The tenant-landlord drama continues at 170-174 E. Second St., the site of two walk-ups that developer/New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner picked up during his East Village buying spree.
Last night, CB3's Land Use, Zoning, Public & Private Housing Committee heard firsthand about allegations of tenant harassment and quality-of-life issues brought on by gut renovations.
Ahead of this meeting, The Real Deal and DNAinfo filed lengthy articles outlining what is happening now in the buildings.
DNAinfo put it this way:
Real estate scion Jared Kushner is using lawsuits, disruptive construction and neglect to force rent-stabilized tenants out of two buildings he owns in the East Village, as he converts them to high-end apartments, according to court documents and residents.
After the deal for the buildings was complete, Kushner's Westminster Management began handing out 30-day eviction notices, followed by buyout offers, tenants told DNAinfo's Lisha Arino. To date, tenants in just 11 of the 43 units in the two buildings remain.
Per The Real Deal:
[T]he Kushner ownership entity has also aggressively turned to the courts. Since acquiring the buildings, they filed suits in New York’s Housing Court against tenants in seven apartments among the 43.
Some have resulted in tenants vacating, while other residents have fought back.
According to The Real Deal, the average monthly rent per apartment was around $2,000 last fall. Today, StreetEasy shows nine active rental listings, gut-renovated apartments with an average price of $3,987 per unit.
As for those renovations, NYC's Housing Preservation and Development agency has issued 34 violations, which remain active. ("Eight of them are for the most dangerous kind of violation — for instance for repairs to a stone retainer wall — which are supposed to be repaired within days, but remain on the HPD website weeks after they were issued," according to The Real Deal.)
However, in the estimation of Westminster, all is well here! Nothing to see! They released this statement to DNAinfo:
"In the six months since Westminster has managed the building, they have been in frequent contact with the building's residents, been consistently responsive to their concerns, and have quickly sought to address them."
Updated 7:55 a.m.
The Daily News files a Kushner-is-bad-landlord story today too. Quite a headline: Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner forcing residents out of East Village building so he can get higher rents: tenants
Previously on EV Grieve:
Inside a classic East Village tenement before the whole building is renovated
Jared Kushner not done buying every walk-up in the East Village
Two East 2nd St. buildings sell for $17.5 million; will new owner still honor Allen Ginsburg?
Tenants claim: Kushner and Westminster want to destroy this building's beautiful garden
28 comments:
Why doesn't he just offer them massive buyouts? Money talks.
I would be humiliated to be married to a Trump. Donald is a racist shitbag and the daughter is made of plastic.
I get sick every time I walk by Kushner's Westminster rental office on East 12th Street. They've always got a sign outside advertising their walkups and I think of the people who were shoved out of these walkups so this guy can make even more money.
What a parasite he is. The way he is fucking with these people is just evil. There's a toasty spot in hell for Kushner
They did offer buyouts and some people took them. This story doesn't begin to detail the harassment these tenants have faced. And the idea that Westminster is addressing their concerns is a simple lie. They never fix anything. These tenants have court orders and they are being ignored.
One tenant in a different building -- new tenant, market rate, stupidly moved into an apartment with mold, got it written into their lease that it would be cleaned. Months later, no action. Standing water in public spaces, rats galore, leaking roofs, holes in the walls, you name it, it's not repaired. And let's not even start about the super who is responsible for ALL the buildings himself, I think he is up to 20 buildings by now.
I am completely with all previous comments. Now, avid and mildly adorable commentator's, DT and his spawn are in the pocket of outside US money. WE need to be very careful about who we elect to office(as in what the fu** were you thinking about Bloomsday?)If you love this city, if you want this city to stay unique, please pay attention! Im begging you.
OK, nice posters, you can change this! You may be a 20 yr old from who knows where. BUT, you can hang on to one part of YOUR country's individualism. The awful spawn of hippie boomers are not where its at, you are! Read "The Places You Will Go " by DR Suess.
They really want to be 60 blocks north anyway.
There is a video of his wife's mom in her previous profession. Check it out , you have all been had by the best Volvo driving soccer mom ever. Thanks for being so alert in saving our city. The free slupee is at the bridge.
Begging you. I actually like the Gen X kids, please stop the awful , status seeking boomer spawn from ruining our nice pocket of hope.
Please learn the difference between commenting and posting.
I'm curious as to when Kushner will finally build a real entryway into 500 East 11th Street.The original nice old doorway was completely demolished to make room for that lovely (hairball cough) aluminum siding on the 7-11, and the tiny replacement stoop his crew build out of 2 x 4's and a piece of shabby outdoor carpeting has been there for well over a year. No handrail, no permanence, just eyesore. Typical slumlord scumbag.
Kid is trying to attain megadouche status. It's unfortunate, but what you gonna do. It is his destiny, the kid was probably groomed his whole life for exactly this, to become this, stereotypically evil real estate baron. He does not know any other way to be, I am guessing.
I said MASSIVE buyouts. Not 25K. Not 40K. Get to 100K minimum and maybe people will walk. The Kushner-Trumps will still have plenty left for nose jobs and racist full-page ads.
What can these tenants do? They can use social media and the media to expose Kushner and/or take him to Housing Court. If they're successful in court, the judge can impose civil penalties from $1,000 to $5,000. $1,000 to $5,000 amounts to big fucking whoop. Bloomberg and Quinn are gone. It's time for the city to get serious about bad landlords like Kushner. The Rent Stabilization Association will go ballistic, but members like Kushner have brought it on themselves.
News stories like this show up quite often concerning the East Village unfortunately one name that never seems to show up in any of them is Councilwoman Rosie Mendez. You would think that she would be on the frontlines against this type of abuse, but she always seems to be MIA. Why ?
Meanwhile, Kusher's/7-Eleven's illegal AC and refrigeration units are droning away forcing tenants from the bedrooms of the apartments they rent from him. He's an abuser.
The problem is the criminal, statist rent laws, which criminally prevent building owners from negotiating market contracts with renters. Specifically it's the security of tenure statutes passed by the Soviet-style politburo at Albany. In every other state satrapy, even the PR of California, a landlord can state in a rental contract that it ends after a certain time, and doesn't have to renew.
Problem solved. In this case, no harassment would occur, as the tenants would move out after it ended, if the owner wanted to do something else with the property.
Bill the libertarian and free market anarchist currently residing in the Union of Soviet Socialist Boros, USSB.
Death to rent control!
$100,000 is not an unusual buyout offer. They could get it but if you are broke it's not enough.
Mr Penley - I found Rosie's office to be very responsive - you might make a civil inquiry just to see how they reply.
Mr Grump what exactly did her office do about it ? These kind of things happen over and over for years so they can't be doing much. Personally, I experienced the same on East 3rd St and sure they were sympathetic but they did nothing to stop the abuse. In my opinion, much of this borders on criminal behavior so why not explose legislation to criminalize it ? I also mentioned Rosie herself not her staff and has she visited the building to talk to the residents ? Other polticians came to my 3rd st. building but Rosie never did.
Bill the libertarian and free market anarchist
Another case where ideology trumps common sense.
The rent regulation laws are archaic and anti free market. Only in NYC is an owner forced to rent his property at below market rates and then be subject to ever rising taxes, water fines etc. and some people want an owner to cough up 100k or more to get them out of a property the landlord legally owns. Nice system. Its easy to be a bleeding heart liberal when it's someone else's money I guess.
The average buy out seems to be $1000 per year; so you are offered 30K for living here when this nabe was worse off & 30K taxed doesn't give you much left over to do with.
I've never heard of 100K buy outs, would be nice but unrealistic unless you are the very last tenants in a building that the landlord wants out to gut reno or tear down a building. and is tired of fighting which is rare. Guess it also depends what streets the buildings are on, living on St. Marks Hell with a crustie encampent between the two Joes Pizza why would anyone want to live in the front of the buildings?
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I wonder if Rent Controlled tenants have more or less protections than RS? My mom has been here 45+ years and she says she won't leave for less than 150K... I just smile and say 'sure mom, maybe'
In answer to Mr Penley - Sonar Gobi had a exhaust motor at ground level blasting fumes into our apartments. I couldn't get DOB to look at it. I contacted Rosie and her office made a call, within a week Sonar Gobi had put in an exhaust pipe to the roof. I wouldn't expect her to personally deal with every problem sent to her office, but I found her staff helpful. I'm just saying, maybe no one has reached out to her. And to the free market people, start with stocks where the Supreme Court has decreed companies must put the needs of stockholders first before customers or employees. Why shouldnt' companies be allowed to decide themselves? There is no free market. I never hear the libs(ertarians) complaining about this. Its always housing, things that help poor people.
HOW can this piece of shit refuse to renew leases in NYC?????
WHERE is the tenant solidarity? No tenant association? It's that every-person-for-themselves mentality looking for the big pay-out that enables SCUM like Trump, Macklowe, Shoal and Kushner (their money comes from Russian + Chinese investors) to succeed in emptying apt. buildings.
If the city did not facilitate them, real estate parasites (who always get the services they've paid their politicians for) would not have been able to hyper-gentrify NYC over the past 20 years in order to change the demographics of this city for the benefit of monied transients....
I am one of his tenants in another building. Our rent also increased drastically after living there for years and being model tenants. We were forced to renew due to the timing of the lease and our current situation. This is despite the fact that the interior is complete shit (and I am in a renovated unit). Everything is cheap and looks like it came from an Ikea catalog. Bad painting, cheap flooring masquerading as hardwood, faucets that were installed loose/do not fit the sinks, windows that don't fully fit in their frame, I can go on and on. And I pay "market value".
It is my opinion that he is hell bent on ruining the neighborhood and filling it with rich students sharing one bedroom apartments (average age of my building went from 30+ to under 25 in about two years). They will rent a unit for one year, get priced out, then he can increase the rent again. Seen this time and time again in my building.
Meanwhile he will hire more shady contractors who will brazenly be in violation of multiple construction ordinances to build another high-rent, generic storefront for another bland chain franchise just like his Avenue A property.
The neighborhood needs to really organize against this man. Not just because of rent control, but because he owns so much of the area and does nothing but try to destroy it's character.
Theres no more time for diologue. If you want to protect this city from gentrification, its gonna take physical force.
Anonymous 7/10 10:38 is right. The time has come to lash out blindly!
http://instagram.com/ivankatrump
just because..
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