City Won’t Kill TIL
By Glenn Thrush

The city's housing department is standing by its embattled tenant ownership program, despite a withering audit from the city comptroller's office. Last month, comptroller Alan Hevesi's audit of the Tenant Interim Lease program-a 20-year-old initiative that allows low- income tenants to buy city-owned buildings and convert them to co-ops-cited poor maintenance in TIL co-ops, the failure of some tenants to pay rent, and tax arrears amassed by buildings.

TIL supporters and tenants fear that the audit might be used as an excuse to cut the Department of Housing Preservation and Development program. But city officials say that won't happen. TIL, said a high-ranking Giuliani administration source, "is considered essential by this administration." In testimony, HPD deputy commissioner John Warren defended his agency's record, charging that Hevesi's investigators inspected TIL buildings that had been renovated before the city adequately funded its repair program. Still, he admitted that his department had no formal procedure to assess the quality of TIL renovations or the fate of buildings once they turned co-op.

Reprinted with permission from City Limits Weekly.