealth Report.” The latest edition produces the curiously precise estimate that there are 167,669 individuals in the world who are “ultrahigh net worth,” with assets exceeding $30 million. “Of course, the big question is: are the rich getting richer?” the report asks. It answers gleefully in the affirmative, forecasting that over the next decade, the ranks of the ultrarich will increase by 30 percent, with much of the growth coming in Asia and Africa.
Daniela Sassoun, a Portuguese-speaking Corcoran broker who used to work in Swiss banking, frequently travels to São Paulo and Geneva to sell elite buyers on New York. “We give them the state of the market, and the lawyers explain how to purchase this under an LLC or a trust,” Sassoun says. “It’s wealth advisory: Here is an option for you to diversify your $100 million.”
In New York, by contrast, buyers of new construction often qualify for a tax abatement. At One57, currently the city’s most expensive new address, the tax break amounts to around 94 percent. A Times analysis estimated that its priciest penthouse, which is reportedly in contract for more than $90 million, would initially be billed less than $1,500 a month."
What do you think your taxes will be if you buy at PCVST? Do you think PCVST buyers will get a 94% tax break? NO PCVST buyers will pay more in taxes to subsidize de Blasio's build higher scrapers.
Thing is if everyone played by the same rules then there would be no tension. But welfare programs for the wealthy internationals and housing built for the uninhabited pied a terres and land / homes stolen from the middle class to replace it with empty skyscrapers for tax evaders is an insult to the American way, American values, the American dream, to Americans. NYC needs to put Americans first or at least give Americans equal importance / consideration. What the hell is NYC doing to its American citizens?
"Many of these buyers took meticulous steps to conceal their identities. Some employed misdirection. The owner of a $37 million unit, Novgorod LLC, was widely believed to be a Russian oligarch until it was revealed to represent the chief executive of the British bank Barclays. (He later resigned in a financial scandal, but the LLC still owns the apartment.)"
"Weill’s penthouse apartment was resold for $88 million in 2011 to an LLC owned by a trust in the name of Dmitry Rybolovlev’s daughter. During divorce proceedings, his wife filed a lawsuit claiming that the trust was a “sham entity” created to conceal the oligarch’s wealth."
"Other investors in 15 Central Park West relied on the strict secrecy laws in offshore jurisdictions. Two units, for instance, were sold to Jolly Star Holding Limited, an entity registered in the British Virgin Islands, which guards the identity of shareholders. But confidential records obtained by the ICIJ as a part of a massive leak identify Jolly Star’s owners as Sun Min and Peter Mok Fung, a Chinese couple in the shipping business. A Hong Kong tribunal recently convicted Sun Min of trading on inside information related to Coca-Cola’s failed acquisition of a Chinese juice company in 2008, the same year she and her husband made their $15 million purchase."
If Preet was up to the challenge he would round up the money laundering real estate brokers and seize their assets to pay for all the budget shortcomings Cuomo is throwing at NYC, Buffalo, Rochester, Long Island, the entire state.
That is precisely why experts say that property investment is a favored route for money laundering, a crime that depends on the outward appearance of legitimacy. The laundering process typically happens in stages: Illegal cash enters the world financial system somewhere and is funneled into a maze of accounts and shell companies, a process called “layering.” Finally, at the other end, funds are integrated into a seemingly respectable investment—like a luxury condo.
In 2010, Senator Carl Levin released the results of an investigation into the role of U.S. property in foreign corruption, highlighting cases like that of the son of the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, who bought a $30 million Malibu mansion. New York real estate often figures in such scandals. Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko has filed a civil lawsuit claiming a crony of the country’s ousted president moved tainted money into New York development projects, while her opponents claim, in turn, that she laundered money through the city’s real estate. In 2012, federal prosecutors seized a Trump Park Avenue apartment from the son of a Philippine general who had been convicted of taking bribes. A $1.6 million condo in the Onyx Chelsea, belonging to a former Taiwanese prime minister, was seized after it was tied to a corruption scandal."
One notorious international fraud case illustrates the difficulty of tracing laundered money that allegedly made its way to New York.
In June 2007, Russian police invaded the Moscow offices of William Browder, an American investor who had fallen out with the Kremlin. Documents hauled away during the raid were allegedly later used to transfer ownership of three subsidiaries to a shadow company, controlled by a criminal ring with government ties, which then used sham lawsuits to run up enormous liabilities. Based on the fake losses, the ring purportedly applied for a $230 million tax refund, which was immediately approved by Russian officials.
Browder suspected the swindle was pulled off with the complicity of powerful government players and dispatched a Russian attorney named Sergei Magnitsky to investigate. Magnitsky was arrested and died in prison under mysterious circumstances, prompting international outrage.
In 2012, President Obama signed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, imposing sanctions on a list of Russian officials and other alleged accomplices in the fraud.
Meanwhile, investigative reporters at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an Eastern European nonprofit, obtained leaked bank records that appeared to reveal the destination of some of the missing funds: 20 Pine Street.
Starting in late 2009, Prevezon began purchasing units in 20 Pine, acquiring five in total. The company later added three Manhattan commercial spaces to create a $24 million portfolio, which prosecutors sued to seize last year.
“While New York is a world financial capital,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release announcing the action, “it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot.”
PREET BHARARA, NYC is counting on you to help us keep our homes from RE and REBNY and Douglas Elliman et al who are stealing them to sell them as tax havens.
"Senator Carl Levin has proposed legislation to extend the Patriot Act’s regulations to real-estate closings and to require disclosure from LLCs, but the bill has gone nowhere."
I'm a senior and I just filled out an application to be entered in the lottery for "affordable housing." I don't think I will be considered even in the unlikely event my name comes up in the lottery. The reason: with my social security and small pension, I am still above (though not by much) the maximum allowable income for a single person.
This affordable housing is obviously not meant to be affordable to middle class (lower middle class, in my case) people. It is meant for the really poor, especially those with families.
I'm not saying poor folk should not be housed affordably, but what I am saying is that the middle class are always left out of the equation. No doubt a lot of the families who will qualify for the affordable housing will not even be from New York, probably many illegal immigrants will qualify, but hard-working, tax-paying middle class New Yorkers will be deemed ineligible.
The best way that affordable housing can be saved and become truly affordable for the middle class is for the rent stabilization laws to be renewed and extended and a lot of the units that were illegally destabilized by the trickery of landlords such as ours, should be retroactively restored to the RS status and become part of the RS housing stock.
That probably wont happen and I think New York City is going to become a densely-packed, overbuilt, dark and shadowy city inhabited by the very poor and the affluent and probably a great many those folks will have come from somewhere else e.g., illegal immigrants and hipsters from the flyover states. Plus, of course, the absentee oligarchs who money-launder their assets through empty glass perches in the sky. The average middle class New Yorker is just not welcome in this City any more.
"Cuomo’s four-year fund-raising totals are significantly higher. The top donors to these committees include ... Brookfield Financial ($813,500)"
Hey Preet: Please investigate the phony Garodnick-TA-Brookfield partnership betraying ST-PCV tenants. Speyer misused Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy our historic, middle class community. Brookfield will misuse that same Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy what’s left of it. ST-PCV tenants have no honest representation. We are being victimized again.
NY CORRUPTION NEWS - PREET BHARARA "..the give-and-take of the political process should not be the giving and taking of bribes,.. And sadly, this was just one of many pockets of corruption this office has uncovered in New York, which has become the ‘show me the money’ state."
Smith, a Democrat, had been charged in federal court with seeking to bribe Republican Party leaders in the city so that he could run for mayor on the GOP line, creating a complex scheme that also involved directing state funds to an upstate road project to achieve his goal.
An accomplice, former Republican Councilman Dan Halloran of northeast Queens, previously was found guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
“As the jury unanimously found, the give-and-take of the political process should not be the giving and taking of bribes, which is what Malcolm Smith and Vincent Tabone tried to make it," said Preet Bharara, U.S. Sttorney for the Southern District of New York in a statement issued by his office following the verdict.
"Smith gave, and Tabone took, a $25,000 cash bribe to permit Smith to run for New York City Mayor as a Republican," Bharara added. "Smith and Tabone were not alone in this scheme – Smith also bribed Daniel Halloran ... And sadly, this was just one of many pockets of corruption this office has uncovered in New York, which has become the ‘show me the money’ state.
Christie (gag choke puke) caught doing same game as Cuomo - Skelos - Silver
CHRISTIE UNDER FEDERAL INVESTIGATION—International Business Times’ David Sirota: “Federal law enforcement officials have launched a criminal investigation of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and members of his administration, pursuing allegations the governor and his staff broke the law when they quashed grand jury indictments against Christie supporters … Two criminal investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday interviewed the man who leveled those charges, Bennett Barlyn. He was fired from the Hunterdon County prosecutor's office in August 2010, and subsequently brought a whistleblower lawsuit against the Christie administration, claiming he had been punished for objecting to the dismissal of the indictments of the governor's supporters for a range of corrupt activities.” http://bit.ly/1DJzrS1
The expunging of those indictments, Barlyn's termination and his allegations that Christie’s administration quashed the case to protect the governor’s supporters were first aired in a lengthy story in the New York Times in 2013. Several members of the grand jury told the Times that the evidence supporting the indictments was strong, and that overturning them seemed motivated by political considerations.
According to the Times account and Barlyn's claims in his whistleblower lawsuit, Sheriff Trout, Undersheriff Russo and investigator Falat gained Christie's protective intervention because of the political connections of those involved in the case.
According to the Times account and Barlyn's claims in his whistleblower lawsuit, Sheriff Trout, Undersheriff Russo and investigator Falat gained Christie's protective intervention because of the political connections of those involved in the case.
Trout headed a group that had backed Christie's gubernatorial campaign in 2009. The county prosecutors' case against Trout and her underlings also involved embarrassing allegations about a particularly prominent figure -- Robert Hariri, a high-level executive at the pharmaceutical giant Celgene, which is headquartered in New Jersey. Though Hariri was not charged, county prosecutors alleged he had obtained fake law enforcement identification from the sheriff’s office after he flew Russo on his private jet to a conference in Washington.
Hariri was a major contributor to Christie's campaign as well a member of the governor's transition team. Celgene employs Christie’s former chief of staff, Richard Bagger, and the firm has made $160,000 worth of donations to the Republican Governors Association -- which until recently was chaired by Christie. Celgene occupies a seat on the board of Choose New Jersey, which has funded Christie's international travel.
REBNY CUOMO SILVER Cuomo and Silver had us taxpayers loan money to Cuomo's biggest contributor Litwin for his midtown luxury apartment building.
"The Cuomo-run New York State Housing Finance Agency, for instance, approved a $260 million state-supported low-interest loan in 2014 to finance Glenwood’s new luxury apartment building in midtown Manhattan. At the time the loan to Glenwood was approved, the NYHFA was headed by Cuomo appointee Bill Mulrow, an executive and registered lobbyist at Blackstone, a private equity and real estate firm. Mulrow was just appointed to be the governor’s chief of staff. According to NYHFA documents, Glenwood also has had other business with the agency.
Similarly, Cuomo in 2011 signed Silver-backed legislation reauthorizing a then-expired property tax abatement for real estate developers called the 421a program. Cuomo also signed an extension of that program in 2013. Litwin’s firm used the 421a program for its Midtown Manhattan project, according to the New York Times. Glenwood has also used the 421a tax break for some of its other properties in the city.
In 2014, Cuomo shut down the Moreland Commission, an anti-corruption panel that was examining the relationship between lawmakers and the real estate industry. The governor’s top aide at time, Larry Schwartz, called commission members to stop them from subpoenaing the Real Estate Board of New York, of which Litwin is the lifetime “honorary chairman."
"Hey Preet: Please investigate the phony Garodnick-TA-Brookfield partnership betraying ST-PCV tenants. Speyer misused Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy our historic, middle class community. Brookfield will misuse that same Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy what’s left of it. ST-PCV tenants have no honest representation. We are being victimized again."
Is there any way we can actually get this message to Preet Bharara? He probably does not read this blog.
Year after year, every year REBNY brags of booming industry profits and enormously large personal gains by its members. RE does not need and does not deserve NY welfare programs. End the wealthy welfare programs.
"The 421a abatement, which costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues, is set to expire in 2015. The question of its renewal -- and Cuomo's support for its renewal -- is a flashpoint in this year’s legislative session in Albany. Already, some New York City lawmakers are calling for its repeal."
Councilman Antonio Reynoso joins Councilman Mark Levine and Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal, among others, to protest the 421-A tax break (Photo: Will Bredderman/New York Observer).
Council members and tenant advocates rallied outside City Hall this morning against the 421-A tax exemption, which was created in the 1970s to encourage construction of affordable housing but which its opponents today claimed has become an incentive for market-rate development.
Five members of the Council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings joined with groups like Make the Road and the Flatbush Tenants Council to demand the repeal of the property tax break. They cited Independent Budget Office statistics showing that the program costs New York City $1.1 billion in revenue a year, while it creates housing they argued is not truly affordable for low-income New Yorkers.
Read more at http://observer.com/2015/01/pols-call-for-repeal-of-421-a-real-estate-tax-break/#ixzz3Qz5VCOLx Follow us: @newyorkobserver on Twitter | newyorkobserver on Facebook
“Those who are using 421-A, are building in the working-class communities without providing real affordable housing units,” Manhattan Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez said adding that his district contains the highest number of rent-regulated units in the city. “I believe that we have to provide real incentive to developers who are responsible.”
Manhattan Councilwoman Rosie Mendez argued that the money lost through the tax break could be used to provide other forms of relief for tenants.
” Let me tell you what we can do with a billion dollars!” she said. “We can take that money and put it into our Mitchell-Lamas and preserve that affordable housing. We take that money and put it in the tenant interim lease program. Tenants have been waiting 20 years for their apartments to be renovated and to be made homeowners. We can take that money and create a fund to combat landlord harassment.”
Read more at http://observer.com/2015/01/pols-call-for-repeal-of-421-a-real-estate-tax-break/#ixzz3Qz6HSpnq Follow us: @newyorkobserver on Twitter | newyorkobserver on Facebook
"Parks are the outward visible symbol of democracy." --Robert Moses
Robert Moses Park "The land for the park was obtained in 1937 as part of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel construction in exchange for the taking of a portion of St. Gabriel's Park (now named St. Vartan Park) for an approach roadway. The Park itself was completed in 1941 and shares the block with the large ventilation building for the tunnel. It was named for Moses in 1982.
The playground is often used for roller hockey, and the East End Hockey Association has been organizing games at the site since 1972. [3]
Since 1982, there have been at least three attempts to take the park's land for building projects.[4]
The plan is opposed by some residents of Tudor City, which is across the street from the park.[9]
On October 5, 2011, the city and state reached an agreement to use the western portion of Robert Moses Playground for an expansion of the United Nations campus. In exchange, the United Nations Development Corporation would pay $73 million to fund the development of the East River esplanade between 38th and 60th streets.
A playground for children in Tudor City or Business the United Nation brings in
Midtown jiggle joint Flashdancers has seen a lot of action thanks to the United Nations General Assembly.
“The place has been so packed with diplomats, they’ve had to turn away people at the door,” says a source.
Hi. Off the topic, but, I am a new tenant who just moved in and I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but, when one turns on or off their bathroom faucet, and the noise is soo loud that it sound like a rhino is in MY bathroom, could you please call Service and have them fix it? PLEASE? These apartment walls seem soo thin that the sound travels really easy. I work evening shifts and care not to be awoken by this loud noise in the early A.M. It is probably extremely bothersome for my surrounding neighbors as well. Thank you.
Some new one star ratings at Yelp. They truly suck. Having a problem with hitting the "useful" tab (we all need to do so at these one star ratings), getting an error message. What's with that?
What's the story with this brick façade MCI'S? Has any other buildings received them other than about the 7 buildings hit since October of last year? What scam is being run now by this God forsaken company? The TA website is absolutely USELESS.
..Valencia epitomizes the worst of Spain's problems. It had the country's most inflated property market and the biggest crash. Its landscape is littered with empty and half-finished buildings.
Valencia has also had an unusually high number of politicians indicted for corruption.
In 2007, Valencia spent $730 million on a Formula One street circuit that hugs its Mediterranean shores. Two years later, Valencia's regional president, Francisco Camps, did a victory lap in a $200,000 Ferrari. He'd just hosted the European Grand Prix and the America's Cup yacht race.
Construction was booming.
But that infamous Ferrari ride was the beginning of the end.
Camps has resigned from office to defend himself full time against corruption allegations.
Thirteen others await trial. And Valencia is now Spain's most indebted province.
Valencia still hosts Formula One races. But the regional government has run out of funds to repair schools, and some kids have been attending class in trailers for years. Politicians are thinking twice about Ferrari photos these days.
"Maybe in the future, if someone says, 'Hey, let's start building houses like madmen again,' this can be a cautionary reference for them."
- Esteban García, co-founder of Nación Rotonda
"Around the end of 2003, I remember sitting in an urban planning class and hearing that 2 million new houses were being built in Madrid. And I raised my hand and said, 'That's crazy! Where are these people going to come from?' It was just madness!" García told NPR in a telephone interview from his office at a small Spanish engineering firm in Madrid. "Now we can see, 10 years later, that those people did not materialize."
But the houses did.
Called Nación Rotonda — "Roundabout Nation," in Spanish — the site displays before-and-after aerial photos of dozens of Spanish towns.
Half-built condos, "roads to nowhere" and urban sprawl are juxtaposed with open farmland and forests that stood in their place just a few years ago.
The site is the brainchild of Esteban García, Miguel Álvarez and Rafael Trapiello. They're all civil engineers in their early 30s who studied urban planning, and then watched in horror as Spain did exactly what their professors taught them not to do.
Like the U.S. and many other Western countries, Spain's building boom in the previous decade was a major factor in its economic implosion. And now a trio of civil engineers in Spain has created a website that offers a dramatic before-and-after view of the COUNTRY'S CONSTRUCTION BUBBLE.
"Our tax system was highly dependent on real estate development," said Campa, who served as Spain's secretary of state for the economy from 2009 to 2011. "Local communities collected a large amount of revenue from these activities — which is one of the reasons they're now struggling."
The site is the brainchild of Esteban García, Miguel Álvarez and Rafael Trapiello. They're all civil engineers in their early 30s who studied urban planning, and then watched in horror as Spain did exactly what their professors taught them not to do.
1:09 PM: Probably there is air in the pipes and that is why it is making such a terrible noise. I always think it's like having a jet take off in your apartment! If you know who the neighbor is, put a friendly note under the door. If that doesn't yield results, call RS. If you don't know from which apartment the sound emanates, call RS and explain the situation to them. People know when their plumbing is making a lot of noise, put some people don't care because it doesn't affect them personally. Good luck!
Can't tell how but I saw stats about 3 years ago. At that time the place was close to 50% MR. I was surprised. Didn't think it was that much. Anyway it's probably more now.
It will crash and de Blasio and Cuomo will have built empty housing that made a lot of money for their real estate friends and will be a problem for future administrations and the people of NYC. No long term vision -- only short term thinking for get rich and richer quick schemes.
Goodbye Money Laundering: The Slide In Luxury Real Estate
Feb. 4, 2015 2:06 PM ET
Disclosure: The author has no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More...) Summary
30% of the $2 million-plus real estate market is bought by foreign buyers, typically Russian, Middle Eastern, South American and Chinese.
The Russians will be the first to go thanks to the ruble's 55% drop.
The Brazilian real has fallen 20% in the last year alone.
Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people: ultra-rich criminals, drug dealers, despots and the mafia globally. I'm being sarcastic, of course.
It seems the greatest scheme for international money laundering is rapidly coming to an end and it couldn't come soon enough.
Unfortunately, this will have some negative effects on real estate in the super-expensive cities across the county because buying of high-priced condos for cash in places like New York, Miami, L.A. and San Francisco is going to come to a screeching halt.
Did you know that the National Association of Realtors gets a major exemption from Anti-Money-Laundering provisions?!
That's something I read about only recently in a Zero Hedge article. And it's another fine example of our perverted special interests-driven political system!
It's disgraceful that all a foreign government official or ultra-rich and shady business person has to do to buy an expensive condo without scrutiny is get cash into the U.S. (legally or illegally, on their private plane or strapped to a mule's chest). When they finally flip it, they've successfully laundered money in the world's reserve currency.
Today, in New York, about 30% of the $2 million-plus real estate market, where most of the actions and gains have been occurring, is bought by foreign buyers; typically Russian, Middle Eastern, South American and Chinese.
As I explained in Boom & Bust last month, the Russians will be the first to go. The ruble has fallen 55% versus the dollar so a $5 million condo now costs $11.1 million at the rate of exchange from June 2014. That’s gotta hurt those Russian mafia bosses!
Well, cracks are appearing in the ultra-luxury market that these bad-guys move in… The Strong Dollar’s Effect on Foreign Buyers
I used to live in Miami and still go there often. When I’m asked to describe why South Beach and downtown Miami have an even greater bubble than the last one, while most cities don’t, I have a standard reply: “Brazilian drug dealers with bags of cash.” They are the types driving the top 1% of real estate in such cities and that has been where most of the action and gains have been.
Along with the rest of the law-abiding ultra-rich, they’re driving the most extreme bubbles in our largest cities because they have to have large places to park their money and they feel high-end real estate is much safer than stocks and bonds…
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article49282.html
de Blasio should preserve and build middle class housing not REBNY higher and denser filthy crap.
New York’s dirty secrets: high-end real estate in the city is an alluring destination for corrupt politicians, tax dodgers and money launderers around the globe.
Since 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in pricey Manhattan developments have been to buyers who listed an international address—most from China, Russia and Latin America—or bought in the name of a corporate entity, a maneuver often employed by foreign purchasers. Because many buyers go to great lengths to hide their interests in New York properties, it’s impossible to put a number on the proportion laundering ill-gotten gains. But according to money-laundering experts as well as court documents and secret offshore records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, New York real estate has become a magnet for dirty money.
Public officials and real-estate operatives in New York have mostly applauded the city’s influx of mega-rich homesteaders from overseas, with former Mayor Michael Bloomberg leading the chorus during his time in office. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?” he told New York magazine in September.
Combine that give-us-your-rich ethos with state and local policies that lavish tax breaks on Manhattan’s wealthiest homeowners and federal policies that let real estate agents off the hook, and the results are predictable: New York is a magnet for the super-rich homebuyers from other lands bearing money of sometimes dubious provenance.
The massive flow of foreign money—licit and illicit—into New York real estate helps deprive the buyers’ home countries of wealth and tax revenues. Housing advocates say it also helps inflate property values, pricing average New Yorkers out of buying or renting and helping increase the city’s huge homeless population.
Critics say tax and development policies have been skewed to favor the rich because New York’s real estate interests are skilled at wielding clout. “It’s like the oil industry in Texas,” Jaron Benjamin, executive director of New York’s Metropolitan Council on Housing, says. “They have so much power and so much money. They’re going to make sure they have the best lobbyists at the state Capitol and City Hall, pulling our elected officials one way or the other.”
Shelley, one of the few academics who’s studied real estate-based money laundering, says many real estate operatives don’t check or don’t care about whether the cash sustaining big deals is clean or dirty.
In recent years, many of the world’s biggest banks have paid huge settlements with the US government to settle claims that they helped rich clients hide their money. In May, Credit Suisse agreed to pay $2.6 billion to settle criminal charges that it used secret accounts and shell companies to help Americans evade taxes. Shelley believes that the real estate industry should be forced to follow the same standards as other big financial players.
“Nobody has been holding the real estate industry accountable to the extent that other sectors of the economy are being held accountable,” she said. “I think we need congressional hearings on this issue, and greater resources for law enforcement to deal with this problem.”
The story is part of a joint investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, New York magazine and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Andrew Rice, Margot Williams, Mar Cabra, Titus Plattner and Pavla Holcova contributed research to this story. More of ICIJ’s reporting on money laundering and financial secrecy can be found at www.icij.org/offshore.
China Cracking Down on Money Laundering to Buy Real Estate
by Chriss W. Street18 Jul 2014
China is cracking down after the CCTV state-owned broadcaster secretly recorded a state-owned bank executive bragging that the bank illegally provides in-house money laundering services for wealthy Chinese nationals to violate currency controls and buy real estate in “world cities” as their off-shore safety deposit box.
The Chinese have been driving up high-end real estate prices with all cash purchases in California’s Orange County, Vancouver, New York’s East Side and Sydney’s Gold Coast. But with CCTV exposing tens of thousands of wealthy Chinese for criminal money laundering, the Communist Party leadership may demand real estate be sold and the laundered money returned home.
1:09 it sounds like your neighbor tenant can't fix what you are complaining of -- that something is happening within the walls -- if indeed the noise is that loud and traveling that far. The pipes are a long standing unaddressed problem in PCVST (articles for years on this problem). All the potential-Property Buyers would rather spend money on "amenities" that give the appearance of luxury then on real luxury of high performance infrastructure / safety / park open space. The problem is the pipes - not the neighbor. At least your neighbor is showering and clean and not smelly.
Noise will often occur when the lifter valve for the shower is broken or worn out. That's the metal pull up that diverts water from the tub faucet to the shower head.
Ask your neighbor to call maintenance and ask to have the shower diverter valve fixed or replaced.
His campaign spent more than $30,000 at a mechanic in the Bronx.
Heastie’s own record and background reflect the system he now vows to change. He received more than $23,000 in travel and accommodation reimbursements for legislative business — the third-highest amount in the Assembly in 2014
His campaign filings show tens of thousands of dollars in bank and credit card payments for unspecified expenses, and several thousand more that Heastie pocketed as reimbursements.
Heastie did not participate in 173 votes last year, one of 18 members of the 150-member Assembly to miss more than 150 votes, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Time to put up. However, never shut up. More opinion, the better. But you always say the TA sucks, so run for the Board with the agenda you think is right.
I disagree 12:33. I don't think I agree with those joining the TA unless you agree with their agenda. You don;t join a group or company or organization that isn't aligned with your own philosophies, ethics, agenda. 12:33 you makes no sense. If the TA is corrupt then certainly do not join a corrupt TA. If it is inept then certainly do not join because that can not be changed. If your agenda is different from theirs then do not join - they would not change their agenda. Anyone joining the board would have to take on their agenda. If you disagree with the TA agenda then do not join it. Personally I do not see why anyone would join the TAboard after they worked with a REBNY attorney to hurt the lives of our neighbors and community, evict the RS for their self-serving goals. If another TA board formed, one of better intentions and the right positions, an advocate for tenants, I would join that. I hope those in dissent from the TAboard do NOT join it. We need them to stay focused on helping tenants and not mired in Dan's political agenda.
These bastards don't even give us adequate heat during these very cold months. Many tenants have to resort to using space heaters. If ever there is a tragic fire caused by these cheap, lowlife bastard scum forcing people to use space heaters there will be blood on the hands of this criminal management. If tragedy occurs because of this, some of us will pursue them to the Gates of Hell to make sure they don't get away with it.
12:33 that is like asking Occupy Wall Street to join J P Morgan to change the Wall Street agenda and principles. You can't be serious. That was sarcasm again, right?
The self-named "TA Board" is fundamentally wrong in principle. The best position to oppose the mass evictions and property destruction is not from within the criminal enterprise. Would you join CW or REBNY to change it? Can you imagine if instead of opposing from the outside, Teachout / Wu joined the Cuomo administration to change it. Cuomo would quash them like a subpoena and the TABoard and its puppetmasters would quiet voices of dissention within. Crush and quash them with the force of their REBNY attorney.
To remain effective, dissenters protecting this community from REBNY should not join the "TABoard"
....still laughing at the thought of an Occupy Wall Street protester applying to join J P Morgan to change Jamie Dimon's agenda of destroying people and the environment in his greedy quest for money at all costs. The analogy works, but there is a big difference between Dimon and Marsh/Steinberg in that Dimon is a puppetmaster who owns politicians and Marsh/Steinberg are puppets owned by politicians who are owned by REBNY. Changing the TA Board agenda has to be done by changing those controlling the opinions and actions of the TA Board. REBNY / Rob Speyer has controlled the TA Board via REBNY attorney Meredith Kane, for years.
Join the Peter Cooper Stuyvesant Town Tenant Association Board if you want Dan Garodnick to tell you what you think; Kane REBNY to tell you what to do; Hoylman to coach you on public speaking so you appear believable and credible with the RENBY message; Berlin Rosen (Sheldon, Dan, de Blasio, City official press contact for affordable housing, RE PR firm) to write the words that will come out of your mouth. Join our TA Board REBNY Brookfield / Speyer vision for PCV ST.
Tenants want to preserve middle class working people housing.
The Garodnick coalition wants to replace the working middle class with "new stabilizers" of higher incomes, with 90% wealthier luxury condo neighbors and 10% poor (for the tax break not for a noble reason as providing them with homes.)
Garodnick coalition is business profit.
Tenant's want personal safety and sanctity and a new councilperson who is our advocate and not our demise.
I have been one of the avid readers and a commentator a few times and I would never join Dan Marsh Steinberg Kane.
9:19...Okay, you advocate a new organization counter to the current TA. I'd like to see you form that. Or even try. For example tell us how. And how you think this new organization would be able to make an impact here and get press to have some impact on public opinion. You're probably thinking someone else needs to do that. Sure, that's everyone's easy answer. But if you do try to come up with some ideas, please bear in mind that efforts have been tried at the STR site to get something going, and nothing has coalesced in over 3 years. In my view advocating new people NOT run for TA board is advocating for more complaining and no meaningful action. Honestly, does anybody who blogs here think that all the venting has had any impact at all? It may be good for our souls but in the real world so far it has meant nothing.
"If it is inept then certainly do not join because that can not be changed."
Sorry, I disagree, organizations can change. Run for election to be a Board member* as per the notice. Meet all the criteria speced out without asking for the Board’s endorsement (Petitioning Process). I know you would have to join the TA. Use social media, the T&V and this blog to lay out your alternative. If you think we can win on ANY of the local issues here without an organization to back us up, you are mistaken. Therefore, again, who here will reveal themselves and organize an alternate to the TA? Again, waiting.
*”three (3) Director positions are up for election this year.”
Ok,7:28...great. I take it that you intend to start a new TA. Just let us know who you are, where you live and when you'd like us to come over for the first planning meeting. I'm sure several of us will attend. Although you can never be sure. But I'll be there.
Those above who said he is evil are right. Citizens in NY are struggling. RE gets hundreds of millions in tax subsidies. Verizon who brings loud concerts into our living rooms after a hard days work, they: "The immensely profitable Verizon earned more than $30 billion in profits over those five years, but instead of paying taxes, it collected income tax refunds of more than a half-billion dollars, which works out to a tax rate of minus 1.8 percent."
Companies pay no taxes and have a lot of other loopholes and scams the Cuomo's et al give corporations who could bring in hundreds of millions if they paid their fair share.
Corporate Deadbeats: How Companies Get Rich Off Of Taxes By David Cay Johnston / September 4, 2014 6:12 AM EDT
Its easy to go after and harass the people. A governor of integrity would at least also make the corporations and companies pay their fair share. He is so evil and so weak.
To all you expert plumbers, the noise is coming from a washer that needs to be replaced. Some tenants must love to hear this annoying noise and are very inconsiderate to others that live right next to them.
Cuomo's five point plan on ethics reform seems lacking in accountability. This governor is saying politicians aren't unethical and corrupt, the job parameters are -- that is a skyscraper high line of BS. He is opening the door for every defense to say a person is never guilty of a crime - the circumstances are. When a pile of money is offered in exchange for favoritism in laws or in greater access, the politician makes a choice to take it or not, no matter what the laws and loopholes the lawmakers authored say are allowable. Even with laws and loopholes favoring white collar criminals, they still take more then allowable and go beyond the boundaries of the loopholes. Lawmakers must be held to higher standards then the people they govern -- but holding them to the same standard would be a good start. Spinola several times boasted of politicians who drop everything to take his call - those politicians need to ask themselves if they give same level consideration to every constituent or just those who gave them a pile of money.
Don't know if I would join so I went to the website for the Peter Cooper Village ST board to see who they are and if I would get a sense if I wold fit in but they have no bios. Just says it is coming soon on the bio for everyone and there is no photo. Where can I get a sense of who they are and what they are trying to do before I consider joining them? Is there another link only for members? I am not a member but would join if I knew more about who these people are (although I am not easy about working with a REBNY lawyer I would like to ask them their motive on partnering with the REBNY to see if they have a good reason they just are not saying. I just don;t know and need more information so if anyone knows if there is a bio page that only members can see maybe they can share that link too. But then again the lack of transparency already has me very skeptical.
Cuomo got $1Million from developer in Silver scandal, Litwin, then gave $260Million state supported low interest loan to same developer, Litwin at Glenwood
All those wondering why the DHCR has not done their job, responded to tenants, or produced questionable, unacceptable results to rent charge inquiries:
Cuomo appointed the William (Bill) Mulrow as the Chairman of DHCR
http://www.nyshcr.org/AboutUs/Board/
William, Bill, is the Senior Managing Director Investor Relations & Business Development at Blackstone (Rob Speyer's partner in the PCV ST deal)
The conflict is gross and would explain why the financial frauds at PCVST are allowed by the city and state administrators. They are either turning a blind eye or they are complicit with financial rewards in some manner.
I think more people just ought to attend TA meetings, ask questions and and see what goes on. It could be the current organization has turned itself into some obvious, unworkable political joke. It used to be that anybody who was a member could run for the board. Now they have a vetting committee. What kind of bullshit is this? To all appearances, the current Board would filter out anyone they feel is unqualified (and not likely to support their current agenda).
Obviously the post regarding joining the TA was from a TA member perhaps even a board member or even Dan Garodnick or his staff. The TA doesn't even care about your $35/year as they are funded by Garodnick and his RE friends. What they need is numbers. Their membership is well below 10% of residents and they need to increase that number. They tried using phony numbers (i.e., they once claimed that anyone who signed those bogus forms/surveys they collect were members) before but have been called on that. True numbers came out when they held an election in which only "dues paying members" are allowed to vote, since they are the only true members. Joining the TA to try and change them would only benefit the board and Garodnick because regardless of your opinion they will count you as approving of their plan. The best thing that could happen is if even more people wake up and denounce their memberships.
CuomoWatch Twitter account where you can add your two cents and read others
https://twitter.com/CuomoWatch
A little more humorous -- Until his arrest the Fake Sheldon Silver account was great to follow and is still a terrific over the top read for anyone who hasn't seen it
HSBC also marketed schemes which were likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes and colluded with some to conceal undeclared accounts from domestic tax authorities, the Guardian added.
The Guardian asserted that the files showed HSBC's Swiss bank routinely allowed clients to withdraw "bricks" of cash, often in foreign currencies which were of little use in Switzerland.
TO BUY REAL ESTATE AND CONDOS IN NEW YORK?
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which coordinated the reporting, said a list of people who held HSBC accounts in Switzerland included soccer and tennis professionals, rock stars and Hollywood actors.
ICIJ should investigate Albany, REBNY and New York Real Estate
Cuomo going after easy target of most vulnerable, those who have to wrok for a living, and taking away their cars and kid's school tax breaks of the parents are $4500 behind on taxes.
Meanwhile for the wealthy: Here's what you need to know about the Swiss bank document leak
For one thing, if you're rich and you want to avoid paying taxes, there are legal and illegal ways to do that. There's a giant industry devoted to finding (and creating!) the legal ways to do it. The evidence in these documents seems to show that this isn't what HSBC was doing. It was pretty clearly advising its clients on the illegal ways to do it, which mostly have to do with pretending the money you have sitting in Switzerland doesn't exist.
The bank was also pretty lax about background checks. Well-known international criminals — drugs, arms, blood diamonds, etc. — could come into the bank, put down some cash, and open an account without anyone asking too many questions about where the money came from.
If you believe global inequality is rising, and that it is mostly because the wealthy are getting wealthier, then this is a big problem. The role of taxes in society is to redistribute wealth, and every dollar in a secret Swiss tax shelter account is a part of a dollar that isn't being spent on roads or schools or healthcare somewhere else. (Places like Greece in particular could really use the tax revenue right about now.)
A group of journalistic institutions, including The Guardian, Le Monde, the BBC, and the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists, just published a huge story on global tax evasion through private Swiss bank accounts based on leaked documents from HSBC's Swiss subsidiary, HSBC Private Bank.
It's hard proof that the world's elite keep a lot of money away from the prying eyes of their respective countries' tax collectors by keeping private accounts in Switzerland, which the country's bankers are legally bound to keep quiet about. There are about 30,000 relevant accounts from 2005 to 2007, with assets totaling about $120 billion.
1:14 I don't know about that, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I know is a dues paying TA member. Not everyone agrees with every decision at comes out of the organization but they're members none the less.
THESE ARE THE CONDO BUYERS NYC IS "BUILDING HIGHER" FOR. NEW STABILIZERS FOR NYC. DE BLASIO MUST SCRAP HIS REBNY CRAFTED AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN THAT IS BRINGING IN UNWANTED SHADY TYPES TO NYC NEIGHBORHOODS.
"HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channelled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for Third World dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws," ICIJ reported.
The files list a range of former and current politicians from Britain, Russia, India and a range of African countries, Saudi, Bahraini, Jordanian and Moroccan royalty, and the late
According to documents, around 3,105 Turks had off-shore bank accounts with HSBC between 2005 and 2007.
These 3,105 Turks had a total of 4,584 accounts, in which they held around $3.5 billion. The largest amount of money owned by a single individual was around $263.7 million.
Turkey ranked 23 out of 188 countries in terms of the value of the money held in these secret bank accounts. The largest amount of money was owned by Swiss customers, according to the documents.
Former Egyptian trade minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who fled Cairo during the 2011 uprising against former president Hosni Mubarak, is listed as having power of attorney over an account worth $31 million, according to the files. He did not respond to requests for comment from the ICIJ.
Other individuals named include the late Frantz Merceron, an associate of former Haitian president Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, and Rami Makhlouf, cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Makhlouf did not respond to a request for comment from the ICIJ.
Calls for probe against HSBC Swiss unit after tax evation revelations LONDON - ISTANBUL http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/leaked-bank-files-show-hsbc-helped-clients-dodge-taxes-.aspx?pageID=238&nid=78081&NewsCatID=346
6:55 and 9:08 the more complaints filed that go unanswered or under-addressed shows the corruption. Everyone should file. It may take time to get through this but at the very least everyone should go on record with the rents because every one is being overcharged in one or more ways.
1:14...Just be clear. I haven't been an attending member of the TA in close to 20 years and haven't been a member period for 4 years. And since I'm advocating bringing change to the TA and backing out of the Brookfield deal, it's hard to see how you come to the conclusion I'm from the TA. But again, please tell us how we can make a real impact by working outside of the TA. We're all dying to know.
BTW, you don't have to be a dues paying member to go to the public TA meetings. Just go and start challenging and complaining there. That alone can start bringing some change.
9:58 pm TA membership is far below 10%. But why don't you prove us wrong and have the TA post their membership numbers on their website if it is what you say. A little transparency might go a long way.
I wonder if it has ever occurred to De Blasio and Cuomo that real New Yorkers (not the oligarch and money laundering crowd who have addresses here, but don't really live here), may not want to live in a city that is full of mega-story skyscrapers densely packed together. Some of us, probably a lot of us, still have the memories of 9/11 deeply etched in our psyches and cringe when an aircraft goes over low and loud. I know people who have nightmares about that day and wake up sweating and trembling as those planes going into buildings was a worse possible fear becoming reality. It could happen again. The more highly and densely built they build, the bigger a target we become.
1:14 I don't know about that, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I know is a dues paying TA member. Not everyone agrees with every decision at comes out of the organization but they're members none the less.
1:14...Just be clear. I haven't been an attending member of the TA in close to 20 years and haven't been a member period for 4 years. And since I'm advocating bringing change to the TA and backing out of the Brookfield deal, it's hard to see how you come to the conclusion I'm from the TA. But again, please tell us how we can make a real impact by working outside of the TA. We're all dying to know.
You can start by making simple phone calls. Ask Stringer, Cuomo, Maloney, Hoylman, Schumer and anyone else you can think of the questions that you have. Let them know that you don't support the TA, let them know you don't support them if they support the TA. Let them know that the TA has very little support from tenants that they are supposed to serve. For exampleI asked Schumer if he was supporting this deal simply because his brother works for one of the firms that stands to make a hefty profit IF Brookfield wins the bidding process. I haven't received an answer but that doesn't mean I will stop calling and asking. I'm a pain in the ass to these people and I know it but since I am paying their salary I really don't care if they don't like me calling them. I don't Facebook or use other social media because I like my privacy but if you do you could ask on those sites. There are literally dozens of things you could do if you really wanted to. Or you could do nothing except complain on here, which to some degree probably still has some effect. I know Garodnick reads it because he once said that people on this site say such hurtful things. Lastly, you could vote AGAINST the incumbent Democrats when election time comes around and send a message. Remember, Garodnick had one of the poorest showings among incumbents in the City Council and went from favorite to being an also ran for the leadership position. I would like to believe that I had a part in that by being one of the 30% of the people in his district to cross over and vote for an unknown Republican. Maybe I'm delusional but hey life is too short not to think BIG! Or you could do nothing at all, it's really your choice.
>>1:14 I don't know about that, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I know is a dues paying TA member. Not everyone agrees with every decision at comes out of the organization but they're members none the less.<<
Perhaps everyone you know is a member, but certainly not everyone living in this complex is. Take students, for instance. They are a considerable entity here, and I'm sure not one belongs, and if one or two do, then it's a student project.
5:58...so that's how you do it. Well, guess what? I've tried most of those things. Without organization & large numbers working together doing a lot of the things you suggest, nothing happens. That's the point. That's why you need an organization behind you. 20 yrs ago when I was active in the TA we appeared on a Channel 5 news show to confront landlord reps. That kind of exposure can have an impact but they aren't going to put on us Nobodies unless there's something that justifies it...like being from an organization with roots in the community. Again, I'm not in the TA and have been a fairly regular critic. Just advocating changing it.
@str the everyone I know who are TA members include newer MR and older residents. You are right that that does not include the students and post collegiate group homes. Although my assessment is far from scientific, I think TA membership is far greater than 10 percent.
"1:14 I don't know about that, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I know is a dues paying TA member. Not everyone agrees with every decision at comes out of the organization but they're members none the less."
And beyond your Mahjong klatch, how many people do you know who are TA members?
5:37pm - I have lived in PCVST for my entire life (just over 40 years), and I know for a fact that not everyone is a dues paying member of the TA. Myself, my parents, my grandparents, my friends, their parents, etc. The list goes on...
With that being said, I do know a few paying members, but that number can't be higher than 5-10% of the people that I know who live in PCVST. And this goes back to the time when the TA was actually significant.
I was a TA member many moons ago. as were all my neighbors and friends. Now I can't find one who is still a member. If the TA's membership was more than 10% they would be touting that. They never answer this question which in itself is the answer. That is why they stated outright on the last survey they did that if you filled it out you would be counted as agreeing to their plan. They used you to fluff their actual membership numbers. Their last couple of elections were postponed because they couldn't muster a quorum. If you count residents which is up around 30k their membership is probably less than 4% but if you count apartments it is probably around 10% given the numbers that eventually voted in their last election.
cuomo wants access to unlimited information sharing on all New Yorkers to root out anyone cheating on workers comp and their taxes because he says if they cheat in one place they are cheating on other places. This could bring in a whopping $1million to the state. But let's not touch those RE, REBNY, or International citizens buying apartments in skyscrapers with all cash and hiding behind llc's. http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Dinapoli-critical-information-sharing-in-Cuomo-6074109.php
8:28 pretty sad commentary about you and your extended families non-involvement in the TA. Random, anonymous carping on a blog accomplishes nothing, though CW thanks you.
>>8:28 pretty sad commentary about you and your extended families non-involvement in the TA. Random, anonymous carping on a blog accomplishes nothing, though CW thanks you.<<
Sad to say that the TA's poor standing among certain tenants, myself included, is a result of the TA's lack of efficacy, its secretive, insulting and heavy-handed administration, and its years-long goal (overshadowing any substantive fight with the landlord) of tenant ownership of this property, which is, in reality, the ownership of a few at the expense of true middle class/working class affordability.
I too have lived here over 40 yrs. I know only 3 who are TA members; they're all on the board. Long ago it worked this way: the membership at any given time might not be high, but when something major was afoot, the old TA would start rallying the troops and membership (dues) would increase. Given that the TA started trying to rally us for Brookfield 3 years ago, membership should be higher than usual...but I don't think it is. They probably got as bump in year 1 and then it fell off a lot.
"8:28 pretty sad commentary about you and your extended families non-involvement in the TA. Random, anonymous carping on a blog accomplishes nothing, though CW thanks you."
Please. The only people CW is thanking is the TA's board and Dan Garodnick for selling out the tenants. Period.
The only sad commentary here is the fact that there are still 5 to 10% of tenants willing to pay for the privilege of getting it up the wazoo from the TA and a cadre of corrupt politicians and lawyers led by Dan Garodnick and Chuck Schumer.
7:16 - It may be sad, but it is a reality. Back when I was younger and the property was all RS, the TA was formidable, but so were the families that banded together and used their high powered connections with law enforcement, attorneys, city employees, etc to get things done when necessary.
Everyone had one thing in common - being a part of the middle class. People would step to the plate for one another, and although the TA was there, it definitely was not seen as the final say if you wanted to get things accomplished in PCVST - everyone knew the right people to talk to. The connections that we used to have are still around, but their pull has definitely been limited following the sale from MetLife to Tishman.
Now the TA is seen as a waste of time for most of the middle class. No reason to pay for membership in an organization that really has no clear action plan for the future and communicates little to nothing to the tenants it is supposed to represent.
Hey, this is what always happens. The developers are few and focused on one thing: making money. And they're pretty aggressive in the public arena. Tenants are many and aren't so focused. Each has different priorities. Getting an effort together is like the old herding cats. In addition most tenants are afraid to stand out in the public arena. So all and all it's tough for tenants to make headway, especially when they have a TA that seems to have lost its sense of mission.
If there's a failure, it's ours. The TA made a realpolitik, considered decision to pursue conversion. In the asymmetrical warfare of affordable housing, when legislative remedies have failed, a tenant led buyout is the most sensible path. But, it seems, small minded, do nothingness, aided by vocal crank conspiracy theorists, are derailing this effort.
Hey, 8:04...what are you talking about? Brookfield hasn't won or lost. And if it does lose, it won't be because of any lack of unity or the griping of people here. It will lose because it's not the highest bidder. Just like last time when T-S won.
In addition, the Brookfield deal wasn't the TA's idea of realpolitik; it was Garodnick's which the TA was led to endorse.
And now...since this is a high-bidder-wins situation, maybe you can explain what actual effect a TA endorsement can possibly have on a decision where $$ is the real driver.
No, getting involved in a developer deal was & is a useless misdirection of effort and energy. What the TA should be doing in all cases (rather than getting into bed with rapacious developers and lawyers) is advocating for housing affordability and showing that it can organize strong, effective trouble-making efforts when developers and landlords aren't acting very nice.
Right now nobody can tell what the TA is doing. They seem to have little sense of mission or purpose.
Your nebulous "advocating for housing affordability" did take form in the TA's decision to back conversion. A realistic assessment of the stpcv dilemma offers few solutions and conversion with tenant protections is probably the the only path to a modicum of stability. To sit back and watch another consortium take over while expecting tenant protections from a wholly dysfunctional state legislature is the defenition of insanity.
172 comments:
OMG! Jeffrey Dahmer had saner eyes than that goon!
This is a really, really thoroughly evil man. He and Rob Speyer are about as evil as they come. I hope that Preet Bharara gets to them very soon.
Me too 9:23 and Preet Bharara got votes for Assembly Speaker. Genius.
http://wibx950.com/tenney-votes-for-preet-bharara-for-assembly-speaker/
Cuomo and his buddy Christie take it too far
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/nyregion/in-christies-career-a-fondness-forluxe-benefits-when-others-pay-the-bills.html?src=me&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Most%20Emailed&pgtype=article
Cuomo treats NY like its his own personal private corporation. Clearly there needs to be better checks and balances implemented in the government process to keep REBNY owned political dictatorships from operating. What a pile of sh*t.
Cuomo, Skelos, Silver - one in the same.
It will be Status Cuomo where businesses profit and people lose everything --- homes, minimum wage increases, human rights because these politicians are being childish and egotistical instead of being professional and grown up. One down - let's hope two more to go soon from the three men in a room.
This is why REBNY spent a lot of money buying upstate politicians.
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20141109/BLOGS04/141109881/status-cuomo-seen-as-boon-to-biz
No wonder. Last week's election reverted state politics in New York back to "status Cuomo"—the dynamic in which the governor, Democratic Assembly speaker and Republican Senate majority leader negotiate bills and budgets.
Republicans retook the state Senate for the first time since 2010, Democrats increased their Assembly majority, and Mr. Cuomo won re-election while distancing himself from the state's liberal activist wing, led by the Working Families Party and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The upshot is that business interests, which backed Senate Republicans and Mr. Cuomo, will have an easier time blocking bills to increase the state's minimum wage, publicly finance campaigns, raise property taxes, subsidize undocumented immigrants' tuition and give New York City control of rent regulation.
"I'm disinclined to do anything [Mr. de Blasio wants], because it's foolish economic-development policy," said Sen. John DeFrancisco, a powerful Syracuse Republican. "I don't believe in any of those issues, because that's what's killing New York state."
Mr. de Blasio also needs Albany's approval for aspects of his plans for affordable housing and struggling public schools. But he angered Senate Republicans by raising money and dispatching top aides in a failed effort to defeat their candidates.
Scumbag!
Looks like Cuomo is going to continue to block or impede anything de Blasio wants to do, just because he's a mean-spirited SOB. No doubt de Blasio will have to give up body parts to get anything he wants. I'm making no judgment as to whether what Hizzoner wants is good for us or the city, just pointing out that lots of political maneuvering is likely.
"After 30 years, the developers could technically ask for the units to become market rate, but any switch would be at the discretion of NYCHA, which has vowed to keep the units affordable.
“NYCHA is in control here,” the spokeswoman said."
Yeah, right.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/city-sell-stakes-housing-projects-developers-article-1.2037359#bmb=1
These are the types of people, cash parkers and money launderers, that RE wants to build higher for and note they do not shop at the supermarket of let their toes touch the same ground as any real New Yorkers.
Barnett also benefited from the flood of new money into New York from rich foreigners who need a haven for their cash. George Constantin, president of Heritage Realty Services, represents a wealthy European family that paid $30 million for an apartment on the 59th floor. He says his clients, whom he declines to name, plan to use it as a pied-à-terre during their periodic trips to the U.S. He says they intend to take full advantage of the hotel room service. “That’s a real asset,” says Constantin. “These people don’t want to go to the local supermarket. They want to make sure everything is there when they arrive. You can say on Monday morning at 9 a.m. you want a gallon of orange juice in the refrigerator, and it will be there.” For some of Barnett’s less sentimental clients, their apartment is just another asset that they hope to flip for a profit. According to CityRealty, four buyers closed on their apartments and immediately put them on the market at substantially higher prices.
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-10-02/gary-barnett-new-york-citys-controversial-luxury-real-estate-master
DO NOT BUILD HIGHER
INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE INSTEAD
LET RE MAKE GOOD ON THEIR THREAT TO WALK AWAY AND LEAVE NYC IF THEY ARE DENIED TAXPAYER MONEY GIFTS
CALL THE BLUFF
Cuomo's One57
"....Along with the views, Barnett tempted buyers at One57 with something else: a tax break. In its condominium offering documents, Extell told buyers they would receive a 10-year abatement because the tower qualified for an affordable-housing tax exemption. Strange as it sounds, the city had for years allowed developers of luxury buildings to purchase tax-savings certificates from builders of actual affordable housing. The luxury developers could then use them at their shimmering towers. Extell told its customers that this would be wonderful for them:
The buyers of the six-bedroom, six-bathroom penthouse duplex on the 89th and 90th floors, for example, would see their annual real estate taxes fall in the first year from $205,883 to $18,415.
Barnett concedes his clients can afford to pay the full sum, but he says the abatement is invaluable when he’s trying to close his deals. “What I’ve found is that wealthy people are willing to put down a lot of money,” he says, “but they don’t want to have that constant payment out. They’re very, very focused on carrying costs. It matters psychologically.”
There was only one problem. Barnett says he was stunned to discover after he’d begun selling units that the abatements no longer applied. They’d been phased out in 2007 as part of an effort by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg to end the subsidies in many parts of the city where the real estate market was booming. (He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg Businessweek.)
That put Barnett in a bind. Extell told buyers that it would reimburse them for the abatements if they were no longer available. But the company had good news: The New York State Assembly was considering a bill that would restore the abatements. In January 2013, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that reestablished them at One57 and the luxury buildings of four other developers. He did so shortly after his reelection campaign committee deposited two checks totaling $100,000 from companies sharing addresses with Extell affiliates.
New York State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat who represents Manhattan’s East Side, says she had little choice but to vote for the abatements. They were tucked into a larger bill that enjoyed broad support because it amended the regulations governing the state’s less expensive loft apartments. Still, she lambasted the tax breaks for Barnett’s condo owners on the Senate floor. “They’re being purchased by foreign oligarchs who won’t even live here,” Krueger says. “They’re just buying these apartments as investment property. We’re building these billionaire towers in the sky that will sit empty.”
A photo and articles on the De Blasio / Cuomo "Build Higher" paid for with taxpayer subsidies while not having to use the same door or live in the same building as the taxpayers
http://ny.curbed.com/tags/227-cherry-street
The Extell Amenity article is ridiculous - it is a mini-mall multiple dwelling so you never need to go outside while you are in what used to be the greatest city in the world.
Let's all hope Preet stops this taxpayer subsidized Cuomo / Extell welfare program.
Everything Cuomo / Garodnick do ruins NY. Let's hope De Blasio doesn't cave to their grubby grab for PCVST.
Cuomo and REBNY are creating a divide in New York that otherwise would not exist and does not exist amongst the people upstate and downstate. Cuomo is creating tension where there is none organically. A governor who is creating a civil war. For what - his business friends to get richer and the international wealthy to like him?
>>DO NOT BUILD HIGHER
INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE INSTEAD
LET RE MAKE GOOD ON THEIR THREAT TO WALK AWAY AND LEAVE NYC IF THEY ARE DENIED TAXPAYER MONEY GIFTS
CALL THE BLUFF<<
I'd add one more thing: Get rid of "air rights."
But, yeah, definitely call their bluff.
"Bharara nailed the biggest fish first. Skelos is next followed by Cuomo, Libous and Maziarz, who are in the “on deck” circle."
"The cesspool we call the New York Assembly is about to flushed out,” Paladino predicts. “If federal investigators do their job right, the criminal element in Albany will be exposed and it’s been a long time coming.”
It is disconcerting to see Preet Bharara stand alone in taking down those who feed at the public trough while our other eunuchs, charged to protect the public trust –the US Attorneys, the State Attorney General and County District Attorneys –conveniently look the other way.
Bharara nailed the biggest fish first. Skelos is next followed by Cuomo, Libous and Maziarz, who are in the “on deck” circle.
One thing is for sure: when Carl Paladino makes a prediction, more New Yorkers will be paying close attention."
http://www.carlpaladino.com/this-man-is-a-criminal/
Cuomo hates upstate too. He hates most people. Cuomo loves only the rich people.
Cuomo in Rochester says of his $10.50 per hour min wage:"You won't live your life in poverty.''
"Tenant advocates were heartened to hear Mr. de Blasio call for Albany to strengthen the city's rent laws, but were concerned that the mayor did not go further in his comments.
"We have lost 300,000 to 400,000 rent-regulated apartments over the last twenty years to vacancy deregulation," said Michael McKee, treasurer of Tenants PAC. "And without the repeal of vacancy deregulation, the city is going to lose far more affordable apartments over the next ten years than can possibly be built or preserved. If all we do is simply extend the rent laws, by 2024 we will have far fewer than one million rent-regulated apartments remaining, and that will be devastating to New York’s working and middle class families."
Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York in responding to the Mayor's speech tells the Mayor get in bed with Wall Street and RE, bend over, take some money in exchange for your dignity -- because in bed with Wall Street and RE is the ONLY way to achieve his housing goals. It's Kathryn's way or the highway because there is no other way.
De Blasio should tell Kathryn "Screw the Status Quo!"
" Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York, in a statement. "While it was not explicit in the mayor's speech, I trust his administration understands that forging partnerships with the development and financial industries is the only way to accomplish his housing goals."
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20150203/BLOGS04/150209944/cuomo-throws-cold-water-on-two-de-blasio-plans
REBNY Facebook Page says it all
https://www.facebook.com/REBNYonFB
Always the Pol in the middle.
Tighe and Spinola had Cuomo in the middle then Spinola and Speyer had deBlasio in the middle at the liars ball gala and now this facebook page with Spinola and Banks with DeBlasio in the middle. REBNY owns DeBlasio too. So much for his campaign pledges and promises.
REBNY Brookfield Schumer DeBlasio made the top cut for REBNY photo feature picks for 2015
https://www.facebook.com/REBNYonFB/photos/pb.120655387959095.-2207520000.1423078146./913717888652837/?type=3&theater
GO Margaret Chin!
http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/01/29/rebny-blasts-unsafe-buildings-bill/
Agree
Get rid of air rights and
Call their bluff. Let them leave. There are plenty others who will develop here without screwing New Yorkers. Doubtful they would leave anyway but if they did good riddance.
http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/02/03/nycs-golden-age-for-capital/
How Cuomo raised big money from small number of donors
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/12/8558028/how-cuomo-raised-big-money-small-number-donors
Holdings of Leonard Litwin/ Glenwood Management (also Shelly's favorite) $1,000,000.00
THE RICHMAN GROUP INC. $314,000.00
Extell Development/ Gary + Ayala Barnett (under investigation by Preet) $300,000.00
BROOKFIELD FINANCIAL AND THEIR HOLDINGS (should be under investigation) $253,500.00
What was Brookfield given for its near million dollars?
The Big U and Stuy town too?
If these committees and Hochul’s are included, Cuomo’s four-year fund-raising totals are significantly higher. The top donors to these committees include James and Marilyn Simons ($1.78 million), Litwin ($1.5 million), Brookfield Financial ($813,500), George Soros ($750,000), the Related Companies ($589,700), Vornado (at least $560,000), Rudin Management ($547,500) and Tishman Speyer ($520,800) FU.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/12/8558028/how-cuomo-raised-big-money-small-number-donors
I think de Blasio is a busy fool and a useful idiot. Unfortunately, he's useful only to his REBNY and Best and Brightest pals who OWN him. To the rest of us, he's useless.
Cuomo seizes every opportunity to publicly rebuke and slap DeBlasio around. He gave DeBlasio 15 minutes notice before shutting down NYC subway and bus service this past weekend. Likewise, 15 minutes after DeBlasio's speech Cuomo's staff was publicly undercutting his proposals.
Agree 6:29. REBNY declared "build higher build denser" dictate in 2013. It became de Blasio's motto. REBNY wrote the words coming out of de Blasio's mouth on development and housing plan. Build "denser" fits both definitions, closely compacted and foolishly, stupidly, empty-headed.
AND
Cuomo's corrupt NY is putting the whole State in ruins.
Upstate and downstate the infrastructure is crumbling, people are struggling but hey, Chobani, Schumer and Cuomo's baby is....well... another bad decision of money wasted but the scandal ridden company is raking in big bucks while Albany keeps minimum wage factory workers down. Cuomo cannot get out of his own way. He is all ego. No leadership qualities. His RE buddy's buildings are reflective of him - demanding and desperate. Desperate for attention. Demanding of the space they take up --- instead of a natural Commanding presence. These new skyscraper hotel / pied a terres are like knock-off Waldorf / Plaza / Carlyle homes for the very wealthy )eg some kids of people on the De Blasio best and brightest list who grew up in the Carlyle Hotel. Its a lifestyle for the rich and famous and that is who all this "build higher" is for. These generic sky-cutting, sun-blocking towers shadowing parks and people are absent noble, grand architecture of the Plaza, Waldorf, and Carlyle too. This is RE greed, short term money making bad decisions all around. Unless you measure success by a few in the close circle getting richer as coffers get larger.
The Best and Brightest list needs to be reconfigured with diversity reflective and worthy of New York. All New York. Good ideas come from everywhere, not just those with fat wallets. Some with fat wallets have level-headed good ideas and some just have fat heads.
This "build denser" has nothing to do with housing people. It has to do with building houses - houses which will sit empty and not support local businesses or the local economy. A dense large number of empty large apartments that builders will make billions from constructing and politicians will make millions from enabling. Let's not forget that those empty, spacious apartments will rise above so to be untouched by the warehouse housing for the working class seniors densely crammed together down below.
All the neighborhoods in NY should come together online and oppose the REBNY Empty Housing Scheme.
Upstate and Downstate are experiencing the same RE problems.
Stuy Town isn't the only NY development property that needs an audit on money and infrastructure. RE practices across NY State need an independent serious fed level investigation.
Louis Ciminelli - More than ten years ago, the Buffalo-based developer won a $1.4 billion contract to repair and rehabilitate the crumbling, vintage buildings of the Buffalo school district.
The project is now in its final, $175 million phase, but it’s hit a snag: $41 million can’t be publicly accounted for.
Earlier this week, Buffalo school board members Carl Paladino and Larry Quinn called for an audit of the last phase’s expenditures and darkly suggested that payments to Ciminelli should be withheld if he isn’t cooperative. There is, of course, the distinct whiff of insider Buffalo politics here. Paladino and Quinn are both developers, and for years, they have been locked in a bitter rivalry with Ciminelli, who most recently scored the contract to develop the $750 million RiverBend/Solar City project.
But when you can't account for $41 million in taxpayer money, you have a problem.
http://cityandstateny.com/2/personality/winners-and-losers/winners-and-losers-01/09/15.html#.VNNuDSxKiSo
Looks like Cuomo can't stand more than one rooster in the barnyard.
The russians financed Forest city Ratner's barclay center and the chinese financed the housing in atlantic yards. A DNC in NYC would not be made in America.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/atlantic-yards-developer-renames-controversial-project-pacific-park-article-1.1891730
RE Forest City Ratner developer dodges
Renaming Atlantic Yards to Pacific Park Brooklyn so a google search wouldn't tie the plans proposed to the actual construction and connect it with the years of scandal.
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/brooklyn-development-atlantic-yards-name-change-pacific-park-brooklyn
The Shadiest or the best and brightest -- Forest City Ratner is on the Mayors 100 list.
http://nypost.com/2014/12/08/barclays-center-faces-slew-of-violations-prior-to-dnc-decision/
It has been in “significant violation” of federal Environmental Protection Agency standards for three years, according to the agency’s Web site. It also faces at least 23 open city Department of Buildings violations.
“If it’s not up to code, that’s not good,” said state Sen. Marty Golden, a Brooklyn Republican.
Golden noted he’s not opposed to bringing the convention to New York — he just doesn’t want the city to “get caught with our pants down.”
Enter at your own risk
Here's another group to add to the haters of the Barclays Center's faux-rusted facade: the Department of Buildings. Why? Apparently, thousands of the bolts used to hold together the 12,000 unique panels were a weaker type of bolt than should have been used, and they need to be replaced. But Forest City Ratner wasn't forthright about the problem with the DOB, who seemed none too pleased when the Times asked a rep about the bolts. However, the issue was noted in a nine-page letter that Forest City sent to the department on Sept. 14?the same day the DOB issued Barclays its certificate of occupancy.
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/01/02/barclays_center_facade_partially_constructed_with_weak_bolts.php
http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2013/10/one-year-in-barclays-center-to-dob-is.html
From the business plan to the construction quality to the neighborhood QOL decrease -- NYC is on the wrong track. Sounds like PCVST. And almost every neighborhood in NYC. Before Ratner does anymore construction a thorough investigation and better DOB practices need to be implemented as this is just what was caught and is probably the tip of the iceberg.
A global perspective on the housing crisis and what America and NYC could do better.
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/better-public-housing-lessons-failure-success-us-world
Feb 5, 8:46 am: You said it perfectly and beautifully. Thank you. I agree with every word you said and I hope your message gets to the ears of those who can actually do something about it. Sadly, I don't think there is any good will in the folks who could do something about it, but if Preet Bharara forges ahead and pulls in all the Big Fish (and the squirming little fish), there may be some hope for this once-great City.
Is Cuomo involved in Brookfield’s ST-PCV condo scam?
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/12/8558028/how-cuomo-raised-big-money-small-number-donors
"Cuomo’s four-year fund-raising totals are significantly higher. The top donors to these committees include ... Brookfield Financial ($813,500)"
Hey Preet:
Please investigate the phony Garodnick-TA-Brookfield partnership betraying ST-PCV tenants. Speyer misused Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy our historic, middle class community. Brookfield will misuse that same Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy what’s left of it. ST-PCV tenants have no honest representation. We are being victimized again.
Instead of building more and more luxury buildings (most of which will not be fully occupied) why don't they just build more affordable housing buildings? My guess is because in order to be affordable, the RE/Developer mafiosi wouldn't be able to charge exorbitant rents. If they could get the tax breaks like MetLife did when it built STPCV, wouldn't that be an incentive.
One thing's for sure, we do not need humungous, ugly skyscrapers with a few units available to middle class people who manage to win an overweighted against them lottery - and then have to go through poor doors and not dare raise their eyes to look at the majority of the tenants. Will forelock pulling, hat tipping and little curtseys from the ladies become the rule?
New York is become less and less a desirable city to live in because it has lost and continues most of what made it an interesting, dynamic city and is taking on the ambience of an overcrowded strip mall and the quality of life is going further and further down the crapper.
I've even heard tourists express disappointment that it is not what they expected and reminds them too much of "home!" What a stigma this city is getting if it reminds folks from the flyover states of home!
That photo of Cuomo reminds me of a goombah gangster spitting out "Whack Him" orders!
And there you have it
The shoddy Barclays convention center would get a sister in Queens that would replace Jacob Javits. NYC would become a low-class city of convention centers and mini-mall-amenitied skyscrapers and all riff raff that comes with pied a terres for people like Jeffrey Epstein.
A convention center instead of the communities, the best ethnic restaurants, diversity, safety of growing up with neighborhood friends replaced with ....a convention center ..... This is cray like Bloombergs failed football stadium in Manhattan legacy he tried to build.
"Cuomo comes back to the convention-center thing
"Jimmy Van Bramer, the councilman whose district encompasses “every inch” of Sunnyside Yards, has expressed concern about the de Blasio plan and on Wednesday reacted to the Doctoroff proposal with horror.
“I have never had one person come to me in western Queens and tell me that what we really need is one of the largest convention centers ever built smack dab in the middle of our neighborhood,” he told Capital.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/02/8561650/cuomo-comes-back-convention-center-thing
SHOCK Politicians and RE Developers Committing Crimes Together
Malcolm Smith guilty of trying to rig NYC mayor’s race
By Rich Calder
February 5, 2015 | 12:32pm
Smith, the feds say, turned to Moses Stern — a crooked Rockland County developer-turned-federal witness — and an undercover federal agent for money and help pulling off the botched scheme. In turn, Smith allegedly promised them $500,000 in transportation funds for a project in Spring Valley, NY.
http://nypost.com/2015/02/05/malcolm-smith-guilty-of-trying-to-rig-nyc-mayors-race/
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/sen-malcolm-smith-key-witness-moses-mark-stern-owes-citigroup-126-million-sources-article-1.1306763
What's the deal with the letters that keep coming for 'inspections'. Inspections for what? Are you people allowing this? W.T.F. is this.
Bharara: NY is the 'show me the money' state
"And sadly, this was just one of many pockets of corruption this Office has uncovered in New York, which has become the ‘show me the money’ state," Bharara said in a statement. "It should not be asking too much to expect public officials at least to obey the law."
Bharara said the "give-and-take of the political process" shouldn't be about "the giving and taking of bribes."
“This Office will continue the vigorous prosecution of political corruption until every public official understands that violating the public trust will likely land you in prison,” he said.
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/politics/politics-on-the-hudson/2015/02/05/bharara-ny-is-the-show-me-the-money-state/22935379/
Maybe we should send Preet Bharara the list of politicians who violated the public trust here in Peter Cooper Village Stuyvesant Town?
I'm a senior and I just filled out an application to be entered in the lottery for "affordable housing." I don't think I will be considered even in the unlikely event my name comes up in the lottery. The reason: with my social security and small pension, I am still above (though not by much) the maximum allowable income for a single person.
This affordable housing is obviously not meant to be affordable to middle class (lower middle class, in my case) people. It is meant for the really poor, especially those with families.
I'm not saying poor folk should not be housed affordably, but what I am saying is that the middle class are always left out of the equation. No doubt a lot of the families who will qualify for the affordable housing will not even be from New York, probably many illegal immigrants will qualify, but hard-working, tax-paying middle class New Yorkers will be deemed ineligible.
The best way that affordable housing can be saved and become truly affordable for the middle class is for the rent stabilization laws to be renewed and extended and a lot of the units that were illegally destabilized by the trickery of landlords such as ours, should be retroactively restored to the RS status and become part of the RS housing stock.
That probably wont happen and I think New York City is going to become a densely-packed, overbuilt, dark and shadowy city inhabited by the very poor and the affluent and probably a great many those folks will have come from somewhere else e.g., illegal immigrants and hipsters from the flyover states. Plus, of course, the absentee oligarchs who money-launder their assets through empty glass perches in the sky.
The average middle class New Yorker is just not welcome in this City any more.
" It seems that time and time again our system is positioned to advance those who are connected, while the rest of us foot the bill.
The system created here on Long Island has been so fundamentally skewed and poised to benefit a collective elite few, that the rest of the region’s residents just sit there and pay their taxes, continuing to feed the machine. This very same machine is so corroded with cronyism and patronage that the system doesn’t work.
Our indifference is beginning to hurt us. The system is broken, but only because we allow it to be.
Pay attention or it will cost us all"
http://www.thefoggiestidea.org/2014/05/14/suburbia-itself-isnt-the-problem-we-are/
ALL NY STATE NEEDS TO STOP FOOTING THE BILL...TO STOP FEEDING THE CORRUPT MACHINE OF A SYSTEM THAT IS RIGGED..TO STOP LETTING OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS HELP A BUNCH OF HEDGE FUNDERS BUY A 90MILLION DOLLAR PENTHOUSE FOR FUN AND KICKS AT ONE57.
http://www.hedgefundletters.com/hedge-fund-looking-to-flip-a-90-million-penthouse/
I miss the STPCV Trees.
How Trees Can Make City People Happier (and Vice Versa)
By Sarah Laskow | February 3, 2015
http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/city-trees-care-tending-people-happiness
RE proudly brags of pushing the middle class out of Manhattan and caters to illicit moneyed clients:
"In fact, if you’ve recently been outdone by an outrageous all-cash bid for an apartment, there’s a decent chance that, behind a generic corporate name, there’s a foreign buyer and an offshore bank account."
Buildings around Times Square and the Financial District are being marketed heavily overseas.
One development project on John Street is “crowdfunding” $50,000 financing shares via the Prodigy Network, a marketing firm with offices in New York and Bogota.
The Related Companies is using a federal program that promises green cards to foreign investors to raise cheap capital for its Hudson Yards project. (A website features a rendering and the slogan “Your Gateway to the U.S.A.”)
Shortly before departing on a road show to Monte Carlo and other redoubts of European wealth a couple of months ago, one broker told me about his most adventurous strategy: buying, emptying, and renovating brownstones in Crown Heights. An Australian investment fund has done something similar in Bushwick."
RE is not building houses for people to live in they are outright laundering money for international criminals.
http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-york-real-estate-2014-6/
"And so New Yorkers with garden-variety affluence—the kind of buyers who require mortgages—are facing disheartening price wars as they compete for scarce inventory with investors who may seldom even turn on a light switch.
The Census Bureau estimates that 30 percent of all apartments in the quadrant from 49th to 70th Streets between Fifth and Park are vacant at least ten months a year."
NYC does NOT have a housing shortage.
NYC has an empty housing surplus.
Thanks to the RE Pol relationship.
"To cater to the tastes of their transient residents, developers are designing their projects with features like hotel-style services.
And the new economy has spawned new service businesses, like XL Real Property Management, which takes care of all the niggling details—repairs, insurance, condo fees—for absentee buyers. “I feel like foreign investors have gotten a bad rap,” says Dylan Pichulik, XL’s boyish chief executive, who recently took me to see a $15,000-a-month rental at the Gretsch, a condo building in Williamsburg, which he oversees for a Russian owner."
"With a little creative corporate structuring, the ownership of a New York property can be made as untraceable as a numbered bank account.
And that makes the city an island haven for those who want to stash cash in an increasingly monitored global financial system.
“With everything that is going on in Switzerland in terms of transparency, people are being forced to pay taxes on their capital that they used to hold there,” says Rodrigo Nino, the president of the Prodigy Network. “Real estate is a great alternative.”
“Sometimes they come in with wires,” says Luigi Rosabianca. “Sometimes they come in with suitcases.” Most of the time, the motivation behind this movement of cash, and buyers’ desire for privacy, is legitimate, but sometimes it’s not.
An inquiry by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington-based nonprofit, has uncovered numerous cases in which New York real estate figured in foreign financial- and political-corruption scandals. "
Laundering money in NY real estate
“Real estate is a wonderful way to cleanse money. Once you buy real estate, the derivation of that cash is forgotten.”
http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-york-real-estate-2014-6/index1.html
Lorber of Douglas Elliman brags of his laundering and pushing out the middle class off the island of Manhattan.
More typically, though, foreign buyers are searching for a favorable investment climate and the identity protection provided by an LLC. Rosabianca’s client, the Italian, lives in Nigeria, where her husband is in the oil business. But she said she was still a tax resident of her home country, giving me a knowing look. Italy taxes its citizens’ overseas assets—if it can find them. “To invest in Italy now is terrible,” she said. So the Italian spent most of her Sunday in taxis, bouncing from Gramercy to Tribeca to the High Line in search of the right place to store her wealth."
Will Anyone Sleep in One57?
The development, still under construction, has closed sales on 25 units to date. Of those, more than half were purchased by corporate entities.
http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-york-real-estate-2014-6/index1.html
“The Wealth Report.” The latest edition produces the curiously precise estimate that there are 167,669 individuals in the world who are “ultrahigh net worth,” with assets exceeding $30 million. “Of course, the big question is: are the rich getting richer?” the report asks. It answers gleefully in the affirmative, forecasting that over the next decade, the ranks of the ultrarich will increase by 30 percent, with much of the growth coming in Asia and Africa.
Daniela Sassoun, a Portuguese-speaking Corcoran broker who used to work in Swiss banking, frequently travels to São Paulo and Geneva to sell elite buyers on New York. “We give them the state of the market, and the lawyers explain how to purchase this under an LLC or a trust,” Sassoun says. “It’s wealth advisory: Here is an option for you to diversify your $100 million.”
In New York, by contrast, buyers of new construction often qualify for a tax abatement. At One57, currently the city’s most expensive new address, the tax break amounts to around 94 percent. A Times analysis estimated that its priciest penthouse, which is reportedly in contract for more than $90 million, would initially be billed less than $1,500 a month."
What do you think your taxes will be if you buy at PCVST? Do you think PCVST buyers will get a 94% tax break? NO PCVST buyers will pay more in taxes to subsidize de Blasio's build higher scrapers.
Thing is if everyone played by the same rules then there would be no tension. But welfare programs for the wealthy internationals and housing built for the uninhabited pied a terres and land / homes stolen from the middle class to replace it with empty skyscrapers for tax evaders is an insult to the American way, American values, the American dream, to Americans. NYC needs to put Americans first or at least give Americans equal importance / consideration. What the hell is NYC doing to its American citizens?
Shady foreign criminals
"Many of these buyers took meticulous steps to conceal their identities. Some employed misdirection. The owner of a $37 million unit, Novgorod LLC, was widely believed to be a Russian oligarch until it was revealed to represent the chief executive of the British bank Barclays. (He later resigned in a financial scandal, but the LLC still owns the apartment.)"
http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-york-real-estate-2014-6/index2.html
"Weill’s penthouse apartment was resold for $88 million in 2011 to an LLC owned by a trust in the name of Dmitry Rybolovlev’s daughter. During divorce proceedings, his wife filed a lawsuit claiming that the trust was a “sham entity” created to conceal the oligarch’s wealth."
Chinese white collar criminals
"Other investors in 15 Central Park West relied on the strict secrecy laws in offshore jurisdictions. Two units, for instance, were sold to Jolly Star Holding Limited, an entity registered in the British Virgin Islands, which guards the identity of shareholders. But confidential records obtained by the ICIJ as a part of a massive leak identify Jolly Star’s owners as Sun Min and Peter Mok Fung, a Chinese couple in the shipping business. A Hong Kong tribunal recently convicted Sun Min of trading on inside information related to Coca-Cola’s failed acquisition of a Chinese juice company in 2008, the same year she and her husband made their $15 million purchase."
How Dirty Money Moved From a Taiwanese Fruit Basket to a Chelsea Condo
According to prosecutors, it took only eight steps. By Michael Hudson
http://nymag.com/news/features/foreigners-hiding-money-new-york-real-estate-2014-6/index3.html
If Preet was up to the challenge he would round up the money laundering real estate brokers and seize their assets to pay for all the budget shortcomings Cuomo is throwing at NYC, Buffalo, Rochester, Long Island, the entire state.
That is precisely why experts say that property investment is a favored route for money laundering, a crime that depends on the outward appearance of legitimacy. The laundering process typically happens in stages: Illegal cash enters the world financial system somewhere and is funneled into a maze of accounts and shell companies, a process called “layering.” Finally, at the other end, funds are integrated into a seemingly respectable investment—like a luxury condo.
In 2010, Senator Carl Levin released the results of an investigation into the role of U.S. property in foreign corruption, highlighting cases like that of the son of the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, who bought a $30 million Malibu mansion. New York real estate often figures in such scandals. Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko has filed a civil lawsuit claiming a crony of the country’s ousted president moved tainted money into New York development projects, while her opponents claim, in turn, that she laundered money through the city’s real estate. In 2012, federal prosecutors seized a Trump Park Avenue apartment from the son of a Philippine general who had been convicted of taking bribes. A $1.6 million condo in the Onyx Chelsea, belonging to a former Taiwanese prime minister, was seized after it was tied to a corruption scandal."
One notorious international fraud case illustrates the difficulty of tracing laundered money that allegedly made its way to New York.
In June 2007, Russian police invaded the Moscow offices of William Browder, an American investor who had fallen out with the Kremlin. Documents hauled away during the raid were allegedly later used to transfer ownership of three subsidiaries to a shadow company, controlled by a criminal ring with government ties, which then used sham lawsuits to run up enormous liabilities. Based on the fake losses, the ring purportedly applied for a $230 million tax refund, which was immediately approved by Russian officials.
Browder suspected the swindle was pulled off with the complicity of powerful government players and dispatched a Russian attorney named Sergei Magnitsky to investigate. Magnitsky was arrested and died in prison under mysterious circumstances, prompting international outrage.
In 2012, President Obama signed the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, imposing sanctions on a list of Russian officials and other alleged accomplices in the fraud.
Meanwhile, investigative reporters at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an Eastern European nonprofit, obtained leaked bank records that appeared to reveal the destination of some of the missing funds: 20 Pine Street.
Starting in late 2009, Prevezon began purchasing units in 20 Pine, acquiring five in total. The company later added three Manhattan commercial spaces to create a $24 million portfolio, which prosecutors sued to seize last year.
“While New York is a world financial capital,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release announcing the action, “it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot.”
PREET BHARARA, NYC is counting on you to help us keep our homes from RE and REBNY and Douglas Elliman et al who are stealing them to sell them as tax havens.
http://blog.elliman.com/market-intelligence/luxury-real-estate-as-the-worlds-new-currency
"The best—though still fuzzy—global estimates say as much as $1.5 trillion in criminal proceeds is laundered each year."
Sounds like a lot of law enforcers around the world are turning a blind eye. How does one not see $1.5 trillion?!
"Senator Carl Levin has proposed legislation to extend the Patriot Act’s regulations to real-estate closings and to require disclosure from LLCs, but the bill has gone nowhere."
It was blocked by RE
THE REAL STATE OF THE CITY
TO REPEAT:
Anonymous said...
I'm a senior and I just filled out an application to be entered in the lottery for "affordable housing." I don't think I will be considered even in the unlikely event my name comes up in the lottery. The reason: with my social security and small pension, I am still above (though not by much) the maximum allowable income for a single person.
This affordable housing is obviously not meant to be affordable to middle class (lower middle class, in my case) people. It is meant for the really poor, especially those with families.
I'm not saying poor folk should not be housed affordably, but what I am saying is that the middle class are always left out of the equation. No doubt a lot of the families who will qualify for the affordable housing will not even be from New York, probably many illegal immigrants will qualify, but hard-working, tax-paying middle class New Yorkers will be deemed ineligible.
The best way that affordable housing can be saved and become truly affordable for the middle class is for the rent stabilization laws to be renewed and extended and a lot of the units that were illegally destabilized by the trickery of landlords such as ours, should be retroactively restored to the RS status and become part of the RS housing stock.
That probably wont happen and I think New York City is going to become a densely-packed, overbuilt, dark and shadowy city inhabited by the very poor and the affluent and probably a great many those folks will have come from somewhere else e.g., illegal immigrants and hipsters from the flyover states. Plus, of course, the absentee oligarchs who money-launder their assets through empty glass perches in the sky.
The average middle class New Yorker is just not welcome in this City any more.
February 5, 2015 at 4:51 PM
Bears repeating:
TO: MR PREET BHARARA
FROM: STUYVESANT TOWN PETER COOPER VILLAGE
Anonymous said...
Is Cuomo involved in Brookfield’s ST-PCV condo scam?
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/12/8558028/how-cuomo-raised-big-money-small-number-donors
"Cuomo’s four-year fund-raising totals are significantly higher. The top donors to these committees include ... Brookfield Financial ($813,500)"
Hey Preet:
Please investigate the phony Garodnick-TA-Brookfield partnership betraying ST-PCV tenants. Speyer misused Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy our historic, middle class community. Brookfield will misuse that same Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy what’s left of it. ST-PCV tenants have no honest representation. We are being victimized again.
February 5, 2015 at 1:53 PM
Cooking Numbers
..and don't get me started on the vulgar misuse of bank settlements.
http://www.streetsblog.org/2015/02/05/cuomo-budget-mta-raids-continue-with-no-answer-on-capital-program/
No more Status Quomo
..........(sound from pacman) GAME OVER
NY CORRUPTION NEWS - PREET BHARARA
"..the give-and-take of the political process should not be the giving and taking of bribes,.. And sadly, this was just one of many pockets of corruption this office has uncovered in New York, which has become the ‘show me the money’ state."
Smith, a Democrat, had been charged in federal court with seeking to bribe Republican Party leaders in the city so that he could run for mayor on the GOP line, creating a complex scheme that also involved directing state funds to an upstate road project to achieve his goal.
An accomplice, former Republican Councilman Dan Halloran of northeast Queens, previously was found guilty and is awaiting sentencing.
“As the jury unanimously found, the give-and-take of the political process should not be the giving and taking of bribes, which is what Malcolm Smith and Vincent Tabone tried to make it," said Preet Bharara, U.S. Sttorney for the Southern District of New York in a statement issued by his office following the verdict.
"Smith gave, and Tabone took, a $25,000 cash bribe to permit Smith to run for New York City Mayor as a Republican," Bharara added. "Smith and Tabone were not alone in this scheme – Smith also bribed Daniel Halloran ... And sadly, this was just one of many pockets of corruption this office has uncovered in New York, which has become the ‘show me the money’ state.
http://www.qchron.com/editions/central/malcolm-smith-vince-tabone-guilty-in-bribe-case-bharara-prosecutions/article_59b27ba6-ad5c-11e4-b3ed-8bb0be861c4e.html
Cuomo BFF Christie Caught Quashing Subpoenas Too
Christie (gag choke puke) caught doing same game as Cuomo - Skelos - Silver
CHRISTIE UNDER FEDERAL INVESTIGATION—International Business Times’ David Sirota: “Federal law enforcement officials have launched a criminal investigation of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and members of his administration, pursuing allegations the governor and his staff broke the law when they quashed grand jury indictments against Christie supporters … Two criminal investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday interviewed the man who leveled those charges, Bennett Barlyn. He was fired from the Hunterdon County prosecutor's office in August 2010, and subsequently brought a whistleblower lawsuit against the Christie administration, claiming he had been punished for objecting to the dismissal of the indictments of the governor's supporters for a range of corrupt activities.” http://bit.ly/1DJzrS1
The expunging of those indictments, Barlyn's termination and his allegations that Christie’s administration quashed the case to protect the governor’s supporters were first aired in a lengthy story in the New York Times in 2013. Several members of the grand jury told the Times that the evidence supporting the indictments was strong, and that overturning them seemed motivated by political considerations.
According to the Times account and Barlyn's claims in his whistleblower lawsuit, Sheriff Trout, Undersheriff Russo and investigator Falat gained Christie's protective intervention because of the political connections of those involved in the case.
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/02/8561786/capital-playbook-feds-eye-christie
Cuomo's BFF Chris Christie in a snapshot
According to the Times account and Barlyn's claims in his whistleblower lawsuit, Sheriff Trout, Undersheriff Russo and investigator Falat gained Christie's protective intervention because of the political connections of those involved in the case.
Trout headed a group that had backed Christie's gubernatorial campaign in 2009. The county prosecutors' case against Trout and her underlings also involved embarrassing allegations about a particularly prominent figure -- Robert Hariri, a high-level executive at the pharmaceutical giant Celgene, which is headquartered in New Jersey. Though Hariri was not charged, county prosecutors alleged he had obtained fake law enforcement identification from the sheriff’s office after he flew Russo on his private jet to a conference in Washington.
Hariri was a major contributor to Christie's campaign as well a member of the governor's transition team. Celgene employs Christie’s former chief of staff, Richard Bagger, and the firm has made $160,000 worth of donations to the Republican Governors Association -- which until recently was chaired by Christie. Celgene occupies a seat on the board of Choose New Jersey, which has funded Christie's international travel.
http://www.ibtimes.com/chris-christie-administration-target-new-federal-criminal-probe-1806644
Cuomo Christie Skelos Silver
REBNY CUOMO SILVER
Cuomo and Silver had us taxpayers loan money to Cuomo's biggest contributor Litwin for his midtown luxury apartment building.
"The Cuomo-run New York State Housing Finance Agency, for instance, approved a $260 million state-supported low-interest loan in 2014 to finance Glenwood’s new luxury apartment building in midtown Manhattan. At the time the loan to Glenwood was approved, the NYHFA was headed by Cuomo appointee Bill Mulrow, an executive and registered lobbyist at Blackstone, a private equity and real estate firm. Mulrow was just appointed to be the governor’s chief of staff. According to NYHFA documents, Glenwood also has had other business with the agency.
Similarly, Cuomo in 2011 signed Silver-backed legislation reauthorizing a then-expired property tax abatement for real estate developers called the 421a program. Cuomo also signed an extension of that program in 2013. Litwin’s firm used the 421a program for its Midtown Manhattan project, according to the New York Times. Glenwood has also used the 421a tax break for some of its other properties in the city.
In 2014, Cuomo shut down the Moreland Commission, an anti-corruption panel that was examining the relationship between lawmakers and the real estate industry. The governor’s top aide at time, Larry Schwartz, called commission members to stop them from subpoenaing the Real Estate Board of New York, of which Litwin is the lifetime “honorary chairman."
http://www.ibtimes.com/cuomo-officials-directed-state-loan-cuomo-donor-center-corruption-probe-1807476
"Hey Preet:
Please investigate the phony Garodnick-TA-Brookfield partnership betraying ST-PCV tenants. Speyer misused Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy our historic, middle class community. Brookfield will misuse that same Fannie/Freddie funding to destroy what’s left of it. ST-PCV tenants have no honest representation. We are being victimized again."
Is there any way we can actually get this message to Preet Bharara? He probably does not read this blog.
Year after year, every year REBNY brags of booming industry profits and enormously large personal gains by its members. RE does not need and does not deserve NY welfare programs. End the wealthy welfare programs.
"The 421a abatement, which costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues, is set to expire in 2015. The question of its renewal -- and Cuomo's support for its renewal -- is a flashpoint in this year’s legislative session in Albany. Already, some New York City lawmakers are calling for its repeal."
http://www.ibtimes.com/cuomo-officials-directed-state-loan-cuomo-donor-center-corruption-probe-1807476
Councilman Antonio Reynoso joins Councilman Mark Levine and Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal, among others, to protest the 421-A tax break (Photo: Will Bredderman/New York Observer).
Council members and tenant advocates rallied outside City Hall this morning against the 421-A tax exemption, which was created in the 1970s to encourage construction of affordable housing but which its opponents today claimed has become an incentive for market-rate development.
Five members of the Council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings joined with groups like Make the Road and the Flatbush Tenants Council to demand the repeal of the property tax break. They cited Independent Budget Office statistics showing that the program costs New York City $1.1 billion in revenue a year, while it creates housing they argued is not truly affordable for low-income New Yorkers.
Read more at http://observer.com/2015/01/pols-call-for-repeal-of-421-a-real-estate-tax-break/#ixzz3Qz5VCOLx
Follow us: @newyorkobserver on Twitter | newyorkobserver on Facebook
“Those who are using 421-A, are building in the working-class communities without providing real affordable housing units,” Manhattan Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez said adding that his district contains the highest number of rent-regulated units in the city. “I believe that we have to provide real incentive to developers who are responsible.”
Manhattan Councilwoman Rosie Mendez argued that the money lost through the tax break could be used to provide other forms of relief for tenants.
” Let me tell you what we can do with a billion dollars!” she said. “We can take that money and put it into our Mitchell-Lamas and preserve that affordable housing. We take that money and put it in the tenant interim lease program. Tenants have been waiting 20 years for their apartments to be renovated and to be made homeowners. We can take that money and create a fund to combat landlord harassment.”
Read more at http://observer.com/2015/01/pols-call-for-repeal-of-421-a-real-estate-tax-break/#ixzz3Qz6HSpnq
Follow us: @newyorkobserver on Twitter | newyorkobserver on Facebook
Chipping away at NYC Parks
"Parks are the outward visible symbol of democracy." --Robert Moses
Robert Moses Park
"The land for the park was obtained in 1937 as part of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel construction in exchange for the taking of a portion of St. Gabriel's Park (now named St. Vartan Park) for an approach roadway. The Park itself was completed in 1941 and shares the block with the large ventilation building for the tunnel. It was named for Moses in 1982.
The playground is often used for roller hockey, and the East End Hockey Association has been organizing games at the site since 1972. [3]
Since 1982, there have been at least three attempts to take the park's land for building projects.[4]
The plan is opposed by some residents of Tudor City, which is across the street from the park.[9]
On October 5, 2011, the city and state reached an agreement to use the western portion of Robert Moses Playground for an expansion of the United Nations campus. In exchange, the United Nations Development Corporation would pay $73 million to fund the development of the East River esplanade between 38th and 60th streets.
A playground for children in Tudor City or Business the United Nation brings in
Midtown jiggle joint Flashdancers has seen a lot of action thanks to the United Nations General Assembly.
“The place has been so packed with diplomats, they’ve had to turn away people at the door,” says a source.
http://pagesix.com/2013/09/28/midtown-strip-club-booming-during-un-week/
Hi. Off the topic, but, I am a new tenant who just moved in and I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but, when one turns on or off their bathroom faucet, and the noise is soo loud that it sound like a rhino is in MY bathroom, could you please call Service and have them fix it? PLEASE? These apartment walls seem soo thin that the sound travels really easy. I work evening shifts and care not to be awoken by this loud noise in the early A.M. It is probably extremely bothersome for my surrounding neighbors as well. Thank you.
Some new one star ratings at Yelp. They truly suck. Having a problem with hitting the "useful" tab (we all need to do so at these one star ratings), getting an error message. What's with that?
What's the story with this brick façade MCI'S? Has any other buildings received them other than about the 7 buildings hit since October of last year?
What scam is being run now by this God forsaken company? The TA website is absolutely USELESS.
NYC is making the same mistakes
..Valencia epitomizes the worst of Spain's problems.
It had the country's most inflated property market and the biggest crash.
Its landscape is littered with empty and half-finished buildings.
Valencia has also had an unusually high number of politicians indicted for corruption.
In 2007, Valencia spent $730 million on a Formula One street circuit that hugs its Mediterranean shores. Two years later, Valencia's regional president, Francisco Camps, did a victory lap in a $200,000 Ferrari. He'd just hosted the European Grand Prix and the America's Cup yacht race.
Construction was booming.
But that infamous Ferrari ride was the beginning of the end.
Camps has resigned from office to defend himself full time against corruption allegations.
Thirteen others await trial. And Valencia is now Spain's most indebted province.
Valencia still hosts Formula One races. But the regional government has run out of funds to repair schools, and some kids have been attending class in trailers for years. Politicians are thinking twice about Ferrari photos these days.
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170561273/how-a-spanish-city-went-boom-then-bust
The Future is here
This young Spanish Civil Engineer is right!
NYC is doomed.
"Maybe in the future, if someone says, 'Hey, let's start building houses like madmen again,' this can be a cautionary reference for them."
- Esteban García, co-founder of Nación Rotonda
"Around the end of 2003, I remember sitting in an urban planning class and hearing that 2 million new houses were being built in Madrid. And I raised my hand and said, 'That's crazy! Where are these people going to come from?' It was just madness!" García told NPR in a telephone interview from his office at a small Spanish engineering firm in Madrid. "Now we can see, 10 years later, that those people did not materialize."
But the houses did.
Called Nación Rotonda — "Roundabout Nation," in Spanish — the site displays before-and-after aerial photos of dozens of Spanish towns.
Half-built condos, "roads to nowhere" and urban sprawl are juxtaposed with open farmland and forests that stood in their place just a few years ago.
The site is the brainchild of Esteban García, Miguel Álvarez and Rafael Trapiello. They're all civil engineers in their early 30s who studied urban planning, and then watched in horror as Spain did exactly what their professors taught them not to do.
Like the U.S. and many other Western countries, Spain's building boom in the previous decade was a major factor in its economic implosion. And now a trio of civil engineers in Spain has created a website that offers a dramatic before-and-after view of the COUNTRY'S CONSTRUCTION BUBBLE.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/05/30/187322818/from-the-sky-a-view-of-spains-boom-and-bust
"Our tax system was highly dependent on real estate development," said Campa, who served as Spain's secretary of state for the economy from 2009 to 2011. "Local communities collected a large amount of revenue from these activities — which is one of the reasons they're now struggling."
Millions Of Empty Homes
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/05/30/187322818/from-the-sky-a-view-of-spains-boom-and-bust
Nación Rotonda — "Roundabout Nation,"
The site is the brainchild of Esteban García, Miguel Álvarez and Rafael Trapiello. They're all civil engineers in their early 30s who studied urban planning, and then watched in horror as Spain did exactly what their professors taught them not to do.
The site:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://nacionrotonda.tumblr.com/&prev=search
Do we now know how much of the property is MR vs not? Thank you.
>>Do we now know how much of the property is MR vs not? Thank you.<<
We do not. (Though, technically, all apartments are RS.)
We also do not know how many students occupy ST/PCV apartments.
1:09 PM: Probably there is air in the pipes and that is why it is making such a terrible noise. I always think it's like having a jet take off in your apartment! If you know who the neighbor is, put a friendly note under the door. If that doesn't yield results, call RS. If you don't know from which apartment the sound emanates, call RS and explain the situation to them. People know when their plumbing is making a lot of noise, put some people don't care because it doesn't affect them personally. Good luck!
Can't tell how but I saw stats about 3 years ago. At that time the place was close to 50% MR. I was surprised. Didn't think it was that much. Anyway it's probably more now.
No to 421a!
No more.
It is absurd.
It is ridiculous.
It is criminal.
It will crash and de Blasio and Cuomo will have built empty housing that made a lot of money for their real estate friends and will be a problem for future administrations and the people of NYC. No long term vision -- only short term thinking for get rich and richer quick schemes.
Goodbye Money Laundering: The Slide In Luxury Real Estate
Feb. 4, 2015 2:06 PM ET
Disclosure: The author has no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More...)
Summary
30% of the $2 million-plus real estate market is bought by foreign buyers, typically Russian, Middle Eastern, South American and Chinese.
The Russians will be the first to go thanks to the ruble's 55% drop.
The Brazilian real has fallen 20% in the last year alone.
Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people: ultra-rich criminals, drug dealers, despots and the mafia globally. I'm being sarcastic, of course.
It seems the greatest scheme for international money laundering is rapidly coming to an end and it couldn't come soon enough.
Unfortunately, this will have some negative effects on real estate in the super-expensive cities across the county because buying of high-priced condos for cash in places like New York, Miami, L.A. and San Francisco is going to come to a screeching halt.
Did you know that the National Association of Realtors gets a major exemption from Anti-Money-Laundering provisions?!
That's something I read about only recently in a Zero Hedge article. And it's another fine example of our perverted special interests-driven political system!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2883956-goodbye-money-laundering-the-slide-in-luxury-real-estate
It's disgraceful that all a foreign government official or ultra-rich and shady business person has to do to buy an expensive condo without scrutiny is get cash into the U.S. (legally or illegally, on their private plane or strapped to a mule's chest). When they finally flip it, they've successfully laundered money in the world's reserve currency.
Today, in New York, about 30% of the $2 million-plus real estate market, where most of the actions and gains have been occurring, is bought by foreign buyers; typically Russian, Middle Eastern, South American and Chinese.
As I explained in Boom & Bust last month, the Russians will be the first to go. The ruble has fallen 55% versus the dollar so a $5 million condo now costs $11.1 million at the rate of exchange from June 2014. That’s gotta hurt those Russian mafia bosses!
Well, cracks are appearing in the ultra-luxury market that these bad-guys move in…
The Strong Dollar’s Effect on Foreign Buyers
I used to live in Miami and still go there often. When I’m asked to describe why South Beach and downtown Miami have an even greater bubble than the last one, while most cities don’t, I have a standard reply: “Brazilian drug dealers with bags of cash.” They are the types driving the top 1% of real estate in such cities and that has been where most of the action and gains have been.
Along with the rest of the law-abiding ultra-rich, they’re driving the most extreme bubbles in our largest cities because they have to have large places to park their money and they feel high-end real estate is much safer than stocks and bonds…
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article49282.html
de Blasio should preserve and build middle class housing not REBNY higher and denser filthy crap.
Cuomo's Dirty New York
New York’s dirty secrets: high-end real estate in the city is an alluring destination for corrupt politicians, tax dodgers and money launderers around the globe.
Since 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in pricey Manhattan developments have been to buyers who listed an international address—most from China, Russia and Latin America—or bought in the name of a corporate entity, a maneuver often employed by foreign purchasers. Because many buyers go to great lengths to hide their interests in New York properties, it’s impossible to put a number on the proportion laundering ill-gotten gains. But according to money-laundering experts as well as court documents and secret offshore records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, New York real estate has become a magnet for dirty money.
Public officials and real-estate operatives in New York have mostly applauded the city’s influx of mega-rich homesteaders from overseas, with former Mayor Michael Bloomberg leading the chorus during his time in office. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?” he told New York magazine in September.
Combine that give-us-your-rich ethos with state and local policies that lavish tax breaks on Manhattan’s wealthiest homeowners and federal policies that let real estate agents off the hook, and the results are predictable: New York is a magnet for the super-rich homebuyers from other lands bearing money of sometimes dubious provenance.
http://www.thenation.com/article/180516/how-new-york-real-estate-became-dumping-ground-worlds-dirty-money#
The massive flow of foreign money—licit and illicit—into New York real estate helps deprive the buyers’ home countries of wealth and tax revenues. Housing advocates say it also helps inflate property values, pricing average New Yorkers out of buying or renting and helping increase the city’s huge homeless population.
Critics say tax and development policies have been skewed to favor the rich because New York’s real estate interests are skilled at wielding clout. “It’s like the oil industry in Texas,” Jaron Benjamin, executive director of New York’s Metropolitan Council on Housing, says. “They have so much power and so much money. They’re going to make sure they have the best lobbyists at the state Capitol and City Hall, pulling our elected officials one way or the other.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/180516/how-new-york-real-estate-became-dumping-ground-worlds-dirty-money#
Shady neighbors...
http://www.thenation.com/article/180516/how-new-york-real-estate-became-dumping-ground-worlds-dirty-money#
Shelley, one of the few academics who’s studied real estate-based money laundering, says many real estate operatives don’t check or don’t care about whether the cash sustaining big deals is clean or dirty.
In recent years, many of the world’s biggest banks have paid huge settlements with the US government to settle claims that they helped rich clients hide their money. In May, Credit Suisse agreed to pay $2.6 billion to settle criminal charges that it used secret accounts and shell companies to help Americans evade taxes. Shelley believes that the real estate industry should be forced to follow the same standards as other big financial players.
“Nobody has been holding the real estate industry accountable to the extent that other sectors of the economy are being held accountable,” she said. “I think we need congressional hearings on this issue, and greater resources for law enforcement to deal with this problem.”
The story is part of a joint investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, New York magazine and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Andrew Rice, Margot Williams, Mar Cabra, Titus Plattner and Pavla Holcova contributed research to this story. More of ICIJ’s reporting on money laundering and financial secrecy can be found at www.icij.org/offshore.
China Cracking Down on Money Laundering to Buy Real Estate
by Chriss W. Street18 Jul 2014
China is cracking down after the CCTV state-owned broadcaster secretly recorded a state-owned bank executive bragging that the bank illegally provides in-house money laundering services for wealthy Chinese nationals to violate currency controls and buy real estate in “world cities” as their off-shore safety deposit box.
The Chinese have been driving up high-end real estate prices with all cash purchases in California’s Orange County, Vancouver, New York’s East Side and Sydney’s Gold Coast. But with CCTV exposing tens of thousands of wealthy Chinese for criminal money laundering, the Communist Party leadership may demand real estate be sold and the laundered money returned home.
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2014/07/18/china-cracking-down-on-money-laundering-to-buy-real-estate/
1:09 it sounds like your neighbor tenant can't fix what you are complaining of -- that something is happening within the walls -- if indeed the noise is that loud and traveling that far. The pipes are a long standing unaddressed problem in PCVST (articles for years on this problem). All the potential-Property Buyers would rather spend money on "amenities" that give the appearance of luxury then on real luxury of high performance infrastructure / safety / park open space. The problem is the pipes - not the neighbor. At least your neighbor is showering and clean and not smelly.
11:42 how about using the world wide internets to find an address for us attny's office in downtown manhattan? It probably is that easy.
109p.
Noise will often occur when the lifter valve for the shower is broken or worn out. That's the metal pull up that diverts water from the tub faucet to the shower head.
Ask your neighbor to call maintenance and ask to have the shower diverter valve fixed or replaced.
Hope that helps. 😀
Let's hope Preet is looking into Skelos too. NYC and Long Island real estate is the dirtiest of relationships. Downstate beats Upstate on dirtiest RE.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/vote-up/2015/01/30/report-preet-bharara-looking-at-dean-skelos-too/22570781/
More of the same or reform?
His campaign spent more than $30,000 at a mechanic in the Bronx.
Heastie’s own record and background reflect the system he now vows to change. He received more than $23,000 in travel and accommodation reimbursements for legislative business — the third-highest amount in the Assembly in 2014
His campaign filings show tens of thousands of dollars in bank and credit card payments for unspecified expenses, and several thousand more that Heastie pocketed as reimbursements.
Heastie did not participate in 173 votes last year, one of 18 members of the 150-member Assembly to miss more than 150 votes, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/02/04/new-ny-speaker-vows-reform-but-past-reflects-status-quo/
Time to put up. However, never shut up. More opinion, the better. But you always say the TA sucks, so run for the Board with the agenda you think is right.
http://www.stpcvta.org/
Got this in a TA email:
http://www.stpcvta.org/post/nominations-for-election-to-the-board-of-the-stuyvesant-town-peter-cooper
I disagree 12:33.
I don't think I agree with those joining the TA unless you agree with their agenda. You don;t join a group or company or organization that isn't aligned with your own philosophies, ethics, agenda. 12:33 you makes no sense. If the TA is corrupt then certainly do not join a corrupt TA. If it is inept then certainly do not join because that can not be changed. If your agenda is different from theirs then do not join - they would not change their agenda. Anyone joining the board would have to take on their agenda. If you disagree with the TA agenda then do not join it. Personally I do not see why anyone would join the TAboard after they worked with a REBNY attorney to hurt the lives of our neighbors and community, evict the RS for their self-serving goals. If another TA board formed, one of better intentions and the right positions, an advocate for tenants, I would join that. I hope those in dissent from the TAboard do NOT join it. We need them to stay focused on helping tenants and not mired in Dan's political agenda.
These bastards don't even give us adequate heat during these very cold months. Many tenants have to resort to using space heaters. If ever there is a tragic fire caused by these cheap, lowlife bastard scum forcing people to use space heaters there will be blood on the hands of this criminal management. If tragedy occurs because of this, some of us will pursue them to the Gates of Hell to make sure they don't get away with it.
I would never be associated or affiliated with the Marsh Steinberg Garodnick TA Board. They betrayed us.
12:33 that is like asking Occupy Wall Street to join J P Morgan to change the Wall Street agenda and principles. You can't be serious. That was sarcasm again, right?
The self-named "TA Board" is fundamentally wrong in principle. The best position to oppose the mass evictions and property destruction is not from within the criminal enterprise. Would you join CW or REBNY to change it? Can you imagine if instead of opposing from the outside, Teachout / Wu joined the Cuomo administration to change it. Cuomo would quash them like a subpoena and the TABoard and its puppetmasters would quiet voices of dissention within. Crush and quash them with the force of their REBNY attorney.
To remain effective, dissenters protecting this community from REBNY should not join the "TABoard"
....still laughing at the thought of an Occupy Wall Street protester applying to join J P Morgan to change Jamie Dimon's agenda of destroying people and the environment in his greedy quest for money at all costs. The analogy works, but there is a big difference between Dimon and Marsh/Steinberg in that Dimon is a puppetmaster who owns politicians and Marsh/Steinberg are puppets owned by politicians who are owned by REBNY. Changing the TA Board agenda has to be done by changing those controlling the opinions and actions of the TA Board. REBNY / Rob Speyer has controlled the TA Board via REBNY attorney Meredith Kane, for years.
Join the Peter Cooper Stuyvesant Town Tenant Association Board if you want Dan Garodnick to tell you what you think; Kane REBNY to tell you what to do; Hoylman to coach you on public speaking so you appear believable and credible with the RENBY message; Berlin Rosen (Sheldon, Dan, de Blasio, City official press contact for affordable housing, RE PR firm) to write the words that will come out of your mouth. Join our TA Board REBNY Brookfield / Speyer vision for PCV ST.
12:33 This is not about competing Agendas.
This is about entirely different goals.
Tenants want to preserve middle class working people housing.
The Garodnick coalition wants to replace the working middle class with "new stabilizers" of higher incomes, with 90% wealthier luxury condo neighbors and 10% poor (for the tax break not for a noble reason as providing them with homes.)
Garodnick coalition is business profit.
Tenant's want personal safety and sanctity and a new councilperson who is our advocate and not our demise.
I have been one of the avid readers and a commentator a few times and I would never join Dan Marsh Steinberg Kane.
9:19...Okay, you advocate a new organization counter to the current TA. I'd like to see you form that. Or even try. For example tell us how. And how you think this new organization would be able to make an impact here and get press to have some impact on public opinion. You're probably thinking someone else needs to do that. Sure, that's everyone's easy answer. But if you do try to come up with some ideas, please bear in mind that efforts have been tried at the STR site to get something going, and nothing has coalesced in over 3 years. In my view advocating new people NOT run for TA board is advocating for more complaining and no meaningful action. Honestly, does anybody who blogs here think that all the venting has had any impact at all? It may be good for our souls but in the real world so far it has meant nothing.
ha ha. good luck with THAT, February 7, 2015 at 12:33 PM. It's much easier to toss peanuts from the online gallery.
9:19 so we should not join the TA and what? I wonder why you would dissuade tenants from organizing, who interests are you behind?
"If it is inept then certainly do not join because that can not be changed."
Sorry, I disagree, organizations can change. Run for election to be a Board member* as per the notice. Meet all the criteria speced out without asking for the Board’s endorsement (Petitioning Process). I know you would have to join the TA. Use social media, the T&V and this blog to lay out your alternative. If you think we can win on ANY of the local issues here without an organization to back us up, you are mistaken. Therefore, again, who here will reveal themselves and organize an alternate to the TA? Again, waiting.
*”three (3) Director positions are up for election this year.”
Well I won't be joining the TA or the TA board. What they are doing is wrong. Besides I don't think joining them will change anything.
Ok,7:28...great. I take it that you intend to start a new TA. Just let us know who you are, where you live and when you'd like us to come over for the first planning meeting. I'm sure several of us will attend. Although you can never be sure. But I'll be there.
I'll vote for STR if he runs for election onto the TA Board.
Those above who said he is evil are right. Citizens in NY are struggling.
RE gets hundreds of millions in tax subsidies.
Verizon who brings loud concerts into our living rooms after a hard days work, they:
"The immensely profitable Verizon earned more than $30 billion in profits over those five years, but instead of paying taxes, it collected income tax refunds of more than a half-billion dollars, which works out to a tax rate of minus 1.8 percent."
Companies pay no taxes and have a lot of other loopholes and scams the Cuomo's et al give corporations who could bring in hundreds of millions if they paid their fair share.
Corporate Deadbeats: How Companies Get Rich Off Of Taxes
By David Cay Johnston / September 4, 2014 6:12 AM EDT
http://www.newsweek.com/corporate-deadbeats-how-companies-get-rich-taxes-268303
Cuomo is going after individuals citizens who can barely make ends meet threatening to take away their means of getting to and from work
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/cuomo-seeks-whack-tax-deadbeats-article-1.2107860
Its easy to go after and harass the people. A governor of integrity would at least also make the corporations and companies pay their fair share. He is so evil and so weak.
>>I'll vote for STR if he runs for election onto the TA Board.<<
But then I'd have to come out of the shadows and be forever "hounded" by the dog owners of ST/PCV!
To all you expert plumbers, the noise is coming from a washer that needs to be replaced. Some tenants must love to hear this annoying noise and are very inconsiderate to others that live right next to them.
Cuomo's five point plan on ethics reform seems lacking in accountability. This governor is saying politicians aren't unethical and corrupt, the job parameters are -- that is a skyscraper high line of BS. He is opening the door for every defense to say a person is never guilty of a crime - the circumstances are. When a pile of money is offered in exchange for favoritism in laws or in greater access, the politician makes a choice to take it or not, no matter what the laws and loopholes the lawmakers authored say are allowable. Even with laws and loopholes favoring white collar criminals, they still take more then allowable and go beyond the boundaries of the loopholes. Lawmakers must be held to higher standards then the people they govern -- but holding them to the same standard would be a good start. Spinola several times boasted of politicians who drop everything to take his call - those politicians need to ask themselves if they give same level consideration to every constituent or just those who gave them a pile of money.
Don't know if I would join so I went to the website for the Peter Cooper Village ST board to see who they are and if I would get a sense if I wold fit in but they have no bios. Just says it is coming soon on the bio for everyone and there is no photo. Where can I get a sense of who they are and what they are trying to do before I consider joining them? Is there another link only for members? I am not a member but would join if I knew more about who these people are (although I am not easy about working with a REBNY lawyer I would like to ask them their motive on partnering with the REBNY to see if they have a good reason they just are not saying. I just don;t know and need more information so if anyone knows if there is a bio page that only members can see maybe they can share that link too. But then again the lack of transparency already has me very skeptical.
.@IBTIMES EXCLUSIVE:
Cuomo got $1Million from developer in Silver scandal, Litwin, then gave $260Million state supported low interest loan to same developer, Litwin at Glenwood
http://www.ibtimes.com/cuomo-officials-directed-state-loan-cuomo-donor-center-corruption-probe-1807476?utm_content=bufferd0892&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
All those wondering why the DHCR has not done their job, responded to tenants, or produced questionable, unacceptable results to rent charge inquiries:
Cuomo appointed the William (Bill) Mulrow as the Chairman of DHCR
http://www.nyshcr.org/AboutUs/Board/
William, Bill, is the Senior Managing Director Investor Relations & Business Development at Blackstone (Rob Speyer's partner in the PCV ST deal)
http://www.blackstone.com/the-firm/overview/our-people/william-mulrow
The conflict is gross and would explain why the financial frauds at PCVST are allowed by the city and state administrators. They are either turning a blind eye or they are complicit with financial rewards in some manner.
8:08 I heard there is already a new TA forming. When they do please announce it here and please do it soon!
I think more people just ought to attend TA meetings, ask questions and and see what goes on. It could be the current organization has turned itself into some obvious, unworkable political joke. It used to be that anybody who was a member could run for the board. Now they have a vetting committee. What kind of bullshit is this? To all appearances, the current Board would filter out anyone they feel is unqualified (and not likely to support their current agenda).
how many ways can i hurt the little people and make big big profits for those who matter
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/blogs/vote-up/2015/02/09/cuomo-wants-star-reforms/23107595/
Obviously the post regarding joining the TA was from a TA member perhaps even a board member or even Dan Garodnick or his staff. The TA doesn't even care about your $35/year as they are funded by Garodnick and his RE friends. What they need is numbers. Their membership is well below 10% of residents and they need to increase that number. They tried using phony numbers (i.e., they once claimed that anyone who signed those bogus forms/surveys they collect were members) before but have been called on that. True numbers came out when they held an election in which only "dues paying members" are allowed to vote, since they are the only true members. Joining the TA to try and change them would only benefit the board and Garodnick because regardless of your opinion they will count you as approving of their plan. The best thing that could happen is if even more people wake up and denounce their memberships.
9 08 am. Wow, just wow. No wonder they don't follow through on investigations, complaints and files.
How seriously corrupt are these NY politicians? No one gives a damn that's for damn sure.
CuomoWatch Twitter account where you can add your two cents and read others
https://twitter.com/CuomoWatch
A little more humorous -- Until his arrest the Fake Sheldon Silver account was great to follow and is still a terrific over the top read for anyone who hasn't seen it
https://twitter.com/shellysilver
HSBC also marketed schemes which were likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes and colluded with some to conceal undeclared accounts from domestic tax authorities, the Guardian added.
The Guardian asserted that the files showed HSBC's Swiss bank routinely allowed clients to withdraw "bricks" of cash, often in foreign currencies which were of little use in Switzerland.
TO BUY REAL ESTATE AND CONDOS IN NEW YORK?
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which coordinated the reporting, said a list of people who held HSBC accounts in Switzerland included soccer and tennis professionals, rock stars and Hollywood actors.
ICIJ should investigate Albany, REBNY and New York Real Estate
Cuomo going after easy target of most vulnerable, those who have to wrok for a living, and taking away their cars and kid's school tax breaks of the parents are $4500 behind on taxes.
Meanwhile for the wealthy:
Here's what you need to know about the Swiss bank document leak
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/importance-of-swiss-bank-document-leak-2015-2#ixzz3RIk8y5Xj
So why does this matter?
For one thing, if you're rich and you want to avoid paying taxes, there are legal and illegal ways to do that. There's a giant industry devoted to finding (and creating!) the legal ways to do it. The evidence in these documents seems to show that this isn't what HSBC was doing. It was pretty clearly advising its clients on the illegal ways to do it, which mostly have to do with pretending the money you have sitting in Switzerland doesn't exist.
The bank was also pretty lax about background checks. Well-known international criminals — drugs, arms, blood diamonds, etc. — could come into the bank, put down some cash, and open an account without anyone asking too many questions about where the money came from.
If you believe global inequality is rising, and that it is mostly because the wealthy are getting wealthier, then this is a big problem. The role of taxes in society is to redistribute wealth, and every dollar in a secret Swiss tax shelter account is a part of a dollar that isn't being spent on roads or schools or healthcare somewhere else. (Places like Greece in particular could really use the tax revenue right about now.)
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/importance-of-swiss-bank-document-leak-2015-2#ixzz3RIjvGqrq
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/importance-of-swiss-bank-document-leak-2015-2#ixzz3RIe5beeq
A group of journalistic institutions, including The Guardian, Le Monde, the BBC, and the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists, just published a huge story on global tax evasion through private Swiss bank accounts based on leaked documents from HSBC's Swiss subsidiary, HSBC Private Bank.
It's hard proof that the world's elite keep a lot of money away from the prying eyes of their respective countries' tax collectors by keeping private accounts in Switzerland, which the country's bankers are legally bound to keep quiet about. There are about 30,000 relevant accounts from 2005 to 2007, with assets totaling about $120 billion.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/importance-of-swiss-bank-document-leak-2015-2#ixzz3RIkOoWOg
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/importance-of-swiss-bank-document-leak-2015-2#ixzz3RIkJjsP8
1:14 I don't know about that, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I know is a dues paying TA member. Not everyone agrees with every decision at comes out of the organization but they're members none the less.
THESE ARE THE CONDO BUYERS NYC IS "BUILDING HIGHER" FOR. NEW STABILIZERS FOR NYC. DE BLASIO MUST SCRAP HIS REBNY CRAFTED AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN THAT IS BRINGING IN UNWANTED SHADY TYPES TO NYC NEIGHBORHOODS.
"HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channelled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for Third World dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws," ICIJ reported.
The files list a range of former and current politicians from Britain, Russia, India and a range of African countries, Saudi, Bahraini, Jordanian and Moroccan royalty, and the late
According to documents, around 3,105 Turks had off-shore bank accounts with HSBC between 2005 and 2007.
These 3,105 Turks had a total of 4,584 accounts, in which they held around $3.5 billion. The largest amount of money owned by a single individual was around $263.7 million.
Turkey ranked 23 out of 188 countries in terms of the value of the money held in these secret bank accounts. The largest amount of money was owned by Swiss customers, according to the documents.
Former Egyptian trade minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who fled Cairo during the 2011 uprising against former president Hosni Mubarak, is listed as having power of attorney over an account worth $31 million, according to the files. He did not respond to requests for comment from the ICIJ.
Other individuals named include the late Frantz Merceron, an associate of former Haitian president Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, and Rami Makhlouf, cousin of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Makhlouf did not respond to a request for comment from the ICIJ.
Calls for probe against HSBC Swiss unit after tax evation revelations
LONDON - ISTANBUL
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/leaked-bank-files-show-hsbc-helped-clients-dodge-taxes-.aspx?pageID=238&nid=78081&NewsCatID=346
DITTO 1:14
We denounced our membership
6:55 and 9:08 the more complaints filed that go unanswered or under-addressed shows the corruption. Everyone should file. It may take time to get through this but at the very least everyone should go on record with the rents because every one is being overcharged in one or more ways.
1:14...Just be clear. I haven't been an attending member of the TA in close to 20 years and haven't been a member period for 4 years. And since I'm advocating bringing change to the TA and backing out of the Brookfield deal, it's hard to see how you come to the conclusion I'm from the TA. But again, please tell us how we can make a real impact by working outside of the TA. We're all dying to know.
BTW, you don't have to be a dues paying member to go to the public TA meetings. Just go and start challenging and complaining there. That alone can start bringing some change.
The photo is a hoot
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2015/02/gov_andrew_cuomo_blaming_me_for_sheldon_silver_is_like_blaming_obama_for_anthony_weiner.html
Gov. Andrew Cuomo: Blaming me for Sheldon Silver is like blaming Obama for Anthony Weiner
9:58 pm TA membership is far below 10%. But why don't you prove us wrong and have the TA post their membership numbers on their website if it is what you say. A little transparency might go a long way.
8 49 start an all out campaign of complaining and all filing reports of over charging and false charges to dhcr. LOL will not change.
I wonder if it has ever occurred to De Blasio and Cuomo that real New Yorkers (not the oligarch and money laundering crowd who have addresses here, but don't really live here), may not want to live in a city that is full of mega-story skyscrapers densely packed together. Some of us, probably a lot of us, still have the memories of 9/11 deeply etched in our psyches and cringe when an aircraft goes over low and loud. I know people who have nightmares about that day and wake up sweating and trembling as those planes going into buildings was a worse possible fear becoming reality.
It could happen again. The more highly and densely built they build, the bigger a target we become.
Hey, 8:24. Are you dense or what? I told you...I'm not in the TA.
1:14 I don't know about that, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I know is a dues paying TA member. Not everyone agrees with every decision at comes out of the organization but they're members none the less.
Maybe you need to meet more people.
1:14...Just be clear. I haven't been an attending member of the TA in close to 20 years and haven't been a member period for 4 years. And since I'm advocating bringing change to the TA and backing out of the Brookfield deal, it's hard to see how you come to the conclusion I'm from the TA. But again, please tell us how we can make a real impact by working outside of the TA. We're all dying to know.
You can start by making simple phone calls. Ask Stringer, Cuomo, Maloney, Hoylman, Schumer and anyone else you can think of the questions that you have. Let them know that you don't support the TA, let them know you don't support them if they support the TA. Let them know that the TA has very little support from tenants that they are supposed to serve. For exampleI asked Schumer if he was supporting this deal simply because his brother works for one of the firms that stands to make a hefty profit IF Brookfield wins the bidding process. I haven't received an answer but that doesn't mean I will stop calling and asking. I'm a pain in the ass to these people and I know it but since I am paying their salary I really don't care if they don't like me calling them. I don't Facebook or use other social media because I like my privacy but if you do you could ask on those sites. There are literally dozens of things you could do if you really wanted to. Or you could do nothing except complain on here, which to some degree probably still has some effect. I know Garodnick reads it because he once said that people on this site say such hurtful things. Lastly, you could vote AGAINST the incumbent Democrats when election time comes around and send a message. Remember, Garodnick had one of the poorest showings among incumbents in the City Council and went from favorite to being an also ran for the leadership position. I would like to believe that I had a part in that by being one of the 30% of the people in his district to cross over and vote for an unknown Republican. Maybe I'm delusional but hey life is too short not to think BIG! Or you could do nothing at all, it's really your choice.
"The squeaky wheel gets the oil"
>>1:14 I don't know about that, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I know is a dues paying TA member. Not everyone agrees with every decision at comes out of the organization but they're members none the less.<<
Perhaps everyone you know is a member, but certainly not everyone living in this complex is. Take students, for instance. They are a considerable entity here, and I'm sure not one belongs, and if one or two do, then it's a student project.
Not sure if I'm a member any more, either.
5:58...so that's how you do it. Well, guess what? I've tried most of those things. Without organization & large numbers working together doing a lot of the things you suggest, nothing happens. That's the point. That's why you need an organization behind you. 20 yrs ago when I was active in the TA we appeared on a Channel 5 news show to confront landlord reps. That kind of exposure can have an impact but they aren't going to put on us Nobodies unless there's something that justifies it...like being from an organization with roots in the community. Again, I'm not in the TA and have been a fairly regular critic. Just advocating changing it.
@str the everyone I know who are TA members include newer MR and older residents. You are right that that does not include the students and post collegiate group homes. Although my assessment is far from scientific, I think TA membership is far greater than 10 percent.
"1:14 I don't know about that, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I know is a dues paying TA member. Not everyone agrees with every decision at comes out of the organization but they're members none the less."
And beyond your Mahjong klatch, how many people do you know who are TA members?
5:37pm - I have lived in PCVST for my entire life (just over 40 years), and I know for a fact that not everyone is a dues paying member of the TA. Myself, my parents, my grandparents, my friends, their parents, etc. The list goes on...
With that being said, I do know a few paying members, but that number can't be higher than 5-10% of the people that I know who live in PCVST. And this goes back to the time when the TA was actually significant.
I was a TA member many moons ago. as were all my neighbors and friends. Now I can't find one who is still a member. If the TA's membership was more than 10% they would be touting that. They never answer this question which in itself is the answer. That is why they stated outright on the last survey they did that if you filled it out you would be counted as agreeing to their plan. They used you to fluff their actual membership numbers. Their last couple of elections were postponed because they couldn't muster a quorum. If you count residents which is up around 30k their membership is probably less than 4% but if you count apartments it is probably around 10% given the numbers that eventually voted in their last election.
Cuomo's War against New Yorkers
cuomo wants access to unlimited information sharing on all New Yorkers to root out anyone cheating on workers comp and their taxes because he says if they cheat in one place they are cheating on other places. This could bring in a whopping $1million to the state.
But let's not touch those RE, REBNY, or International citizens buying apartments in skyscrapers with all cash and hiding behind llc's.
http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Dinapoli-critical-information-sharing-in-Cuomo-6074109.php
8:28 pretty sad commentary about you and your extended families non-involvement in the TA. Random, anonymous carping on a blog accomplishes nothing, though CW thanks you.
>>8:28 pretty sad commentary about you and your extended families non-involvement in the TA. Random, anonymous carping on a blog accomplishes nothing, though CW thanks you.<<
Sad to say that the TA's poor standing among certain tenants, myself included, is a result of the TA's lack of efficacy, its secretive, insulting and heavy-handed administration, and its years-long goal (overshadowing any substantive fight with the landlord) of tenant ownership of this property, which is, in reality, the ownership of a few at the expense of true middle class/working class affordability.
>>If the TA's membership was more than 10% they would be touting that. They never answer this question which in itself is the answer.<<
It's obvious, isn't it? If EVERYONE is a member of the TA, that would be the headline on the TA's website.
And this is what's pissing me off: everyone is either bullshitting us or hiding behind their secrets. The politicians, the landlord, the TA.
I too have lived here over 40 yrs. I know only 3 who are TA members; they're all on the board. Long ago it worked this way: the membership at any given time might not be high, but when something major was afoot, the old TA would start rallying the troops and membership (dues) would increase. Given that the TA started trying to rally us for Brookfield 3 years ago, membership should be higher than usual...but I don't think it is. They probably got as bump in year 1 and then it fell off a lot.
"8:28 pretty sad commentary about you and your extended families non-involvement in the TA. Random, anonymous carping on a blog accomplishes nothing, though CW thanks you."
Please. The only people CW is thanking is the TA's board and Dan Garodnick for selling out the tenants. Period.
The only sad commentary here is the fact that there are still 5 to 10% of tenants willing to pay for the privilege of getting it up the wazoo from the TA and a cadre of corrupt politicians and lawyers led by Dan Garodnick and Chuck Schumer.
7:16 - It may be sad, but it is a reality. Back when I was younger and the property was all RS, the TA was formidable, but so were the families that banded together and used their high powered connections with law enforcement, attorneys, city employees, etc to get things done when necessary.
Everyone had one thing in common - being a part of the middle class. People would step to the plate for one another, and although the TA was there, it definitely was not seen as the final say if you wanted to get things accomplished in PCVST - everyone knew the right people to talk to. The connections that we used to have are still around, but their pull has definitely been limited following the sale from MetLife to Tishman.
Now the TA is seen as a waste of time for most of the middle class. No reason to pay for membership in an organization that really has no clear action plan for the future and communicates little to nothing to the tenants it is supposed to represent.
A bickering, fractured, disorganized tenantry...CW could not have planned it better, we're playing to their script.
Perhaps but that is better then a unified tenantry getting thrown under the bus. I don't believe CW planned this script alone.
Hey, this is what always happens. The developers are few and focused on one thing: making money. And they're pretty aggressive in the public arena. Tenants are many and aren't so focused. Each has different priorities. Getting an effort together is like the old herding cats. In addition most tenants are afraid to stand out in the public arena. So all and all it's tough for tenants to make headway, especially when they have a TA that seems to have lost its sense of mission.
If there's a failure, it's ours. The TA made a realpolitik, considered decision to pursue conversion. In the asymmetrical warfare of affordable housing, when legislative remedies have failed, a tenant led buyout is the most sensible path. But, it seems, small minded, do nothingness, aided by vocal crank conspiracy theorists, are derailing this effort.
Hey, 8:04...what are you talking about? Brookfield hasn't won or lost. And if it does lose, it won't be because of any lack of unity or the griping of people here. It will lose because it's not the highest bidder. Just like last time when T-S won.
In addition, the Brookfield deal wasn't the TA's idea of realpolitik; it was Garodnick's which the TA was led to endorse.
And now...since this is a high-bidder-wins situation, maybe you can explain what actual effect a TA endorsement can possibly have on a decision where $$ is the real driver.
No, getting involved in a developer deal was & is a useless misdirection of effort and energy. What the TA should be doing in all cases (rather than getting into bed with rapacious developers and lawyers) is advocating for housing affordability and showing that it can organize strong, effective trouble-making efforts when developers and landlords aren't acting very nice.
Right now nobody can tell what the TA is doing. They seem to have little sense of mission or purpose.
Your nebulous "advocating for housing affordability" did take form in the TA's decision to back conversion. A realistic assessment of the stpcv dilemma offers few solutions and conversion with tenant protections is probably the the only path to a modicum of stability. To sit back and watch another consortium take over while expecting tenant protections from a wholly dysfunctional state legislature is the defenition of insanity.
Well, my final comment is...looks like someone from the TA Board is just grumbling in his beer.
Not even close, but glad to see you're silenced by the logic of it all.
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