Phipps Houses' 2020 Barnett rezoning proposal is deeply problematic and Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer should be strongly urged to deny their request. Phipps is known to treat tenants in the neighborhood inhumanely, including elderly tenants, and should not be rewarded with an opportunity to build more housing in our neighborhood, subjecting more vulnerable people to the same bad treatment. 

Adam Weinstein, President and CEO of Phipps Houses, is known throughout NYC as a bad landlord among well-respected tenants' rights groups, and ranked #11 in number of evictions in 2019, according to "NYC's Worst Evictors List". This list is maintained by The Right to Counsel NYC Coalition, a group that consists of lawyers, advocates, tenants and organizers from AARP, Legal Aid Society, Coalition for the Homeless, Take Root Justice and many others. They are experts in the field of housing rights and their research should be heavily relied upon and weighed accordingly. 

To corroborate The Right to Counsel's findings, numerous neighbors at 50-01 39th Avenue, a building Phipps owns across the street from the proposed development, testified at the CB2's hearing on November 18, 2020. Some of the complaints were that conditions make it impossible to keep a roommate due to roaches and chronic mold, roach infestation is so bad that tenants have resorted to buying cats to take care of the problem, and that tenants there are "treated like dirt by Phipps."  Others complain of mice, leaking roofs, and general filth so that some have resorted to cleaning floors in common areas themselves. These claims are consistent with grossly and purposeful inadequate staffing. Phipps currently employs only 4 maintenance workers for this 472-unit building, down from 9 that they had employed in the past. 

To counter these claims, Phipps cited unsubstantiated survey results that tenants "would recommend them to a friend" as a basis for being rewarded with a rezoning to build so-called affordable housing. However, there are legitimate questions whether elderly tenants, who make up a large portion of Phipps, were able to complete the survey or were scared of being evicted if they responded. Therefore, that survey should not be relied upon as reason to grant them a rezoning. 

Finally, although some like to portray Phipps as a organization that cares about low-income tenants simply because they get contracts with NYC to build so-called affordable housing, this couldn't be further from the truth. Close to 10% of the affordable, rent stabilized units at 50-01 39th Avenue have been converted to market rate, as have Mitchell Lama apartments at Kips Bay in Manhattan, among others. This pattern of converting rent stabilized units to market rate is well-documented in data compiled by The Right to Counsel. Additionally, at the November 18th hearing, Phipps representatives stated that they "don't like to have a high concentration of poor people" which indicates they will continue this pattern of displacing low-income tenants in current and future buildings in order to make a profit.

For all of the above reasons and more, Councilmember Van Bramer must say NO to Phipps Houses' rezoning proposal.