The Indypendent e-news
February 8, 2008
Shitty landlord got you down? Lights out in the hallway? Non-payment notice posted on the door? You are not alone and now you have recourse of action.
The New York City Council’s Housing and Buildings committee held a hearing on Thursday Feb. 7 to discuss Intro 627-A – a tenant anti-harassment bill. Intro 627-A would be the first law on the City’s books to penalize harassment by allowing tenants to take owners to housing court by filing an “Order to Show Cause” and having a judge order the landlord to stop the behavior. The bill provides fines of between $1,000-5,000 for each apartment where harassment occurred and makes harassment a class “C” housing code violation.
The bill defines harassment as any act “intended to cause any person lawfully entitled to occupancy of a dwelling unit to vacate such dwelling unit or to surrender or waive any rights in relation to such occupancy.” Acts specifically penalized are using force or verbal threats against tenants, discontinuance of basic services, frivolous lawsuits, illegal lockouts and removing entrance doors to occupied buildings.
“My understanding is that this bill gives tenants an avenue,” Council member Robert Jackson said. Jackson represents parts of uptown Manhattan and cosponsored the bill, along with eastside Manhattan Council member Dan Garodnick and others. “This [bill] gives protections to tenants and landlords, and is a fair bill going forward.”
One and two family houses, co-ops and condos are to be exempted from the bill if it passes, and landlords can sue for legal fees for frivolous tenant initiated proceedings.
Harassing tenants can be economically beneficial to landlords, as they can clear tenants from their rent stabilized apartments. Once the stabilized tenants are gone, the landlord gets a 20% vacancy increase, plus 1/40 the cost of any renovations. When the rent goes above $2,000 per month and there’s a vacancy, the owner can deregulate the apartment and then the sky’s the limit for the rent and there are little tenant protections.
The Rent Stabilization Association, the landlord lobby, has campaigned hard against Intro 627-A. Using their financial muscle they were able to craft a watered down version of the harassment bill and get friendly council members to sponsor it. But an organized tenant movement made them pay. Sponsorship of the landlord-backed bill backfired for Bronx council members Maria Baez and Joel Rivera. In an excellent article by Village Voice writer Tom Robbins, Community Action for Safe Apartments organizer Jackie Del Valle (present at the hearing) recounts angry and organized tenants confronting Councilmember Baez over the perceived selling-out of tenant interests.
(See: Slumming for Landlords)
The landlord lobby has also circulated talking points that the anti-harassment bill would “clog the courts with frivolous lawsuits.” But City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court Executive Director Louise Seeley doesn’t think so. She pointed out that 98% of housing court lawsuits are landlord initiated, most tenants are not represented by attorneys in court and it’s landlords that often file frivolous suits to get rent stabilized tenants out.
“Emptying long standing tenants from buildings is a business plan,” Seeley said. “Tenants do not have the time and money to spend the day in housing court [over frivolous cases].”
Into 627-A is expected to pass on February 13 when it is up for vote despite opposition.
Comments
Many longtime neighbors in Stuyvesant Town are being harrassed. Assuming passage of 627-A, without material modifications, one question remains is: What role do individual law firms on retainers with large landlords including Tishman-Speyer play in tenant harrassment?
We have found that even with a singular client-landlord, the level of harrassment varies from firm to firm. One of the more outrageous firms, Belkin et alia, has gone after a 35-year tenant married couple based on the travelling nature of the husband's promoter job and investment properties in another state.
The plethora of non-renewal notices, including some taped to the tnenants' door, and several copies addressed to non-exixting Jane and John Doe's cite among other things - property that was disposed of over a decade ago; and another that was also disposed of more recently, by the husband. Totally ignored was the wife who documented a 20 plus year full-time work history at the neaby Veterans' Administration Hospital and other substantial proof of her continuing presence in the family's rent-stabilized marital/ family abode.
While Tishman has improved the amenities here subtantially, including the horticulture, holiday decorations and festivities, which are appreciated by virtually all of the tenants, stabilized and market rate alike, harrassment of 50% of tenants up for renewal is not justified by the identification and eviction of "illegal" tenants which we support.
We ask Tishman to rein in the lawyers who go overboard and listen and better assess the facts of a tenant's circumstance before attesting to sometimes too often trumped up verification or affidavit. This would go a long way to vastly improving the quality of life for the more elderly tenants while still allowing Tishman to weed out the illegals and recoup its subtantial investment as StuyTown transitions to a welathier, upper class community of market rate paying tenants.
"landlords can sue for legal fees for frivolous tenant initiated proceedings"
However, tenants cannot recover legal fees for successful cases against their landlords, unless that was already written into their leases.
Is this giveaway to landlords too much to swallow? I don't know, but somebody had to ask.
By the way, you cats should really find a better recording environment for sound cues like the one below. What was that, a party?
I know Belkin. They're one of the main--and slimiest--landlord law firms. When I lived on the Lower East Side in the late '80s, they represented my landlord when he put a crackhouse in the building and we went on rent strike. (One month I made out my rent check for $0.00, stapled an empty bag of heroin I'd found in the hall to it, and added a note "No rent until the front door lock is fixed.")
I sympathize with Granville's comment, but he's giving away too much to Tishman. Tishman spent a ridiculous amount of money for StuyTown in order to turn it into "a wealthier, upper-class community of market-rate paying tenants." Filing frivolous lawsuits against legitimate tenants is not about "lawyers who go overboard." It's part of that business model, which is far too common in the city.
We need home rule and a much larger tenant movement. We need stronger rent controls, genuinely affordable new housing, and much higher taxes on the rich.
Ink-stained wretch is right about giving too much away to Tishman. The attorneys there work for Tishman; those Belkin boys are like dogs on a leash and Tishman is the master. Harassing tenants is a business plan like the above poster and Louise Seeley have mentioned. Stuy Town tenants have always seen the world through middle class eyes and now they that they have a target on their backs, they are caught off guard. The middle class tenants don't know what to think and thus have the mistaken idea that its just the lawyers and not Tishman behind the lawsuits. In fact the poster had a positive view of Tishman! Wow, if I'm Tishman, I'd go as aggressive as possible against the middle class schmucks and knock 'em hard so that their heads are spinning. Get 'em out of their apartments and let 'em move into their summer houses permanently. All the while collecting the thousands more in rent.
I don't support this, but damnit, if middle class tenants don't get their heads on straight, forget about it. I know that the tenant association is doing what it can, but the TA president, Doyle is not interested in really fighting Tishman, just nuzzling up to politicians and wearing that stupid ass American flag pin on his $100 suits.
"$100 suits"?
Friend, I can only assume you haven't gone suit-shopping lately.
"The middle class tenants don’t know what to think and thus have the mistaken idea that its just the lawyers and not Tishman behind the lawsuits."
This kind of statement reminds me of when certain presidential candidates inveigh against lobbyists and "special interests" but refuse to utter the word "corporations" or "corporate power". Just as night follows day, lobbyists aren't corrupting Congress on their own initiative any more than these pit bull lawyers are acting without the full knowledge and approval of the company that has them on retainer, Tishman-Speyer.
Kudos to the author of this piece.
Previous Indy Coverage of Stuy Town
"Met Life to Stuy Tenants: Middle Class My Ass!"
http://www.indypendent.org/2006/09/21/met-life-to-stuy-tenants-middle-cl...
"Tenants Mobilize for Affordable Housing"
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/05/23/tenants-mobilize-for-affordable-ho...
My comment regarding the role of lawyers in harassing tenants in StuyTown was based on experience with several of my neighbors of 20-30 plus years. While several firms may be on retainer with Tishman-Speyer, the level of abuse of tenants seems to vary firm to firm and some attorneys stand out beyond the rest. The Belkin firm seems to be the worst.
Second, the Garodnick and similar legislative attempts to curb abuse of rent stabilized and rent controlled tenants did not appear to restrict the practice we have witnessed of law firms indiscriminately issuing notices of non-renewal with very little due diligence other than unchecked items from a database frequently about property used as a vacation home or the residence of a relative or estranged spouse. These lawyers try to justify their retainers and "rep" by moving on scanty information and by bludgeoning a tenant with an inordinate number of copies of the notice of non-renewal. Belkin adds to the harassment by acting as a debt collection agency for speculative amounts that may or may not become due on the eviction cases it handles based on the market rate rent not yet determined, which may not ever be established, so that it can create further stress.
Whether firm initiated or the policy of Tishman-Speyer, we should kvetch AND send specific instances of harassment to Council Member Garodnick's Office. We are all in this together and Al Doyle and the ST-PCV Tenants Association Board's effectiveness and strength is only derivative of the support of its members.
Add new comment