LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — Dozens of Citylights residents crowded the steps of City Hall Tuesday to symbolically return a $5.8 million property tax bill, the first of many expenses levied against the Long Island City co-op in an agreement that threatens to make its apartments unaffordable for most longtime members.
More than 1,000 residents of the 522-unit complex on 48th Avenue are saddled with the hefty bill after an 87 percent jump in its property taxes this year coincided with the end in July of a 20-year tax abatement for residents under a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes agreement with the state.
Citylights members said they’ve worked for years to convince New York State to renegotiate the agreement, and after their first protest in June, the state agreed. But nothing can be done without the city’s approval via Mayor Bill de Blasio, who residents said have so far ignored their pleas for help.
“We’re begging him for consent,” Shelley Cohen, treasurer and longtime resident of Citylights, told Patch.
They hoped to catch de Blasio’s ear with a protest at the opening of Hunters Point South Park but were met with silence.
On July 1, the first bill came in: A $5.8 million annual property tax on the co-op that will ultimately be too much for 86 percent of its residents to afford, said Brent O’Leary, who has lived in Citylights for 11 years.
“We’re being penalized because our neighborhood is gentrifying very quickly,” O’Leary told Patch.
The co-op, built in 1996, was among the first state-owned affordable housing in Long Island City for New Yorkers with modest incomes who wanted to own a home.
“The mayor keeps saying he’s for affordable housing and we’re sort of the pioneer for that, but he’s not helping us,” O’Leary said. “It’s very strange.”
De Blasio’s office did not immediately respond to Patch’s request for comment.
Citylights plans to appeal the property tax bill to the New York City Tax Commission in a hearing on Aug. 6, where they’ll ask for a dramatic decrease to their assessment. But Cohen says that still doesn’t address their main concerns about their PILOT agreement.
“That has nothing to do with why we need Mayor de Blasio to consent to a modification, because there are all kind of issues we need to address to make the building affordable in the long term,” Cohen said.
Some of those issues include a rising mortgage, maintenance bills and yearly ground rent to the state.
“We’re the only building in west Queens paying ground rent,” Cohen said. “We also have no agreement about what happens at the end of our 99-year lease.”
Cohen fears if the city doesn’t take action soon, it will only be a matter of time before Citylights’ retirees and other members on fixed incomes are forced to relocate.
“Up until now they’ve been hoping for the best, but there’s going to be a point where people give up,” she said.
As for Cohen, that point is still a ways away.
“If he doesn’t agree to consent, I guess I’ll just park myself out here for the remainder of the summer and scream and yell and carry on until somebody listens,” she said.
Lead photo by Danielle Woodward/Patch
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