Our History

Stuyvesant Town is named after Peter Stuyvesant, the last Director-General of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, whose farm occupied the site in the 17th century. Peter Cooper Village is named after the 19th-century industrialist, inventor, and philanthropist Peter Cooper, who founded Cooper Union. ST-PCV was originally planned as a postwar housing development during the early 1940s in anticipation of the returning World War II veterans. The complex was developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Construction of ST-PCV took place 1945–1947. On the first day of its initial offering, the property received 7,000 applications; it would collect 100,000 applications by the time of first occupancy. The complex's first tenants, two World War II veterans and their families, moved into the first completed building on August 1, 1947. 

  • The Tenants Association was founded in the fall of 1971 as the Stuyvesant Town Tenants Association.

  • The forming of the Association was prompted when Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller pushed a package of bills through the New York State Legislature, commonly referred to as “Vacancy Decontrol." The legislation enacted full vacancy decontrol for all rent-controlled and rent-stabilized housing in the state, effective June 30, 1971.

  • Working with others in the city and around the state, we were able to show the full importance that rent control imparts on the social fabric, vitality, and dynamism of New York City and the state. We were successful, and vacancy decontrol was repealed in 1974 when the state legislature and Governor Malcolm Wilson enacted the Emergency Tenants Protection Act. 

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In 1974, a contract between MetLife and the city expired after 25 years. The agreement kept rents in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village lower than they otherwise would have been through MetLife’s tax abatement and limited profits. A 10-year extension on the tax abatement and rent stabilization of the complexes, however, limited the immediate threat of rising rents. 

  • In 1993 the Tenants Association's name was officially changed to the Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association. 

In October 2006, MetLife sold Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town to Tishman Speyer. The new ownership implemented major capital projects on the property. Tishman Speyer relinquished control of the property in 2010 to CWCapital, a debt servicer. 

  • In 2012, the STPCV TA helped get tenants $68.7 million in refunds from overcharged rent dating back to 2003.
  • In 2014, the ST-PCV TA reached a deal with the property manager to give residents in 15 of the 21 buildings in Peter Cooper Village and two in Stuyvesant Town that were the most affected by Superstorm Sandy a onetime reduction of 15 percent from the July 2013 rent bill. 

As of October 2015, the property was sold to Blackstone Group LP and Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real-estate arm of pension fund giant Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec for about $5.3 billion. 

  • In November 2015, the STPCV TA worked with Blackstone to preserve 5,000 units in our community as affordable housing for middle-class people as well as to keep an affordable supermarket in Stuyvesant Town. 
  • Today, we are the largest tenants association in the world. We are a 100% volunteer-run organization, with a dedicated Board of Directors, a statewide footprint, and we take pride in being considered, as the New York Times wrote, the strongest and best organized tenants association in New York City.