IPNTA Newsletters

Sept/Oct 2003

IPN Isn’t Your Football, Laurence, It’s Our Home!

Our new landlord, Laurence Gluck (Stellar Management), seems to say all the right things.

First we’ll tell you what he says, in his recent letter. Then we’ll tell you what he does.

What Gluck Says

“We’re already working with tenants and public officials to minimize issues and concerns. We’ve already begun meeting with the tenant association and other tenants – as well as public officials from all levels of government – to ensure that the change in ownership is a seamless transition and positive experience for all IPN tenants.”

“We are moving forward on a series of meetings with City administration officials, the City Council, state officials and others that are in a position to extend all available support to residents. I hope you will think of us as part of the team that is actively helping to deliver that support.”

Sounds terrific, doesn’t it? Mr. Gluck claims that he is actually on our team!

What Gluck Does

But what he has been doing as “part of our team” is trying urgently to kill the City Council legislation that gives us a chance to negotiate rather than have him dictate how much we’re going to have to pay him to stay in our homes. He says the legislation will “chill negotiations.” What he means is that it will make it tougher for him to get every last nickel he can get. Mr. Gluck’s idea of a negotiation with tenants seems to begin with his demands and ends with our acceptance of them.

As for buying our homes, which many of you have asked about, he says IPN is his property now; not only won’t he give us a price, he won’t even discuss it. In fact, at a recent meeting, Gluck looked at us across the table and boasted, “It’s my football now.”

He calls our request for a price at which he would consider selling IPN to the tenants, a “red herring.” He says he isn’t a greedy kind of guy. He wants IPN for “my children and grandchildren.” Who can argue with a loving granddad wanting only the best for his grandchildren?

What he Doesn’t Say

He says he’s going to make a multi-million dollar investment to improve IPN. What he doesn’t say is that the government already has given millions of dollars of our money to the Cohn brothers for improvements, some of which have been made, others delayed for years, and some not made at all.

When the Cohn brothers – you remember them, the guys who had no intention of taking IPN out of the Mitchell-Lama program, and who told tenants that IPNTA was just scaring people to raise money – well, when the Cohns got a rent raise of over 20% from HPD, and then were awarded at least $6 million of our rent surcharge money from HUD, we told HPD and HUD that they wanted to raise the value of the property that they had mismanaged for years, that they wanted to do it with our money, and that when they got it, they would then get out of Mitchell-Lama. HPD and HUD said they had no evidence of that; in fact, the Cohns told them that they had no intention of leaving the program, and that was good enough for our officials! You know the rest of the story.

They got the money, and sold to Gluck who will take IPN out of the program. Mr. Gluck will continue with the improvements while IPN is in the Mitchell-Lama program because he has incurred legal obligations and money that came with his takeover deal.

Many other improvements will come—and we welcome them. We have already paid for most of them. (We all should have had those new carpets a long, long time ago.)

Here is how it works.

When Gluck completes the initial upgrading, he will have an even more valuable property. He’ll be able to charge higher rents to all tenants – those of us who live here – and those who will come later. He’ll even get more money from the government under the voucher program. That’s because the vouchers are based on how much the property is worth: the more improvements, the more money the government pays—not to tenants, but to him.

Mr. Gluck assures us that the voucher program will protect 2/3 of the tenants. Here is what he has to say about vouchers as reported in the Tribeca Trib: “The program is not about to be terminated in any willy nilly fashion. It’s true that it’s subject to annual appropriation, but so is the U.S. military. That doesn’t mean they’re going to stop funding the U.S. military.”

He sounds very confident doesn’t he? Vouchers are going to be as solid as the military budget! But at our meeting with him in July, our lawyers asked whether he would be willing to put anything in writing about the vouchers. If they were cut back, for example, would he guarantee anything for voucher-eligible tenants? We haven’t heard anything yet that sounds like a commitment from Mr. Gluck; only vague, nice sounding words.

Make no mistake, we want those vouchers for every tenant who qualifies. When we met with Dan Doctoroff, the Deputy Mayor, he assured us that tenants who qualified would have these vouchers available to them. Mr. Gluck wants you to think that he’s getting them for you.

At that same meeting with Mr. Gluck, we pointed out that vouchers have many more problems than the funding cutbacks—which already have begun. Among them is the problem of tenants who might be living in their home of twenty years having to move to smaller apartments— if they are even available. There are many more problems with vouchers that we will be reporting to you in the next month or so. In short, so far, Mr. Gluck hasn’t talked about anything except what the government will do—and what he will not do.

What We are Waiting For

To be fair, after much hemming and hawing, he did make one commitment: He said he would give us a written offer that will cover voucher and non-voucher tenants. We had an understanding that this offer would come shortly after Neil Fabricant’s return on September 5th, if not sooner. This would enable the board to review it, maybe negotiate an amicable agreement that he says he wants, and present it to the tenants at a general tenant meeting. Our lawyers have called his lawyers at least three times since then. So far, we have received — nothing.

We don’t plan to negotiate in a public forum, make a lot of speeches, or talk a lot of bull. In fact, the only reason we’re writing this response is that what Gluck has been writing and telling people is too patently misleading and self-serving to ignore.

When we think we have an offer that is fair, we will call a general tenant meeting to present it to you for your consideration. Ultimately, you will decide by an open vote. That’s how the City Council legislation is written, and that’s what he’s trying to kill. So far, we have had only empty words and bad deeds from Gluck.

If we're wrong about Mr. Gluck, we'll be pleasantly surprised, and we'll tell you publicly, honestly, and humbly if he turns out to be the decent guy he says he is. So far--no surprises to report."

Here’s what else he’s done.

The Bad Deeds and Attitude

He’s dismissed a number of maintenance and other IPN employees. He hasn’t replaced them. We know for a fact we now have fewer maintenance people at IPN. We are in the process of finding out just how many.

Recently, management asked for the keys to the bulletin boards. We said that we’d at least like a chance to discuss the issue of access to the bulletin boards. The response? No discussion. “We’re changing the locks.”

When tenants were a bit late in sending in their recertification papers, a practice that has gone on for years even under the Cohns, Gluck –without warning – charged steep penalties, which apparently he is legally authorized to do. We could go on with a lot more. But we’ll leave it here for now. We just wanted to give you a flavor of who this guy, “our teammate,” really is.

The tenants at Park West Village called it a “nightmare” when his company took over their building. They went on a rent strike. The state regulatory agency found a pattern of overcharges for “capital improvements.” These so-called improvements were made – and in some cases not made – so that they exceeded the thresholds for rent stabilization. He said, “I only have a minority interest. It’s not my fault.” In other words, he takes the money, but he isn’t responsible.

Many other things are going wrong since Gluck has taken over, things like hoodlums harassing tenants while our so-called security chief does nothing , broken elevators and intercoms that management blames on everyone but themselves. The townhouses still have no intercoms. We’re keeping the list and we’ll let you know.

We are going to need your active support in the next few months. That means you’ll have to be out there in massive numbers for a planned demonstration in October. We’ll need your continued financial support as well. We are not going to let this man smooth talk us, schmooze us, and steal our homes from under us—for his grandchildren or for anyone else. We have grandchildren too.

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