The tenant association hopes to block the sale, or at least prevent the buyout, by coming up with an alternative deal: a tenant-led purchase of IPN that would deliver to Cohn, or Gluck, fair market value for the complex. But the tenants will need political muscle to make that possible, IPN tenant leader Neil Fabricant told a gathering of about 250 tenants last month.

“We are going to hold politicians who can do something about this highly accountable,” Fabricant told tenants. “We will put their feet to the fire.”

In an interview, Fabricant said he wants the city to use its power of eminent domain to acquire IPN, in the interest of preserving affordable housing. The tenants could then buy the complex from the city. Even the prospect of such action, Fabricant believes, could pressure Cohn to negotiate directly with the tenants.

IPN leaders pitched the plan last month to an aide of Deputy Mayor Doctoroff, and they were lobbying Speaker Silver to exert pressure on the city administration to embrace it.

At the same time, the tenant association and its lawyers were preparing a bill to present to the City Council that would impose a fee on a building owner for withdrawing from Mitchell-Lama. The legislation would “change the economics of a deal for anyone who wants to buy out, so if they try to do it without tenants’ approval, there will be a big, big price to pay,” Fabricant said at the tenant meeting.

“We need to get [Cohn and Gluck] worried about something and in the end, what they will worry about is what we present to the Mayor, to Doctoroff,” Fabricant said. “If we get legislation passed, they’ll worry because then they have to overturn it.”
City Councilman Alan Gerson, whose district includes IPN, said last month that he also was working on legislation to encourage Mitchell-Lama owners to remain in the program.

Fabricant said that the tenants had made progress on at least one front. While HPD, which IPN tenant leaders have long claimed ignores tenant interests, is officially responsible for reviewing the proposed IPN sale, Fabricant said he believed that Doctoroff’s office had taken an interest in the complex and that the review “is now out of HPD’s hands.”

“That’s a very positive step,” he said. “HPD was going to railroad us right out of here.”

Doctoroff told the Trib late last month that he was aware of tenants’ concerns and was “looking into” the IPN issue. He declined to comment on any specific action the city might take.

The financing for a tenant purchase of IPN could involve tax credits, low interest bonds or loans. If the tenants pull off the deal, they could maintain the complex as a Mitchell-Lama rental, convert it to a limited equity co-op or combine the two, Fabricant said.

“The idea is to offer people a menu of options to stay in their apartments—either to purchase at a price below market, or to rent, maintaining rents with as modest an increase as possible,” Alan Epstein, a lawyer for the tenant association, said at the meeting.

Tenant associations at other Mitchell-Lamas have fought buyouts in court, but Fabricant said that litigation was a last resort. While lawsuits have slowed buyouts at other buildings, they led to “lousy settlements,” he said. But he added, “if we lose in the political arena, we’re definitely going to court.”

Since last September, when Gluck applied to HPD to buy the complex, he has tried to reassure tenants that he will not force anybody out and that most tenants will be protected from rent hikes by government rental assistance programs.

Echoing Gluck’s assurances, an HPD official said at a meeting of Community Board 1’s Tribeca Committee last month that about two-thirds of IPN tenants will qualify for government rent subsidies, known as enhanced or “sticky” vouchers, if a buyout goes through.

Although the HPD official and IPN tenant leaders have suggested that an owner might not be obligated to accept the subsidy program, a spokesman for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which runs the program, said that that was not the case.

Under a 2001 law, “when a buyout happens, the landlord is required to accept the vouchers, as long as the building continues as a rental,” said Adam Glantz, the HUD spokesman.

But IPN tenant leaders remain wary, saying that Gluck could convert the complex from a rental and that funding for the subsidy program, which must be renewed by Congress every year, could be cut in the future.

“Forget about the idea that you’re protected out of the goodness of the landlord or HPD,” Fabricant told tenants at the meeting.

Tenants also worry that about a third of them, not covered by the subsidy program, could be priced out of their homes. Gluck has said that tenants who can afford it will be charged higher rents, but that reasonable increases will be negotiated with the tenant association.

Under new HPD regulations that went into effect on Feb. 1, an owner must give HPD one year’s notice of his intention to buy out from Mitchell-Lama. Previous rules required only six months’ notice.