Exclusive | Bronx co-op residents rip Mamdani for over 30% rent spike despite affordable housing promises

The Mamdani administration is raising the rent on a city-supervised co-op in The Bronx by more than 30% — angering residents who blasted the mayor over his affordable housing promises, The Post has learned.Residents of Tracey Towers — an 871-unit Mitchell-Lama development serving middle- and moderate-income families — were told during a Wednesday tenant meeting that their rents would go up by 30.59% over the next four years.“I know that this is very frustrating, particularly with an administration, a mayor that ran on affordability and rent freezes,” Councilman Eric Dinowitz, a Democrat who represents the district, told a group of nearly 100 distressed residents. Dina Levy, the Mamdani-appointed head of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said the rent increase would go toward covering the Jerome Park complex’s mortgage and ongoing operating costs. “You speak about affordable housing, affordable for who?” one irate woman shouted after Levy took about 20 minutes of questions about repairs to the two buildings.That prompted another tenant to shout, “There’s the question.” The first tenant continued, saying, “I worked for the city for 37 years, and I’m still here, and I’m living in this building.My husband also worked for the city for 20 something years. “And now, you can’t afford to live here.

You can sit in your cool office and propose a 28 percent increase? How? It’s not affordable to me anymore,” she said, drawing applause from the group.Rent will jump 15% next year for tenants, who pay an average of $1,344 for a 1-bedroom and $1,680 for a 2-bedroom apartment. Rents will then climb 5% in each of the following two years, and finally 3% in the fourth year, with increases compounding year-over-year, for a total 30.59% rather than the 28% presented.Mitchell-Lama buildings are owned and operated by private companies but are strictly overseen by the HPD.Unlike the city’s over one million rent-stabi...