![]() ![]() “The state is putting us in a very precarious position.” “The idea that are cut out of a program that’s supposed to help people meet their monthly housing costs is a real slap in the face,” said Dave Powell, executive director of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association II, a limited-equity co-op of 21 buildings on Lower Manhattan’s east side. Treasury, which is also overseeing $46.5 billion in COVID rent relief nationally. While New York plans on launching a new fund to assist co-op owners this fall, it’s still awaiting authorization from the U.S. This has left many co-ops, especially low-income ones, struggling to pay their bills and maintain their buildings as the pandemic dampens the economy. (Owners pay monthly maintenance fees - about $1,700 a month for an average 800-square-foot Manhattan apartment, for example - and can be evicted by co-op boards for nonpayment or other issues.) Yet his story highlights a largely overlooked aspect of ERAP: It excludes New York’s hundreds of thousands of co-op owners, even though they’re usually treated as tenants in state law and some legislators say they intended the same for this vital program. Mitch contacted his state assemblymember’s office for help and was ultimately approved for the aid. “At that point I’m saying, ‘OK, the building is co-op, but I’m not a co-op owner, I’m just a renter.’” “Finally after five to six calls, I heard it had something to do with me living in a co-operative building,” he told New York Focus. He got different answers about his case each time he called, he said. ![]() So he began calling New York’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), a $2.7 billion effort to prevent evictions by paying off tenants’ debts with mostly federal money. But a few days later, it showed his application was “pending denial,” said Mitch, who asked to be identified only by his first name to protect his privacy. Several weeks after he submitted a completed application for pandemic rent relief in late June, Mitch, a longtime Hell’s Kitchen resident in his 60s, saw on the application portal that his materials were validated. ![]()
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