Edition: U.S. / Global

Property-Tax Breaks for the Elderly

Published: December 1, 1991
(Page 3 of 3)

Despite a decline in the number of participants -- there were 54,000 senior citizens in the Scrie program in 1985, the city has seen its bill for this benefit rise from $43 million in 1985 to the current $52 million. The higher costs result from efforts to broaden the scope to increase eligibility by rasing the income limits. Since 1987, the income ceiling has gone from $12,025 to its current $15,000.

The mechanism allows landlords of apartments with certified Scrie tenants to deduct from the property-tax bills the increases tenants would pay without the Scrie benefit. Changes in the procedures require the city to make cash reimbursements rather than credits to building owners where Scrie payments exceed the taxes owed. Many landlords complain bitterly that modifications made several years ago which were designed to speed reimbursement and streamline the paperwork have not worked.

"In theory, it is a beautiful way to help the city's older people," said Harley Brooks Hutchings, who owns 160 units of low-income housing in buildings on 110th, 111th and 112th Streets in East Harlem. "But the city's bureaucratic ineptness has kept it from working the way it is supposed to and in turn put the burden on the building owners."

Ms. Hutchings said that it took her a year of fighting City Hall to straighten out an erroneous classification of her building as tax delinquent. Not only did the mistake threaten her status with the bank holding the mortgage, she said, but it also led to thousands of dollars in interest charges from the city on her "delinquent" tax bill.

As the law allowed, she had been deducting the rent increases of the Scrie- certified tenants from the taxes owed. But the city's records failed to reflect the accurate number of Scrie tenants.

"THE city kept sending me notices of tax delinquency and bills for interest payments," she said. "I kept sending them photocopies of my tenants' Scrie certificates."

Finally, with the help of someone on the inside, she was able to straighten out the records on the number of Scrie tenants and have the interest charges removed.

Another owner, who declined to be named rather than raise the ire of city officials said he is owed a $32,000 tax refund for rent income lost as a result of the Scrie program.

"I have been communicating with the agency by mail and by telephone since February of 1990 to see if we can work this out," he said. "My older tenants need and deserve some help. But at the same time I deserve to be reimbursed in a reasonable amount of time."