Housing in the News

SBLS Attorney Criticizes Mega-Landlord in City Limits Article

South Brooklyn Legal Services Director of Litigation Ed Josephson was interviewed for a recent City Limits article about a class-action lawsuit against the Pinnacle Group, a massive landlord that owns dozens of buildings across in New York. They’ve been accused of using various tactics, including increasing rents on rent-controlled apartments, to edge tenants out of apartments and then increase prices.

“These hedge-fund backed landlords that acquired huge numbers of subprime apartments gambled on their ability to raise rents and evict low-income tenants,” Josephson told City Limits. “Either the gamble pays off and they displace tenants or they don’t succeed and their business model collapses.”

Read the full story at City Limits magazine.

(Housing)

Residents of Bushwick Houses Fear Section 8 Cuts, Says SBLS Attorney

South Brooklyn Legal Services Director of Litigation Ed Josephson was interviewed for a recent story about the impact of potential Section 8 cuts on residents of a Brooklyn housing project.

“‘For a time, things seemed good,’ said Dolores Byrd, a retiree who has lived at Bushwick Houses for 27 years, and who made $45 yesterday collecting completed census packets. Still, like many of the thousands who call the project home, Byrd’s good week ended abruptly on Wednesday when the city announced it may have to revoke housing assistance vouchers from more than 10,000 New Yorkers. The New York Housing Authority (NYCHA), faced with a $45 million deficit, may have no choice but to cut off the housing voucher program, known as Section 8, even though it may result in many thousands of people being unable to pay their rent and perhaps ending up homeless.

[...]

One of the public advocates working in Brooklyn’s housing courts sees NYCHA’s announcement as short-sighted, partly because of the added pressure this could put on the city’s homeless shelters.

‘By definition, people with Section 8 vouchers can’t afford the rent,’ said Ed Josephson, director of litigation at South Brooklyn Legal Services. ‘Needless to say these people will end up in the shelter system.’”

Read the full story at The Brooklyn Ink.

(Housing)

Tenants Demand Repairs in Protest At Landlord's Doorstep

A group of tenants who have been represented by SBLS recently protested outside their landlord’s home to demand that he finally make good on an agreement to repair their Flatbush homes signed in January.

The tenants took to the sidewalk outside their landlord’s home. Their complaints include leaking sewage, bedbugs, rodents, and dust from construction that has sent several residents to the emergency room.

SBLS attorney Michael Grinthal, who is representing some tenants, said that the deadlines from a consent stipulation signed by the landlord for repairs of the most serious and dangerous violations have already elapsed.

Read the full story at Brooklyn Courier-Life.

(Housing)

SBLS Represents Disabled Woman Against Landlord

SBLS is currently representing a client who suffers from muscular dystrophy and has to crawl up and down four flights of stairs each day because her landlord refuses to transfer her and her mother to a ground-floor apartment.

South Brooklyn Legal Services Housing Unit Co-Director Brent Meltzer is representing the Flores family in a suit against the landlord.

Lordes Flores spends more than an hour a day just getting in and out of her building to attend school five days a week at United Cerebral Palsy.

When there was a vacancy on the ground floor last February, Carmen Flores sought to move to the empty flat.

She said a Dermot representative told them “transfers” are not allowed.

“They want us to move out,” Carmen Flores said. “It’s not fair. I just want a better life because it’s very hard for me and Lordes here.”

Read the full story at the New York Daily News here.

(Housing)

SBLS Client Speaks Out Against Atlantic Yards Project

Although the New York Court of Appeals recently released a decision that said the state can seize the properties of home- and business-owners for the construction of Atlantic Yards, which includes a basketball arena, some of the people who live in the area are still trying to fight to project. Client David Sheets spoke to the Brooklyn Eagle about his experiences being pushed out of his home.

“It’s a matter of principle,” Sheets said of the fight against Atlantic Yards. “I can find another place to live; that’s not the point. I’ve seen what this whole ordeal has done to an entire neighborhood of people.”

For the full story, please visit the Brooklyn Eagle.

(Housing)

SBLS Attorney Michael Grinthal Discusses Support for Tenants in City Limits Magazine

SBLS Attorney Michael Grinthal of the Housing Unit was featured in a recent article in City Limits magazine, in which he talks about his work with Make the Road New York to help draft a bill requiring landlords to identify themselves in a registry.

Grinthal worked with Make the Road, based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to address what he said was a common question at tenant meetings: “Who is my landlord?”

The article states, “Grinthal says the standard practice of incorporating the owners of a multi-unit apartment building as a single limited liability corporation, while perfectly legal, also allows for abuse by landlords who don’t want to respond to tenants’ clamoring for repairs or other requests.”

“A bill that was introduced in August by City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito from East Harlem … would require anyone owning more than 25 percent of a corporately owned multi-unit apartment building to register their individual names, residences and business addresses with the city’s Department of Finance.”

For the full story at City Limits magazine, click here.

(Housing)