BRONX NEWS: Co-op City’s $621M HUD Mortgage Will Add to ‘Housing-Project Mentality’ -Critics Say

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Co-op City’s $621M HUD Mortgage Will Add to ‘Housing-Project Mentality’ -Critics Say

‘I see a continuing downward spiral in this community's quality of life.’

By Michael Horowitz

BRONX, NEW YORK, December 1- Saying that Co-op City is already run like a New York City housing project, civic activist Frank Belcher said, this week, that the HUD-insured mortgage will accentuate this unfortunate trend.

“There's a lack of pride in the community that is pervasive in Co-op City,” Belcher stressed. “Those of us who are Co-op City shareholders have a right to be treated like shareholders, rather than the way the people in management treat us.”

Belcher added, “We already have too many lowlifes in Co-op City. I don't know how some of the people I see around the community could have qualified as shareholders in this community.”

The civic activist stressed, “With the involvement of HUD in Co-op City's affairs, I foresee a further decline in the quality of people we have living in Co-op City. With the HUD mortgage about to become a reality, I see a continuing downward spiral in this community's quality of life.”

Belcher noted, “I didn't pay for my apartment in Co-op City to live in a federal housing project. From my perspective, Co-op City is on its way to becoming the federal housing project that I would never knowingly choose as the place in which I would want to live.”

The civic activist emphasized that as far as he is concerned, the members of the Riverbay board of directors and top management officials, led by Herbert Freedman and Riverbay Executive General Manager Vernon Cooper, are responsible for the community's precipitous decline over the course of the last decade.