Council Member Farías on 50% increases and lack of transition time for families

But I don't think this is only about those cases that you mentioned.

There's what we're seeing happen across the board, and I know you folks are familiar with this, a 50% increase

in one fiscal year or really overnight for people, the same as what I'm seeing on my side of town with the financial, the lending capacity being extremely limited because of 20

or 25 years of a management company that is supposed to have the oversight of city agencies that are supposed to catch early on that boards are not approving a 2%

increase into coffers to ensure that in 10 years or 15 years when we need elevator replacement, roof replacement, modernization,

local laws that come into play that have to be implemented by the boards and by the Mitchell-Lama campuses themselves, there's money there to do that.

We're now doing increases where we're asking people overnight to catch up on 20 years of poor management from the city and the state, and also

no increases that they have enough coffers or have enough lending capacity to make the repairs or to implement the local laws that we're putting into play.

What are you folks doing to look at how do we not do a 50% increase overnight and provide some stability or some flexibility to allow a long run of transition to get them to a place where they financially have capacity to stay in?

their homes and also make the repairs that are necessary.

Yeah, so typically when we do increases with the city-supervised Mitchell-Lamas, and I think the Mitchell-Lama you might be referring to is a state-supervised.

I have both city and state.

But, you know, similar conditions across both, right?

Different oversight, different authorities.

We try to stagger the increases as best we can, right?

We take a look at the operating expenses.

We take a look at the new debt that is taking care of the capital improvements.

We try to stagger the increases as best we can so it's a bit more manageable for households over a longer term, and so it's not just overnight.

Okay, so what happens in the case of Councilmember Eric-Dinowitz's district where there's a 50% increase at Tracy?

That's not overnight.

How many meetings did you folks have to have that increased role into play?

Like, when did they find out and how much did they know ahead of time that they were getting a 50% increase?

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

The increase isn't in place yet.

I heard that earlier.

I'm asking leading up to it.

How much time was given to the families in Tracy Towers that they were going to get?

I mean, at a minimum, we had...

As obviously, like, I'm being a bit facetious with overnight, right?

But, like, what's the time frame?

Right.

So there was the 30-day notice, which we're required to do.

Got it.

So not overnight, but just in one month.

Okay.

The increase hasn't gone into effect yet.

I understand that.

But still, right, when we have inflation, when we have an affordability crisis, even 30 days or three months is not going to be sufficient amount of time for families.

You're asking people to find completely different careers or get promotions in a short amount of time.

And if they're retired or on a fixed income, I'm preaching to the choir on this dais, and I'm sure it's the crowd, but it's still not a manageable amount of time for such an increase.

And I think we all can agree on that.