NY Mag Reveals the "Racist and Likely Illegal" Schemes of a Brooklyn Landlord
We’d like to ignore New York Magazine’s article, “I Put in White Tenants’: The Grim, Racist (and Likely Illegal) Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord,” but people keep emailing us about it, posting it on Facebook — and it’s now “most read” on the magazine’s site. The article is a Studs Terkel-like stream-of-consciousness 1,600-word quote from a…
We’d like to ignore New York Magazine’s article, “I Put in White Tenants’: The Grim, Racist (and Likely Illegal) Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord,” but people keep emailing us about it, posting it on Facebook — and it’s now “most read” on the magazine’s site.
The article is a Studs Terkel-like stream-of-consciousness 1,600-word quote from a racist Hasidic landlord who describes a variety of questionable and sometimes outright illegal money-making real estate schemes, from buying deeds on lis pendens property to driving blacks out of rental property and replacing them with whites. A sample quote:
The building was full of tenants — $1,300, $1,400 tenants. We paid every tenant the average of twelve, thirteen thousand dollars to leave. I actually went to meet them — lawyers are not going to help you. And we got them out of the building and now we have tenants paying $2,700, $2,800, and they’re all white. So this is what we do. My saying is — again, I’m not racist — every black person has a price. The average price for a black person here in Bed Stuy is $30,000 dollars. Up over there in East New York, it’s $10,000 dollars. Everyone wants them to leave, not because we don’t like them, it’s just they’re messing up — they bring everything down. Not all of them.
Is quoting a racist with no context also racist? Seems the article is implying this guy is not atypical. The article says “It is important to remember that Ephraim [a pseudonym] is one voice on a wide spectrum.”
The article is an excerpt from a forthcoming book, The Edge Becomes the Center,” by DW Gibson, from Overlook Press. Perhaps New York Magazine intends to publish more excerpts in its print magazine that will give a more balanced picture.
In any case, we think it’s worth noting that, racism aside, replacing tenants paying $1,300 or $1,400 for an apartment with tenants paying $2,700 or $2,800 a month is a very common practice in many parts of Brooklyn these days, regardless of the color of the tenants or the views of the landlord.
“I Put in White Tenants”: The Grim, Racist (and Likely Illegal) Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord [NY Mag]
Whether this particular story is true I think everyone agrees that the displacement and deception is part of a larger trend. When a homeowner unknowingly sells at a low price to a manipulative buyer, everyone in the area loses except the buyer.
It got me thinking about knowing your rights, and the way the city handles building sales data.
Perhaps the city should start a PR campaign where recent sales and rental data are posted on street corners. They could include data aimed at educating under-market renters exactly how much they would gain or lose by taking a buyout. This type of information, as well as how much your house is worth in the rapidly changing market, shouldn’t be hard to come by.
And that’s a NY Magazine article? Quoting one idiot hallucinator that claims to have owned 100 houses at age 20? Without any debate or study if this trend is widespread and if its source is racism or just profiteering from a MAnhattan to Brooklyn trend. Arent young artists that came to WIlliamsburg or Bushwick first being hurt the same way now by the new affluent Manhattanites joining the Brooklyn crowd? IS that racist or just cashing out on a economic trend? Might be morally wrong either way (depending in your moral conscious) but definitely not racism induced. The answer of why this is an article at all… is that the writer wanted to smear the hasidic community as racist but that would be too outrageous. So the writer instead took the stupidest of the bunch and quoted word for word so to imply that hasids are racists. That is a good way to sell his book. To cover her/his ass the writer put in that disclaimer that efraim doesn’t represent all hasids. Good try at anti semitism. Gibson preaches about racism while spewing the worst antisemitic stereotypes.
If writer isn’t implying that Efraim represents all than why is this one interview newsworthy. What a slimy hater. Ill remind the writer of the words of Martin Luther King:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
I hope the writer will learn from those beloved words.
Yes, and that works for sellers, at least those who have the money for that and are not underwater, offered a lump sum to get out of debt. Doesn’t work for renters. And of course, the accuracy of appraisals in a fast gentrifying neighborhood is often discussed here.
Randolph: “If he is using some sort of strong-arm, bullying or degredation of conditions to get them out, different story.”
Lamb is right. This Efraim is obviously a hallucinator. HE claims to be 26 but says he owned 100 houses at the crash.. SO he owned 100 houses at age 19? LOL!
A Hasid speaking Hebrew?! HAsids speak Yiddish not hebrew…. A journalist should have known that.
SHame on NYMAGAZINE for making a story out of some israeli stupid wannabee that doesnt own ship… into some hasidic antiblack trend…
Stupid and cheap ploy to sell their magazine-and Gibsons book!