53-broadway-091813

Tenants at Williamsburg’s 53 Broadway, a luxury rental, are staging a rent strike beginning today. In March, building residents told us they were dealing with incredibly high electric bills, problems with their parking lot and not having a promised 24-hour doorman. Their building super agreed to help some of the tenants negotiate a plan to break leases. But in the meantime, roughly half the tenants are withholding their rent. When they emailed the CEO of their management company, Metro Management, the responses were “elusive” and didn’t acknowledge their requests to fix issues with energy costs and building maintenance, according to the tenants.

They notified Metro of their planned rent strike on June 23, but didn’t receive a response. We’ve reached out to representatives of the management company, but haven’t heard back yet.

Tenants Complain About Problems at New Luxury Rental in South Williamsburg [Brownstoner]


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. If you’re paying high electrical bills turn off your account air conditioner, humidifier, flat screen tv and computer. And take a look at your bill; it’s high because our government is taxing us to death, but you don’t protest in front of yhe mayor’s crib.

  2. Eff these hipsters. How many if them are sub leasing their apartments on Airbnb in violation of their lease. And many if them mive into buildings and the next thing you know..they want only their White and Chinese friends in as tenants. And then these liberal rugrats are always defending deadbeat, chronic unemployed losers who use the tenant friendly law to their advantage instead of just paying the rent.
    These hipsters are self obsorbed elitist, racist opportunist

  3. Incredible. I love that folks have something to say without really knowing what they’re talking about. We work hard and pay an awful lot to live here.

    It’s as simple as this: there are commitments from building management per our contracts that have not been upheld, and we’ve tried to have this resolved for months with little, if any, satisfactory result. It’s unfortunate because it is, bar the countless number of setbacks, a nice building. Contractual promises aside, no one should have to pay, on average, $500/month/apt during the winter in a building with as many units as this one (as high as $1000+, btw). Mind, these aren’t the largest apartments in the world, either. And this doesn’t begin to speak to all of the other issues we’ve had to face in just our first year here.

    That said, the building’s super isn’t one of them. While the management company has done little to indicate they care about our concerns, the super has. To this end, the article misrepresents his position. He isn’t – and hasn’t been – offering to help us “negotiate a plan to break our lease.” After we exhausted all other means of communication, we reached out to him, believing he was in a better position than we were (incredible once you consider how much we pay to live here!), to help relay our grievances.

  4. You have no idea what you are talking about. This is a building full of working professionals forced to go all winter not using heat due to $1000+ bills. No NYU brats here.