Rent-stabilized tenants of 196 Huron Street held a protest in front of the building on Tuesday evening calling on their landlord to provide long-neglected repairs to their apartments.
The six-unit apartment building is listed for sale with a $3.5 million asking price and is advertised to be “delivered vacant,” NY1 reports (video via link):
Denisse Miramon says it’s her father, not the landlord, who has repaired leak-damaged walls, ceilings and floors at her family’s $998 a month rent stabilized apartment, on Huron Street in Greenpoint.
It’s an apartment she says that’s been plagued with mold, rusty fixtures, and leaks from excessive humidity.
“The ceiling was Very moldy and it would always leak to the point where my dad had to. He fixed it multiple times my dad, but it came to the point where it was just falling in so much leaking that he put up on my dad put a plastic cover on it until the landlord came and fixed it,” said Miramon.
Miramon and the buildings other tenants, who are Latino families, said at a rally Tuesday afternoon that the Landlord’s failure to make proper repairs is an effort to drive them out, so he can sell the building for millions of Dollars, in a neighborhood transformed by gentrification.
“Suddenly since it became a boom, my house has been neglected for far too long,” said Miramon.
Other tenants tell similar horror stories about their living conditions.
Maria Galicia said her bathroom ceiling collapsed while her husband brushed his teeth.
Listings for the 6-unit building show a $3.5 million-dollar asking price.
One of the selling points for that listing is, that the “building will be delivered vacant.”
Now tenants are asking a housing judge on Wednesday to take building management out of the landlord’s hands, and allow another company to handle the repairs.
The landlord’s attorney tells NY1 that the owner “most certainly never agreed to sell the place vacant” and that tenants began to complain about repairs after the building was listed for sale.
Assuming this is true, it is the type of thing that gives gentrification a bad name. Yes neighborhoods will change and the old timers must adapt to it but not get harassed out of their homes.