NY Times: They Helped New York Bounce Back. Now Their Rents Are Surging.
“As these businesses get drowned out by this tide of rising rent, culture disappears,” said Paula Segal, a lawyer with TakeRoot Justice, a nonprofit legal services group.
“As these businesses get drowned out by this tide of rising rent, culture disappears,” said Paula Segal, a lawyer with TakeRoot Justice, a nonprofit legal services group.
To renovate buildings the City has let get run down, it is forcing community land trusts and their partners to take out private loans. "And that is a real barrier to long-term affordability,” said Paula Segal, TakeRoot Justice.
With legal help from TakeRoot Justice, Cooper Park residents stopped a plan for luxury development on their parking lot by showing that NYCHA failed to follow environmental-review procedures and did not adequately engage residents.
“Then why didn’t the city or state guarantee stepping in, in the event of a default?" asked Marquis Jenkins, a longtime resident of NYCHA’s Bracetti Plaza in the East Village and a founding member of Residents to Preserve Public Housing.
“I’m still hopeful that we can have what was promised–a space that will serve the residents of Lands End II until the new buildings are built. Never a parking lot,” Paula Segal said, an attorney for CAAAV.
Paula Z. Segal, senior staff attorney at TakeRoot Justice, called commercial landlording in New York “the last unregulated industry.”
The community groups have since then filed a zoning challenge through their counsel, Paula Segal, senior staff attorney with TakeRoot Justice, of D.O.B.’s acceptance for consideration of additional building permits.
“The old system enabled debt collectors and hedge funds to make millions at the expense of New York families and neighborhoods,” said Paula Segal, Senior Staff Attorney at TakeRoot Justice.
A new report by TakeRoot Justice and Stand for Tenant Safety Coalition documents the experience of tenants whose buildings underwent recent construction and the gaps in laws intended to protect tenants from the practice of construction as harassment.
"This is about more than a space heater," Pilar DeJesus, an advocacy coordinator with TakeRoot Justice said. "We need to get to the root of the problems."