Tenants Demand Repairs in Protest At Landlord’s Doorstep

A group of tenants who have been represented by South Brooklyn Legal Services (a program of Legal Services NYC) recently protested outside their landlord’s home to demand that he
finally make good on an agreement to repair their Flatbush homes signed
in January.

The tenants took to the sidewalk outside their landlord’s home. Their complaints include leaking sewage, bedbugs, rodents, and dust from construction that has sent several residents to the emergency room.
SBLS attorney Michael Grinthal, who is representing some tenants, said that the deadlines from a consent stipulation signed by the landlord for repairs of the most serious and dangerous violations have already elapsed.

The
landlord “had 14 days to repair the C violations,” noted Michael
Grinthal, a staff attorney for South Brooklyn Legal Services who is
working with the tenants. That period, Grinthal said, had ended on
January 27th. In addition, Grinthal said, the landlord “had 30 days for
B violations,” a period that ended on February 12th. The 75-day period
for the least significant violations has not yet expired, Grinthal said.

“He’s
done some repairs,” Grinthal told this paper, “but he’s focused on a
bunch of vacant apartments to renovate, to re-rent.” Grinthal also said
the landlord had told the tenants that “they can’t meet in the
building,” which, he added, “is against state law.”

[…]

Waldman, for
his part, said that efforts to fix inhabited apartments had been
forestalled by tenants refusing him access, and suggested that the
tenants who were demonstrating were doing so because they were behind
in their rent. “One of the demonstrators here didn’t let us in till
last week,” he asserted. He later said. “All the demonstrators are in
court for not paying their rent. That’s the issue.”

As
for the charge of renovating only empty apartments, Fleischman said he
was doing so in order to move tenants into renovated apartments while
he worked on the ones they vacated. “We are renovating by fours,” he
said. But, he added, “Now, I don’t think I’m going to be that nice to
the tenants. I’m suffering. Let them suffer.”

[…]

As
for Fleischman’s contention that he was moving tenants into renovated
apartments while he fixed theirs, Trojniak had this to say: “If Mr.
Fleischman had any concern for tenants living with the inconveniences
of construction, he would make sure their lungs aren’t being filled
everyday with construction dust and debris.” However, she added, the
doors to apartments being worked on are “left wide open as workers tear
out everything in them and then drag the debris through the building to
take it outside.

“As far as I am aware,” she added, “only one
tenant has moved from her apartment into a different one, but that’s
only because South Brooklyn Legal Services forced the owners to do it.
The ‘new apartment she moved into also has leaks, major radiator issues
and other problems. Since she moved, Fleischman has done no significant
work on her old apartment.”

Read the full story at Brooklyn Courier-Life.