Sunday, July 27, 2014

Sound Familiar?

On the TA Facebook a link was posted to an article about a multi-millionaire landlord possibly using illegal tactics to get out his rent-stabilized tenants from apartments he wants to turn into market rate paying ones. The state attorney is investigating.

What I found of interest is one of the comments on that story:

Same thing is happening in my building. Landlord is converting studio apartments into 2 or 3 bedrooms & 2 bedroom apts. into 4 bedroom apartments. Quadrupling the rent & renting to Columbia students. This can't be legal & has to stop.
 "Same thing is happening in my building. Landlord is converting studio apartments into 2 or 3 bedrooms & 2 bedroom apts. into 4 bedroom apartments. Quadrupling the rent & renting to Columbia students. This can't be legal & has to stop."
Same thing is happening in my building. Landlord is converting studio apartments into 2 or 3 bedrooms & 2 bedroom apts. into 4 bedroom apartments. Quadrupling the rent & renting to Columbia students. This can't be legal & has to stop.
Same thing is happening in my building. Landlord is converting studio apartments into 2 or 3 bedrooms & 2 bedroom apts. into 4 bedroom apartments. Quadrupling the rent & renting to Columbia students. This can't be legal & has to stop.

Same thing is happening in my building. Landlord is converting studio apartments into 2 or 3 bedrooms & 2 bedroom apts. into 4 bedroom apartments. Quadrupling the rent & renting to Columbia students. This can't be legal & has to stop.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is happening all over New York City. Tishman Speyer purchased PCVST for far more than it was worth and then tried to force older tenants out. They succeeded in some cases, mostly because those tenants didn't have the means to fight back. I acknowledge that TS didn't go as far as the dirtbag in the current article in the NYDN, but I suspect that that was only because they were too high profile a name and would have drawn unwanted publicity to themselves.
It's no wonder that Cuomo stopped the Moreland Commission in its tracks when it came to giving up the info on his connections to the REBNY and The Committee to Save New York. The latter is chaired, I believe, by Scumbag Speyer.

Anonymous said...

But it is legal. Students have a right to live here too.

Anonymous said...

If landlords and Universities are colluding to evict rent stabilized tenants city wide then the DOB and DHCR should either catch and stop it or they are turning a willful blind eye or colluding. It couldn't happen without their knowledge. There should be general rules against wall partitions in RS apartments - by tenants and by landlords. Neither are putting in wall partitions for good reasons, only for bad deeds. DOB needs to reassess their practices on wall partitions ASAP. Just WOW.

Tommyboyardee said...

Horrible

Anonymous said...

In December 2000, the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal revised the Rent Stabilization Code, limiting the amount a rent-stabilized tenant can charge a roommate to a proportionate share of the rent.

DHCR has rules on tenant's allowance of roommates and rents but not on landlord's allowance to house roommates in rent stabilized apartments? This has been going on for how long? Dorm leases with universities housing unlimited revolving door of student roommates in rent stabilized apartments and DHCR has done nothing about this for decades? Guterman is right - the dormitizing on a large scale here is the time and place push back to end this for all NYC (but with different lawyers than used on Roberts!).

Anonymous said...

DHCR and DOB who? lol lol. All a sham. You can call, visit, they pretty much laugh in your face if you're a tenant. Now landlords, they have lunch with, they go in the back of the offices, they shake hands, smile.
Yes, btdt. Many times.

Anonymous said...

2:43
"But it is legal. Students have a right to live here too."

That is seriously misguided.

This is not the student's fault so don't imply students are the cause, to blame, or their rights are being violated when residents and communities oppose immoral, unethical, illegal leasing practices.

The long list of immoral, unethical illegal acts by NYU in this decade alone is nothing less than astonishing - high tuition on overburdened students, oppression of and paycuts to professors while astonishingly expensive perks to those at the top, land grabs destroying communities, apartments to NYU head's kids during a student and professor housing shortage, a decade of millions $ in shady real estate loans, a campus built by engaging in human rights violations, purposefully creating a fire and safety hazardous situation with thousands of wall partitioned apartments and increased population where we are raising our kids, etc

The business deals by NYU is the problem and one of the biggest violators of resident rights in NYC.

This is not about whether the students have a right to live here and you know that. You are trying to incite a battle that does not exist.

This is about NYU leaders violating others rights.

Troubling, when you read of vast NYU transgressions, more troubling they use the ridiculous excuse of "we have to do what we do to remain competitive" - One of the most undesirable of insecurity traits is the entity who is always comparing themselves to others instead of being them self.

As for students loud parties - that is why students and grown ups should not live in the same community. Students and Grown ups are in different life stages each doing what they do. The mixing of these two disparate communities (student / grown up) is orchestrated by adults who are trying to cheat the system.

Students party - that's what we do. Grown ups raise kids and work full time jobs - that's what they do. The two communities should not be mixed so closely together as they have here.

Anonymous said...

This housing of these students is pure B.S. Where is the T.A.? HELLO?

Anonymous said...

1:09 agree. Governor vote will be difficult to decide this year. Disappointed in Cuomo and Astorino too. Cuomo if he interfered and Astorino for his self-serving focus on Cuomo with no attention or calls for furthering the Moreland findings on , REBNY, campaign contributions, and that media company.

The People need those findings - maybe we can count on Mr Bharara to get to the bottom of the REBNY dealings that are tearing apart New Yorkers lives for the almighty dollar.

Anonymous said...

RE; STUY PCV

There is no tenant here associated with media i.e.: CBS NBC, etc etc who wishes to expose the illegal charges being forced upon unsuspecting tenants? Really?

Anonymous said...

"I know of a tenant here who had their mail regularly photographed and the financial bank documents stolen from their mailbox."

Was this done under the TS Reign of Terror? The same rabid dog (Fred Knap) that TS hired is now working for CW.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the students, professors, and community should get together and save NYU from its current course that is wreaking havoc on everyone under this unjust-self-enrichment Sexton et al leadership.

Anonymous said...

The West Village is synonymous with Civil Rights and Civil Rights Movements. We cannot let an NYU blank check from some of the world's worse human rights violators build here.

The East PCVST is synonymous with Middle Class Community. We cannot let an illegal NYU scheme turn a "community" into three equal size "housing" segments - dorms, affordable middle class, unaffordable middle class.

Anonymous said...

Bring back Al Doyle! Drain the Marsh!

Anonymous said...

Tishman, Croman, CW Capital etc. all use and abuse the vacancy decontrol law that was pushed through in the early 90s by Anthony Weiner and other supposedly pro-tenant members of the City Council. Vacancy decontrol changed the whole rent stabilization program by allowing owners to jack up rents faster when apartments became vacant.

First landlords started hiring goons to harass tenants and force them out, or hired investigators to claim they had another primary address in order to file phony cases in housing court. But the new tenants that replaced the old tenants stayed around too long, and landlords wanted to raise rents even faster. That problem was solved by the booming student population which gave them a way to turn apartments over every year, escalating rents faster and eventually pushing apartments out of rent stabilization.

One way to fix this is to rewrite the vacancy decontrol law, either elimintaing it or restricting it in the case of student tenants. If landlords could no longer use vacancy decontrol to increase rents on all the apartments occupied by students they would have less of an incentive to rent to students and more incentive to rent to regulr long-term tenanats.

Anonymous said...

FOR THE RECORD - why isn't anyone ever checking the tennis court in peter cooper for key cards? There are a group of grown men who play there every day, twice a day who don't live here - we know for fact. We can never get on and play - we are tenants and they're very rude as well.

Who do we call to check on this?????

Stuy Town Reporter said...

Call Public Safety and keep at it.

Anonymous said...

Maybe MetLife will purchase this place back. They sold high and can buy back at a low price. At least they knew how to run this place!

Anonymous said...

Calling PS (i'm not poster) does little. You have to be there to report that someone doesn't 'live' there. Dangerous since they'll know it's you and you know.

Tell your landlord you won't pay your rent until you get the services you are paying for.

Anonymous said...

Calling PS (i'm not poster) does little. You have to be there to report that someone doesn't 'live' there. Dangerous since they'll know it's you and you know.

Tell your landlord you won't pay your rent until you get the services you are paying for.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, the tennis guys near building 5 pet coop road... Half the time used by men who don't live here. They like to say they're with so and so who live here. Have completely taken over the courts most days. ST should require ALL players to be tenants.

Anonymous said...

5 PC RD tennis issue. If none of them have ID's, call PS, you should not care if they know so and so (so called "guests"), that person should be with them. Otherwise, it's bogus.

Anonymous said...

9:09 that will only happen if we vote out those currently in office who are Spinola puppets and vote for real lawmakers who will change the vacancy decontrol law. Evidence shows landlords are abusing it as it is currently written - we just need a decent lawmaker in office who will write and push for a better vacancy law. We can't vote for those who have been in office the past 4 to 8 years because under their time in office we have had our homes threatened. We need to overhaul the pols with all new players because these guys have not done right by us. None of them have proposed new vacancy decontrol laws as they should have. Pretty brazen of Spinola to admit the payoffs.

Anonymous said...

Oh Verizon.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/30/fcc-verizon-wireless-speeds_n_5635607.html

dcf said...

Speaking of indecent landlords, this is off topic but don't ask CW to replace torn screens. My husband was give a quote of $215- for the bathroom screen and the Town and Village guy has them for $20-.

Anonymous said...

Have CALLED PS. I don't care if they know so and so. ?

Anonymous said...

IF THE TA wants my support on any issues going forward, they had better do something about these bogus charges in addition to my rent (MR) here and now. And the fact I'm paying too much for a/c monthly x 12 months a year.

Anonymous said...

"Speaking of indecent landlords, this is off topic but don't ask CW to replace torn screens. My husband was give a quote of $215- for the bathroom screen and the Town and Village guy has them for $20-."

I was told by management that it would cost $150 per screen to replace or fix mine in PCV. I removed them myself, purchased screen by the yard, spline (the stringy stuff that holds the screen in the frame), and a spline tool. Watched a couple of videos online, and for less than $25 I fixed three screens. BTW, management is warehousing screens in one of the PCV buildings--they have tons of them, all presumably paid for by tenants who have moved out.

Anonymous said...

The recreation dept. I don't know their phone number but offices are just to the left of Oval Cafe in T level of 3 Stuy Oval

Anonymous said...

Screens for RS tenants are $45.00 ea.
I'd go to T&V but how do you remove the screens?