Protestors got it wrong

Last week a group of tenants from the New Settlement Apartments’ organizing arm, Community Action for Safe Apartments, arrived unannounced at my office to distort my record on rent regulation and the 421-a program (“Protesters target Klein,” June 4). They failed to research my current positions, my stellar voting record on tenants’ rights and their own buildings’ history.

I support the continuation and strengthening of rent regulations in New York City.

While up in Albany, I continue to hold discussions with my colleagues in the Senate and the Assembly on overhauling vacancy decontrol, so that apartments do not fall off the rolls, and limiting the MCI (major capital improvement) costs passed onto tenants in New York City.

I have also sought to strike the right balance on affordable housing incentives such as 421-a: we need to ensure that the program is more efficient and that we get the maximum number of affordable housing units in return for the taxpayer’s investment. At the same time, it is important that the program actually spur affordable housing construction. 

Sadly, these nuances are lost on the protesters, wearing orange shirts emblazoned with “CASA: A Project of the New Settlement Apartments,” who call for the end of these housing incentive programs despite the fact that projects built by their organization, under the Settlement Fund, Inc. umbrella, have been receiving 421-a and J-51 benefits.

One of their developments, Two Bridges, a Manhattan property overlooking the Williamsburg Bridge integrating “formerly homeless and working families of low- to moderate-income,” received $1.5 million in 421-a benefits since 1998.

In the Bronx, the city granted a “J-51” benefit to the New Settlement Apartments on Townsend Avenue, a tax break for the rehabilitation of multi-family housing.