125 Court Tenants Sue Two Trees and Withhold Rent

All is not well on Court Street. According to a press release yesterday, tenants of 125 Court Street, the large rental building at the northeast corner of Atlantic Avenue, are on rent strike and have initiated a lawsuit against landlord Two Trees Management. The suit alleges that the landlord has run afoul of the 421a law (which gave the project a 25-year tax abatement) “due to fraudulent misrepresentation of the Housing Preservation Development (HPD) approved rents for each unit and fraudulent lease renewal increases that used a deceptive base rent and did not adhere to the Rent Guidelines Board’s increases.” Jack Lester, the lawyer on the case, told us that rent was typically 20 to 30 percent higher than what was allowed by the 421a law when tenants tried to renew their leases. The tenants stopped paying rent this fall and winter, due to the rent dispute and complaints about water damage to the building, specifically mold. There will be a trial at the NY Supreme Court concerning the non-payment of rent in a suit filed by Two Trees Management. Two Trees emailed in a terse rebuttal to Curbed: “These allegations are completely baseless and have absolutely no merit. Beyond that, our focus has been providing the highest quality of service to our tenants and we will continue to do exactly that.”
Brooklyn Tenants Sue Landlord Two Trees, Begin Rent Strike [Curbed] GMAP