newshound

In another example of high-end buildings giving some low-rate renters short shrift, rent-regulated tenants at 845 West End Avenue recently told the West Side Spirit they do not have access to the building’s fitness center like their market-rate co-op owning counterparts do.

Gloria Zicht was born in the building, and after moving around in the years following college returned in the 1960s to her family’s rent-regulated apartment, living there ever since. About five years ago, many of the building’s 90 or so units were converted into co-ops, and tenants who did not have any rent protection were pushed out. Those that do have protections said they’ve been barred access to amenities that have recently been built, including a fitness center and a children’s playroom.

“It’s in the building, it shouldn’t be something that’s just set aside for condo owners,” said Zicht. “You have to have a card or a key or something.”

Zicht said both she and her daughter, who lives with her, would use the gym if they were allowed to.

Zicht showed a reporter down to the basement where, behind a locked door that appeared to open only with keycard access, several treadmills and weight machines could be seen through a square window at eye-level. Next to the fitness center was a playroom that had the same locking mechanism located next to the door.

The prewar building, at 103rd Street and West End Avenue, is managed by Atlas Capital Management, who did not return requests for comment. Zicht said she approached a managing agent about opening up the fitness center to all the tenants but so far has seen no indication that they would do so.

“It just has a nasty feel to it, to set it up this way,” said Zicht.

Rent-regulated tenant Phyllis Dolgin said even though she goes to a nearby gym for free, it’s the principle that she disagrees with.

“I’m just finding out about it now,” said Dolgin, who called the policy unfair. “I’d like management to be more open about it.”

A rent-controlled tenant named Moncef Bensedrine confirmed that neither he nor his children are allowed access to the fitness center. When asked if the policy is upsetting to him, Bensedrine said, “very much so.”

“Of course I’m not happy, my kids also,” he said. “I live in the building and other people use the facilities and I can’t.”

Bensedrine said he thinks the gym facility should be free for all the tenants to use. “The rent’s high enough already,” he said.

A fourth tenant confirmed the practice to the West Side Spirit. “It’s a fact, I’m one of them,” said the tenant, who declined to give his name, when asked if he had heard of the policy.

“It sort of separates out the people in the building,” he said. “I’ve only been in this building for about 10 years but when I moved in there was a real friendship and spirit among people in the building, and then they booted out all the people that weren’t regulated. Now, people don’t talk to each other in the elevator, it’s strange.”

Eight-forty-five West End Avenue is the latest building on the Upper West Side where rent-regulated tenants said they’re treated differently than market-rate tenants. Last summer, it was revealed that a 270+ unit project being pursued by Extel Development at 40 Riverside Boulevard would include a separate entrance for tenants of the 55 affordable units that were to be included in the deal.

Building owners sometimes use amenities such as pools, gyms and gardens to lure market-rate tenants, preventing regulated tenants from enjoying the same luxuries as their neighbors. Critics say such practices amount to segregation and have no place in New York’s housing market.

Stonehenge Village, an apartment building on West 97th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, also bars rent-regulated tenants from its gym, as does Lincoln Towers at 142 West End Avenue.

Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal recently lent her support to a 1,189-unit apartment building on West 57th Street, provided that tenants in the 200 rent-regulated units have equal access to all the amenities offered in the building, among other concessions agreed to by developer TF Cornerstone.

“Every single resident regardless of how much they pay in rent should have access to amenities in a building,” said Rosenthal.

Rosenthal told the West Side Spirit that she and fellow council member Mark Levine are also exploring legislative options to prevent such practices.

Do you live in a building with unequal access to amenities for rent-regulated tenants? What’s your opinion on such policies? Email news@strausnews.com and your letter could appear in the West Side Spirit.

Air BnB, the apartment-sharing startup that has attracted from lawmakers and regulators in New York, purged 2,000 listings from its website the day before a hearing on whether it woud have to give up data on users suspected of abusing the platform.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently subpoenaed Air BnB for data on hosts he believes use the platform as a business model for operating illegal hotels and illegally renting apartments. On April 21, the day before a judge was set to rule on the subpoena, Air BnB removed listings it said had already identified as illegal.

But for State Senator Liz Krueger, whose 2010 “illegal hotel law” is central to the subpoena, such actions amount to 11th hour posturing in the face of scrutiny. She said Air BnB has refused to regulate itself effectively. “They are unbelievably irresponsible and bad at it,” said Krueger, who called Air BnB’s removal of the listings the night before the subpoena hearing last week, “more than transparent.”

Air BnB spokesman Nick Papas said the purge has been in the works for months. “We took a hard look at our community in New York to identify these hosts and we took action,” he said. “Earlier this year, we began notifying these hosts that they and their more than 2,000 listings would be permanently removed from the Air BnB community.”

The illegal hotel law prohibits the subletting of an apartment for less than 30 days unless the owner is present during the rental. After investigating over 19,000 listings in New York, the AG’s office found that 64 percent of them violate that law by advertising the entire apartment for rent, the overwhelming majority of which are offered for three nights or less.

Perhaps the most damning fact found by the investigation was that just 12 percent of Air BnB hosts make up 30 percent of the total listings in New York, suggesting that many use the service to book short-term stays in multiple apartments that are consistently – and illegally – used as hotels. The AG’s investigation found that five such hosts had at least 28 listings, with the worst offender listing a whopping 80 apartments for temporary stays.

A judge heard arguments on the subpoena from both sides on April 22, but has given no indication on when he’ll rule if Air BnB has to comply.

Krueger said the 2010 law stemmed from constituents who reported being harassed by landlords to vacate their apartments, presumably so that they could be used more lucratively as ad hoc hotels. Constituents also reported unsafe conditions and quality of life concerns with strangers having access to residential buildings.

“This has really been escalating since about seven years ago,” said Krueger, who noted the bill isn’t targeting any one company, but instead is aimed at stemming the proliferation of these illegal hotels.

Krueger said Air BnB and other sites encourage customers to engage in illegal activity without informing them that they could be breaking the law and might be evicted based on their interactions with the website.

Most lease agreements in New York, she said, prohibit tenants from subletting their apartments without permission from the landlord. Leases also typically prohibit tenants from using their apartments for business purposes, like earning money off of them when they’re not home. None of these points, Krueger said, are raised by Air BnB or similar websites when they interact with customers.

In all, Krueger said, tenants who use Air BnB unawares do so with great risk.

“You’re breaking a whole bunch of different laws that come with financial penalties and are the basis for eviction, and these companies think they shouldn’t even have to tell you about that,” said Krueger. “There are now landlords who type in the address of their building, review, and go ‘gotcha, this guy is renting out. That’s not legal and I can evict him.’”

Papas said 62 percent of Air BnB hosts in New York said the company has helped them stay in their homes, and that the typical host in New York earns about $7,500/year using their platform. “A modest, but significant amount that can make a huge difference for families,” said Papas.

Krueger spokesman Andrew Goldston said Air BnB may have to reevaluate the amount of revenue they expect to pull out of the city; the AG’s investigation found 64 percent of listings that violate the law, leaving over a third of rentals liable only to the provisions in the host’s lease.

“It’s not like we want to kick Air BnB out of New York State,” said Goldston. “Our law is not a blanket ban on Air BnB. Obviously they’re valued at $10 billion dollars now and they want to expand out their business as big as it can go…but it’s really unfortunate that they don’t want to play by the rules and they don’t want to warn [their customers] of what the rules are.”

Longtime stationer Blacker & Kooby was forced to close this year.

The Upper East Side stationary store Blacker and Kooby has been around since 1963, at the corner of 88th Street and Madison Avenue in the heart of Carnegie Hill. For decades, the neighborhood mainstay sold art and school supplies, pens and pencils, notebooks and other items.

Earlier this year, Blacker and Kooby closed its doors, the latest in a long line of small businesses that have been forced out of storied neighborhoods due to an expired lease and an increase in rent. Co-founder Fred Kooby said he was asked to pay double the $35,000 in rent he was paying for the space. Instead, the store moved to Lexington Avenue under the leadership of his daughter, Vanessa, and now offers only custom printing services.

Vanessa Kooby said that while business is good, every day she gets a handful of former customers dropping by or calling to express their longing for the old storefront. “I mean, do I miss my old store? Sure,” she said. “Do I miss Madison Avenue the way it used to be? Sure. But this is really what Carnegie Hill is about right now on Upper Lexington and it worked out for me.”

Retail rents in Manhattan are shockingly high– and going higher, according to recent data. The Real Estate Board of New York, in its most recent study, reported double-digit increases in the major shopping districts throughout the city. Throughout Manhattan, retail rents exceed their pre-recession highs of 2008.

But while real estate experts hail the rising rents as evidence of strong global interest in New York, many local, independent small businesses simply cannot generate enough revenue to stay in the monied neighborhoods they once defined.

So what’s to be done? Just as the city saw an affordable housing movement in the 1950s that carries through to today, some experts are wondering whether it’s time for a similar effort to help small businesses.

Steve Null, a longtime proponent of affordable retail rents and director of the Coalition for Fair Business Rents, said the solution has been around since the 1980s, and doesn’t involve retail rent control, which he said is a non-starter.

“There’s a very clear solution that’s been on the table for 25 years that just gives rights to the tenants, that’s all it does,” said Null. He is referring to the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, which originated with the former progressive Councilwoman Ruth Messinger, who represented the Upper West Side. The bill establishes guidelines for landlord and tenant negotiations during the commercial lease renewal process, and has seen eight different iterations since failing in the City Council in 1986.

The latest attempt in 2009 was stymied – even though it had the necessary number of votes to pass – after Council Speaker Christine Quinn refused to bring it to a vote because she wasn’t confident it would hold up in court.

Null said Mayor Bill de Blasio’s approach to helping small businesses – streamlining the city’s bureaucracy and reigning in excessive fines – misses the mark.

“Small businesses, regardless of how long they’ve been there or how successful they are, cannot stay in business competing with these banks and franchises paying these obscene rents, it’s impossible,” said Null.

Borough President Gale Brewer worked under Messinger when her office tried to pass the original version of the Small Business Job Survival Act, and she’s been trying to find a viable solution ever since then. Brewer said that when small businesses leave, it’s like “the heart and soul is torn out of the neighborhood. I’ve seen children cry when small stores leave and are replaced by a 7-Eleven or a drug store.”

Quentin Dupouy

Seventeen-year-old Quentin Dupouy became interested in politics when he campaigned for Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012. Later he attended community board meetings to draw attention to a program he created to help foreign exchange students learn English. This led him to apply this year to Community Board 7 on the Upper West Side, where he lives, even though he is technically ineligible.

“I was going to my local community board to get some feedback and from the community and get some support and ended up just being fascinated by the meeting and very surprised with how active everyone was,” said Dupouy. “Since then it’s just really made me want to go back and be a part of it.”

Dupouy may soon get his chance.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Upper East Side Councilmember Ben Kallos are sponsoring a resolution in the City Council to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to serve on the city’s 59 community boards, which are advisory groups that tackle everything from crime and development to the approval of liquor licenses.

“Most 16 and 17-year-olds cannot serve on a community board,” Brewer said. “But those who can, what it says is that they have another perspective about the community – after-school programs, playgrounds, parks – and somebody who’s really smart can figure out how to work with the adults and get the young person’s perspective across.”

Brewer said that as a council member 10 years ago, she supported a measure to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in citywide elections, but the support among her colleagues wasn’t there. “So then we decided to look at community boards,” said Brewer, who left the council to become Manhattan Borough President in January.

The City Council must go before the state legislature to make changes to the age requirements for community board service, as it would modify the state’s Public Officers Law. Current regulations require an applicant to be 18 years old. There is, however, a precedent for 16-year-olds to serve on community boards: Comptroller Scott Stringer received special permission to serve on a board at age 16.

Brewer has seen a changing of attitudes toward the idea. “I think there’s quite a bit of support for it in this city council, we didn’t get as much before,” she said.

There’s also support at the state level. Staten Island Assemblyman Andrew Lanza and Queens Assemblywoman Nily Rozic are sponsoring separate legislation to allow anyone who’s at least 16 years old to serve on community boards.

“New York City has 8.3 million residents, and more than 20 percent of them are under 18,” said Kallos. “Community boards have a mandate for being representative of their communities, and I think the best way we can do that is giving 16 and 17-year-olds a voice on their community boards that will encourage them to be civically engaged for a lifetime.”

When attending community board meetings, Dupouy said he noticed there was an overwhelming majority of older members. “I think I was maybe one of two people below the age of 40. Seeing that made me feel that I could add something to the discussion.”

Dupouy, a junior at Hunter High School, said that if he were appointed to CB7 he would focus on school overcrowding and transportation issues for high schoolers, as well as beefing up after-school programs.

Although CB7 had the highest number of applicants of any community board, and although he’s not technically eligible, Dupouy is hopeful he’ll be appointed, given Brewer’s support and the fact he’ll turn 18 in October.

“I definitely see it as a long shot, but it’s something that’s worth pursuing,” said Dupouy.

Austin Ochoa, 18, applied to Community Board 4, which has parts of the West Side and Chelsea. He said he’s been to community board meetings that “are dead,” and enthusiasm is another asset that youth have in abundance.

“A lot of community board members don’t show up,” said Ochoa. “I believe if youth had a reason to be there, we would be there without a doubt.”

Ochoa does see himself as somewhat of an anomaly, and recognized that civic service at such a young age isn’t for everyone, but “there are many other voices standing behind me, and with me, saying that we would like a voice at the table. For far too long youth of my generation has been ignored. And not even just in my generation, but in generations past.”

Ochoa, who is studying political philosophy and digital media at CUNY, and interning for a City Council member, likes his chances of being appointed April 1.

“Youth needs a voice and needs an image somewhere in city government, and why not here?” he said.