November 14, 2018
Attn: Vivian Louie
Assistant Commissioner
Department of Housing Preservation and Development
100 Gold Street
New York, NY 10038
VIA Electronic Transmission to:
Testimony of The Legal Aid Society Regarding Proposed the Amendment of the Rules of the City of New York (RCNY), Title 28, Chapter 34, Section 34-04, Sub-Section 5, Regarding Successor Tenants in City-Owned Buildings, Including Buildings in the Tenant Interim Lease Program (TIL).
Introduction
Founded in 1876, the Legal Aid Society’s Civil Practice is the oldest and largest program in the nation providing direct legal services to the indigent. Annually, the Society’s Civil Practice provides free direct legal assistance in more than 44,000 individual cases involving immigration, domestic violence, family law, and employment, in addition to housing, public benefits and health law matters, through a network of 16 neighborhood and courthouse-based offices in all five boroughs and 22 specialized units and projects for under-served client groups.
Since their inception, The Legal Aid Society’sHousing Development Unit (HDU) and Community Development Project (CDP)have worked to help tenants and tenant organizations preserve and expand the stock of affordable housing throughout New York City. Legal Aid attorneys have represented numerous tenant associations in the TIL program, providing technical and legal assistance to help them successfully convert their buildings to affordable housing cooperatives. Over the years, we have advocated on behalf of our clients, and collaborated with community partners and The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), to improve the clarity of the TILprogram rules, and more importantly, to ensure fairness and that the interests of our clientsare heard and protected.
Proposed Amendments to the Rules of the City of New York
We welcome the opportunity to testify before the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in connection with its proposed new rules governing successor tenants in city-owned buildings, including buildings in the Tenant Interim Lease Program . We commend HPD for taking steps to finally extend succession rights to tenants in TIL buildings. The proposed changes go a long way in correcting the inequality that existed among tenants in City-owned properties. However, we have concerns that the proposed changes fail to account for some of the distinct characteristics of the TIL program. As currently proposed, the changes could be unduly burdensome to TIL Tenant Associations and potentially harmful to TIL tenants and their families. With the goal of keeping families together and preventing displacement of long-term residents, we suggest the changes more following described below.
Sub-section 5 of Section 34-04 proposes that:
An application for a family member to be approved as a successor tenant will be subject to the rules governing successor tenants set forth in Chapter 24 of Title 28 of the rules of the city of New York. The Tenant Association will be required to provide a statement either supporting or opposing the successor tenant application. This statement must include the Tenant Association’s reasons for support or opposition.
We have the following several concerns about the proposal as currently written. First, TIL tenants become such by virtue of having resided in the TIL building. They are not subject to the income limitations that purchasing tenants face. Successor tenants should therefore, also not be subject to income limitations. The introduction of income limitations not previously imposed on the family can only serve to either break up the family unit or displace the family altogether. We propose that successor TIL tenants be exempt from the income limitations set forth in Section 24-04 of Chapter 24 of Title 28 of the Rules of the City of New York.
Second, we are concerned that the time periods for applying for succession and appealing a denial of succession are not sufficient. The most common reason to request succession rights is the death of the tenant of record. At this difficult time, in addition to the pain and trauma of losing a loved one, remaining family members must handle countless, and sometimes unknown or unexpected, additional responsibilities and costs. Families should be given time to grieve. As such, the time period to apply for succession should not be fixed but instead should be within a reasonable amount of time after the tenant of record has vacated the apartment. Likewise, the time to appeal the denial of succession rights should be extended to ninety (90) days of receipt of the denial notice. Furthermore, to ensure that those who are entitled to succession rights have the best opportunity to maintain their rights, we would recommend that the succession application form prescribed or to be prescribed by HPD be distributed to all TIL tenants and made readily available to TIL tenant associations.
Third, under current law, Section 24-05 (b) states that …persons otherwise eligible to apply for tenancy under §24-04 above shall not be offered tenancy if they fail to pay any accrued rent which they have been advised by HPD is due for the apartment. In our view, the current rules are meant facilitate tenancy transitions and we believe that eligible persons should have the full benefit of all defenses that are found in housing laws and regulations. We therefore propose that failure to pay accrued rent should not bar succession claims where the law provides defenses to such actions.
Fourth, HPD and TIL tenant associations have established and effective legal remedies they may pursue to deal with non-desirable tenants. The decision to grant or withhold succession rights is not and should not be one of those remedies. In order to provide clear succession rules and guidelines, and avoid the appearance of impropriety or abuse of discretion by HPD, the TIL tenant association or its members, applications for succession must be approved if the successor tenant meets the requirements for succession, i.e., is an eligible family member that meets the co-residency or inception of tenancy requirements. TIL tenant associations should not be required to provide a statement of support or opposition to the successor tenant application. Instead, tenant associations should be given the option of submitting statements of support should they choose to do so.
Lastly, we propose that as soon as HPD is aware of a potential successor tenant, it should notify the successor tenant of the process for applying for succession and provide all needed forms and information.
Conclusion
The proposed changes to HPD’s rules governing successor tenants in city owned buildings are significant and have the potential to greatly affect low income families that reside in such housing. While we applaud HPD’s efforts to do this, we also urge HPD to adopt suggestions made above. We share HPD’s goal to strengthen the Tenant Interim Lease Program to better support tenants in these buildings so that they can becomestrong and viable affordable housing cooperatives. We believe that our suggestions will aid these efforts.
As always, we look forward to working closely with HPD in the future to discuss any need for amendments to the rules. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to testify today.
Submitted by:
Magda I. Rosa Rios,
Supervising Attorney
The Legal Aid Society
Harlem Community Law Office
230 East 106th Street
New York, New York 10029
TEL: (212) 426-3083
FAX: (212) 876-5365