tick Tick Tick TICK TICK

There is danger in a ticking clock.

For both Island House and Westview, that clock ticks louder by the day. Repeatedly extended deadlines have been missed in the tenant groups’ drive toward resident ownership.

Under the rules of the game called Mitchell-Lama, the owners have the right to leave the program. Once out, they slip away from the control of the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR). But without an extended ground lease, leaving would be suicidally unprofitable unless rents were raised substantially – perhaps doubled – something tenants feared that Christopher Daly’s Sheldrake Organization was likely to do, at least until Daly got discouraged and/or pinched financially and went away.

But the option remains for the current owner – or their corporation in other hands.

If that happens – if the owners grow weary of delay, and muscle their way out of Mitchell-Lama and raise rents (a distinct possibility despite an official presumption that they cannot) – almost every tenant in Westview and Island House will be forced out.

Resident groups in both buildings have devised plans that will avoid the legal wrangling that would follow a Mitchell-Lama departure accompanied by big rent hikes – and they’ve been working their way past all the ambiguities and lack of full and willing help from the State agencies involved, coaxing them along. Those include both RIOC and DHCR under George Pataki.

Now, there are new players at both those agencies, and a danger that plans carefully made under Pataki will not fit the new set of rules.

Each plan – as well as the plan to privatize Rivercross – may need minor tweaking. But it is time for officialdom to stop dragging reluctant feet. It’s been ten years, more or less! It is time for bold moves that will ensure affordability for today’s residents, and ensure availability of the funds needed for repair and rehabilitation of the buildings.

What will we have in 20 years? "Affordable" housing so run-down that razing is a better choice than repair? Or buildings owned by their residents, carefully brought back to even greater livability than at any time in their history?

There’s only one good answer, and it’s time – right now, before summer relaxation sets in – to resolve all this, implement the resident plans, and secure the future.

RIOC has changed the Red Bus routing again – this time a more thoughtful change than anything tried before – and, we might hope, one made with a plan to measure the results to make sure the new plan is the best possible with the available resources. (A WIRE e-mail bulletin announced this earlier in the week; for bulletins, send an AddMe e-mail to editor@MainStreetWIRE.com.)

The WIRE will measure, as will every resident who uses the rush-hour service. If RIOC measures, too, to test its revision rather than assuming it will work – and there’s every reason to believe this administration will – we’ll be on the right track.

DL