BY EILEEN STUKANE | Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and a Lower East Side-based tenants coalition have a message for property owners who try to drive out rent-regulated tenants by doing renovations without required protections on notice: “We’re onto you!”
On Tues., Jan. 10, Brewer teamed up with the Stand for Tenant Safety tenants’ rights / legal services coalition to co-sponsor a jam-packed town hall meeting about “construction as harassment” at the Municipal Building at 1 Centre St.
The frustration in the room full of a few hundred people was palpable. It was mostly directed at the Department of Buildings for what critics said was its lack of interest in changing its culture. Brandon Kielbasa of S.T.S. asked for examples of construction as harassment from the audience.
Many of the issues expressed had been heard before and are ongoing. Audience members spoke of gas shutoffs, front doors and windows being removed, jackhammering causing cracks in and the collapse of drywall, and toxic dust in the air.
A number of people mentioned D.O.B.’s self-certification process and how it can be abused by unscrupulous landlords. Through self-certification, a building can acquire a permit based on a false statement that it is “unoccupied” when it is indeed “occupied” and requires a Tenant Protection Plan, or T.P.P. As reported last year in Chelsea Now, a sister paper of The Villager, Brewer said she was appalled by the frequent gas shutoffs initiated by landlords who seemed to have no concern about creating hazardous conditions in people’s homes. The B.P. took action by contacting Con Edison, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the commissioners of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, D.O.B., Homes and Community Renewal, and the New York Public Service Commission.
Twenty elected officials were also co-sponsors of the town hall. Ten others sent representatives. Working in cooperation with S.T.S., 11 councilmembers who were among the town hall co-sponsors are involved in shepherding a package of 12 tenant-protection bills into law. These bills would force D.O.B. to overhaul its penalty system for violations, and to take on more oversight of T.P.P.’s and the issuing of permits.
Kielbasa spoke about construction as harassment being used mainly against rent-regulated tenants.
“The landlords create an unsafe space around you under the guise of construction work and say, ‘This isn’t our fault. We’re trying to do this as fast as we can,’” he said. “A landlord will buy a building and chase out as many rent-regulated tenants as he can through lawsuits and buyouts. This is the acquisition stage of ownership,” he said.
“Then they transition quickly to the renovation stage, where they use construction as harassment to lean on tenants who know their rights and understand the importance of having their rent-regulated apartments.”
Kielbasa further explained that this “violent and tormenting” form of harassment may last from three months to a year, depending on the extent of construction, until the landlord moves into the marketing phase of moving in new market-rate tenants.
A panel of activists was ready to offer ideas and counsel to the community. They included Yonatan Tadele, an organizer for the Cooper Square Committee; Marti Weithman, a supervising attorney for MFY Legal Services, Inc.; Kerri White, director of organizing, policy and research at Urban Homesteading Assistance Board; and George Tzannes, a Lower East Side / East Village tenant leader.
Henry Dembrowski, a Soho resident who was subject to long-term construction as harassment by his landlord, Marolda Properties, recalled coming home early one morning to 57 Spring St., only to find the building’s front door locked. He could only get into his apartment through the basement access of the bakery next door, climbing up the fire escape in the back of the building, and entering through one of his windows. That was just the beginning. What followed was a loss of power for 10 days, the installation of pipes that went on all night and collapsed a wall, and holes poked in his ceiling and walls.
Dembrowski’s advice was simple: “Organize,” he said, and warned against trying to take on the landlord alone, because there is much more power in a group. When Dembrowski began speaking with his neighbors, he was able to create a coalition of buildings in the neighborhood. Eventually, he prevailed in H.P.D. court.
“Construction as harassment is a poison in our city and we need to group together and work together, through legislation and bills,” he said.
Holly Slayton, an East Villager, spoke about the Toledano Tenants Coalition — of which she is a member — that has organized to fight Toledano’s Brookhill Properties.
“They pushed out my business and 21 of 24 businesses in the neighborhood,” Slayton said of Brookhill. “Three of the buildings have dust issues, and my doctor advised me and my daughter to wear dust masks in our own apartment.”
She explained that Healthy Homes, part of the state Department of Health, finally came and took a lead dust sample.
“D.O.B. has a billion dollars in fines due to them,” Slayton said. “They need to put liens on these buildings; take some action. And it is up to us to speak out.”
She encouraged everyone to sign contact information cards so they could be part of ongoing activism.
Rolando Guzman, deputy director of community preservation at St. Nicks Alliance in Brooklyn, gave an update on the 12-bill package — which he dubbed a “Legislative Platform to Reform D.O.B.” — currently working its way through the City Council. He noted that the first bill on the list would require D.O.B. to inspect at-risk buildings instead of allowing for self-certification, which is a prevalent complaint among tenants. More information on the 12-bill package can be found on the S.T.S. Web site: standfortenantsafety.com/sts-dob-platform.
Guzman explained that the 12 bills were introduced to the City Council in September 2015. The bills first go to the Council’s Housing Committee where they are given hearings. If approved at the committee level, the bills go to the full Council for a vote. If the Council gives the go-ahead, the bills go to the Mayor’s Office to be signed into law. So far, seven of the bills have had hearings at the committee level.
“We are working with some councilmembers to have hearings on the remaining five bills,” Guzman said, “and we hope that within the next month they should be voted on and passed.”
Loraine Brown, co-chairperson of Community Board 8’s Housing Committee, told this reporter of a historic gathering of all 12 Manhattan community boards, to which the public is invited.
“We’re convening all Manhattan community boards, the Land Use and Housing Committee members, to meet and discuss the affordable housing program,” Brown said. “We want to come together to create guidelines that we can all use, and to develop the ‘ask’ — what we ask of developers in terms of permanent affordable housing versus temporary, and keeping the 421a units in our borough.”
The gathering will be Tues., Jan. 31, 6:30 p.m. at the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center, at 415 E. 93rd St.
