Council Member Epstein on proactive rent increase recommendations
Epstein asks why HPD waits for Mitchell-Lamas to request increases rather than proactively recommending small annual increases. Phillips says HPD does make recommendations but co-op boards often resist. Epstein urges HPD to collaborate with council members to encourage boards.
Councilman Rupstein?
Yeah, I want to just go back to what you said earlier about waiting to hear from Mitchell Lamas who haven't done an increase in 20 or 30 years.
I'm wondering why wait instead of just...
Reach out to them every year saying, hey, you know, we advise you to do at least a 2% increase, so ways you can do it over time, instead of having to see, like, Councilmember Dinowitz saw, you know, a 30% or 50% increase.
I have a Michelama that had a 10%, 15%, 20% increase year after year after year, and that it's impossible for the residents to manage.
Why not take an affirmative position to try to get them to apply for those increases and make a constant, like, a 2% every year?
So we do make recommendations, right, to folks.
Once we get the financials and we do a review, we make a recommendation about whether or not they should increase their rents or maintenance fees.
As somebody who worked with HDFC co-ops for nearly eight years, it is sometimes very hard to get a co-op board to raise their own maintenance fees to cover expenses and...
Cover capital needs.
Yeah.