Big 6 Hearing Shows Changes In Mitchell-Lama Housing
BY THOMAS COGAN

A maintenance hearing on premises last week at Big Six Towers, the high-rise cooperative complex (actually seven towers in all) at Queens Boulevard between 59th and 61st Streets conducted by the Division of Housing Supervision of the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development provided another look at the evolution of Mitchell-Lama housing.

Big Six has been in existence nearly 45 years and the Mitchell-Lama law a little more than a half-century. The feasibility of the housing that each was meant to afford the working and middle classes of New York City has come into question in recent years. The residents who were present at the hearing, most of whom were near retirement age, at the point of it or well into it, had questions of their own about the seemingly unstoppable march of rising costs. The hearing provided no immediate answers, nor was it supposed to. Gary Slomin, an assistant HPD commissioner who conducted it, said that ultimately HPD's housing supervision division would make an assessment based on what he called "a complete analysis, using our own methodology . . . of what it takes to run a Mitchell-Lama operation."

Building management set up about 50 chairs, but before the meeting could commence, folding chairs by the dozen were brought out for people continuing to show up; their number would finally come to about 100. In his preliminary remarks, Slomin said that he was conducting a public hearing, which would not be a give-and-take session but would allow statements from those who put their names in to make them. He then described the main problem at hand, an operational deficit in the 2007-08 budget of 4 percent. At the beginning of the new fiscal year, July 1, 2008, the Big Six debt service will be increased by $491,000, he said, and money must be made available to meet it- hence the move by management to increase maintenance costs.

The first two speakers, Nathan Nass and Arthur Paolo, said they were Big Six residents since the beginning, or nearly so. Nass said that instead of funding rising expenses, property management should be reducing deficits that have been incurred over the years. Paolo, who said he found his new surroundings at Big Six "a joy" when he moved into his cooperative unit in 1963, lamented what he characterized as the decline since then of the Mitchell-Lama ideal: to keep a middle class tax base in the city. He declared that residents "shouldn't be penalized for keeping New York City alive". Slomin's reply of sorts was to remind his audience of the Senior Citizens' Rent Increase Exemption, or SCRIE, mention of which drew a few groans and hoots, perhaps because it, like the federal subsidies he also mentioned, was "too complicated to explain here". (SCRIE allows eligible senior citizens exemption from rent or maintenance increases, and correspondingly allows landlords eligibility for equivalent credits on their property taxes.)

A resident who might have been unborn when Big Six was opened spoke for those who moved in relatively recently. Doreen O'Leary, a city worker, became a resident in 2001. She told the audience that her residential expenses have increased to where she now pays in excess of 30 percent of her income each month to stay where she is. She said she is applying elsewhere for housing, fearing that in four or five years her Big Six home would be unaffordable. When she said she has seen sub-letting going on and would like an investigation of it, Slomin told her to confine her remarks to economic matters. Those who did keep their remarks within the scope of economics included Dorothy Kaminsky and Maxine Jacobowitz, who have been residents 40 years or more. Kaminsky called HPD a rubber stamp that ignores its own regulations, noting also that in 1988 it relinquished its first mortgagee status to the Community Preservation Corporation and became a secondary one. After running through a list of increases in the past 15 or so years, she speculated that it might be indicative of an operational takeover by CPC as the entire mortgagee and the privatization of Big Six. Jacobowitz also cited past increases from 1992 to January 2006, which she called the "ancillaries". She was critical of what she saw as the privileged status of a nursery school in one of the buildings: it takes up 14 rooms, she said, and is charged less than $200 per month. During this past summer, she further alleged, it was even relieved of that low amount when the rent was waived. Another resident, William Boudreau, said there is too much of the economically strong part of Big Six carrying the weak part. He said that the housing part should be separated from the commercial part, i.e., the strip mall on Queens Boulevard, which has its steady tenants (a supermarket, a dry cleaner, a bank branch) but also empty spots, some of them quite large, that, in his opinion, will probably never be filled again. The mall should be responsible for its own expenses, not subsidized, he said. Another resident, Angel Negron, who recently moved into Big Six but is of retirement age, said that the coop's board of directors is often denounced for acceding to all of management's revenue enhancement requests but is always reelected.

After hearing these persons and others, Slomin said that he would keep the record open to further commentary until November 26, the Monday after Thanksgiving.