tenant harassment

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Despite Rapid Development, Bushwick Community Plan Won’t Happen Until Next Year

When we last checked in with the Bushwick Community Plan that stakeholders are formulating for the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, Antonio Reynoso and Rafael Espinal were hoping to introduce it to the City Council sometime this year. But it now looks like it won’t happen until the end of 2018, Reynoso said in an interview with City Limits.

“Through negotiations and the work that they’re doing, we’ve noticed that we’ve had to push the timeline back a year,” Reynoso told the site’s publisher, Jarrett Murphy.

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LES Landlord Sami Mahfar Settles Tenant Harassment Case

The State Attorney General has reached a settlement with Sassan “Sami” Mahfar, the embattled landlord accused of illegally harassing tenants of his Lower East Side buildings in an effort to displace them. As part of the $225,000 settlement, companies owned by Sassan “Sami” Mahfar and Sina Mahfar will pay $175,000 to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and its efforts to combat lead poisoning.

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East Village Landlord’s Ice Cream Social Gets a Chilly Reception

Protestors yesterday at TK (Photo: Luisa Rollenhagen)

Protestors yesterday at TK (Photo: Luisa Rollenhagen)

It’s hard to imagine how anyone could get pissed off about ice cream. It’s pretty delicious stuff on its own, but when ice cream comes free, it’s capable of turning almost any New Yorker with a broken-AC situation into a sedated, softly smiling master of chill. But the tenants at 325 East 12th Street– owned by Brookhill Properties, a real estate company founded by notorious landlord Raphael Toledano, who’s currently under investigation by the State for tenant harassment– have been moved to a level of frustration that can’t be solved with tasty bribes. That’s why, when they started receiving invitations to attend an ice cream social bought and paid for by Brookhill, the tenants organized an ice cream protest.

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Landlord Steve Croman Charged With Criminal Fraud and Pushing Out Tenants

George Tzannes, a Croman tenant from the East Village last month (Photo: Luisa Rollenhagen)

George Tzannes, a Croman tenant from the East Village last month (Photo: Luisa Rollenhagen)

Just a month ago we followed faith leaders and tenants as they tried to meet their landlord, Steve Croman of 9300 Realty (and honoree on The Village Voice‘s New York City’s 10 worst landlords list twice–once in 1998 and again in 2014). They wanted to deliver letters from 32 different religious figures, decrying Croman’s alleged tenant harassment tactics, such as cutting gas and heat, dangerous construction, low buyouts, and threatening frivolous lawsuits.

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East Village Tenants Say ‘Enough Is Enough’ to Alleged Predatory Landlord

Karen Platt's East Village building, 522 East 5th Street (Photo: Nicole Disser)

Karen Platt’s East Village building, 522 East 5th Street (Photo: Nicole Disser)

Karen Platt has been channeling her frustrations through the satisfying scrape of chalk across concrete. After years of living with dust, noise, and health hazards caused by construction, repeated and seemingly relentless service cut-offs, and what she says are intentional moves by her landlord to clear her (and other rent-regulated tenants like her) out of her longtime home at 522 East 5th Street in the East Village, Platt’s sidewalk messages reveal she has reached a breaking point: “Lack of services is harassment” and “Enough is Enough.”

As Platt explained to B+B, since Icon Realty Management bought her building, things took a turn for the miserable. “I’ve lived in New York my whole life and I’ve never, ever been treated like this,” she said.

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