South Brooklyn Legal Services Fights for Family’s Right to Stay in Their Home

The October 1st issue of the Village Voice focuses on a couple who in 2006 purchased an 8-unit property in Prospect Heights and promptly began evicting its longtime low-rent tenants in order to create a 20-room remodeled home for themselves. Brent Meltzer, Senior Housing Attorney at South Brooklyn Legal Services (a program of Legal Services NYC), is leading the team representing the family living in the building's lone remaining rent-stabilized unit.

The first tenant to receive an eviction notice left without a fight,
and Bailey and Loughrey [the new owners] moved into that vacated apartment in early
2007. Another tenant, Hector Gerena Jr., contested his eviction but
eventually took a $12,000 buyout and moved in March. "The apartment
meant a lot to me, because that's where my father had his dying days,"
he says. But his lawyer warned him that if he took the case to trial
and lost, he would owe his landlords money for their legal fees. Two
more families settled recently and agreed to move out in the coming
months. Suarez [SBLS's tenant] is the last one standing.

With the help of Brent Meltzer, a lawyer at South Brooklyn Legal
Services, Suarez has put up a fight for her $402-a-month apartment.
They argued that Suarez was protected from eviction because she was
disabled due to her bout with colon cancer. Rent regulations bar
landlords from displacing disabled or elderly tenants unless they can
provide an apartment of equivalent size and (impossibly, in this case)
equivalent price in the same neighborhood. The stakes are high: If the
court agrees that Suarez is protected as a disabled person, the
landlords will either be forced to let her stay, or they will have to
find her another three-bedroom apartment in Prospect Heights, where she
will pay her current $402.50 rent and they will pay the difference.

The landlords' lawyers asked for an independent physical exam of
Suarez, apparently to verify that part of her colon had been removed
due to cancer. They also wanted years of medical records, employment
records, Social Security documents, and contact information for all
medical personnel who saw Suarez as a patient. (The landlord's lawyers
eventually dropped the request for the independent exam.)

Meltzer countered with demands for documents to verify that the
landlords were, in fact, planning to live in the house permanently and
not just clearing out the building in order to sell it for a profit. He
asked for five years of the landlords' bank statements and other
financial documents, as well as information on the financial agreement
between the four owners of the building, and medical evidence to back
up Bailey and Loughrey's statement that the evictions were justified
because "a doctor had suggested that their son needed more space."

The battle over 533 Bergen, meanwhile, has ignited interest from
housing and neighborhood advocates. In August 2007, the Fifth Avenue
Committee invited several elected officials to a block party outside
the building. "This stuff usually happens in the dead of night, and we
wanted to really broadcast it," explains Powell, the tenant organizer.
"We wanted to say: 'Hey! This is happening in your neighborhood, and we
don't find this socially acceptable.' "

Read the full Village Voice article here.