Westview residents, still smarting over a ten percent increase in 1998, vowed to take a stronger stand in the current round of rent deliberations before the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

If that was the aim, Thursday's rent determination hearing can be counted as a success.  Laurence-Marie Lacoste-Brodsky, one of the organizers of the Westview Task Force, tallied nearly 30 Westview residents who made the trek to the DHCR office in Lower Manhattan.  Eleven of them, beginning with Opher Pail, the leader of the Westview Task Force, made statements to the panel of State housing officials and top executives of the partnership and management company that own and operate the 361-unit apartment complex.  Their comments were followed by applause.  City Council member Gifford Miller made an appearance at the hearing on behalf of the tenants, and representatives of the Island's legislators, Senator Olga Mendez and Assemblymember Pete Grannis, also addressed the panel.  The hearing was chaired by Elliot Ashrey, Assistant Director of DHCR's management bureau, who indicated that a decision on Westview's rent would be forthcoming in about two weeks, after internal agency discussions involving the agency's commissioner, Joseph B. Lynch.  Under the State's Mitchell-Lama middle-income housing program, the agency serves as an advocate for the tenants.

Another hearing, involving Island House, which has 400 apartments, was scheduled for later in the day, after WIRE deadlines.

At this point, the three sides in the Westview rent equation - it is not, as the owner pointed out, an adversarial proceeding - are poles apart.

Charles A. Lucido, President of Westview Houses Inc., and Managing General Partner of North Town Phase III Associates, signed an application on Aug. 31 for a 31% rent increase for Westview.  After examining the proposed budget, DHCR countered with a proposal for an increase of about 6.9%.  And at the hearing Thursday, Jeffrey Resnick, an accountant who has had great success in beating down previous rent-increase proposals for Island House and Eastwood, presented a case for an actual rent decrease, asserting that Westview could generate a surplus over the next two years.

So what will it be: a rent increase of $93 a room, or $20, or nothing? Under the Mitchell-Lama system, rental income is supposed to be based on housing company expenses.  At no point during the proceedings Thursday, or in informal questioning afterward, did anyone acknowledge that the publicly-available figures have already been modified, either in negotiations or by the facts of a rapidly-changing energy market.

As Lucido noted, Westview's electricity costs have tripled from January 2000 to January 2001, and these costs are not reflected in DHCR's proposal of a $20.70 per-room rent increase.  Can the State order him, in effect, to lose money?

No, Lucido replied, the only alternative is to cut expenses.

In that respect, the owner and tenants are in agreement.

Resnick said efficiencies could start with Westview's pool.  He said the tenants felt that it was unfair that they had to subsidize community use of Westview's pool and that either increased fees for the pool or shutting it down would produce a swing of about $200,000 over the budget period.  Five percent of the building's utility costs, he said in a report submitted to the DHCR, should be allocated to pool expense.

Another major expense cited by Resnick, Pail and other Westview spokespersons and their supporters was the cost of roofing, $700,000, which they characterized as a "front-loaded" charge in the budget that translates into a permanent rent increase, rather than an expense that ought to be spread out over the duration of the roof's lifetime, 20 years.

The session produced some disconnections.  Aaron Silberman of Jerome Belson & Associates, the parent of Roosevelt Island Housing Management Corporation, said that previous rent decisions had undercut the company's efforts to maintain the building, and thus a higher level of spending is needed now.  "Sooner or later it catches up," he said.  He noted that he had been "lucky" to negotiate cheaper prices for natural gas on contracts in the past, but that no such savings were available now.

One of the tenant speakers, on the other hand, Rebecca Ocampo, argued that "we still are owed a reduction on our 10 percent" because the company had failed to deliver capital improvements in line with the previous rent increase.

Pail and other tenant representatives asserted that the company had failed to perform an energy audit to reduce spending on electricity.  Silberman responded that the company had been working since last October with NYSERDA (the New York State Energy Resource Development Authority) to cut energy costs.

Lucido said, "When we did our budget two years ago, we did not anticipate our utilities going up to the extent they have gone up."  He brought up the problem of electricty being included in the rent and said, "It would be fairer to all of you to have separate meters."

He also asserted that the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, headquartered in Westview, was not paying its fair share of the building's expenses in commercial rent.  And he expressed gratitude to everyone who showed up and said he appreciated their comments.

Several tenants expressed the desire to hold down rents at all costs, given the economic pressure on residents who are living on fixed incomes.  Others, however, were more concerned with problems of maintenance, such as poor ventilation and heating, shoddy repairs and painting, water leakage, and lack of insulation.

The DHCR staff members, led by Ashrey, took down everyone's name and apartment number.

Alex Marshall, a 17-year resident, delivered what could be considered a coda to the proceedings, as an addendum to a complaint about his heating and air conditioning system.

"The Rivercross building, the co-op building, was also hit with the same sort of energy costs, but that building is properly maintained," Marshall said.  "But Westview has been run, all the years I've been there, on the cheap, and if you run the building on the cheap, then eventually the building is going to fall apart.  You're in business, Mr. Lucido, presumably you made an investment in order to get back somethig out of it, but surely, you can't manage this building, it seems, in a sensible way.  Perhaps the answer is to give it to us.  You can pay the underlying mortgage, but you know, the fact is, the Rivercross building was built with the same underlying standards and it's not falling apart, and ours is, because it hasn't been properly run over the years."