Rent Misdirection
To the Editor:
After reading about the Harmon family’s “plight” regarding rent-regulated tenants (“Landlord Supreme Power on Rent,” Dec. 15) and Harmon’s legal efforts to challenge rent regulations, I feel that I have to respond.
I am the president of the block association where the Harmons reside and know them as I knew Harmon’s parents when they lived here decades ago.
Harmon and his brother inherited the building in question.
Increased property taxes, water taxes, city agencies’ frivolous code enforcement, increased fuel costs and additional operating costs are the reason so many small mom and pop owners continue to sell to developers.
On our landmark block alone, we have had over seven of 40 brownstones converted by developers in the last nine years, which resulted in the loss of over 80 residents on our block.
The fact that operating costs have increased exponentially in recent years should really be the focus. Three rent-regulated tenants are not the primary cause of Harmon’s business crisis.
Incidentally, the millionaire families now residing in the converted brownstone contribute nothing to our block or our association; so much for community improvement through social assimilation.
If tenant-caused hardship was indeed the cause of Mr. Harmon’s legal drive, he could easily sell the building and rid himself of the burden called rent regulation. Properties like Harmon’s fetch handsome prices on our block.
I think that the issue here is a disdain for people who are misportrayed as self-serving parasites when, truth be told, they are hard-working individuals who are residing in Harmon’s walk-up building because it’s the only place they can afford to live. They were the pioneers of our community long before there was a demand to live here.
Two of the three rent-regulated tenants in question are over 62 years of age. Anyone who knowingly attempts to profit from creating a financial or emotional burden on a senior citizen is in a category unto him or herself.
Harmon would be doing himself, and others, much good by lobbying and focusing his legal prowess on changing the laws in our city to allow for senior residency tax credits and rent regulation tax benefits for small property owners.
Those seem like noble efforts worthy of legal judicial consideration that could effect positive change. In the long run, such efforts would be the most equitable for all parties involved.
Joseph Bolanos
President, Landmark 76
West 76th Street Park Block Association
Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.
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To the Editor:
79th Street and York Avenue is a very busy, hazardous four-way intersection. It’s confusing in that the signals don’t correspond in the traditional pattern that all pedestrians recognize and expect. Instead, when the traffic signal is red on the north side of York to stop southbound traffic, at the same time the signal is green on the south side of the avenue, allowing northbound traffic to continuing driving! Confusing and irrational? You bet! Pedestrians start crossing only to become startled by whizzing cars, trucks and buses coming at them from the opposite side. Fragile and disabled seniors afraid to cross here must walk one block farther for normal, safer crossing. Complaints to the DOT have resulted in signage warnings of little help to the vision impaired that are no substitute for safer signal lights.
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To the Editor:
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To the Editor:
I have been practicing law in New York for eight years (“Big Bucks in Auto Fraud,” July 14) and have represented more than 1,000 injured people during that time. I have never encountered a case involving a staged accident or insurance fraud. I asked several well-respected attorneys who have practiced law for many years, and none have personally come across an incident involving a staged accident or insurance fraud.
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I am a history teacher at the Beacon School and I will be teaching a New York City history class to seniors this fall on the history of the West 60s and San Juan Hill. I am particularly interested in having my students interview people who lived in the neighborhood before Robert Moses’ “urban renewal” and the construction of Lincoln Center and the Fordham campus, or people who spent a lot of time in the neighborhood as students at Haaren HS, Power Memorial or the parish school at St. Paul the Apostle. The neighborhood has filled and emptied several times over the past century as African Americans, Irish Americans, Caribbean immigrants, Puerto Rican migrants and others have come (and gone), and there are a lot of questions that my students and I have about what the neighborhood was like and how it has changed.
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To the Editor:
Andrew Cuomo just got here (“The Son Also Rises,” June 30), and you want to send him off on the campaign trail before he has completed even half of his first term as governor? Yes, as you say, he’s a political star on a meteoric rise, but in Albany, not necessarily Sacramento and everywhere in between those two capitols.
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To the Editor:
The State Legislature accomplished a lot this year, but one important reform was conspicuously left out—passage of the legislation know as the “Fraud Tax Bill” that would crack down on crisis-level auto insurance fraud in New York State.
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To the Editor:
Last year, Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Act, which included important protections for Main Street businesses from debit card swipe fees that have gotten out of control. Almost immediately, credit card companies began pushing Congress to weaken the amendment, and last week the Senate voted on an amendment proposed by Senator Tester (D-MT) to delay this critical reform.
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