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How Has Stuyvesant Town Affected Harlem Apartment Buildings?
January 21, 2010 by Neil · Leave a Comment
A group of tenants at Lenox Terrace, an apartment complex in Harlem, filed a lawsuit against the apartment complex’s ownership, a partnership lead by the Olnick Organization. The tenants claim that the owner illegally raised rents at the six-building Harlem complex, which houses, among others, Gov. David Paterson and Congressman Charlie Rangel.
Since Rangel’s apartments are all rent regulated, they would not impact, or be impacted by, the lawsuit.
According to lawyers for the tenants, between 200 and 300 units of the 1,700 apartments in at Lenox Terrace complex have been illegally deregulated. By this logic, individual tenants would be entitled to anywhere from $2,000 to $30,000. Attorneys for the plaintiffs maintain that two of the buildings still receive J-51 tax breaks, but the benefit expired in the other four in 2008.
New York’s Court of Appeals recently held in the Stuyvesant Town case that owners whose buildings received the benefit from the J-51 program are prohibited from removing those units from rent regulation.
