Tracey Towers tenants urged City Council members Wednesday to strengthen oversight of Mitchell-Lama housing after their Bronx development was hit with a proposed 30.58% rent increase that residents say follows years of deteriorating conditions and deferred maintenance.
The testimony came during a City Council oversight hearing examining the affordability of the Mitchell-Lama program and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s role in monitoring the financial health of the city’s affordable co-ops, as many struggle with mounting operating costs and aging infrastructure.
A proposal from HPD and managing agent RY Management would raise rents at Tracey Towers by 30.58% over four years. HPD officials said the increase is driven by rising operating costs and the development falling three years behind on its mortgage payments.
The agency routinely reviews the financial condition of Mitchell-Lama developments under its purview and the management companies that operate them.
Adam Phillips, First Deputy Commissioner at HPD said that the agency is required by state law to approve rents and maintenance fees set by the management company, sometimes making up for many years at once.
A March audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that deteriorating conditions and insufficient oversight of the city’s Mitchell-Lama developments could snowball into “unpredictable and unaffordable rents,” warning that unresolved financial and maintenance problems threaten the long-term affordability of the program.
Jean Hill, president of the Tracey Towers Tenant Association, estimated that roughly 60% of residents do not qualify for those programs, leaving many with living on fixed incomes, few options to offset the proposed increase.
“But yet you keep coming back to the tenants asking for all of this money, and we’re not getting service for the money,” Hill said.
“Nobody’s going to increase their salary because Tracey Towers wants more money.”
Council Member Eric Dinowitz, who represents Tracey Towers tenants in his district, said his office has seen an uptick in tenants seeking assistance applying for SCRIE. He said his bill, Local Law 44, which would require the city to send pre-filled SCRIE and DRIE applications to eligible residents, could help more tenants receive relief from future rent increases.
“Structurally, we need to fix what’s broken at Tracey, and what we looked at today, among other things, was the oversight tools that HPD has and uses,” Dinowitz told the Bronx Times.
“They don’t seem to be utilizing all the tools of oversight. They just did $40 million in capital work 10 years ago, and the elevators, the roof, all the things they worked on are breaking.”
Dinowitz added that broader reforms, including opening the approval process for management companies and negotiating lower insurance rates for Mitchell-Lama developments, could help reduce operating costs.
Built in 1972 and designed by architect Paul Rudolph, Tracey Towers consists of 871 apartments across two Brutalist towers that were originally planned as luxury housing before entering the city’s Mitchell-Lama program, which provides affordable housing for middle-income New Yorkers.
The proposed increase came just weeks before the Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze rents for the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, fulfilling a key campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Mitchell-Lama developments operate under a different regulatory structure than rent-stabilized housing, with rent increases based on a building’s financial needs rather than annual recommendations from the Rent Guidelines Board.
Several Tracey Towers residents attended Wednesday’s hearing wearing shirts reading, “Zohran Mamdani raised my rent!”—a play on the Democratic Socialists of America’s “Eric Adams raised my rent” shirts, which criticized rent increases under the previous mayor’s administration—to protest the proposed increase.
Reach Marina Samuel at msamuel@schnepsmedia.com. For more coverage, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!
