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STUYVESANT
TOWN-PETER COOPER VILLAGE
TENANTS ASSOCIATION |
Alvin
Doyle, President Susan Steinberg, Vice President Message Center 1-866-290-9036 |
Frequently Asked Questions About Met's
Sale
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On July 18th, Metropolitan Life announced that it was putting Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village on the block and has hired a broker to consummate the sale. As might be expected, the Tenants Association has received many questions about the future. In order to protect the interests of this community, it may make sense for tenants to explore teaming up with an outside investor or investors in order to purchase the property themselves.
City Council Member Dan Garodnick, who grew up in this community and currently lives in Peter Cooper Village, has written to the Chairman of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company alerting him to the fact that tenants are looking into the possibility of assembling an investor group for the purchase of the Property
These are the questions residents are asking us most frequently:
Additionally, we have prepared a Fact Sheet that puts MetLife's plans to sell Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in context. It, too, is designed to help you understand what a sale might mean to our community.
It depends on who buys the property. For example, one buyer or group of buyers might decide to maintain the property as rentals and enjoy the increasing financial benefit as properties become deregulated through vacancy and luxury decontrol. Another buyer might decide to convert the property to cooperatives and give tenants a choice of either buying their apartments at market value or continuing as renters. Yet another buyer might decide to add new buildings and units to the property in order to maximize profit.
If we tenants were able to coordinate a purchase of the property, we would seek to do so in a way that maximized options for tenants and preserved the stability of this community.
The Association wants to ensure that the rights of all tenants are fully protected in the event that MetLife goes forward with a sale. That means making certain that this remains a community accessible to middle-class New Yorkers -- the group for whose benefit the communities were built. We believe that our interests will best be served if tenants themselves take action to use their significant combined leverage to shape the future of the property. This might mean a tenant-sponsored plan that seeks to protect both rent-stabilized and market rate tenants.
Yes. A purchaser who is motivated exclusively by profit might make decisions that community residents would find objectionable. This might include removing playgrounds, building additional stories on top of buildings, or knocking down buildings altogether in order to construct larger towers.
Because of these risks, it is important for tenants to join forces to protect our interests. With MetLife moving aggressively to find a buyer, we need to ensure that we are part of this process. A purchase coordinated by residents would seek to protect the rights of all existing tenants to stay in their homes without obstacle, protect the current configuration of the property, and give tenants the maximum opportunities for choice.
MetLife is a corporation that has a responsibility to its shareholders to sell the property at a competitive price -- if they decide to sell. However, the City of New York gave MetLife a great deal of flexibility in building Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in order to protect middle-class tenants in the City. It is our firm hope that by organizing ourselves, we will make clear to both the City and MetLife that they should continue to have that same commitment today.
View the Fact Sheet to understand what a sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village might mean to our community.
Join the debate visit our forums.