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?
The owners are trying to beat the system by buying a property that can be considered “undervalued” due to the fact that most people just aren’t sleazy enough to acquire a home in this manner.
Is this the kind of garbage that’s moving into Prospect Heights these days? Yuk.
It’s a 3500sq ft home for 2 parents and their 2 children and their 2 grandparents – not for 2 people as 12.03 says. I dont think that is “massive”.
AMERICA – i quess i should be able to spell this by now 🙂
I dont understend why tenants, insted of being greatfull for having 20 years plus discunt (i wonder how much money they were able to save?) atacking new owners who just want to use what they own. I have been to this country 10 years but i am still confiused, it is like a eastern europe again, what kind of AMEARICA is that?
if you want to talk about govt subsidy for housing, the biggest culprit is the income tax deduction that homeowners receive on interest payments. as an owner, i along with other Americans who are fortunate enough to own their homes, are recepient to countless billions in these govt ‘handouts’. also in nyc, particularly in brownstone brooklyn, property tax rates are especially low for 1-2 families vs. multifamily properties. both of these ‘subsidies’ are regressive as renters tend to have lower incomes than owners. so let’s get away from all the stereotypical judgements that are being thrown around on this blog about the character, motivations, work ethic and means of the tenants who are being displaced. it is at the least very bad policy, and I would agree with earlier posters 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? legal change always begins somewhere. perhaps it’s the accumulation of incidents like this, which are ‘legal’, that lead end/amend bad laws or add necessary laws. after all how many things that were ‘legal’ at one point were later viewed as at best poor policy and at worst immoral.
this is my first post on this board and after having spent a few hours (i know nothing better to do w/ my time i guess) reading comments, i have to say the level of outright selfish, i got mine (w/ no gov’t help of course), and racist attitudes is disturbing. i feel ashamed to live in brooklyn.
10:36–I don’t know what you mean by “guaranteed” and I don’t know about the ups and downs of some east village place but a statute is a statute, even though it can be open to endless interpretation. What do you mean “living, breathing human beings”? You mean like the people who own the property?
These tenants have had their run of BARGAIN rent and now it’s time for them to pay market rate like everyone else in this city does. YES IT IS HARD to fathom that they want to stay where they have lived for 20 years – easier to fathom that they just want to continue paying the rent they have been paying for 20 years!!!!!!!!!! Anyone that pays market rate for their apartment could not possibly have sympathy for these tenants.
To 8.47 – I do know more about the tenants than you because I have followed this story and read about it in the Daily News and you obviously have not – none of the tenants in this case are even employed – do you still feel sorry for them now bitch?
Far too many of you here are confusing “law” with “court decision.” And, in the case of the East Village building, it went like this: owners won the first round, tenants won on appeal, and then the owners appealed and won. Nowhere in the United States is a property owner “guaranteed” a right to do anything with their property that they please. And 90% of the posters who whine about greedy developers tearing down historic properties already believe this. But, of course, it’s different if living, breathing human beings stand in your way, isn’t it?
How about if all of us who are disgusted by the political posturing here–which is in direct contrast to the legal rights of the owners–call James’s office to lodge our disagreement, objection, etc.
I find it really appalling that politicians would demonize–by name–people doing exactly what the law entitles them to do.