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Early Addition
The Trinity School, a private school on the Upper West Side that charges annual tuition of $30,000 a year, is prepared to cash in on the rise in property values by opting out of the Mitchell-Lama housing program. That program was designed to reserve housing for middle-class tenants in New York through government subsidized loans and tax breaks. The disparity in below-market rents required by Mitchell-Lama and the value of the building that houses the school, with apartments above it, has apparently become too great for Trinity's administration to not take advantage of.
A planned sale to Pembroke Properties, Inc. will eventually result in the conversion of Trinity House (as the residential portion of the building is known) into luxury condos. Most of the current tenants, which include teachers at the school itself, would have to move out because the market rates of those properties would be out of their league.
Ms. Fenster has lived in the building, known as Trinity House, for 30 years. “The whole idea for Mitchell-Lama was to enable middle-class and working-class people to stay in Manhattan, which was a wonderful thing,” Ms. Fenster, 65, said yesterday. “But no one cares anymore. Everything is about making money these days.”While the Trinity School is a private institution, the move to cash in on its property comes in stark contrast with a recent initiative by the state teachers' union, which is experimenting with using pension funds to construct subsidized housing for educators in the Bronx.
The Trinity School was founded in 1709 and is one of the oldest continuing educational institutions in New York. Its motto is "Labor and Virtue."
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Where will their teachers live, Bay Ridge?
A story I read this morning said that the apartments will become rent controlled. And if I remember correctly, the State of NY just last month changed a law to make Mitchell Lama apartments like these revert to rent control when they exit the program. So the effect on the tenants is probably not going to be so terrible.
What a shitty line this is:
"The disparity in below-market rents required by Mitchell-Lama and the value of the building that houses the school, with apartments above it, has apparently become too great for Trinity's administration to not take advantage of."
More like, "...too great for Trinity's administration to not become greedy for."
Sweet. More luxury condos. That means more well-heeled Midwesterners can live here, and continue the blanding/mall-ification of Manhattan. Awesome! Another Cheescake Factory!
I find it hard to believe you would blame the midwest in this instance. the people buying new york properties are saudi or german businessmen, not midwesterners. in fact, we are experiencing one of the worst real estate busts ever out here.
did any of you even read the article? no one loses out - it's a win-win for the school and tenants.
"In a separate letter to elected officials, Pembroke wrote that its ultimate goal was to convert the apartments at Trinity House into condominiums, which would be offered to current tenants at a below-market price. Tenants who could not afford to buy would be allowed to continue renting their apartments, the letter said, but once those units were vacated, the developer could renovate and sell them at market price."
I WISH I was a tenant with an option for below-market purchase of my home OR continue to rent at below-market rates for (x)years
Even if the current tenants are insulated from the impact of a building sale, I think the larger issue is the eventual elimination of semi-affordable housing for the less-than-incredibly wealthy in NYC. It's a qualitative issue, but one that affects the nature of NYC.
The only people whom programs like this benefit are the small minority of people who are lucky enough to have gotten in at the right time, and they do so to the detriment of the vast majority of people who are not so lucky.
good point JMH - if the reason for posting this is to raise our awareness of the elimination of affordable housing in Manhattan then Gothamist is ten years too late. In the FIRST sentence of the article it says that the Trinity building is "the last one on the Upper West Side to offer subsidized rental apartments under the state’s Mitchell-Lama program".
Affordable housing in Manhattan has already been eliminated. Thanks for the timely heads-up Gothamist!
I believe the underpinnings of that argument is that the artificial depression of the housing supply caused by rent controls, like Mitchell-Lama housing, leads to a false shortage that runs up rents for those dealing with the restricted housing stock. I generally agree that's true, but in this particular era, I think the demand curve is rising far faster than any possible increase that an unleashed supply curve could keep up with.
Both curves would bounce up, but the astronomical demand for NYC real estate at this time would far outstrip the supply, or the ability to increase the supply of housing. The end result is that the price point of housing for working-class NYers is simply out of reach. What that means is for sociologists or ethicists to determine, but it's fantasy to assume that a free market environment would benefit lower-income tenants at this time.
"Another Cheescake Factory!"
There aren't any Cheesecake Factories in Manhattan, or NYC for that matter.
STUDY PLAN
Trinity students, your lesson for today:
Worship truth & beauty, as long as they pay.