'Cuomoville' Is Back: Tenants Rights Activists Plan Campout At Governor's NYC Office

MURRAY HILL, NY — The "Cuomoville" campout, a tradition born during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 and revived two summers ago outside both the Albany and NYC offices of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, will return to the sidewalk in front of his Third Avenue office building next week.

UPDATE, June 14: Cuomoville is in full effect. Watch live video from the scene of the sidewalk encampment.

Campers plan to call out Cuomo for one of his less talked-about records at the helm of NYC rental law. (For more local news stories that affect you, sign up for Patch's free email newsletters and real-time alerts for your NYC neighborhood.)

"He hasn't protected us," Skipp Roseboro, a 71-year-old Bed-Stuy resident involved in planning the campout, said of Cuomo. "We want him to be the governor he claims he is, and actually protect people — from developers, from rents that are astronomical, from the gentrification of vast areas of New York City."

"Most people believe he will seek the presidency at some point," Roseboro said. "So we're trying to call him out — to let people know the governor has not been protecting them."

The governor's office did not respond to a request for comment.

This year's Cuomoville campout will begin at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, June 14, and last through at least Saturday morning, organizers told Patch. (It could also last longer than those three nights, they said, depending on how things go.) Just like in summer 2015, participants will be sleeping on the sidewalk in front of Cuomo's office tower at 633 Third Ave., pictured above.

Organizers estimated around 50 people slept over at the last event. They were then joined by hundreds more protesters in the daytime.

Roseboro explained that by sleeping in a makeshift sidewalk village named after the governor, homeless person-style, protesters will capture "the essence of what he's done for the city."

"It's kind of a metaphor for the governor's housing policy," the longtime activist said. "Where we will be is actually a Cuomoville."

The 2017 comeback of Cuomoville is being organized by the Alliance for Tenant Power, a coalition of eight organizations involved in protecting tenants rights in NYC — including the Legal Aid Society, New York Communities for Change and Make the Road New York.

Here are their stated demands, as outlined in their Facebook event:

1. Stronger rent laws to protect tenants
   
2. End corporate tax breaks to developers
   
3. Solve homelessness in New York State

As it happens, New York City rental law is almost entirely controlled by the state — a system in place since the 1970s.

A recent Patch investigation showed current rent laws under Cuomo are allowing, even encouraging, NYC slumlords to plunder what's left of the city's affordable housing stock and make tenants' lives hell in the process.

In interviews for the story, housing attorneys and industry experts said Cuomo — the state's No. 1 recipient of real-estate campaign cash — has done little in his six years as governor to disrupt decades-old laws permitting and encouraging this kind of behavior among building owners.

He's also doubled down on tax breaks for developers.

Just this spring, Cuomo revived a much-derided tax break called 421a. The program costs taxpayers more than $1 billion per year, and has reportedly been taken advantage of by developers who aren't actually building new affordable units. (Even NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio called it “a giveaway to developers.”)

The governor "claims he's doing stuff for press conferences that give him a positive spin, but often what he does is so little, or doesn't really go to benefitting tenants," said Roseboro, one of the Cuomoville planners.

Cuomo held his latest pro-tenant press conference on May 18. At the event, he revealed a new, $20 billion plan to "combat homelessness and create affordable housing for all New Yorkers." Half the $20 billion will go toward 110,000 new affordable housing units for low-income residents, Cuomo promised, and the other half toward 6,000 new units for the city's growing homeless population.

NYC housing watchdogs are still waiting to see whether Cuomo's new plan will make a difference.

But Roseboro with New York Communities for Change said he sees it as "too little, too late."

"Homelessness has gone up since he's been governor," Roseboro said of Cuomo. "We want to highlight the difference — where things were when he came into office, and where they are now."

"He should be ashamed of what's happened," the activist said, "and of trying to suggest he's done more."

Photos via Alliance for Tenant Power/Facebook