Announcing Results of Our Management Survey

This summer, the Tenants Association sponsored a survey to residents to provide an independent assessment of the performance of Blackstone’s new management and to find critical areas where we can work to improve quality of life in the community.

View Survey Summary

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View Individual Comments

We would like to thank the hundreds of Tenants who participated. Your feedback was critical in understanding the diversity and depth of opinion throughout the community and helped us determine where and how we can have the greatest impact serving you.

Complete survey results have been posted on our web site. Seventy-nine percent of respondents rated Blackstone’s overall performance from January through June as “Excellent” or “Good.” Fewer than 3% of respondents rated management’s overall performance as “Poor.” While we are encouraged by the general sentiment that relations between management and tenants have improved in 2016, there were still several issues that ranked high among tenants’ concerns. These are, by number of responses:

“Community” actually breaks down into many subjective areas and is not really quantifiable. Be that as it may, you may see the breakdown for yourself on the actual survey.

After receiving your feedback and reaching these determinations, the TA shared your anonymous survey responses with management for their feedback and comment. It is as follows:

“Despite the positive results regarding the management scorecard (we’re grateful for the recognition), the survey highlighted some areas that residents still feel need attention.  As such, some require continued effort:

• Dogs.  Since the new registration process began in the late winter, public safety has made over 3,000 documented stops to owners without the lanyard.  The amount of non-ST/PCV dogs on the property has dramatically decreased evidenced by the decrease in stops.  There are some dogs that violate the House Rules (breed/size) but they are either service dogs or completed the 90-day legal period of being “open and nefarious” under prior ownership and cannot be asked to leave.  Public Safety continues to issue Notices of Lease Violation to owners who do not clean up after their dogs.  Green areas have been increased to encourage dogs to defecate/urinate on the grass instead of the walkways in “Pet Friendly” designated areas.  These areas are rotated so no one building bears the continuous dog traffic.  The Dog Days events have been extremely successful giving dog owners the opportunity to run their dogs off-leash and upon departure, the rotated playground is sanitized by the environmental services team leaving it cleaner than before the event.  Management will continue all of these policies to do its best to appease all residents, dog owners and non-dog owners alike.
• Students.  By not directly marketing to students as committed by Blackstone, SPS has had to find other ways to rent vacant apartments.  This decision has cost SPS hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing costs to find tenants to fill the void.  Despite the perception that every young person is a student, the demographic data shows this not to be correct.  Consistent with East Village demographics, ST/PCV is populated with young professionals in careers that mirror the job growth in Manhattan.  Medical, education, technology, media and internet are the careers listed on rent applications.  There are students living in ST/PCV and there will always be a population of students; but there is also a population of families, couples and seniors.  Diversity is what makes a community but it’s also the law; we will not discriminate against anyone who inquires about living in ST/PCV. 
• Noise.  The Good Neighbors campaign has had an impact on noise as evidenced by the reduction in noise complaints.  In addition, the increased carpet inspections (both after move-in and faster response to resident complaints) has yielded great results.  Providing new residents with slippers and felt pads for furniture at move-in has increased awareness of noise and we believe this too has contributed to the decrease in calls to Public Safety.  The team will remain disciplined and vigilant in providing all residents with reasonable peaceful coexistence in an urban, multi-family environment.
• Communication.  Inasmuch as this area scored well, we’ll continue to improve how we provide information to residents.  The weekly e-blasts, the new Alert Texting, use of social media and partnering with Town & Village has made this happen.  The new Construction schedule (noise chart, water outages, etc.) has also given residents more information on what’s taking place in their building.  We still see a void communicating with residents who don’t have computers or mobile phones thus we’re working on centralizing a lobby location to post notices; more to come this winter on this.
• Security.  Statistically (crime related incidents), ST/PCV is one of the safest areas in the five boroughs.  That said, today’s law enforcement is a combination of technology, investigative work and presence of officers.  In the past few years, ST/PCV has invested over $13M in cameras, campus security stations and other technologies to keep residents safe.  The Good Neighbors campaign has also focused on raising awareness of resident controlled safety measures such as not allowing an unknown person to “piggy back” when entering a building.  But it is further recognized that along with life safety is quality of life enforcement.  A study is under way to review the allocation of public safety resources.  There are times of the day, days of the week we could be under resourced and conversely, times when we are over resourced based on activity and historical incidents.  For example, I suspect we will add resources on Saturday nights when the calls for noise related incidents spike.  Lastly, I believe it is understood that the public safety team will never see every infraction.  This will not be due to a lack of effort and the team will continue to focus on reducing noise, catching dog owners who do not curb their dogs and keeping smokers away from buildings to highlight the list of quality of life issues faced every day. 
• Rent.  As most everyone knows, the Rent Guideline Board controls increases to legal rent.  The past two years have been 0% on one year leases.  For residents at preferential rent (when rent is below the legal rent), a landlord can raise it only as high as the legal rent.  Promises cannot be made about future rent increases for those with preferential rent; but rest assured we would rather keep a resident than turn the apartment over and lease to a new resident.  Each renewal is treated individually and the desire is to retain residents. 

The TA thanks you for your support. We look forward to an active Fall season and more exciting improvements in our community.

We will continue to press for improvements to your quality of life, and we will continue to advocate in areas where there is not a meeting of the minds with management.

 Please contact the TA’s online message center if you have any questions.