Press Center

Fighting Roosevelt I. Rent Hike

New York Newsday, March 1986

By Howard Manly

Quadraplegic Granville White says it is a severe hardship to pay his present rent at Eastwood, a state- and federally-subsidized housing project on Roosevelt Island.

And White says a state-approved rent increase that would raise his rent from $111 to $130 would force him to face the possibility he will be thrown onto the street.

“I don’t see how I can pay the rent now.” White said yesterday. “I’ll either have to starve myself or become a homeless.”

Since February 1986, 300 Eastwood tenants have refused to pay the rent increase approved by state Division of Housing and Community Renewal Commissioner William B. Eimicke. Court actions have allowed the tenants to avoid paying the increase.

Last month, North Town Roosevelt Associates, the owners of the building, won a court ruling backing the rent increase. The management company for the building promptly sent out letters ordering the 300 tenants to start paying the new rent – plus the amount withheld – this month.

For White, paying the rent and the back payments would mean spending nearly all of the $411 he receives each month from Supplemental Security Income to stay in the Project earmarked for elderly, disabled and low- to moderate-income people.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, however, granted the tenants’ Eastwood Building Committee a reprieve on July 6 while their request to take the case to the Court of Appeals is being studied. That decision is expected in September.

The owners had argued for a one-step monthly rent increase of $19.69 a room in 1985, telling the state it was necessary in order to pay mounting bills for the 1,003-unit building on Main Street.

Last Dec. 26, the Department of Housing and Community Renewal authorized an increase amounting to $20.28 a room over two years.

“Owing to causes beyond the control . . . the present rental rate is insufficient to enable it to meet, within reasonable limits, all necessary payments required to be made,” the Department ruled.

Even with the increase, argued state housing official Calvin Spivak, the building would have a $2.6 million deficit this year.

Spivak said in an affidavit that government subsidies received by the tenants “not only reduce the impact of the rent increase but assure that those most in need receive the most protection.”

Jay Itkowitz, the tenant group’s lawyer, called the rent increase “heartless.”

North Town Roosevelt Associates failed to indicate the need for a rent increase, Itkowitz said.

“The regulations require the state to consider and to balance the economic impact of a rent on the tenants, but there is nothing in the rent increase order or the state’s other documents indicating that they did that,” he said.

According to state figures, 448 families at Eastwood were spending from 30 to 40 percent of their incomes to pay for rent before the increase was ordered. Sixty-three families were paying more than 40 percent.

The state said that a $20 per room increase “would cause substantial displacement but would not increase vacancies.”