Paper trail behind city co-op push

$$ link to DeB plan

The new rules for the city’s planned Soviet-style takeover of 30,000 co-op apartments were at least partially written by advocates who could cash in on their implementation.

Joseph Center, the former associate director of nonprofit Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, said the recent city plan embraces rules for co-op oversight he wrote for the city more than a decade ago.

“It . . . is an updated and somewhat changed version of what I did,” said Center, who left the UHAB in 2005.

The old regulatory agreement he crafted is now being used for a new blueprint for the city’s Housing Development Finance Corp. program. HDFC co-ops are oncederelict buildings the city sold decades ago to homesteaders for as little as $250 an apartment.

Center’s name appeared on a document the city circulated with the new rules it wants to impose. The name of a current UHAB staffer, Samantha Kattan, also showed up as someone who had modified the document, although she denies writing any of the rules. The city wants 1,231 co-op buildings to sign on to new rules that would, among other things, force them to hire city-chosen monitors and set low ceilings on sale prices. Buildings that don’t sign the regulatory agreement would lose tax breaks; coops that sign on would get a better break.

The UHAB is part of the HDFC Task Force, a group that has been pushing for more co-op oversight. The UHAB has said it will apply for one of the monitoring contracts, which will cost each building between $3,500 and $7,500 a year.

Critics said the UHAB has a “vested interest” in the city’s plan.

Melissa Grace, a de Blasio spokeswoman, denied the UHAB wrote the regulatory agreement, saying it was drafted by lawyers at Housing Preservation and Development.