Two members of a coalition of tenants’-rights groups appear to be backing out of a lawsuit they had filed against Hoboken’s largest real estate developer, according to a letter from one of the groups.
The suit has been brought by a handful of outside tenants’ organizations and Helen Hirsch, a Hoboken resident and taxpayer. It seeks to overturn an agreement inked two years ago between Applied Housing, a Hoboken-based developer of market-rate and subsidized housing, and the state’s Department of Community Affairs (DCA). The groups charge that the agreement sidesteps long term commitments Applied has made to provide affordable housing in the city.
Officials with Applied, which manages approximately 1,000 units in town that have been set aside for low- and moderate-income families, and the DCA have taken an aggressive approach to countering the suit. They argue that the tenant advocates are confused and that their actions could undermine their agreement, which protects current residents from large rent increases.
The agreement was made because Applied had paid off a 30-year mortgage that the government had given the company in exchange for building and maintaining low-income housing. Once the government was no longer involved, it was unclear whether there would be any regulation on the units. Applied has said that they needed to create an agreement to protect current tenants. The agreement also allows the company to eventually bring some of the units up to market rate when current tenants leave, if no new low-income tenants with government housing vouchers can be found. This is what the tenants’-rights groups are protesting.
Claims there were threats
While the withdrawal of two of the groups might suggest some hesitancy about the groups’ commitment to the case, a letter sent to Applied’s tenants organization, dated Dec. 8, 2000, suggests another motive.
“This decision has been due to pressure and threats of non-support placed upon us and other plaintiffs by the Department of Community Affairs,” a two-paragraph letter from the YWCA of Hudson County to the tenants’ organization of Applied Housing states. The letter was co-signed by Martha Lewin and Jeannette D’Italia, the YWCA’s co-executive directors.
Lewin said this week that her organization had not been contacted by the DCA, but that the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, the other organization reportedly pulling out of the suit, had been instructed to withdraw by DCA representatives.
Representatives from the Network did not return phone calls by press time. A DCA spokesman denied there were any threats.
The Housing and Community Development Network receives approximately $100,000 in funding from the DCA a year, officials with the DCA said last week. The YWCA receives almost no grant funding from the DCA.
“We don’t get a ton of support from the DCA,” said Lewin. “But that’s not the point. The point is we are a very active member of the Housing and Community Development Network, and when they decided to withdraw, we decided to withdraw.”
E.J. Miranda, a spokesman for the DCA, denied that any pressure had been placed on the group.
“We have not threatened anyone,” said Miranda from his office in Trenton Wednesday. “I know that there has been no specific communication about this case between those groups and us. We have supported the affordable housing network and we will continue to support them.”
The DCA has, however, made it clear that they would like to see the suit withdrawn. A DCA official who has dealt with Applied President Joe Barry for decades appeared at a rally with Barry several months ago in which they explained the nature of the suit to Applied tenants.
What impact the withdrawal of the two organizations could have on the case is unclear.
Renee Steinhagen, the principal attorney representing the plaintiffs, said last week that she planned on adding a pair of new clients to the plaintiff list next week. When asked what organizations she was adding to her team, the veteran public interest lawyer said that she did not want to say before they had their names officially affixed to the plaintiff list. “I don’t want Applied to knock them off before they even sign up,” she explained.
Steinhagen likened the situation with the DCA and the Community Development Network to the threats of non-support Mayor Giuliani’s directed towards the Brooklyn Museum of Art when it showed an exhibition of Damien Hurst’s work that the mayor found offensive.
“I think there is a First Amendment issue here, if someone takes a stance and then someone else retaliates as a result of that stance,” she said.
‘Obvious ploy’
While the plaintiffs are complaining of being bullied, the defendants seem to have no doubt that the organizations are dropping out for the right reasons and that all the rest of it has simply been manufactured to try and generate publicity.
“Bringing in the new plaintiffs is an obvious engineered ploy by these people,” said Joe Barry, the president of Applied Housing. “All they do is call someone else in their little network of 20 people and they manufacture a new plaintiff. This just shows how phony and weak they are. They are trading plaintiffs in and out in an effort to save face, because that is what they really care about, not the 1,000 real live tenants whose lives they may be effecting.”
“This is almost like barratry,” added Barry, “where you have a case but you have no client. Its like she is out there trying to dig plaintiffs up.”
The Applied president said that he thought as a matter of law, the tenants in his buildings may have legal standing to countersue Steinhagen and the groups she represents.
“As a matter of law it sounds to me like they are verging on tortuous interference,” he said. “They certainly are divorced from any reality here. I don’t know how you can bring an action for an abstract principel when real rights and duties have been affected. Where do they get the right to do that?”