Here is a briefish description of NYC's landlord culture and ethics (CF. Donald Trump). It is a truncated version of a story in the Broadsheet, the daily e-paper of Battery Park City in lower Manhattan and an example of what many much larger towns/cities are losing when local coverage disappears.
Displaced
Residents of 85 Bowery, Still Homeless 13 Weeks Later, Find Belongings in Trash
The suffering
continues for tenants of 85 Bowery, who were driven from their homes on January
18, after inspectors from the City's Department of Buildings (DOB) determined
that an interior staircase in the building was unstable, and in danger of
collapsing. More than 75 residents of the building -- including 17 young
children and dozens of elderly residents -- have been living in hotels and
shelters ever since. On Wednesday, employees of the building's owner, Joseph
Betesh, began tossing the residents' belongings into a dumpster in front of 85
Bowery. [Local elected officials reacted with fury to this development. …..]
This is only the
most recent travail for residents of 85 Bowery, who had originally been told
they would return to their homes by mid-February. When repairs were not
completed by that deadline, the landlord promised the staircase would be
replaced by the end of February, and then by March 28. This project appears to
have been successfully completed by that third deadline, but while it was
underway, Mr. Betesh announced this his contractors had found asbestos in the
building, which required immediate remediation. This extended pushed back to
the end of April the deadline for moving displaced residents back into the
building. In the meantime, he decided to dump into a trash cart the belongings
those tenants had left behind. The reasons for this decision, or whether is was
even legal, were not immediately clear.
[more elected
official and City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD);
nothing happens ]
In 2013, Mr.
Betesh's firm, Milestone Equities, paid $62 million in cash for a portfolio of
11 apartment buildings on the Bowery, between Canal and Houston Streets. (In
addition to 85 Bowery, located half a block north of the Manhattan Bridge, he
bought the buildings at 83, 88, 103, 105, 219, 221, 262, 276, 280, and 284
Bowery.) Shortly after taking possession of 85 Bowery, Mr. Betesh began trying
to evict the 27 families who had lived there, in many cases, for decades.
It was at this
point, on January 18, that DOB inspectors showed up at 85 Bowery, examined the
staircase, and ordered everyone to vacate the premises immediately. Thirteen
weeks later, it remains unclear when -- or even whether -- residents of 85
Bowery will be able to return to their homes.
Story by Matthew Fenton
[Sorry, I can't get a link to the piece, but here is The Broadsheet's Home Page.]
A new simile enters the cliche list: As mean as a New York landlord. More proof Pope Francis isn't just a liberal dreamer when he says we need to pay attention to the people pushed out to the peripheries and treat them as, I don't know, children of God? Human beings?
ReplyDeleteNot just mean!... CRUEL!!! We may be in the midst of a Dickensian novel.
ReplyDeleteNice of the city's inspectors to go along so docilely with the master plan.
ReplyDeleteYes. My daughter for whom the Broadsheet is the local paper wrote and speculated about the role of housing inspectors declaring the stairway unsafe. A moment of careful inspection or someone's palm being greased?
DeleteYeah, who knows if it was a trumped up safety violation, or if it was all too convenient for the owner. I can imagine that in an older building there might be safety issues that needed to be brought up to code, but would they need to evict the residents to carry them out?
DeleteI recently read "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City". Or to be completely honest, I skimmed part of it. Because it was about 450 pages, and a lot of the stories seemed to repeat one another. Maybe that was the point; that it happens a lot. Landlording is big business, can't let a thing like someone losing the place they lived in get in the way of profits.
Do the ones whose possessions were dumped have any legal recourse?
Yes, read Evicted. Very repetitive and not all in favor of the evictees. But it does bring home the morass of inequality that flows from having no place to lay your head, go to the toilet, cook your dinner, or stay warm. We who have so much, must consider all that we have to share.
DeleteAs my brother and I liquidate my mother's estate, we've been approached by the jerk who owns a lot of rental properties in the area. The single mom who rents the house next door to Mom's lives in one of his places. If my brother decides not to live in the house, this discussion is making me think about trying to see if we can swing a sale to this gal--get her out from under the landlord and see that the family home stays out of the hands of that landlord gink.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I had missed that your mother passed away. I'm so sorry for your loss.
DeleteMe too. I'm sorry to hear that, Jean.
DeleteRIP, Mrs..... (Jean's Mom).
Deletesorry as well, Jean.
DeleteShe got pneumonia last Thursday. They told us she was doing OK and would be discharged Monday. My brother talked to her at 3 p.m. Saturday, and she was tired but griping about her heart-healthy diet. She wanted a damn pizza. With pepperoni. A couple hours later, they called to tell me to get up there. She was largely unresponsive and died about 45 minutes later. She called her own shots, avoided having to go to "the home," and she went fast on the good dope. And now I am in the odd position of planning a Unitarian memorial service. Prayers for the repose of her soul are much appreciated. Her name was Sara. God will know who you mean. She's the one looking for the pepperoni pizza.
DeleteGetting that lady out of the landlord's property and toward owning your mother's home would be a lovely tribute to your mother. It might also get you the George Bailey Award.
DeleteIt all depends on how much of a cut out of the inheritance my sister-in-law is willing to take. I doubt she is George Bailey Award material, but I'm willing to throw it out there and let her surprise me.
DeleteWe'll just have to pray to St. George. Funny how the most Spirit of the New Deal movie ever made had George Bailey played by a lifelong Republican, Jimmy Stewart. As for that pepperoni pizza, I really don't get why they torment old people with these proscriptions. If I make it to my 80's which is probable, I don't intend to kill myself trying to live forever.
Delete30 years ago, my coworker friend and I were sharing an apartment in Hackettstown, NJ. Having had a year and a half of the landlord's loveliness, we fantasized about leaving a couple of jumbo sized dog food bags in the attic along with a male and female rat. Oh yeah.
ReplyDeleteBwahaha! That would have been sweet revenge.
DeleteA slumlord would just pass pest control costs in to the renters cuz that's how they roll.
DeleteEither they pass the costs on, or they just hand the renter a box of D-Con and tell them to go for it. Because they always go outside to die. Wrong! Sometimes they crawl in a radiator to die. How do I know this; um, experience. Thank the Lord it was mice instead of rats. Oh, they die on the kitchen floor, too. And my 5 year old comes and says; "Mom. That poor mouse died because you put out poison." Nothing like mom guilt. Of course this was the same kid who said, on seeing a flower I had pressed in a Bible, "You squashed that pretty flower in that God book of yours!" Sweet revenge is seeing him with three daughters. Grandparents just spoil them and go home.
DeleteSome cats are good mousers. Some seem to want to treat the mouse as a friend rather than a food supply. But even the good mousers, in my experience, leave the mouse carcass in the middle of the floor - possibly as a tribute to its hunting prowess or some such.
DeleteMy friend MaryAnn once heard a mouse eating her cat's food in the kitchen while she and her cat were 5 meters away in the living room. She told Zeiss he was a loser cat. Next day, Zeiss dropped the dead mouse before her computer stand.
DeleteZeiss confirms my suspicion that a cat could sit up and tell you all about St. Thomas Aquinas if he felt like it. But he just doesn't want to waste his time talking to the hired help.
DeleteNo, they don't eat the mice. Everyone knows that.
No, rodents aren't very appealing when you can eat Blue Wilderness Grain-Free instead. We live next to an open field; would seem to be an open invitation for mice. But we have had cats (spoiled, lazy ones)ever since we moved here. No mice problems; apparently feline presence is enough to scare them away.
DeleteI know they eat squirrels, except for the fuzzy tail left as evidence.
DeleteWell, Lou and I realized that it would inflict more suffering on the other tenants than it ever would on the jerk landlord though I'm pretty sure it would impact his wallet once potential tenants heard of the problem. But it was a nice fantasy while sharing a bottle of wine. Ah, let there be rats.
ReplyDelete