Tenants Fight Eviction on Bergen Street
A Prospect Heights block party yesterday had homemade food, loud music and a louder message: Good neighbors do not evict neighbors. The Fifth Avenue Committee-organized event was aimed at drawing attention to the plight of four rent-stabilized tenants facing eviction from 533 Bergen Street, and it highlighted bubbling tensions over affordable housing, gentrification and Atlantic…
A Prospect Heights block party yesterday had homemade food, loud music and a louder message: Good neighbors do not evict neighbors. The Fifth Avenue Committee-organized event was aimed at drawing attention to the plight of four rent-stabilized tenants facing eviction from 533 Bergen Street, and it highlighted bubbling tensions over affordable housing, gentrification and Atlantic Yards. Councilmember Letitia James, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery and various activists spoke in support of the longtime tenants, who are fighting lawsuits from 533 Bergen’s new owners. The two couples that bought the building last year—Dan Bailey and Felicity Loughrey, along with Deanne Cheuk and Andre Wiesmayr—claim they want to evict the tenants because Bailey and Loughrey intend to construct a triplex for themselves out of the units. Under current laws, landlords of rent-stabilized buildings are allowed to evict tenants if they plan to live in the units themselves.
Most speakers called for reforming rent-regulation laws and maintaining affordability for low-income residents. Rents in Prospect Heights are increasingly beyond the means of most working-class families, said Councilmember James. We must preserve this community’s diversity. James and Senator Montgomery both characterized the push to evict 533 Bergen’s tenants as secondary displacement from Atlantic Yards. Brent Meltzer, a lawyer with South Brooklyn Legal Services who is representing one of the tenants, noted that if the landlords succeed with the evictions, 3,500 square feet that four families live in will be given over to just one family. The most basic articulation of the situation, however, came from Rosa Negron, one of 533 Bergen’s residents: How you going to evict people who’ve been living here all these years?
I think the East Village case has been getting a lot of attention because it is just SO out of whack. They claim that one family will live in a 60-room building. In the Brooklyn case, it is very likely that the owners will live there, and although it will be a generous space, it is not bizarrely huge.
One of these tenants is paying only $402 per month! Normally, that would rent for at least $1800 a month. Time for these folks to move on…
You mean OVERT racism has no place here, right? This site couldn’t survive without other, less obvious kinds of racism.
Brownstoner could do with moderating these boards. Don’t think racism has a place here.
90 percent of all poor people should be euthanized. The remaining 10 percent should get their black asses back to work!
is it immoral to eat as much food as we eat in America while folks in Darfur starve?
everytime you go to grocery store to buy that big steak, the politicians should picket infront of the store so you feel guilty that someone who doesn’t have the money to buy the steak can’t have any.
isn’t every home buyer trying to “beat the system” when they purchase a house?
isn’t everyone who purchases anything and bargains in the process trying to “beat the system”?
when you get a job and negotiate higher pay than a colleague, are you “beating the system”?
i believe someone in an earlier post mentioned “Atlas Shrugged” . Ayn Rand would be shaking her head after reading these series of posts. With the ” immoral to displace 4 families to create 1 massive home for 2 people in today’s tight housing market. 3,500 sf where do they thin kthey are? dallas?” comment:
now that could be straight out of the “Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged”. imagine that in 2007?
Am I the only one disturbed that someone can’t even post an opinion here without being called “bitch” by some cretin with a computer, as did “guest at 10:47”? That’s really beyond the scope of argument or stating one’s opinion. I guess when some people can’t argue their point intelligently, they fall back on childish name calling. Way to go.
The owners are probably spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, it’s not exactly a cheap way to “beat the system” so there must be more to it than that.