Rent hikes will destroy community
To the editor,
Raising rents by thousands of dollars a year (some increases were as high as 35 percent) is beyond cruel. Hundreds of tenants will be unable to pay and unable to stay. Where’s our mayor?
This kind of price gouging is what happened in New York City in the early 70s. In one fell swoop, CW has turned the clock back to a dark era, when tenants faced greedy landlords and a housing crisis so bad, it ended only with the passage of the NYS Emergency Tenant Protection Act in 1974. Where’s our mayor?
CW Capital is destroying a community that has stood as an icon of middle class stability since its inception in 1947. Hundreds of tenants will be scrambling this summer to find suitable housing in a city with a very low vacancy rate, dislocating their children from their schools and friends. Where’s our mayor?
This heartless act on the part of CW is without precedence – but that is a distinction no company with any sense of decency would wish. Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village is a community, not a commodity. Its residents deserve to be treated with respect, not as garbage to be thrown out.
Is there a mayor out there? Where was he when our other elected representatives stood with us? Is he only the mayor of developers and the one percent, not everyday citizens? The silence is deafening.
Susan Steinberg, ST
The author is the chair of the ST-PCV Tenants Association.