Dixon Puts Landmarked Bed Stuy Apartment Building up for Sale for More Than $4 Million

I looked at this building when it was on the market before. The tenant on the top floor is a relatively new tenant, not a long time tenant at all. He claimed in a load fashion when I was there that he has been in court to claim his rights from the moment he moved in! A couple of years at that point. Yes, his rent was far below market, because the prior long time owner did it by the book. Why not just move in and appreciate it? No, he has rights…. any sane person would have just dealt with the minor issues: 100 year old original windows do come with some droughts etc that is what curtains are for. Pieces of molding coming out of alignment etc! Move to a new building, if you don’t like antique details and charm! But yes an HPD inspector will write them up as violations.
No matter what any landlord does; and the prior one had and was trying to do a lot while I was there, but the tenant would not let workers in because the worker was 30 minutes late for his appointment! For a job that would be taking the whole day. Clearly a tenant with a serious abuse issue of both any landlord and workers trying to maintain the building.
There was also another tenant on the lower floor; a lovely elderly lady who had lived in the building for many, many years but was now living in fear of her life from her own family who had all moved in and were terrorizing her. Her grand daughter and her “fiance” along with six children as well as an other adult friend had all moved in a taken over the apartment. The poor tenant was clearly a victim of elder abuse at the hands of her own family just because she had a rent stabilized apartment, and those mutts will inherit the apartment once she is gone. The elderly lady was locked out of most of the apartment, every room had locks on the doors, so she showed me her tiny room, (what was the original maids room off the kitchen) the kitchen & the bathroom and hoped that I could help her.
There is much talk in the press about landlords abusing rent stabilized tenants, no one talks about tenants abusing their own elderly family members and long term landlords. Not all Landlords are faceless corporations, most of the long term landlords in the outer boroughs are people that live in the communities, but are now completely giving up again, ( in the early 1980’s it was due high oil & RE tax issues etc) not because of the price that they can get for them…40-50 years of your life is worth more than money can pay, it is not about money, it is about not being able to protect your good tenants or being able to maintain and update the building that you have struggled to do right by all these years. But because their kids certainly do not want them and face the abuse from tenants and the authorities, but they also do not want to be abused any more by the few (the tenant on this top floor for example) and the rights of tenants without any notice of the whole situation.
Rent stabilization has been in existence for more than 50 years, of buildings that for the most part were already old. Most of these buildings need major work that cannot be done with people living in them!
This is a beautiful landmark building that if it is to be preserved should NOT be rent stabilized.