New law benefits senior cooperators.

After seven years of campaigning, a new State law will allow tax assessing units the ability to abate a portion of the property taxes payable by low-income senior citizens from their co-op maintenance payments. By adopting this measure, the local assessing units can bring these cooperators to a parity with single-family homeowners and condominium owners who have always qualified for these abatements.

"It is a tremendous victory for senior citizens," said Charles R. Rappaport, a senior citizen cooperator who heads the Federation of New York Cooperatives. "We thank all of the legislators involved on both sides of the house in getting this important legislation, Chapter 410 of the laws of 1995, passed."

Rappaport has long complained that while low-income homeowners and condo owners could receive abatements on a percentage of their real estate taxes and even renters could be exempted from a portion of their rents, senior citizen cooperative shareholders did not qualify for any help unless they resided in Mitchell-Lamas, where they could obtain SCRIE.

"Although I was looking for SCRIE, [the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption] the best I could get was the abatement," Rapport said. "It may be a loaf or a half of one."

While SCRIE only applies to future increases in rent and the income limits are approximately $16,500, the new measure would apply to a portion of current real estate taxes and the qualifying income ranges up into the mid-$20,000 mark. "So if the percentage tax goes up, this will go up," explained Rappaport. "For the lower income senior citizen it will be much better."

The benefit for these seniors will be a proportionate reduction in the portion of their co-op carrying charges that represents real estate taxes.

Rappaport said the formula for determining their share of the real estate taxes to which the abatement will apply is the proportionate percentage of their shares to the total number of shares outstanding in the cooperative.

"So if their shares represent three percent, you would use three percent to find the amount of real estate taxes as the abatement," he said. "It is skewed as for private homes from a low of 10 percent to a high of 45 or 50 percent."

Each cooperative's overall real estate taxes will be then reduced dollar for dollar by the amount of the abatement.

But it is the adoption feature that has forced Rappaport to ask others to continue his long-fought campaign for equity. Because each municipality must pass a law to opt into the program, Rappaport has turned his attentions from members of the State legislature to asking other people to contact their own numerous local officials and school districts.