Press Center

Roosevelt Isle Tenants Win Bitter Rent Fight

New York Post, March 23, 1983

By Richard Johnson

In a scathing decision against state housing officials, a judge has tossed out a 19 percent rent hike at the deficit-ridden Eastwood housing complex on Roosevelt Island.

The decision revokes rent increases of almost $100 per apartment that went into effect in December and means that about half the 1003 tenants, who actually paid the increase, will get refunds.

“It’s a tremendous victory,” said Jay Itkowitz, the tenants’ lawyer. The tenants at the Mitchell-Lama project brought suit after the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal granted the owners of the complex a monthly rent increase of $19.50 per room.

The tenants claim that part of the increase was for paying off mortgage arrears that have reached almost $6 million over the years through mismanagement.

But Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Richard W. Wallach didn’t even get far enough into the case to rule on the charges because he found the entire rent increase proceeding was conducted illegally. Wallach said the state DHCR had violated tenants’ rights by changing its rules last September, four months after the proceeding began.

“The tenants had no knowledge or notice of these new regulations or the abridgement of their rights,” Wallach said in his decision.

“While an agency may sometimes waive its own rules in the interests of justice it certainly may not do so where the substantive rights of individuals are prejudiced.”

Eastwood, a project of the troubled Urban Development Corp., has been plagued with problems since it was built.

Many apartments have been vacant for months at a time while repair crews tried to keep wind and water from leaking in.

But Itkowitz said state officials are trying “to penalize the tenants instead of the people who built it and the people who were supposed to manage it.”