An Unexpected Challenge

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Daniel Garodnick and his official new role in the Tenants Association of the Stuyvesant Town. It discusses how Garodnick's work as a founder of the Market Rate Residents Network gave him the chance to meet the neighbors and get to know the Stuy Town property management team. It also highlights MetLife's use of vacancy decontrol in order to take a quarter of the units in Stuy Town out of rent stabilization, specifying the traditional rent-stabilized residents and newer tenants living in nonregulated apartments as two classes of renters. The chapter mentions Al Doyle, who still lived in Stuy Town and was the longest-serving president of the Stuyvesant Town Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association. It recounts how Doyle became the most identifiable name in the community after many years of battling MetLife.