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Tenants of about a dozen buildings in Crown Heights have formed a group to fight gentrification, landlord abuse and rising rents called Crown Heights Tenant Union, Brooklyn Bureau reported. Formed in October, the group recently held a rally outside 1059 Union Street, above, to protest landlords who try to force out longtime tenants to deregulate apartments and raise rents.

“When long term tenants move out, landlords have been gutting the apartments to deregulate the rents,” said the story. “At the same time the long term residents are not getting repairs in their units.”

The group was created with the assistance of the Pratt Area Community Council and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, or UHAB. The union has a list of demands, “including a five-year rent freeze, timely repairs, a right to organize and a right to fair leases.”

“They’re beautifying the neighborhood,” the story quoted a long-term resident as saying. “I’ve been here for 36 years. I want to enjoy that also.”

Crown Heights Tenants Form Union to Fight Gentrification [Brooklyn Bureau]
Rapidly Rising Rents Drive out Recent Arrivals in Crown Heights [Brownstoner]
Photo by Nicholas Strini for PropertyShark


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. So much good convo here. Risks related to RS for an owner are definitely factored into price by anyone who knows what they are doing.

    Love the line in the article at the very end:

    “We have a right to affordable housing. That’s what we’re fighting for,” says Donna Mossman, a resident of another BCB building at 1159 President St. “They’re beautifying the neighborhood. I’ve been here for 36 years. I want to enjoy that also.”

    Donna wants her cake and to eat it too. I want a drive a Ferrari and want to pay the price of a Chrysler for it if thats how we are gonna roll!!!! Typical democrat.

  2. I think these buildings USED to sell for less, because the rule of thumb USED to be that it was more trouble than it was worth to get rent controlled and rent stabilized tenants out. However, for a multitude of reasons–the biggest one being the amount of sheer cash that’s being poured over NYC real estate, (somewhat indiscriminately), those rules no longer apply. Now investors are buying up rent stabilized buildings with the assumption that by hook or by crook they’ll get those long-term tenants out, out, out. Buy-outs are increasingly common and increasingly large. Illegal strong-arm tactics are also now socially acceptable, and housing court is a lot less of a sure thing than it once was for tenants.

    Nothing about this situation is sustainable or pretty for anyone. Yes, it’s hard to make ends meet when you had to pay $8MM to buy a building and the rent roll for it is only 100K. (I didn’t even bother to try and make those numbers realistic–nothing about NY real estate at present is in any WAY realistic). It’s also hard to make ends meet when you’ve carved out a life for yourself in New York city making $40K a year and your rent being $1300, when suddenly apartments for that only exist in Yonkers or Far Rockaway or the north shore of Staten Island–all of which are nowhere near your job, your child’s school, your church, or the community you’ve help to shape for your entire life.

    The good news, (I think?) is that we’re in bubble territory again. This cannot hold. Already I’m amazed at the sheer number of rentals available in Bed Stuy and Crown Heights–most of them from obviously deregulated apartments. Something’s going to give, and I think it will soon.

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