Bill de Blasio's war on public housing

Cash-strapped NYCHA sold apartment buildings that had been recently refurbished

NYCHA claimed that it needed to sell 900 Section 8 apartments, because it could no longer afford to maintain them.

However, a Progress Queens investigation has revealed that four buildings that were sold were recently refurbished by NYCHA, seemingly refuting claims that these buildings were too dilapidated for NYCHA to maintain.

Before NYCHA sold the buildings 1780 and 1782 Madison Avenue in Manhattan to private real estate developers, the city housing agency spent an unknown amount of money making unspecified refurbishing or repairs to the buildings.

Before NYCHA sold the building at 903 Halsey Street in Brooklyn to private real estate developers, the city housing agency spent an unknown amount of money making unspecified refurbishing or repairs to the buildings.

Before NYCHA sold the building at 55 Saratoga Avenue in Brooklyn to private real estate developers, the city housing agency spent an unknown amount of money making unspecified refurbishing or repairs to the buildings.

Conflicts of Interest : Administration officials were either paid to lobbying in support of the sale of approximately 900 NYCHA Section 8 apartments, or else they had prior relationships with some of the developers. A controversial structured finance transaction originated by the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, to create a special purpose vehicle to offload some Section 8 buildings to private developers is coming into greater view, according to an analysis by Progress Queens. The portfolio of project-based, Section 8 buildings that NYCHA sold to a consortium of private investors named Triborough Preservation LLC included four buildings that had recently been refurbished. The portfolio of buildings that were sold were situated in neighborhoods, where there was a great potential for real estate value appreciation due to recent trends in gentrification, begging the question whether real estate developers had cherry-picked some of the best properties amongst NYCHA's roster of buildings. Two principal de Blasio administration housing officials, Gary Rodney and Vicki Been, have had prior close ties to two of the developers in the consortium, BFC Partners, L.P., and L&M Development Partners, Inc., respectively. A third de Blasio administration official, Jonathan Greenspun, who serves as a commission on the city's Commission on Human Rights, was a lobbyist for BFC Partners, L.P. Administration officials defended the controversial sale by arguing that NYCHA did not have the financial resources to maintain the dilapidated buildings. However, as documented in archival photographs published by Google Street View, four of the buildings had had scaffolding encircling the buildings, with one photograph showing workmen suspended along the front of one building doing exterior construction or repair work. Some government reform activists told Progress Queens that the de Blasio administration disenfranchised taxpayers and NYCHA tenants by sidestepping the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or the ULURP process, when it sanctioned NYCHA’s sale of the properties. According to one source, a lawyer with expertise in city legislation, Section 197-c of the City Charter requires that any disposition of city real property must be made through the ULURP process. City housing officials have suggested that they may seek to sell other NYCHA buildings in order to offload the responsibility of upkeep and maintenance for the buildings, a potential backdoor for for-profit real estate developers to raise the rents on tenants living in public housing. According to a reading of some of the transaction agreements, the city conveyed rights to the consortium of developers to building residential and non-residential units on developable land that was also sold along with the project-based, Section 8 buildings. Officials with NYCHA, City Hall, and the developers, who bought the Section 8 apartments, declined to answer questions about the transaction in time before the publication of Progress Queens report.

RELATED Cash-strapped NYCHA sold apartment buildings that had been recently refurbished (Progress Queens) Councilmember Torres : A public housing puppet on REBNY's strings (Progress Queens) Activists worry that de Blasio administration will keep selling NYCHA to developers, undermining regulated rents (Progress Queens) Michael Hayes, LMT, has practiced massage for more than 20 years as a licensed massage therapist in New York City.

Conflicts of Interest, Corruptive Role of Developers, and Shady Donors Mar Post-Election Contributions

From City & State :

FLOWERS SMELL, MONEY DOESN'T

New York City Council members are more careful vetting their campaign donors than those who contribute transition funds.

New York City Councilman Corey Johnson, who represents Chelsea, the West Village and Hell’s Kitchen, threw himself an elegant inauguration costing upwards of $30,000, including $1,500 on flowers. Rather than sourcing this business to one of his district’s many high-end florists, or to the city’s flower district on 28th Street, Johnson hired his chief of staff’s mother, who owns a flower shop 150 miles away in Norwich, Conn., to provide the floral arrangements for his swearing-in celebration. The councilman also spent $14,000 on food with a caterer based in New Jersey. Johnson’s chief of staff, Jeffrey LeFrancois, did not respond to questions as to why his mother’s business was chosen to supply the Johnson inaugural with its table arrangements.

Are the progressives who now constitute the Council leadership any different from the typical big city machine politician with a wide smile and an open palm ?

According to the city’s Campaign Finance Board’s rules, Transition and Inauguration (TIE) funds are not matched by public funding, so elected officials are free to distribute the money they raise for those purposes largely at their own discretion. As such, TIE funds are a gray area of political financing, not just because they are mostly spent on parties, but also because they do not receive a lot of scrutiny. A candidate taking money from a dubious donor will be criticized by his opponent, but the winner of the election no longer faces campaign opposition, and is freer to accept TIE money from questionable sources.

For example, Johnson was adamant throughout his campaign that he was independent of real estate and development interests, and insisted that his professional life in the hospitality industry was so incidental as to be practically an afterthought. Indeed Johnson took only a small amount of money from the real estate industry in his race for Council. As soon as he was elected, however, he accepted $5,000 in TIE money from the Meilman brothers, who own a large stretch of prime retail property on 14th Street just east of the High Line. Johnson also received $15,000 from the developers and managers of the Dream Hotel in the famed Maritime Building on Ninth Avenue, including the owners of Tao Nightclub.

• RELATED : Flowers Smell, Money Doesn't (City & State)
• RELATED : Cracks in the Campaign Finance Board (City & State)
• RELATED : Political Machinations Cloud Campaign Finance Board's Decision-Making (NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : The Advance Group Federal Complaint Referred To Moreland Commission (NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : Scott Levenson, NY-CLASS, Citizens United Super PAC Investigation (NYC : News & Analysis)

One of these developers, Punjabi hotelier Sant Chatwal, purchased a decommissioned church on 44th Street and converted it into a luxury hotel called the Chatwal. He neglected to inform the Department of Finance that the building was no longer a house of worship, and thus no longer exempt from property taxes. By the time the city caught up with this omission, the hotel had avoided payment of $2 million.

Johnson also accepted $2,500 from Judith Rubin. Rubin is the wife of Robert Rubin, Clinton’s secretary of the Treasury. Secretary Rubin oversaw the dismantling of regulatory oversight of the financial industry, and urged caution regarding the regulation of credit derivatives. He then became chairman of Citigroup, which had to be bailed out by the U.S. government following the 2008 collapse of the financial industry. Between 1999 and 2009 Rubin received more than $125 million in compensation from Citigroup.

Is there a contradiction inherent in a supposed “progressive” who aggressively touts his family’s labor background partying on the dime of a person who perhaps typifies the “1 percent”? Or is it the case that in a one-party town, being a “Democrat” covers the widest range of sins?

Another progressive whose TIE fundraising appears to be incongruous with his politics is Councilman Carlos Menchaca, who, like Johnson, was selected as a freshman by his borough colleagues to be a co-leader of their respective delegations. Menchaca ran as a reformist insurgent against Sara Gonzalez, whom he vilified as a tool of “Manhattan millionaire developers” for receiving support from Jobs for New York, the Real Estate Board’s independent expenditure arm. But soon after taking office, Menchaca accepted $1,500 in TIE funding from Taxpayers for an Affordable New York, which is essentially run and funded by the same major property owners who spearheaded Jobs for New York.

Menchaca also took $1,500 from John Ciafone, a Queens lawyer and property owner who was listed on Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s Worst Slumlord watchlist in 2011. De Blasio returned two large contributions from Ciafone when it was revealed that he was a donor, but Menchaca is apparently untroubled by or unaware of whom he is accepting from.

John Ciafone’s wife is Gina Argento, the CEO of Broadway Stages, a large television and film production studio and sound stage company in Brooklyn and Queens. Argento and her brother Anthony Argento are prolific contributors to political campaigns, and each gave $1,500 to Menchaca’s TIE committee.

Last year the Argentos applied to have a subsidiary company, Luna Lighting, receive a license to operate as a trade waste business, which would allow the company to cart demolition and construction debris from worksites. As the Argentos have ownership interest in many industrial sites that they would like to repurpose for other commercial uses (for example, the Knockdown Center in Maspeth), owning their own demolition hauling company would provide vertical integration to their business. The city’s Business Integrity Commission issued a harsh denial of the Argentos’ application, citing a history of illegal carting by Luna Lighting, and also misrepresentation by Anthony Argento of his arrest record.

Furthermore, Anthony Argento was shown to have over $1 million in federal tax liens against him, as well as his business. As of April 2013 Argento owed the Internal Revenue Service more than $600,000. This information was all published by the city and is a matter of public record. One imagines that Menchaca or his staff must have done some cursory analysis of who was giving him money. Or perhaps the Argentos have papered the city with enough contributions that their questionable business practices do not raise the eyebrows of even the most progressive elected officials.

Debi Rose of Staten Island, one of the Council’s seven deputy leaders, threw herself a $7,000 inaugural party, even though she has already served a full term. It is typical for freshman Council members to have a lavish inauguration, though it is not unheard of for veterans to do so as well: Rose’s fellow progressive Councilwoman Margaret Chin had a five-figure celebratory dinner to commemorate her election to a second term.

• RELATED : “TIE” Breaker : Incumbent City Councilwoman Margaret Chin Exploits Transition Funds (City & State)

Rose raised a relatively small amount of TIE money, but she got it from some strange sources. Almost half of her TIE contributions come from four men who appear to work together in a real estate company called Shore to Shore Realty Partners. The business address is listed with the Secretary of State as 15 Page Avenue on Staten Island, which is the location of a 7-Eleven convenience store. No one at the store has any knowledge of Shore to Shore.

In 2011 the CEO of Shore to Shore, Andrew Gonchar, who gave Rose $2,000, was recently barred for life from the securities industry by the Securities Exchange Commission, which noted in its decision that Gonchar actively sought to “gouge” his bond-trading retail customers.

Whether accepting these donations was hypocritical, unwise or justifiable is for the Council members and their constitutents to judge. What is certain, however, is that elected officials exercise far more due diligence vetting whom they take campaign dollars from than from whom they receive Transition and Inauguration funds. The bar is much lower for TIE funds because the election is over, the next campaign is more than three years off and none of the money is eligible for public matching funding anyway, so who really cares? Still, for those paying attention, TIE contributions are an amusing coda to campaign finance season, when elected officials can embrace their unseemly supporters and freely take what they had to deny themselves during the Lenten pre-election period. Which begs the question: Are the progressives who now constitute the Council leadership any different from the typical big city machine politician with a wide smile and an open palm ?

• RELATED : City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito got help landing job from top lobby firm that reps unions and real estate developers (The New York Daily News)
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The Advance Group, which provided unpaid consultants to Melissa Mark-Viverito's speakership campaign, worked for the City Action Coalition PAC, which lists 'traditional marriage' as its platform and supported opponents of gay City Council candidates. (The New York Daily News)

Did Scott Levenson sabotage LGBT civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland's political campaign ? (Scott Levenson : Biggest Loser Of The Week * NYC : News & Analysis)

The Anti-LGBT Attacks By Scott Levenson, Alec Baldwin

LGBT groups refused to accept anti-gay attacks from Alec Baldwin. How about from Scott Levenson ?

LGBT groups must come together to address the anti-LGBT campaign work of Scott Levenson. Levenson is a political campaign consultant and lobbyist, who was paid by the conservative City Action Coalition PAC to defeat several LGBT City Council candidates solely because of their identity. One of Levenson's attack ads, against gay Bronx Councilmember-elect Ritchie Torres, was featured in a post on The Village Voice.

Scott Levenson, Alec Baldwin - Report Back #constantcontact http://t.co/FVD14o2hge

— Louis Flores (@maslowsneeds) December 2, 2013

The attack ad sent by Levenson criticized Torres for, among other things, living in affordable housing normally reserved for "homeless and mentally ill people," casting negative implications on Torres's character. This raises serious questions as to whether Levenson supports prejudice and discrimination.

Will LGBT Groups Protest Scott Levenson Over Anti-Gay Attack Super PAC ? http://t.co/bcAwIpwsZI @HRC @glaad @prideagenda

— LGBT Civil Rights (@lgbtcivilrights) November 26, 2013

As we continue our work for equal civil rights laws and new cultural norms of equality and dignity, the discriminatory actions of Baldwin and Levenson will occur less and less. But only if we continue to speak up and demand that these forms of prejudices must end.

Pack your bags, Alec ! MSNBC fires Baldwin over anti-gay slurs http://t.co/frDuktYYNT via @nypost

— LGBT Civil Rights (@lgbtcivilrights) November 27, 2013

Will notable LGBT advocacy groups, like HRC, GLAAD, and the Empire State Pride Agenda, as well as notable LGBT bloggers, denounce Levenson for the prejudice in his anti-LGBT campaign work ? Balwin was the anchor of a weekly cable news program, but Levenson is a political operative, shaping the outcome of elections in New York. Will LGBT advocates note Levenson's possibly larger detriment to LGBT equality ?

Change.org Petition Asks Bill de Blasio To Boycott NYCLASS Fundraiser Over Scott Levenson Anti-Gay Attack Ads

The Advance Group, providing political consulting services for "free" to Melissa Mark-Viverito, was paid to defeat LGBT City Council Candidates

Sign our Change.org Petition : Bill de Blasio : Do not attend NYCLASS fundraiser to benefit Scott Levenson

WATCH : Will LGBT Groups Protest Scott Levenson for Anti-Gay Attack Ads ? (YouTube)

@boldprogressnyc @HRC @maslowsneeds Are you asking if Democrats overlook behavior in Democrats for which they'd pillory Republicans? Yes : (

— Charmian Neary (@CharmianNeary) November 21, 2013

The Advance Group, which is providing unpaid consultants to Mark-Viverito, worked for the City Action Coalition PAC, which lists 'traditional marriage' as its platform and supported opponents of gay City Council candidates. (The New York Daily News)

Did Scott Levenson sabotage LGBT civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland's political campaign ? (Scott Levenson : Biggest Loser Of The Week * NY Pop Culture & Politics)

E-mail me if you would like to plan a protest against Scott Levenson : louisflores (at) louisflores (dot) com

… the Advance Group's work on behalf of City Action Coalition-backed candidates conflicted with its work for two of its own council clients. And the outside work for the teachers union raises another potential conflict: the Advance Group not only produced mailers promoting Manhattan council candidate Yetta Kurland for the NYCLASS independent expenditure, but Strategic Consultants produced mailers touting her opponent, Corey Johnson, that were paid for by the teachers union. Mr. Johnson won the primary. (Teachers union paid $370K to fake consultant * Crain's Insider)

Why aren't the LGBT civil rights activists protesting against Scott Levenson and his "anti-gay agenda" ? And how can LGBT civil rights activists stay quiet while Ms. Mark-Viverito uses a political consulting operation that hires itself out to work against candidates specifically based on their identity ? This is discrimination and prejudice. How can Mr. Levenson and Ms. Mark-Viverito call themselves "progressives," yet enable bigotry ?

The Advance Group's anti-LGBT attack ad against Ritchie Torres

Scott Levenson - The Advance Group - Attack Ad Against Gay Bronx Councilmember Elect Ritchie Torres (043-04... by Connaissable

Will LGBT Groups Protest Scott Levenson Over Anti-Gay Attack Ads ?

The Advance Group, providing political consulting services for "free" to Melissa Mark-Viverito, was paid to defeat LGBT City Council Candidates

Sign our Change.org Petition : Bill de Blasio : Do not attend NYCLASS fundraiser to benefit Scott Levenson

WATCH : Will LGBT Groups Protest Scott Levenson for Anti-Gay Attack Ads ? (YouTube)

@boldprogressnyc @HRC @maslowsneeds Are you asking if Democrats overlook behavior in Democrats for which they'd pillory Republicans? Yes : (

— Charmian Neary (@CharmianNeary) November 21, 2013

The Advance Group, which is providing unpaid consultants to Mark-Viverito, worked for the City Action Coalition PAC, which lists 'traditional marriage' as its platform and supported opponents of gay City Council candidates. (The New York Daily News)

Did Scott Levenson sabotage LGBT civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland's political campaign ? (Scott Levenson : Biggest Loser Of The Week * NY Pop Culture & Politics)

E-mail me if you would like to plan a protest against Scott Levenson : louisflores (at) louisflores (dot) com

… the Advance Group's work on behalf of City Action Coalition-backed candidates conflicted with its work for two of its own council clients. And the outside work for the teachers union raises another potential conflict: the Advance Group not only produced mailers promoting Manhattan council candidate Yetta Kurland for the NYCLASS independent expenditure, but Strategic Consultants produced mailers touting her opponent, Corey Johnson, that were paid for by the teachers union. Mr. Johnson won the primary. (Teachers union paid $370K to fake consultant * Crain's Insider)

Why aren't the LGBT civil rights activists protesting against Scott Levenson and his "anti-gay agenda" ? And how can LGBT civil rights activists stay quiet while Ms. Mark-Viverito uses a political consulting operation that hires itself out to work against candidates specifically based on their identity ? This is discrimination and prejudice. How can Mr. Levenson and Ms. Mark-Viverito call themselves "progressives," yet enable bigotry ?