Top photo by EVG
All other photos courtesy of Jeff Rae
ICYMI: Tenants at 109 E. Ninth St. are claiming a rare win in their ongoing fight with their landlord.
According to city officials, landlord Michael Geylik has been found to have harassed tenants — prompting officials to revoke his Certificate of No Harassment (CONH), an unusual step typically reserved for more serious cases.
At a March 24 press conference outside the building between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue, City Council Member Harvey Epstein and Assemblymember Deborah Glick's office, as well as the Cooper Square Committee and Take Root Justice, joined tenants in calling attention to the decision and pushing for the restoration of essential services, including shared bathrooms, kitchen space and other basic building functions.
As first reported by Hell Gate, the remaining six tenants in the longtime single-room occupancy (SRO) building — some paying as little as $155 a month — have said the landlord removed communal bathrooms, showers and a kitchen after buying the property in 2021 with the promise of rebuilding them. Those amenities were never restored.
The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development ultimately determined there was sufficient evidence of harassment to revoke the CONH, a move that could help tenants remain in their homes and compel the landlord to make repairs.
Tenants and advocates are now calling for the return of all essential services, completion of repairs, and an end to eviction proceedings against current residents.
11 comments:
$155 a month in rent?
I assume the landlord will just declare bankruptcy. I don't see how he can afford to pay for any of these renovations (even if he likely removed them all in a scummy bid to force the existing tenants to move).
lol I was like how could the city even let this happen? then a quick google search and all the facts and omg......what a joke.... the city told the landlord to fix violations, he did, and then he got f***** hahahaha welcome to ny, where following rules and regulations gets you headlines like this. ehhh
You can’t find $155 rent in Bismarck, North Dakota. This is ridiculous. Every single economist left, right, center agrees rent control is bad policy. Look at Buenos Aires after they got rid of them. Night and day.
How funny of an example. I actually was in Bismarck ND, twice! I love the western attire store there.
So in a story about a scumbag landlord, a city that takes the better part of a decade to enforce the laws, and a person living in an SRO with shared kitchen and bathroom (but not for the last six years), you think the latter is the issue…
That building used to be the home of the Pageant Book and Print Shop.
14 apartments and two toilets? I’d say $155 is about right
Had no idea it’s an SRO building. I think the commercial space is for a realty business.
No one buys a SRO building thinking they’re going to make money, unless their plan is to remove all the SRO tenants. And I guess they don’t do fat buyouts—just terrible harassments.
Do you think the landlord spent millions of dollars to buy an SRO building to keep it as an SRO? It was proven in court he harassed the tenants by taking away the kitchen/restrooms/shower under a false premise of DOB violations. The OATH judge's verdict states that the landlord failed to present any credible evidence that he removed the kitchen/restrooms/shower due to DOB violations, despite his claims. The judge concluded that he removed it all to harass tenants in order to influence them to move out. Furthermore, he can afford renovations and proposed a large construction plan, but his goal was to clear out the building in order to redevelop and profit from the ordeal. He bought the building with predatory intentions, but it didn't quite work out as planned. It sucks to suck.
The OATH judge found no credible evidence that the landlord removed the kitchen/restrooms/shower in order to clear DOB violations, as he continues to claim. If there was ever a time for the landlord to prove it, that trial would be the time and place. He still spreads this misinformation, but the judge concluded he removed it all to harass tenants.
Yes exactly!
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