Trump Village Tenants Re-Energized
by Deborah Schutt

Since reinvigorating its tenants association with Met Council’s help earlier this year, the residents of Brooklyn’s Trump Village are getting more involved with the tenant movement, as well as fighting against enormous major-capital-improvement increases.

Trump Village, which is owned by Fred Trump (Donald’s father), is located at the western edge of the Brighton Beach section, near Coney Island. It is a large complex of seven buildings built in the 1960s. Five of the buildings are Mitchell-Lama co-ops, and the other two were Mitchell-Lama rentals before being converted to rent- stabilized status in 1992. Mitchell-Lama buildings were built to provide affordable housing for middle-income New Yorkers.

According to Sylvia Fields, president of the tenants association, the problems with the MCI increases started when the buildings converted to rent-stabilized status. Since then, the owners have put in new roofs, windows, boilers, pointing and waterproofing, and applied to the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal for MCI increases, which would add 1/84th of the cost of the work to tenants’ monthly rent forever. The DHCR recently approved an $8.31 per room MCI for the windows, and tenants were just notified of a possible $15.28 per room increase for pointing and waterproofing. More MCIs are anticipated, and tenants say their biggest problem is whether they are going to be able to afford to stay in their homes because of the ever-increasing rents.

At a general meeting on March 26, attended by approximately 75 tenants and longtime Met Council volunteer Joe Weiss, many expressed concerns about the unfairness of the MCIs laws. Tenants did not understand why they had to continue to pay for improvements forever, and why these increases were added into the base rent.

Many of the tenants also plan to testify at the upcoming Rent Guidelines Board hearings.