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FLASH!! New York, May
9, 2008 Gretchen Morgenson in today's
New York Times: "Questions of Rent Tactics by
Private Equity." But remember, you saw it here first, in our
entry for December 31, 2005.
L&T differences aside, our sympathy and support are with
our landlords for the
strife the people of Beirut are now enduring. With their
wives, both have
worked to rebuild Lebanon after at least five
decades of civil wars, assimilation of Palestinians
driven from their home, and bombings by Israel.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York, May 6, 2008
AUNTIE SEMITE? That's how the litigator for a feared
and hated
eviction mill in New York, specializing in putting
African-American and Latino tenants on the street to make
room for affluent whites, chose to characterize Vicki for
writing this web site. Perhaps "Trannie Semite" would have been more
apt. Borah Goldstein has evicted me three times since 1977,
twice for the crime of being transgendered.
"As the child of Holocaust
survivors," the litigator appealed to the judge, "I object
to her web site and want her held in contempt." He must have
made his family proud, passing the bar and joining the law
firm that many tenants see as a virtual New York Gestapo,
which keeps its receptionist in a bullet-proof cage.
"She's sophisticated," the litigator
described me, begging the court to ignore my dowdy appearance. "The web site goes back to the 1990s," he went on,
once again proving that history is written by the winners, "with a
long record of harassing landlords."
Harassment:
1. being called "John and/or Jane Doe" in eviction papers after returning
to care for an ailing mother; 2. getting the boot from one's childhood home;
3. entering the database of blacklisted tenants.
Its rise to power began in 1977,
when it booted me from the home where I became
transgendered. It was called Finkelstein Borah Goldstein
then. The founding partner, Danny Finkelstein, now known as the
dean of New York landlord-tenant law, wrote the textbooks
judges consult before ruling. Less than two decades
after his partner Robert Goldstein litigated me out of my West 82nd
rent-controlled home, Mr. Finkelstein joined his son's modest real-estate firm,
forever gone from what had
become the most prolific eviction mill in the city, the firm he had founded.
Final arguments are over; memoranda
of law are filed; we await the court's decision on contempt.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York,
MAY DAY, 2008.
SOLIDARITY! For tenants without liquidity, that's all we
have.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York,
Apr. 16, 2008.
In hearing our lawyer's argument against
contempt, the court ruled that that plaintiff
has produced no evidence that Philip Tager, a respected leader of the
Lebanese diaspora in New York, is affiliated with our
landlord, and has in fact denied it. Therefore we infer that
we may now cite Mr. Tager as one of the two partners of the
LP
that owns us.
While none denied the other partner's identity, none
fully affirmed it. Rather than speak for himself, Steven E. Carter preferred
presenting the plaintiff's preening posse of parcel-peddling
puppets, pampered Pesakh petseles, and
pandering poseurs on parade.
Representing us, Steven DeCastro
has taken the bold and dangerous move of resting our case without presenting
any testimony or evidence. Answering plaintiff would provide
little, our lawyer reckoned, that his cross had not already shown. Worse, it
would allow the plaintiff to rebut our defense and perhaps
fill the gaping holes we believe it had left in its case.
But the most compelling reason to
refrain from presenting fact, in our merely ethical opinion, is to leave our First Amendment
protection in the overarching position for acquittal.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York,
Mar. 17, 2008.
Our slumlords have hauled us into court,
calling this site in contempt. Setting them off was our reply to their nonpayment
claim. We had withheld 60% of our
rent for violations and lack of required
services.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York, Mar. 11, 2008. GOOGLE BOMB!
Attempting to prove that Vicki is in contempt of court for this
site, the Borah Goldstein litigator representing our
landlords is claiming that Vicki has
doled out copious coin to convert this site to a Google bomb. Pay Google?!! Borah Goldstein, Perseus Capital Management, and Cronus Capital have enabled our
bomb by repeatedly searching for citations
of themselves on this site. In what may
be the most perfect circle in legal logic, Borah's attempts to
prove contempt have generated their sole evidence for contempt. Google
should be paying Vicki for the heavy hits this site has
fetched for the search engine. Our trial resumes on March 24, at 2 p.m. The
court has shown an even-handed judicial restraint and
respect for justice. Criminal
contempt has been thrown out. It is now a civil matter, with
a "preponderance" — much more than 51% — of the
evidence needed to affirm the plaintiffs' motion.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York,
Feb. 27, 2008. CONTEMPT!
Vicki is now in contempt of court for this
site. It's all over but the trial, scheduled for March 10. A blindfold has not
spared Dame Justice a rancorous reaction to our December
5 entry. We complied with our agreement to remove
the identities of our actual owners. But upon reading our edited
text, the court has expanded its order, without
prompting by our adversary, to include any
reference to our landlords' business names, Perseus Capital Management, which is
for tenants only, and Cronus Capital, for investors only;
no tenants allowed on the latter site. In our opinion, stripping, shredding, and
slip-shodding this page any further will not change the
court's view of our site. But it will destroy
the work that Vicki has been creating for over ten years. Or, as e e cummings writes in his
i sing of Olaf, "'there is some shit I will not eat'."
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York,
Feb. 22, 2008. TENANTS GAIN
RENT REDRESS.
Turning back various regulated
rent increases for as long as two years, with retroactive
rebates assessed, the
Division of Housing and Community Renewal has just ruled in
favor of the Tenants Association petition citing unsanitary
conditions and the lack of essential
services and habitability. The decision has been logged as VB430010B. It was handed down about
a year after our submission. It fails to
acknowledge that the present owner removed the resident
superintendent about three months after the date of our
petition. The tenants are considering another RA-84 petition
for lack of a resident employee or of 24/7 maintenance service.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York,
Jan. 30, 2008, 12:31 p.m. An Israeli govenment
commission has just reported "'grave failings' among political and
army leaders," according to Reuters, in shelling southern Lebanon in July
2006. The skirmish, which reportedly killed 1200 Lebanese
civilians and about 150 Israeli soldiers, is said to have
driven the harvestable fish from the eastern Mediterranean
coast, depriving the fishemen of Tyre of their livelihoods. Without openly criticizing Israel themelves,
a group of Lebanese-Americans, Social and Economic Justice
for Lebanon, has undertaken to build affordable housing in
southern Lebanon. We tenants are proud that Philip
Tager, one of
our landlords founded SEAL and that his wife is its
treasurer, and we urge support for
its efforts. The Israeli commission offered no apparent
reparation for what it admits was a mistake. Lebanon has
sought no redress, but,
funded by Hezbollah, private Lebanese are suing Israel.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York,
Dec. 6, 2007.This is no longer the Home Page of Vicki
Richman. This page is now registered by the 500W140 Tenants
Association. The new owners of this site will gladly
post any objection to the content from the
landlords. Hard copy, email, or fax. Links to the landlords'
proud citation of themselves now replace their personal surnames everywhere on
this site.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent
developments.]
New York,
Dec. 5, 2007.
AMICABLE.
That was how Vicki and Casey agreed to
describe their settlement with their landlords. The tenants got a 19% abatement on unpaid
rent. The legal regulated rent was reduced to what we
claimed from a higher figure billed by the landlord, and
our lease goes to next year. The
landlord agreed to provide a 24-hour maintenance number, and
to improve conditions. That brilliant coup was devised and executed
by the top
tenant lawyers in New York, Steven DeCastro, Esq. and his associate Peter Sayer, Esq. Despite their willingness to go to trial
to protect our civil liberties, Vicki agreed to redact
citations of our slumlords. Therefore we
link to the site where they
proudly cite themselves. We expect no thanks for this
exposure. Tenants call them Perseus Capital Management, LLC, and
their loaded clients know them as Cronus Capital, LP. In fact they
identify their real selves on the Cronus web
site, but hide their names on the Perseus site. "How dare you okay such limitation on our
strongest means of
petitioning for redress of grievances?"
demanded a tenant committee of their president
and secretary when we got home. "Well," we answered sheepishly, staring at
the floor and swaying from side to side, "if we didn't
agree, we'd have to go to trial, and the judge" —
apparently a fan of 1950s cool jazz (Miles, Sugar Hill needs
you now!) — "called our web site petty, mean, worthless, insignificant, libelous, spiteful, traitorous,
offensive to natural law, and probably linked to cyber-terrorists. "Wow, the judge sure knows your web site,
Vicki. How come he didn't add 'Hitler' and 'Stalin'?" "No, he just heard the landlords' lawyer
describe it." "And for that he made you agree to nonsense?" asked the
incredulous tenants.
"We can't dignify a rant with the word 'unconstitutional.'" "With such judicial restraint," Vicki continued, "if we refused and went to trial,
his decision would no way be as favorable as what we
were getting. The bench might even have spewed an injunction
against this site, and we'd now be in the can for contempt." "So we wouldn't have to listen to your
endless lectures at our meetings." "Hey, come on," Vicki argued hopefully, "I
did it for you guys, the tenants. We
got major concessions in return for voluntarily censoring
our site. Besides, maybe the judge was right. Even
life-destroying, mass-eviction slumlords have a right to privacy." "Vicki, Vicki," the tenants sighed, shaking their heads more in pity than sorrow, "you constantly
carry on
about your article on the tenant
blacklist. A couple of mouse clicks, you showed us, and the
landlords have our social-security numbers, our salary, our
debts, our
rent history, our spousal squabbles, and every
landlord-tenant dispute, for any reason. Did the slumlords stipulate to stay away from
the blacklist database? No, they have the money and the
power. Will-to-live power. Their property is our homes,
and our homes are our lives. You gave away our only means of defending
ourselves." Vicki shrugged, looked at the ceiling, and
tried to blink away a tear from an eye. "The landlords demanded photo ID from each
of us," the tenants went on, "and copied it,
before giving us a front-door key. Look at what their own
web
site asks us to tell them. They know who we
are. Well, Philip Tager, one of our landlords, is a founder of a
courageous, principled activist group that builds affordable housing for the fishermen of
southern Lebanon, whose livelihoods were destroyed
by Israeli shelling in 2006. It has
to deal with prejudice, discrimination,
know-your-place caste targeting every day. And yet you,
Vicki, sit silently as the court levels the same class bias and
judgment-jumping against you." Vicki's heart is filled with shame. Her
agreement to save some bucks, improve our lives, and stay out of court has sold
out her friends and neighbors. "I am unworthy," she blurts
out. "I don't deserve my own web site." And she collapses
silently sobbing. "No you don't!" say the tenants sternly. "That's why we're confiscating your site. This
is no longer the Home Page of Vicki Richman. This is now
a tenants site. And as our
group has entered into no foolish agreement, we choose to leave the
content just as it is. And just to show you we have no hard
feelings, Vicki, we appoint you webmaster of
our site." "Hmm," says Vicki, once again struggling to
pretend she has a grasp on the law, "that may not work. Letter
versus spirit, like that." But the tenants know more about
the ruling than they had let on. "Didn't His Honor
tell you, Vicki, that the landlords are free to hide their existence with
whatever nonce LLC du jour they've decided to invent
for themselves, and no one is allowed to identify or even to know who is
profiting from those idiotic noms d'arnaque? And
didn't the landlord's lawyer put that very ruling on the
judge's lips? Surely
then neither the judge nor the landlord can attempt to peek
around a tenants organization name and find the mere human person Vicki Richman."
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Nov. 24, 2007.
9 WORST.
Among the nine most decrepit tenements in
Manhattan, according to the NYC Department of
Housing Preservation and Development, is one owned
by our slumlords. Known as Perseus Capital Management, LLC, by
tenants, or Cronus Capital, LP, by clients, they are also the
slumlords of 612 West 182nd
Street, zip 10033, cited in the
list just released by the HPD.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Nov. 11, 2007.
The LORDS of
the VANDALS.
Our Tenants Association bulletin
board has just been ripped out of a
plastered brick wall in the tenants' mail room. The item cost less than $50 new and
was likely destroyed in the act. The area appeared immediately cleaned, and the damaged bulletin board was nowhere on the
premises. The board had been marked as belonging to the
Tenants Association and was mounted in the tenants' common area. From the
flimsy evidence, Vicki infers that our slumlords contracted for
the vandalism in retaliation for: tenants'
complaints about lack of heat, a defective, damaged
elevator, and the absence of a superintendent or any
employee on the premises; and, specifically, Vicki and
Casey's counterclaim for damages in the slumlords'
nonpayment court action against us. To hide from their tenants,
our slumlords use Perseus Capital Management, LLC, giving tenants
only a useless voicemail
number and a postal box for rent. To their chums
and acquisitive clients, they are known as Cronus Capital, LP. The bulletin board had been bolted to the
wall with anchors cemented into the brick. The vandalism
left four gaping holes in the wall. Where the board used to
be, Vicki and Casey posted Thanksgiving greetings to the
tenants. As the paper stock may be easily ripped off the
plaster, we shall see.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Sept. 30, 2007.
GENTRIFICATION.
Well, we predicted it. It just took five and
half years to happen, probably spurred by
Columbia University's attempt to expand above 125th Street. Our slumlords, using the
business names Perseus Capital Management and Cronus Capital, have begun mass
evictions of tenants of color, many on subsidies paying low
rent. Are they pulling a Joel Saul Weiner, not bothering to
show up in court? No, they really mean it. They're using the eviction-mill
law firm Borah Goldstein. At the same time they're gut-rehabbing the many
vacant apartments, with, for example, real wood floors
instead of the faux tiles. Casey and Vicki are among the evicted,
facing Borah for the third time since
1976. This is our first nonpayment; the others have been
holdovers. We have paid only 40% of our legal rent since January
2007, withholding 60% for such lack of habitability as no
resident employee, no locked entranceway, no intercom, and
no reliable, safe elevator. We are arguing for the
abatement; we are prepared to pay the balance if we
lose. While the other evictions are meant to open the
building to middle-class tenants looking for bargains near
Columbia, our eviction appears only personal retaliation for
this Web page and for organizing a tenants association. Gentrification also appears to explain sudden
improvements. The front door has
been repaired, with a powerful magnetic lock opened by an
encoded Keri key fob — a small, firm plastic
amulet that identifies the apartment to which it was issued,
with perhaps additional information — and installation of a new intercom
system promised to begin tomorrow. In place of a resident
superintendent, the slumlords have contracted for cleaning
and maintenance crews, appearing only at the slumlords'
pleasure. While the contractors are efficient on the common
areas, the tenants have no one to contact for a personal
problem, like a leaking pipe, a clogged toilet, a
malfunctioning stove or refrigerator. However, if the
apparent gentrification is successful, we may get a resident
concierge to interact with tenants. Such gentrification will lead us to return
to paying our legal regulated rent, but it will destroy the
lives of the tenants forced to the street to make way for
well-heeled replacements.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
June 30, 2007.
0.
No super. No porter. No front door. No
intercom. So what have our slumlords, who bought us two months ago,
given us? A postal box to receive our rent. Oh, and a
voicemail number. They use variable and elusive stooges
under the name Perseus Capital Management. Their
investment brokerage, Cronus Capital, L.P., speculates in "urban housing" suffering
"distressed or unique situations." Well, if that's not
what they bought, that's what they have made of this purchase. They have inflated their monthly statements
to include a full security deposit and a 5% late fee charged
on the second day of the month, with sundry other
undeciferable fees. Every tenant is suddenly
thousands in arrears. We continue our preferential rent, 40% of the legal
regulated maximum, and the DHCR grievance by our tenants association remains alive, if
stagnant, with those recent addenda.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
May 28, 2007.
CAPIN CASHES CASAS.
As predicted on May 5, our slumlord
has sold our home separately, apparently unable to find a single buyer for
his block of ten Harlem apartment buildings. A pair of stylishly strutting scroungers, two youthful MBA
types, using the nom d'arnaque Perseus
Capital Management, L.L.C., now own our home.
Philip Tager lives in a
far-east Upper East Side high-rise sprung from the debris of
Old Law tenements once housing tradesmen and domestics
to the doyens and denizens of Park and Fifth
Avenues. Steven E. Carter has a one-bedroom condo on the fifth floor of
a gutted sweatshop loft building, Chelsea Lion's Head, once
generating the gentility that kept Ladies Mile full and flowing at the
confluence of Chelsea, the Village, and Gramercy. They
founded the investment brokerage Cronus Capital, L.P., 275 Madison
Avenue, New York. Mr. Tager is an alumnus of the notorious Praedium Group, the
primary source of financing for the rapacious slumlord Joel Saul Weiner of the Pinnacle Group. After
dabbling in downtown condos for a decade or so, Mr. Carter
turned to Harlem about three years ago, apparently as a protégé of Mehmet A. (Luca) Capin, who sold him our
home (neglecting, one suspects, to mention this website). Mr. Tager rents. Mr. Carter's
condo is less a home than a barrel-scraping pied à
terre investment. Not to worry, both have second, and even third, homes from the
Catskill foothills to the para-Hamptons. In 1997 Mr. Tager co-founded Social and
Economic Action for Lebanon (SEAL), and his wife is its treasurer, often hosting
fashionable fund-raisers. Mr. Carter's wife is an academic clinical
psychologist. Both families have contributed to SEAL. By what may be a coincidence, lacking a
lock or an intercom to the front door of our building is no longer a
problem. We now have no front door at all. The world has
seemingly welcome access to our mail, hallways, elevator, stairways, and apartments.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
May 5, 2007.
Our slumlord has paid off his $1,400,000 secondary
mortgage on our home and the nine other covered properties. That was on March 28, 2007, and
our sources are somewhat slow. So it seems likely that Mehmet A. (Luca) Capin, the
slumlord's broker and building manager, has already
sold the buildings. One of those properties — 23 East 109th Street, or 1632
Madison Avenue — has indeed
been sold, to the landlord Michael Ostad, M.D., a urologist at
Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, residing in Old
Westbury, Long Island, with a pied à terre on the 15th floor of
the Beekman Regent at East 51st Street. Solar Realty Management and Capin's Associates
may be fronting the deal. The
"sale" just changes the silent investor. William
Robbins cashes out, and the urologist pisses in. We'll
probably still be owned by Capin. Our Tenants Association petition for lower
rent, Division of
Housing and Community Renewal Docket Number VB430010B, stays alive.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Apr. 6, 2007.
4 MONTHS, 40% MAX.
With our April rent payment in our
slumlord's Clifton,
N.J., bank account, we've paid 40% of the Rent
Stabilized maximum for four months. Four
check endorsements should set a "preferential rent," crunching any claim of automated
inadvertence by William Robbins and his building manager, Mehmet A. (Luca) Capin of Solar Realty Management
Corporation and Capin and
Associates, Inc. Our slumlord continues to bill us for what
Solar Realty claims is the Rent Stabilized
maximum, taking our check and incrementing arrears every
month. But a rent check is not payment against an incurred
debt. It's an offer to pay in advance for
occupancy. The courts typically take the
endorsement on the back of a rent check as an agreement to a lease-like contract.
Meanwhile the 500W140 Tenants Association
has filed the "Application for a Rent Reduction Based upon
Decreased Building-Wide Service(s)," form RA-84, with the
New York state Division of Housing and Community
Renewal. It includes three pages of tenants'
signatures, form RA-84.1. If the building gets an effective lock
— if each unit has an intercom — if the
slumlord hires a porter — then Solar Realty
will have responded to our grievances. With Casey the acting
president and Vicki the acting secretary, the majority of
our tenants prefer petitioning the DHCR to following their
officers' rent-striking example. The DHCR has
accepted our petition as Docket Number VB430010B.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Apr. 1, 2007, 11:59:59 p.m.
April Fool's Day completes 24,350 days, or
two-thirds of a hundred years, on this
earth for Vicki. No cheapie, Vicki took it all with a century of
humor.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Mar. 7, 2007.
PINNACLE WANTS US?
The notorious slumlord Pinnacle Group,
headed by Joel Saul Weiner of Brooklyn, aims
to buy our home, according to rampant rumor. We're now owned by
Mehmet A. (Luca)
Capin of Capin & Associates, Inc, and
Solar Realty Management Corporation. Oft-cited by tenant activists and
politicos as the most
feared slumlord in Harlem, Pinnacle seeks profit not merely by
market fluctuation, as does our present owner, but also by vacating its properties and
sending its tenants into the streets
homeless. But Joel Weiner is
only a bellowing, blustering bully, bearing no big
billy. Although he typically begins thousands of eviction
actions a year, Pinnacle almost never actually appears in
court against tenants who dare to stand up to Weiner
and his henchmen. Pinnacle Group receives almost all of
its financing from The Praedium Group, which claims such "'value enhacement' opportunities"
as acquiring properties with: "deterioration of the asset's physical condition; inadequate
repairs and maintenance"; and "present ownership's failure to aggressively manage the
current tenant/leasing base." Anything under the éminence
grise Mehmet Capin qualifies.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Jan. 8, 2007.
SLUMLORD TAKES
REDUCED RENT.
Lowered by 60%,
our January, 2007, rent check is now in the Clifton,
N.J., account of William Robbins, the "sole member" of the LLC that
owns our building. Solar Realty Management
Corporation shrouds Robbins and his broker and
building manager, Mehmet A. (Luca) Capin of Capin and
Associates, from the tenants who make their livings for them. In warning our slumlord, we appealed to
the bedbug case,
won by the tireless tenant attorney Steven De Castro, Esq. The loser,
Jamie Leigh
Heiberger, Esq., now represents — fortuitously, one hopes — Solar Realty Management and Luca Capin. By common law and a sleep-sowing slew of
Solomonic say-so, taking less rent overrides any earlier
contract and affirms lack of redress. Cashing the check
may also set a lower maximum, or a "preferential,"
rent-stabilized rent for our apartment. However, in practice, legalities
work only for the landlord, not for the tenant. The court
may yawn and nod as the slumlord claims
that taking the check was the forgivably inadvertent bug of office
automation. In our
landlord-leaning legal system, we may need a few months of reduced rent to shed the sham of
inadvertence and secure our lawful
compensation for the continuing failure to redress violations.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Dec. 28, 2006. Slumlord's Holiday Jeer:
HAPPY NEW FEAR!!
No tree. No lights. No deco. No porter. No intercom. No
lock from the street to the lobby. Just a bare,
litter-strewn entrance. With muggers, panhandlers,
scammers, and the legions our City has chosen to leave
unwashed and unwanted waiting to let us in. Well, the elevator has had minimal repairs
after over two months of our slapping soles to steps in this
seven-story building.
But it's still down about a day and a half a week. It's groaning and
thumping new warnings at us every time we're in it. Our
slumlord, Mehmet A. (Luca) Capin, boss of Solar Realty Management
Corporation and Capin and
Associates, has mailed a new rent statement just in
time for 2007, with creative holiday increases backdated for months
and years. He's placed just about every old-time tenant
in overbearing arrears. But we have a new tenants association, with
Casey elected the acting president, and Vicki the acting
secretary. We're working on a rent strike. Bearing our
leadership burdens gravely — perhaps lured to join the City's unwashed and unwanted — we've begun by deducting 60% from our
rent check for January 2007: no entrance lock or
intercom loses 45%; sacking the porter, with only the
super for all building maintenance, shaves another 15%. Reading our
letter, you'll see that our legal grounds for
withholding rent is the infamous bedbug case, which Jamie Leigh
Heiberger, Esq., lost to the tireless tenant attorney Steven De Castro, Esq. Now it happens
that Ms. Heiberger is the landlord lawyer representing
Solar Realty Management. Will Ms. Heiberger get her round two against
us?
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Nov. 22, 2006, 9:44 a.m.
MAYBE RENT.
After about 51 hours of hypertensive
aggravation, repeated phone calls, and loss of income, our heat and hot water
have returned. The elevator remains motionless and useless,
without any apparent repair work. The slumlord
has about ten days to show us why we should pay rent for December.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Nov. 21, 2006, 7:13 p.m.
NO RENT.
No heat. No hot water. No elevator. No Thanksgiving. No bending our knee for relief from the lords of Rent
Stablization. If our slumlord wants to get paid, and if he can find his balls, he'll plead his
case to the judge. Our slumlord, Mehmet A. (Luca) Capin,
has "temporarily suspended" his unlisted land line in Great Neck, Long
Island. Our boiler has been down for over 36 hours. The
elevator . . . well, read on. The voice at
his emergency service says the building manager and
the front office are
"unresponsive." Has the Manhattan real-estate tsunami
— has slumlord millions dumped into structurally unsound
properties without pennies remaining for renovation —
left high-rolling Capin's
Associates, Inc., and its slumlording offspring Solar Realty Management
Corporation flailing and thrashing in the sand, gasping for
another bubble to keep them afloat?
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Nov. 16, 2006.
OUR WISH.
GRANTED?
The stake is in the undead heart. We're slapping our soles as high as to the
seventh story until whenever. Our slumlord, Solar Realty
Management, cut a $20K check — sez the office — on a $40K
contract to have the
deathtrap elevator rebuilt. Some
day, unknown or unmentionable. But not replaced, alas.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Nov. 6, 2006.
THE DEAD RISES.
Our elevator. The inspector condemned the crate
two weeks ago. We tenants of 500 West 140th Street in
Manhattan had to trudge as many as six flights. It's up again, although, after hearing
the clunker body-slam the shaft, after feeling its tooth-loosening vibrations,
and after never quite hitting the floor we
were aiming at, many would say we'd be better
off with the undead junker forever out of its misery.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Oct. 26, 2006.
CASA CAPIN CAVES.
Describing Washington Heights property owned by Solar Realty
Management Company as "a squalid apartment building," the
New York Times reported on
October 10, 2006, that our slumlord, "Mehmet A. Capin, the chief
executive" of Solar, has vacated most of the tenants. He was reportedly
acting under order of the Department of Buildings, which cited such
"violations" as "a partly collapsed ceiling and a bathtub
sinking through the floorboards." Also known as Luca Capin, he heads
Capin's
Associates, Solar's holding
company. According to the Times, Capin now refuses
phone calls. A New York Resident reporter
has privately told us the same. From 1998 to 2003 to September 3, 2006,
Capin would loudly and proudly boast of his investment strategy to
publications from the Times to the Real Estate Weekly to Crain's. About a year ago, in a dramatic departure from his earlier rôle as broker
and building manager for other investors, Capin bought the sorry squalor as part of a package with four other buildings
in upper Manhattan and Queens. As borrower, he has signed for
the mortgage under different dummy LLC names.
The vacated building is at 501 West 173rd Street in
Manhattan, lot 48 of block 2130. The Post Office also
recognizes 2284 Amsterdam Avenue as its address.
Meanwhile the Department of Buildings has condemned our
elevator, in 500 West 140th Street, or 1616 Amsterdam Avenue,
on lot 36 of block 2071 in Manhattan. We tenants shall have
to walk as high as seven stories until and unless Capin gets
around to correcting the elevator violations.
If he fails to do that in a reasonable time we
will withhold our rent. Bypassing the New York state Division of Housing
and Community Renewal, an ill-disguised landlord front, we
will rely on the courts, if necessary, to rule on how much we owe for
living in desperation and despair.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Aug. 1, 2006, midnight.
BOXCARS!!
So begins the final 12 months in which Vicki can
reckon her years on this earth in dicemal notation. She's
happy only to have made it
through snake eyes.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
July 21, 2006.
SLUMLORD SENDS
A NASTYGRAM.
This time he paid for a real lawyer.
Jamie Leigh Heiberger-Jacobsen, Esq.,
is her majestic moniker. Omitting any mention of this web site,
she objects to the physical distribution and
posting of our slumlord leaflet. It calls for
a tenants association and cites our slumlord as Mehmet or Luca Capin, of
Capin and Associates and Solar Realty Management
Corporation, with his actual home and business addresses and
phone numbers. She finds it "libelous and slanderous"
and worthy of unspecified retaliation.
Ms. Heiberger, as she is known in the
eviction industry, is celebrated among tenant
activists for losing three cases — bedbug, predicate-notice, and consumer-rights — to the well-spoken
tenant lawyers Steven DeCastro, Edwin Vega (of Legal Aid),
and Robert E. Sokolski (of Zekaria and Sokolski). In the
last, Romea v. Heiberger
Associates, Ms. Heiberger's office was the
defendant, not the litigator. Answering her firm's
appeal to the Second
Circuit of the U.S. Court
of Appeals, Mr. Sokolski established that a
lawyer seeking a nonpayment eviction is a debt collector
subject to Federal law.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York, May
26, 2006.
LANDLORD
on the LOOSE.
Calling himself
the "in-house attorney" for Capin & Associates and Solar
Realty Management, a real-estate wheeler-dealer threatened "subpoenas of all your records"
to get us to take down this site and stop organizing a tenants
association for 500 West 140th Street in Manhattan. Our phone caller, Michael Goldman, is in fact just a broker for our slumlord, Luca Capin, according to the Real Estate Weekly and the New York Real Estate
Journal. Contrary to the threats of the "in-house
attorney," Mr. Goldman has never litigated. He typically
represents both sides of real-estate deals.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
May 24, 2006, 6:25 p.m.
LUCA'S "LAWYER"
SQUAWKS!!
This site must remove any reference to Luca Capin as the
owner, owner's representative, or manager of our home at 500
West 140th Street, in Sugar Hill, Harlem. Or so said a phone
voice claiming to be the attorney for our slumlord — uh, make
that, for the bloke who plays the rôle of our slumlord.
Accusing us of "slander" and "restraint of trade," about half an hour ago, a man identifying
himself as
Michael Goldman, "the in-house attorney for Capin &
Associates," phoned Casey and Vicki with threats of sundry
"legal actions," including "subpoenas of all your records,"
if we fail to redact our citations of Mehmet or Luca Capin,
Capin & Associates, and Solar Realty
Management.
The apposition of the word "slumlord" against the various
compounds of the proper noun "Capin" seemed to stir some
sonorous straying from our communicant's routinely restrained
recitative. Repeatedly accusing us of courting an
"adversarial" relationship, our putative slumlord's alleged
attorney insisted he was "the only friend you have," and
meant only "to help you."
We asked Mr. Goldman to put his gripes in
writing. He failed to acknowledge our request.
More, we have very little doubt, is yet to come.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Jan. 1, 2006, 2:30 a.m.
NEW YEAR!!
NEW RENT BILL.
At some time in the last twelve hours, our
rent bill came skidding over our threshold.
Our new year's surprise: Luca listens!
As domestic partners for over
29 years, Casey and Vicki have learned one legal point:
Don't rely on rent law to protect us; get both our names on
every document. We made sure Casey and Vicki were on the top and
last lines of our Rent Stabilization lease.
But, of course,
the field for "tenant" in the slumlord's software database
allows only one entry. We've so far refused two
computer-generated renewal
leases until the slumlord manually added Vicki's name to
Casey's in the "tenant" field. Every month we squawk for
Vicki's name on the payment demand, as a rent bill is useful
ID. The omission is not sufficient cause to withhold rent,
but we threaten anyway.
To make matters worse, our slumlord, Luca
Capin of Capin & Associates, Incorporated, and Solar Realty
Management Corporation, refused to acknowledge the
one payment
we had sent to his physical address, rather than to the
post-office box he gives to tenants. For two months we had
been carrying arrears.
The rent bill shoved under our door on New
Year's Eve, 2005, is to "Vicki Richman & Eileen Casey." It shows
our earlier rent paid in full, with no arrears.
Happy new year, Luca.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full story.
Top of right column for
less recent developments.]
|
|
New York,
Dec. 31, 2005.
THE YEAR
of the SLUMLORD!!
Does Luca Capin, our slumlord for the past
six months, at least, actually own 500 West 140th
Street, in Sugar Hill, Harlem USA? Not exactly. Someone else — a bloke called William Robbins — signed
the mortgage papers under the nonce
limited-liability company name that we write on our rent
checks. Luca just runs the building to protect his client's
investment until he can sell us at a handsome profit.
Luca has done the same for a slew of other tenements in the
Bronx and uptown Manhattan — at least a dozen in this
millenium, by my count. He's not exactly hiding his work. He
seems to want people to know his business and lifestyle. He's offered
press interviews; he's written about his investment strategy
under his byline. But he has
apparently intended his public
relations only for certain people.
From certain others — us tenants of the apartment buildings
he manages — he most certainly is in hiding. He gives us
tenants only a business name and the numbers for a post-office
box and voicemail.
Identifying myself as his tenant, I have heard Luca hang up
on me over the phone at his home and at his office. He has
not answered my mail. He has not answered email to the
for the capinandassociates.com site. He has my email address for sure; he
owns a URL that has hit this Web page repeatedly in December
2005.
"I make my living talking to people on the phone all day,"
Luca tells the press. The people he
talks to don't
include us tenants, who make his living for him.
But if I had identified myself only as a journalist, I would
have had no problem speaking to Luca Capin. He loves giving
interviews. His brokers — Benjamin and Timour Shafran,
Isaak Kohannim — are frequent sources for real-estate
reporting in such rags as Crain's, Wall
Street Journal, and Real Estate Weekly. This blog
entry is based only on public records,
conversations with tenants, and published material.
Under the name "Mehmet A. Capin," he arrived here with his
family from Turkey about fifteen years ago. Claiming
to be a writer, he defines journalism as the business of
selling facts, and, in a flash of self-aggrandizing insight,
instantly finds that real estate fetches a higher price in
the USA.
He starts out with the title "vice-president" at Metrovest
Equities in Astoria, Queens. The New York Times cites him
as "Mehmet Capin" in a February 1, 1998, article on upper-Manhattan real estate. As "Mehmet Capin," he also
affiliates himself with the Hyde Park, Long Island, law firm Mandell Mandell Okin & Edelman, LLP, where
he learns how to file Articles of Organization for nonce LLCs to buy property for
his clients under cover from the people living there.
Several years later, he begins
using the name "Luca" among his friends and associates, as
well as the press, and founds Capin & Associates,
Incorporated, to run his investment brokerage.
Needing an extra layer of protection between himself and the
sentient portion of the property he profits off, he founds a
sub-corporation for tenants only. Perhaps whimsically, as Luca has just
bought his vacation home in environmentally conscious Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, Luca calls his tenant trap the Solar Realty
Management Corporation. That flight of fictional fancy
is the only entity he chooses to reveal to his tenants.
He incorporated both businesses under the name Mehmet
A. Capin, according to New York State records. He also used
that name in 2003 to sign the mortgage on 742 Saint
Nicholas Avenue (just down the block from St. Nick's Pub,
the legendary jazz joint), according to government records. That is perhaps the only uptown tenement he
personally owns; the broker was alleged to be one Batuhan
Capin at Luca's business address. The administrative contact of capinandassociates.com
is also a . According to a published article,
Luca's son Deniz Capin "represents" Solar Realty Management, but the son's name
appears on no official papers.
A phone call for "Mr. Capin" to Capin & Associates will draw
the reply, "Which Mr. Capin?"
Luca Capin is a "real-estate investment broker." Let's say
you have a couple of million — or at least hundreds of
thousands — dollars lying around. You want something more
exciting than tired old stocks and bonds. You go to a guy
like Luca. He already has a couple of other dudes even more
loaded than you waiting for action. Luca pools your gelt
into a limited-liability company, and uses it to buy a
slum tenement — for maybe 3.5 to 12.5 mil — in the Bronx
or upper Manhattan.
The elevator may be down, the boiler may be out, but the
place has tenants like us living in it. That doesn't bother
Luca. He runs the building until prices in the neighborhood
zoom, like everywhere else in metro New York. He's not as
bad as some of his colleagues. He buys oil a couple of times
a year. He burns the oil, sometimes excessively, often
insufficiently, always inefficiently. He plugs holes that
don't cost him more than three or four figures. He half-pays
a nonunion superintendent and a cleaning man; they're
replaced three or four times a year. He provides
no apartment for the super; all living space in this
building are for paying customers only.
Our rent pays mainly his expenses and his income. The payoff on
your investment comes after his tenants and our neighbors
have worked for years to improve the surroundings and to
raise the price of real estate. The price finally doubles on
the building we live in and he owns.
That is, Luca Capin lives off the sweat and smarts of his
tenants, and brags about his way of life to the real-estate
industry. His home is on Windsor Road in Great Neck, one of the
wealthiest sections of Long Island. He owns a luxury condo
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He even runs his business in
PR-heavy central midtown Manhattanƒ, a half
hour or more on the subway from his
properties.
He has built nothing in this neighborhood. He has
contributed nothing to this neighborhood. He has introduced
no new living space, business, or facility to this
neighborhood. He buys and sells what others have toiled
to build.
Luca Capin cares nothing for this neighborhood. He simply
lives off the people living and making a living in
this neighborhood. Refusing even to talk to us, he profits off our daily struggle to
survive.
Enlightening readers outside of New York
City as I celebrate New Year's Eve by cutting my rent check for January 2006, I am writing this blog under what I pray is protection
of Rent
Stabilization Law. "What a great country," Luca says about his
career in the United States. "Only in the Big Apple," says
Vicki about this Web page.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for less recent developments.]
New York,
Oct. 28, 2005.
SLUMLORD
OUTED!!
Five days without heat
or hot water while outdoor temperatures dropped below
45º. That's what we tenants of 500 West 140
Street, in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, had to endure yesterday. Our slumlord was too cheap to pay for repairs to
the boiler and for oil to burn in it.
Late yesterday evening
through today, the inside heat had soared to
over 83º F., and the water has been hot enough to
scald. What happened to change the slumlord's mind?
When the heating season began, on October 1,
Vicki and Casey began an hourly log with: the date and time;
the Weather Service temperature reading in Central Park; our
reading on a fifth floor window ledge; our indoor reading;
and our comments, as on the heat of the water.
Upon acquiring the building in
July of this year, the slumlord gave us tenants a phone
number, (212)633-9985, with only voicemail boxes that were always
full. Fortunately the slumlord included a fax number,
(212)633-9986, possibly believing that it would be
useless to us low-income tenants.
After the slumlord had failed to
pay for boiler service for about three days, Casey and Vicki
began hourly faxes, day and night, of our five- or six-page
log to the slumlord, with choice comments on the cover
page. Of course, the slumlord eventually pulled his fax
plug, but he reconnected it often enough to allow our trusty
faxmodem software to squeeze our documents in. (His underpaid
employees, living in buildings like ours, were a big help to us too, although please don't
reveal that to the slumlord.)
But wait, that's not all! The cold air and water lingered,
despite our faxes. While we were faxing, taking time off from our
work, we were using Net resources to research the
slumlord, who had given us only the names of a couple of
phony, unlisted front businesses, of a flunky gopher,
called a "building manager," and of a building super. We
uncovered the names of the real, (quasi-)human owners of 500 West 140
Street, their real business name, their real business phone number,
and the home address and phone number of the head honcho.
Okay, we made a few phone calls to the
slumlord's real phone numbers, identifying
ourselves as his tenants.
"How did you get this number?" was the
startled reply. We talked long enough to confirm the
slumlord's status and the
pronunciation of his real name.
Then the cover page to our 5 p.m. fax
included the names of the head honcho and of the
upscale suburban town in which he lives, no doubt with heat and
hot water, and without hallways and stairwells full of human piss and shit, manic rodents, and
threatening racist graffiti. We also
produced a leaflet with the slumlord's
private, unlisted (but no longer unpublished) data, and
distributed the leaflet to our neighbors, who
were delighted to get it and made good use of it.
Within two hours of our phone calls, latest fax, and leaflet, our radiators were
blasting Saharan heat and the water was scalding.
We're sorry for posting the leaflet as a PDF file. We well
know how much easier HTML is. But we're developing a web
page for our co-tenants, on which we'll include all the
information in the leaflet, as well as strategies
for making the landlord get rid of the piss, shit, rats, and
graffiti.
Hint: Painting the slumlord's private home number in big
black letters in strategic places around our building should do wonders for the
graffiti and be a big step toward achieving our other goals.
Skip-trace research on the slumlord:
$30. Publishing the leaflet: $1.75. Heat, hot
water, and the head honcho's humiliation: Priceless.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for less recent developments.]
New York,
Aug. 1, 2005.
THE LION IS A PUSSY!!
After over a year of silence by the lawyers
for Columbia University, it appears that their barrage of about half a dozen
nastygrams to Vicki amounted to no more than gratuitous harassment,
with no legal or moral legs.
The law firm Toback, Hyman & Bernstein began dunning Vicki for almost
$11,000 on March 12 last year. Variously adding the names
of Vicki's
domestic partner, Eileen Casey, and of Vicki's mother, the nastygrams
included no accounting or justification for the claim, other
than what the lawyers called our "legal and moral"
obligation.
Actually the earliest nastygram arrived over
two years after Columbia had severed all contact with
Vicki by driving us out of
our family home of seventy years. The dun therefore exceeded the statutory limitation
on civil action for the friviolous financial damages the
lawyers were alleging.
Scanning this blog, the reader will learn
that, in 1997, Columbia first attempted to evict Vicki's
86-year-old mother, for
seeking physical therapy for her crippling
osteoporosis. Failing that, Columbia went after Vicki and
Casey, who had moved in to care for our mother. The eviction
mill Borah, Goldstein, Altschuler &
Schwartz finally
got us out five years later, in early 2002.
During the prolonged legal battle, our
rent-controlled tribute to the landlord had been frozen by the courts as "use
and occupancy," which we had dutifully paid every month to the
lawyers. Perhaps Columbia's dunning was its belief that our
eviction had retroactively increased the rent-controlled amount
to the fair-market value. But the nastygrams offered no such
explanation.
More likely, the nastygrams were the work of
Elizabeth Baum, the low-level employee at the university's Office of
Institutional Real Estate. Liz Baum, who, like Vicki, is a
biking enthusiast, had initiated the evictions out
of apparent conviction that no mother could love
transgendered and lesbian daughters, and that even if she
did, she deserved no better than suffering a stroke
watching Baum's perjurious plotting to drive us
into the streets.
Although Columbia is a remarkably advanced,
diverse, tolerant New York refuge, Baum's colleagues in its Institutional
Real Estate probably saw less stress in letting Baum stoop to
her shrillish schemes than in striving to stop her.
We managed to escape living on the streets
just hours before the marshals threatened to put us
there. The
nastygrams, lacking any legal grounds over two years later, seemed
no more than Baum's way of telling us that she can find us
no matter where we are.
Yesterday saw the end of Vicki's last power of
two in years on this earth.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for recent developments.]
New York,
Dec. 21, 2004.
WINTER SOLSTICE!!
May the light glow longer in our lives
every day for the next six months!
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for less recent developments.]
New York,
Aug. 1, 2004.
VICKI REACHES LAST
POWER OF TWO!!
That is, Vicki's last power of two in
earthly years!
The event occurred exactly three years, to
the second, after Vicki's dyslectic sweet sixteen.
In Vicki's first thirty-two years alive, she
had six powers of two, including, of course, 20. Since then
she has had only one more. That is additional evidence, if
any be needed, that natural law, as well as computer
science, favors the young.
This power of two is almost certainly Vicki's last.
Virtually all good writers nearly always
protect themselves with, for the most part, typically cop-out modifiers, like "almost," "virtually," "nearly,"
in front of pretty much all-inclusive closely
absolute terms, somewhat
similar in quite a lot of debatably decisive ways to "You
broke it, you bought it!"
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full story.
Scroll down for less recent developments.]
New York,
Mar. 12, 2004.
COLUMBIA STICKS
TO OUR ASS!!
Claiming we have a "legal and moral obligation" to
pay something called "delinquent vacated rent arrears," two years, almost to the day, after our
physical eviction, Columbia has just
dunned us for $10,799.11.
What could that possibly mean? That our
alleged rent arrears were vacated? Then what is
the nastygram asking for? Or that we have to pay the
landlord for calling the marshals to force us to the street? And
what is the difference between "delinquent" arrears and the
other kind?
The university claims certain rights as an
"eleemosynary institution." That means Columbia has a "legal
and moral obligation" to act in the public good and refrain
from filing perjurious court pleadings to hound a peaceful, law-abiding 86-year-old woman to her cruel and tortured
death.
The nastygram came from the law firm
Toback, Hyman & Bernstein, which has represented Columbia,
as a defendant, at least twice before the Appellate
Division. Both were high-profile cases within the last
four years. Therefore the dun is not merely from a skip-trace
fishing in the court records and the tenant-blacklist agencies.
Landlords typically use this retaliatory tactic to put former
tenants into the blacklist and ruin their credit. But why
did Columbia wait so long?
With a term like "delinquent vacated rent arrears," this
case falls well within the bailiwick of Borah, Goldstein, Altschuler &
Schwartz, the law firm that handled our
two evictions. When the last appeal was finally over, and we
had nowhere else to go, except to the street, Jeffrey Metz,
Esq., the final litigator for Borah Goldstein, confided in
me that he took "no pleasure in winning this case."
Although the firm often goes after
alleged arrears, it is my guess that Borah Goldstein had no desire to
continue hounding me. Columbia had to shop around for a
lawyer willing to take this spurious debt collection,
but wanted a firm more respected than a high-volume
skip-trace.
Winding up another case for Columbia on
January 20, 2004,
Toback Hyman agreed to go after us, perhaps to win points from a lucrative
client. But the firm had never before handled a
residential landlord-tenant matter, to Vicki's knowledge,
and has only twice earier, as the firm Horowitz, Toback & Hyman in 1994 and 1996,
represented a commercial landlord renting to a retail store.
By contrast, Borah Goldstein is locked into the New York
landlord practice, even cited as an endorser of prominent candidates
for city offices after having contributed generously to
their campaigns. Borah Goldstein may prefer respectability
and prominence to sucking up to deep-pocket clients.
Sent only to Vicki and her
mother at our present street address, thankfully omitting Casey, the nastygram cites "your lease." There
had been no lease for our apartment since 1960. Rent-control law
takes precedence over the content of any lease or
landlord-tenant contract. Therefore the initial rent-control
lease is never renewed.
Our monthly rent-control payments were
frozen, by court stipulation, as "use and occupancy" after the original eviction
papers were filed in court. We paid that amount throughout our five years in Housing Court and appeals.
There is a saying among lawyers. "A
lawsuit by the federal government is like a terminal
disease: it's not over until you're dead."
Ditto for a suit by Columbia University.
[See the Brief for Appellants or our full
story.
Scroll down for less recent developments.]
New York,
Apr. 4, 2002.
YOU CAN'T GO
HOME AGAIN!!
Taking Thomas Wolfe's symbolism somewhat literally, Columbia
University Institutional Real Estate has finally taught us that lesson in American
letters. It happened exactly a month ago. The intervening
time has been consumed by meditation on what we have learned.
We managed to escape the marshals with
barely 12 hours to spare. The treasures of three generations,
with the exception of the 20-odd volumes of a 1950s
Britannica and a mildewed and water-logged
set of 19th-century Russian texts, are virtually intact. We
saved what's left of the Richman family only with the
tireless professional help of the master
mover Joël, (212)926-0823, and his two assistants, who
transported five large rooms of fragile furniture, objects
of oblique art, and hundreds of book cartons, with the
delicacy, strength, and speed of a cat burglar.
In the deep recesses of our large and
many former closets, did we find anything for Ebay or
the Antiques Road Show? Not a chance. "All I have to leave
you," said Vicki's mother before she died, "is this
apartment."
We are now in Sugar Hill, once
the home, hope, and heart of the Harlem Renaissance, but now
a way station for young immigrants and inchoate
intellectuals, as
close to the Yuppie West Side as they're likely to get in a
while. The only owner willing to rent to us has slumlord
credentials including an arrest for bribing a building
inspector and a tenants' lawsuit against such unsafe and unsanitary conditions as
prostitution on the roof, urine in the hallways, and
infested mattresses in the stairwells of a Bed-Stuy
government-subsidized project .
Because Columbia booted us immediately after
we lost the appeal, we had to move before our new home
was ready for habitation. We had a radiator, a toilet, a
pallet on the floor, nothing more. Our moving
in and paying rent are no incentive for the
landlord to stop work on vacant apartments long enough to finish the job
in ours.
However, we are confident that our new
landlord wants to lose the slumlord history, if only to
capitalize on the early stages of the gentrification of Harlem. The
landlord is using us blacklisted tenants as a source of
income before the building is ready for renters who can
afford to be choosers. |
