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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