In a previous post I described a meeting with Laurence (“Call me Larry”) Gluck, the new owner of our Mitchell-Lama development, Independence Plaza. He was planning to take the development out of the program and go to market rents as quickly as possible. With the exception of tenants whose low incomes qualified them for housing vouchers, the rest of the 3000-3500 tenants would be unprotected.

We were determined to stop him. We knew Albany and the courts would be hopeless. Instead, we had prepared and negotiated city council legislation. Gifford Miller, Christine Quinn’s predecessor as speaker, had agreed to sponsor the legislation. Quinn had agreed to co-sponsor it. Eventually, we assembled a veto-proof majority of the city council. You might think that with the speaker and a veto-proof majority, we were home free. We knew it was only the beginning.

After our meeting with Gluck, where he had promised to get back to me with an offer in a month, he disappeared. His strategy was to stall us and exit Mitchell-Lama quietly. Tripling rents or evicting elderly people living on fixed incomes is never good press.

On July 23, we led a rally at City Hall to support the city council bill. Hundreds of tenants came out. They stood on the steps of City Hall with banners demanding that politicians “Save our Homes.” They displayed photographs of Independence Plaza kids who had been evacuated on September 11: “Victims of Ground Zero.”

A group of council members stood alongside Miller. He spoke first. When he handed the microphone to Quinn who was scheduled to speak next, she passed it to me as though it were burning her hand. She didn’t say anything. I hadn’t ever seen a politician pass up an opportunity to hold forth in front of the press and a large crowd of constituents, especially not on a bill that she was sponsoring. I knew she was in the tank, but I didn’t know the whole story. Later, when she succeeded Miller with the help of the real estate lobby, I understood.

When I began to speak about windfall profits for landlords who had risked nothing, had built their developments with public funds, and were now preparing to privatize them and evict the low-and moderate-income tenants for whom the developments were built, and so on — by now it was a campaign stump speech, one that I strongly felt, but a stump speech nonetheless — Miller, standing behind me, whispered, “We don’t want to demonize the landlords.” I toned down the rhetoric. Miller, as it turned out, didn’t want to alienate the landlord lobby either. He had advanced the bill only because the people who controlled the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) were mostly large developers who didn’t have an interest in Mitchell-Lama. He had underestimated Gluck’s ability to gain its support. He thought he could get the tenants and the money.

Miller made a strong speech. He had now seen us pull out large numbers of demonstrators at two successive rallies. We had hired a real estate lobbyist, Ethan Geto, who would prove key to the outcome of our story. Ethan was pleased with the turnout. He took me aside after the rally and said, “He doesn’t have much wiggle room now, does he?” I nodded, not entirely convinced but feeling more confident.

The next day’s press accounts showed that Gluck had enlisted REBNY to oppose the bill. When questioned by the press, Gluck’s public relations firm declined to comment. The firm’s senior vice president, said: “In this instance, because the proposal addresses a wide range of properties across the city, we consider it appropriate to let the industry respond.”
A REBNY vice president was quoted: “If it is public policy to preserve low- and moderate-income housing, then that should be publicly funded. It shouldn’t be placed on the backs of private property owners to take care of this obligation.”

I agreed that burdening the backs of the owners would be a difficult thing, seeing as they were already burdened with the loot they would walk away with whenever they took a building out of the Mitchell-Lama program. The reporter didn’t ask the REBNY spokesman why a wholly government-financed program was being allowed to privatize without even a gesture towards repaying the government for its investment or easing the rent burden on the residents. Neither Bloomberg nor Doctoroff, his deputy, was quoted. But at least I knew where Christine Quinn stood: her feet were firmly planted on the side of big real estate. It was clear that notwithstanding Miller’s fine speech, we were in for a rocky time.

The Working Families Party had turned out a speaker at the rally. Some tenant board members were still unhappy about our alliance with it. They claimed that some tenants were upset about it. I was dubious about that. But they insisted that I explain to the tenants that we weren’t pursuing a left-wing political agenda. (The same board member has recently raised some of the same bizarre issues concerning one of Gerson’s opponents and communist leanings. I felt we were back in the better dead than red days where the great threat to tenants was from Vladimir Putin rather than Michael Bloomberg, Christine Quinn, and the real estate lobby.

I wrote to the tenants:

Dear Neighbor:

I want to explain why and how we are involved with the Working Families Party…. Other Mitchell-Lama tenants have sought help in Albany…These efforts have failed. Thus, the board decided to develop a different strategy…getting the City Council rather than the State Legislature to enact protective legislation. …With the money that you contributed to the Defense Fund, we retained an excellent law firm… and political consulting firm…. But Laurence Gluck also has very good lawyers and political consultants. And he’s willing to make big political contributions to get his way. In a different system, these political payoffs would be called bribes, but that’s what we’re dealing with…enlisting the Working Families Party to… support our cause gives us additional political muscle…

WFP wants to organize chapters in Mitchell-Lama developments around the City. We have agreed to help the organizing work….not to help a political party – but to SAVE OUR HOMES …If we had an opportunity to advance our cause with a similar Republican arrangement, or with the Green Party—or with any political entity – well, almost any—speaking entirely for myself, I would take that opportunity. But the truth is that both major parties in Albany have failed Mitchell-Lama tenants, and with the City Council being almost entirely Democratic, and most of its members wanting WFP’s support, this was an opportunity that we could not afford to miss.

And it is working. On August 17th, Council Speaker Gifford Miller will introduce the legislation that we negotiated. The Working Families Party was not involved in those negotiations, but it has reached out to many labor unions and Council members to support the legislation, and it is helping us in many other ways. We can’t guarantee success, but it’s fair to say that we have a much stronger chance of succeeding with the Working Families Party helping us.

We can’t ask others to do what we haven’t done. Therefore, we want to form a chapter of WFP at Independence Plaza. We’ll invite you to attend a gathering in someone’s home, and we’ll try to answer any questions you might have.

As a sequel to that story, WFP now has a Downtown Manhattan chapter chaired by John Scott, then one of Independence Plaza’s tenant vice presidents and now an active member of our FUNY coalition. (TO BE CONTINUED)

- Neil Fabricant