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The Riverside Park Community apartment complex is a group of five buildings ranging in height from 10 to 35 stories at 3333 Broadway between West 133rd and 135th Streets, in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. Completed in 1976, it was the largest residential structure in the United States. Together, the five buildings include 1,200 apartment units and were designed to accommodate nearly 1,190 families. The complex also includes the KIPP Public High School and the Infinity Charter school. The present manager of the property is the Urban American Management Corporation. Urban American Management is considered to be a slum lord type of company by most, making it very difficult if not impossible for tenants to get their issues addressed by blatantly evading and disregarding concerns. It's widely know that this building is categorically one of the worst in Manhattan as it is ridden with violations, adding new ones everyday. It's also ridden with open drug activity such as consumption, solicitation, and distribution, and as a result has become the most common place in the neighborhood for loitering drug addicts. The building is also infamous for it's rat infestation problem that has been widely documented by local news as recently as September 2015. The building management refuses to pay a private company to handle the trash of the thousands of tenants allowing it all to amass, and instead waits every few days for the city to come and pick it up resulting in a serious rat infestation/colonization where the car entrance of the building is. The biggest safety risk however are the elevators. Most of the residents are elderly or have children and rely on these in a building this size, however most of the time they are not working as a huge hazard and detriment to safety of tenants. There is a shady third party contract in place to keep the decrepit elevators and laundry machines there, even though the building is now privately owned, and surely can afford better. == History == Designed by architect Max Wechsler, the original plan called for 5 buildings arranged in a semi-circle at varying heights facing West 133rd Street. The plans also included plans for a public school, a medical building, a pharmacy and a playground facilities for 1,800 children. The community was constructed under the Mitchell-Lama program, a state-run program created in 1955 that provided low-interest mortgage loans and property tax exemptions to landlords who agreed to provide low-income residents with affordable housing at below-market-rate rents. At a cost of $54 million, the Educational Construction Fund developed this project as the first phase of a total renewal of the area between West 125th Street and 135th Street, from Broadway to Riverside Drive. When the property first opened, in Spring 1976, the director of sales received over 9,000 applications in the rental office. At the time, a family of five had to meet a basic income requirement of $13,000/year to qualify for housing. Federal subsidies, however, made it possible for people with incomes less than that which was required to obtain housing in the building. In 1976, a one-bedroom apartment cost $228/month and a two-bedroom apartment cost $272. Today, the rents for those apartments start at $1,750 and $2,250, respectively. In 2005, after the loan was paid off, the then landlord Jerome Belson controversially〔 opted the community out of the program. Per the guidelines of the Mitchell-Lama program, "any owner can withdraw from the program after 20 years upon paying off the mortgage". At the same time, BSR, the management company for 3333, sold the property to Cammeby’s Realty Corp. for $85 million. Following the withdrawal from Mitchell-Lama, a class action lawsuit was brought against the current owner by many of the building's tenants, alleging that they were not properly notified of the rise in rental costs and for systematically harassing them to move out and make room for tenants who can afford to pay higher rents. The case was dismissed without merit. At the time of its development, the area surrounding the site of the Riverside Park Community consisted primarily of low-rent tenement housing and mixed-use commercial/residential building types that made up much of Broadway in West Harlem. Since the previous owner of the property opted out of the Mitchell-Lama program, some housing advocates asserted that as many as 300 residents moved out of the building in the course of three years and some tenants are concerned that the building will no more be affordable. In 2008, "a group led by the Legal Aid Society filed a class-action suit in State Supreme Court against the building's owner, arguing that a provision requiring that the property remain dedicated to low and moderate income housing had been removed by the City and the prior owners without proper public notice, and that this was a major contributing factor to the efforts to force residents out." The State Supreme Court dismissed the case, citing that all claims, including those of harassment, were without merit. All attempts to appeal that decision have also failed. The president of one of the building's tenant associations, Alicia Barksdale, asserts that many of the tenants believe that it is not fair for them to ever have to move, regardless of the changes in the neighborhood.〔Hamilton, Andrew. ("Notes from the 15th Floor" ), ''Columbia Political Review'', March 2010.〕 In 2007, Cammeby’s sold the property as part of a portfolio for $278 million to Urban American Management, nearly triple the previous value.〔 No longer under Federal regulation, the new management company aims to house the local college students from Columbia University and other young professionals. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Riverside Park Community」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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