Where is stuy town nyc

But instead, we were able to significantly stop the bleeding and to deliver an extraordinary outcome at a moment when we had very little leverage. When I was growing up, I counted firefighters, nurses, construction workers, teachers and small-business owners as my neighbors. To a large degree, that same middle-class demographic exists today. But many people are quietly struggling to hold it all together. When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information.

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Skip to Content. By Ralph Ortega April 14, April 14, Who should pay attention most to the StuyTown and Peter Cooper story? The new people moving in are paying market rates, correct? Please talk about the current landlords and their commitment. Share This:. This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website.

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To the real estate developers, Stuy Town and Peter Cooper had the potential to be the biggest residential deal ever consummated and a source of enormous profit for years to come. To the people who lived there—many for decades—the message was clear: their stable, middle-class community was on the brink. Over the years, I developed a personal relationship with many of the people who now had a target on their backs.

When I ran for public office in , questions about Stuyvesant Town were mundane and focused on the routine conflicts between landlords and tenants in a city housing development—like brown water, or rent increases.

Like me, the people of this community were invested in its stability as an affordable, middle-class neighborhood. The people who lived there—some had been there for the entire life of the community—were now subject to an uncertain future.

Despite public pressure to do so, the new owners had no interest in making a commitment to the long-term preservation of affordable housing in Stuyvesant Town beyond what the law already required.

To many in the real estate community, and even to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, that was more than enough. Unfortunately, it was clear to many of us that a sale of this magnitude could only be justified with a business plan that would seek to drive up rents and drive out existing tenants. Tishman Speyer wasted no time in attempting to usher in a new era of luxury to this largely middle-class community.

They closed the local supermarket and replaced it with a gym. They offered new amenities—for a fee—that could attract younger tenants and hosted rock concerts in the middle of Stuyvesant Oval.

But most significantly, Tishman Speyer tried to push out existing tenants in order to increase rents on new tenants who moved in. My family and our neighbors—my constituents—were being treated as an afterthought by corporate titans, and, as the sale and its aftermath unfurled, they banded together to fight back. We assembled our own competitive bid to buy the property on behalf of the tenants themselves—and did it twice.

We defended the interests of residents who found themselves subject to baseless legal claims, we litigated and won the biggest tenant victory in the New York Court of Appeals in a generation, and we were courted by nearly all the major real estate players across the globe. Ultimately, we put ourselves in a position to strike a deal that would preserve thousands of units as affordable housing for the next generation of residents.

Our fight to save Stuyvesant Town faced significant obstacles, however, and not just from the real estate world. We were constantly challenged by Tishman Speyer and, when they defaulted, by a special servicer called CWCapital. We worked to navigate the shark-filled waters of New York real estate, with many viewing the Tenants Association as an active foe. Some residents also objected to the plans that the Tenants Association was advancing, either because they focused too much, or too little, on the long-term affordability of the community.

Moreover, public sentiment was not always on our side. Though MetLife historically had imposed a minimum income requirement for incoming tenants, there was no income cap for any resident. Accordingly, though most of the members of the community were middle class, some had more means, and all were paying below market rate for their units.

If you are paying less than a third of your income in rent, the housing is, by formal definition, affordable to you. However, others wisely saw the value of preserving a middle class in a city where the divide between the very rich and the very poor was growing.

New York City in had the lowest percentage of middle-class residents of any of the hundred largest metropolitan areas in the United States. That posed risks for New Yorkers of all income levels. While many middle-class people who started out in New York City were ultimately priced out, the people who lived in Stuy Town generally were able to stay. Thanks to affordable prices and a stable, quiet community, they were able to work and raise their families in the heart of New York City, contributing to its vibrant nature.

My own building when I was growing up included multiple public school teachers, a furrier, a literary agent, an accountant, a truant officer, and a former NYPD detective. Like my own parents, these were people who likely would have left the city but for the housing in Stuy Town and Peter Cooper that was affordable to them.

The deal we struck in Stuyvesant Town—the preservation of 5, units for middle-class New Yorkers for the next generation—was the largest affordable housing preservation deal in New York City history. It also was the first time that people had to prove a maximum income in order to become eligible for an apartment in the community.