Understand That Your Mitchell Lama Apartment Is Not Part Of Your Estate
In Mitchell-Lama co-op apartments, the shareholder is viewed strictly as a tenant, and the apartment’s sale is governed by the corporation and by state law. As such, the decedent’s next of kin or executor is not entitled to sell the apartment. The New York City Mitchell-Lama rules mandate that when a shareholder dies, the proprietary lease and the shares for the apartment must be surrendered by the decedent’s estate or survivors. Additionally, the rules mandate that once your shares are returned, the development will coordinate the sale of the apartment pursuant to New York City Mitchell-Lama rules. What this means is that the next of kin or executor of the decedent’s estate must immediately notify the management about the owner’s death and make arrangements for the removal of the property within the apartment. The estate is only liable for up to three months of maintenance payments after the property is made available for resale. Overall, an individual shouldn’t buy a Michell Lama development if he or she wants to pass an apartment/asset down to their children, etc., as this is not allowed.
State Supervised Middle Income Housing Developments For Families And Senior Citizens
Following are lists, sorted by county, of HCR supervised Middle Income Housing Developments for Families and Senior Citizens constructed under New York States limited profit and limited dividend housing programs. The lists indicate whether the development is a rental or cooperative with their waiting list status. Developments identified as List Closed generally conduct advertised lotteries to replenish their waiting lists. For complete details on apartment availability , admission eligibility, and application instructions, please contact the management office in the right-hand columns.
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Deep dives on cities, architecture, design, real estate, and urban planning.
On December 10, 1968, the first handful of families moved into the originaland, at that point, onlyhigh-rise apartment building at Co-op City in the Baychester neighborhood of the Bronx. It was bone-chillingly cold, but it wasnt the sub-freezing temperatures that curtailed the newcomers arrival. Instead, the capacity of the buildings freight elevators was to blame for the fact that only 16 families could move in that day.
As construction continued across the marshy, 320-acre site over the next five years, those pioneers were joined by around 60,000 more residents, and by the time Co-op City was completed, in 1973, it would be home to 15,372 apartments, making it the largest cooperative apartment complex ever built. Today, its population has dropped to around 45,000, but its still roughly the size of Potomac, Maryland, or Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
When visiting recently, I walked down from the Gun Hill Road IRT station toward the management office, and the reddish-brick towers loomed in front of me almost like a mirageI kept walking, but the towers never seemed any closer. Even when Id arrived and was walking through the complex, there was something about the size of it I couldnt quite fathom.
Will Co-op City forever stand as a lone monument to progressive postwar overreach? Or could it point the way toward solving the citysand Americashousing crisis?
Editor: Sara Polsky
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Cooperation For Service Not Profit
Welcome to the Amalgamated Houses. Our website is intended for our cooperators and former cooperators, people applying for membership and those thinking of applying, for historians and students of the cooperative movement, and for everyone interested in this historic and living cooperative community.
Founded in 1927, Amalgamated is the oldest limited equity housing cooperative in the United States. We still provide affordable housing and a strong community for almost 1500 moderate-income families. Democratically governed, we remain committed to Cooperative Principles. Community activities are available for all ages and a wide range of interests.
Corruption Or Honest Mistake Co
Tony Cohenin Board Operations
The issue came to light after the 15-member board of the storied Co-op City a 320-acre middle-income cooperative in the northern Bronx, whose 15,372 residential units in 25 high-rise buildings and seven clusters of townhouses make it the largest single residential development in the country voted Oct. 5 to have its attorney, Jeffrey Buss, investigate whether a board member was allowed to have one the coveted townhouses ahead of other residents on the waiting list.
Two other Co-op City board members, Emmanuel “Manny” Torres and Raymond Tirado, were among those on the list for one of the 236 townhouses, which can involve a wait of five years or more. They and two other board members allege that Steve Gold, sales director for the complex’s management company, RiverBay, showed favoritism to board member Leticia Morales by bumping her to the head of the list, according to the New York Daily News.
Gold has been suspended while the investigation continues. Morales told the Daily News she was unaware she may have been allowed to jump the line. “This came out after I was a month in the apartment,” she said.
No Stranger to Corruption
This would not be the first time corruption plagued a Co-op City’s waiting list. A different sales representative was arrested in 2009 for taking bribes to bump people up an apartment list.
Lessons for Other Boards
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Be Prepared To Downsize
Generally, one-bedroom apartments become available more often than two or three bedrooms. This happens because residents are permitted to upgrade their apartments if they have a change in family size. However, they are not required to downsize if their family size goes down. As such, applicants should apply for the smallest unit that they qualify for to increase their chances of getting picked. Also, please note that Mitchell-Lama residents get their first pick at empty apartments when they become available.
External Waiting List Status
Through Mitchell-Lama Connect, you can view the waiting list number and date the last application was approved for each Mitchell-Lama development. This information will allow you to monitor your progress on the waiting list. The waiting list information gets updated each time we approve an application.
Resident Information
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Co-op City has spacious one, two and three bedroom air conditioned apartments, many of which have beautiful views. Located on 320 acres next to Pelham Bay Park, the grounds are full of gardens, park benches, trees, playgrounds and ball fields. Co-op City is across the street from Bay Plaza Shopping Center, which has a new indoor mall. Residents travel to Manhattan by subway or bus.
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Don’t Depend On Getting A Mortgage
Even though Mitchell-Lama apartments are cheap, that doesn’t mean that you can bank on easily qualifying for a mortgage. Obtaining a mortgage for a Mitchell-Lama apartment is complicated and rare. Even though there’s no specific regulation preventing buyers from borrowing against their Mitchell-Lama co-op shares, most banks won’t do it. This mainly has to do with the fact that if the buyer stops making payments, the foreclosure process is not clear-cut under state law. To combat this roadblock, some Mitchell-Lama buildings have set up their own internal programs to lend to buyers.
New Middle Class Housing
Last December, Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined a plan to try to meet New York City’s great demand for housing. The plan would build or renovate 65,000 homes during the next five years. And it includes housing for middle class New Yorkers. According to the Independent Budget Office, about half of the new housing will be for New Yorkers who make between $88,000 and $157,000 a year. Sixteen percent will be for those who make under $50,000 a year.
The mayor’s housing initiative is the biggest since Mayor Ed Koch’s day. But City Councilmember Gail Brewer responded to the plan by saying that the city should work to preserve Mitchell-Lama buildings and more closely copy the 1955 program. “Here we are as a city trying to provide affordable housing and it already exists. I would opt for more Mitchell-Lamas, if I had my druthers,” she told Real Estate Weekly.
McKee, from the New York State Tenants & Neighbors Coalition, pointed out that through the Mitchell-Lama program, 165,000 homes were built statewide, over 25 years. “And even that was not nearly enough to solve the imbalance between supply and demand,” he said, and added that the demand for middle class housing will grow as more Mitchell-Lama buildings go market rate.
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Wait For Your Application To Be Approved
Once on a waiting list, be prepared to wait a long time. Typically, it takes anywhere from a couple of years, up to 15 years before an apartment becomes available. When an apartment opens up and assuming that you still meet the income/family size requirements, you can proceed or wait for the next available apartment. However, typically if you reject the second place, you go back to the bottom of the waiting list, or you may be removed from the waiting list altogether.
Frequently Asked Questions For Mitchell
The Mitchell-Lama development I applied to doesn’t appear on the dropdown lists.
Contact the development’s management office to find out who the supervisory agency is. The NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development also supervises Mitchell-Lamas, but only HCR supervised developments are on the AWL system. If HCR is the supervisory agency, it is also possible that the development is known by, and listed under, another name or is not on the AWL yet.
The development I applied to is not on the AWL system yet. When can I expect this to happen?
We expect that all HCR supervised Mitchell-Lama developments will eventually be on the AWL. Contact the development’s management office to find out if they have a projected conversion date.
I applied to a development on HCR’s AWL system and received an application number, but I can’t find the number on their waiting list.
If you applied recently, your application might not have been entered into the system yet. If that’s not the case, and you applied before the development was converted to the AWL, your application number would have been changed during the conversion. Another possibility is that your application may have been inactivated by the housing company. Please contact the development’s management office for information.
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The History Of Mitchell
The name comes from two politicians — New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell and Assemblyman Alfred Lama — who sponsored the 1955 bill that created the housing plan. Their idea was to clear sites in blighted areas of New York to construct income-restricted rentals and limited equity co-ops. Those neighborhoods include Chelsea, the Lower East Side, Upper East Side and Upper West Side — places where affordable apartments are now mostly a thing of the past. Income-restricted rentals mean apartment rents are tied directly to a tenants income — much like all affordable housing in NYC these days. The co-op prices are set so a buyer pays an equity value which is returned to them when they sell. Meaning, the buyer scores a cheap apartment but wont get any profit after they move out.
Learn The Mitchell Lama Apartment Laws & Regulations Regarding Family Members
Even though a Mitchell Lama apartment does not qualify as part of your estate when you die, that doesn’t mean that your family has to immediately move out upon your death. In Mitchell-Lama co-ops, regulated by either the city or the state, there’s a complex set of regulations and laws, which will determine whether a decedent’s family can continue to occupy the apartment. To continue residing in a Mitchell Lama apartment, the purported successor must show that he or she primarily lived in the apartment for at least two years contemporaneously with the tenant of record. . Additionally, he or she must meet the required financial criteria to succeed to the shareholders’ rights. Lastly, it will tremendously help the successor’s case if he or she was listed on the tenant’s annual income affidavit as a co-applicant during the same two-year period.
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Apply To Join The Waitlist
Once you find a Mitchell Lama building you’d like to live in, you’ll need to apply to get on the waitlist. If you see a list you want to be on, you can apply through the HPD website. Some Mitchell-Lama Apartments have an open waiting list, while other buildings have closed lists. If and when a building opens up its waiting list, they are required to announce this in the media. However, this list is just to be entered into a lottery, to be added to the building’s waiting list.
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Be Ready To Pay A Surcharge If Your Income Is Too High
Once you obtain a Mitchell-Lama apartment, you will be required to update your income information annually on the annual income affidavit form. If you, together with the other occupants of the apartment, exceed the income cap for your residence, you will be required to pay a surcharge, which is typically no higher than 50% of the monthly rent or maintenance fees.
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Dream Housing Waking Up
Co-op City is the largest complex built under the state’s Mitchell-Lama program, which ran from 1955 to 1978 and was intended to encourage developers to build housing for the middle class. The state gave developers tax exemptions and low-interest mortgages in exchange for what they hoped would be the public good of affordable housing. At Mitchell-Lama buildings the government has control over rents and co-op prices, and developers have to charge prices that middle class New Yorkers can afford.
The program, named for New York State Senator McNeil Mitchell and State Assemblyman Alfred Lama, is often championed by city planners and housing advocates. “From the point of view of providing affordable, moderately priced housing, it is a smashing success. Can you imagine what the city would be like without the Mitchell-Lama program? For people who work for city government, low to middle income people, this has been an incredible success,” said Tom Angotti, a professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College. “I think we should ask ourselves, why isn’t Mitchell-Lama being repeated?”