Letters

Ravitz Defends Backing Pataki

I was somewhat surprised but even more disappointed by a letter published in the March issue from William Mayer, a constituent of mine, who questioned my commitment to tenants’ rights.

I was surprised by Mr. Mayer’s comments considering my long, vocal, and unwavering support for tenants and tenants’ rights. During my eight years in office, I have worked with numerous tenant organizations and helped countless individuals with specific landlord problems. During the horrendous rent fight of 1997, my office fielded several thousand calls and letters, Mr. Mayer’s included, and every person, whether pro-regulations or not, received the courtesy of a response. If a tenant had taken the time to read that response, he or she would have realized that I supported renewing the laws as they were. I opposed vacancy decontrol or the lowering of luxury-decontrol income levels, and fought hard for stiffer penalties against landlord harassment.

What disappointed me the most about Mr. Mayer’s letter was his partisan attacks. Yes, I am a supporter of Governor Pataki. But when it comes to certain housing issues, we have disagreed and I have said so publicly. In order to preserve quality, affordable housing, it will take a determined coalition of tenants, Democrats, and Republicans. Exclusion can only weaken our chance of success in preserving what affordable housing remains. I am sure Mr. Mayer does not want that.

Assemblymember John Ravitz
East Side, Manhattan

Name Pier for Vicki O’Mara

This letter regards the proposal to name the 69th Street Pier in Bay Ridge after former President Ronald Reagan.

With all due respect, Bay Ridge should honor its own. If a name is to be given to the 69th Street Pier, let us consider the late Victoria O’Mara.

She was an activist, a lifelong resident of 69th Street, and raised two children there.

In establishing the Bay Ridge branch of Met Council, she founded the powerful housing movement that met at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church. This organization helped Bay Ridge tenants (especially seniors) get landlords to repair violations in their buildings and provide basic services such as heat and hot water. She helped tenants recoup thousands of dollars in overcharges. She helped tenants in Housing Court, stopping many illegal evictions. Most notable among many cases was that of Elsie Daudelin, an 84-year-old war widow living on 68th Street. A tree now grows near that building in memory of Elsie and that victory.

Victoria went on to become a member of Met Council’s Board of Directors and the housing advocate for the Bay Ridge Center for Older Adults, where she continued to champion the rights of senior citizens in rental housing. As a tenant in a small multiple dwelling, she was sensitive to the problems small homeowners faced, and directed her advocacy work to the tenants in large complexes, such as Flagg Court-and to the problems that arose from absentee landlords trying to make a quick buck on the backs of Bay Ridge residents.

The breezes from the 69th Street Pier would blow much sweeter if it was named in memory of Victoria O’Mara.

Maria Casasnovas
Dorothy Walsh
Joe Weiss
Brooklyn

The End of Rent Controls?

There is an easy solution to the possible “sunset” of rent regulations, as described so forcefully in Mr. Collins’ article (Tenant/Inquilino, Mar. ’98), and all candidates for local and statewide offices should be asked to endorse it: Remove from the vacancy survey all apartments that have been removed from rent regulations, specifically those whose rents exceed $2,000 per month.

When rent controls were first established, all apartments were controlled, and the “emergency” was defined as ending when a 5 percent vacancy rate occurred in these controlled apartments. There were no uncontrolled, “market-rate” apartments, unlike today. (Concentrations of ownership and artificial limits on supply mean there is no real “market” in rental housing in New York; “market-rate” apartments are priced far beyond the reach of average New Yorkers.) The point of the law was to preserve affordable housing, give New Yorkers security in their homes, and prevent forced overcrowding and exploitation of housing scarcity by landlords.

In many neighborhoods, landlords are charging rents far beyond the means of local residents. They are able to get these high rents only by allowing families to double and triple up, in violation of a number of city building, zoning, health and safety codes. The city should begin recovering the proceeds of the illegal actions from these landlords, just as it does from drug lords. And, the numbers of vacancies found in the “vacancy survey” should be reduced by the numbers of overcrowded apartments, since the families in those apartments should have legal places of their own and are part of the housing crisis we are in.

Of course, the simplest solution would be to eliminate the survey entirely and make the rent laws permanent.

Thomas Vitullo-Martin
Manhattan

Mr. Vitullo-Martin is a leader of the Belnord tenants association on the Upper West Side.