Results tagged “eviction”

East Village actor and director Sturgis Warner isn't just facing eviction from his apartment of more than 30 years — in a theatrical twist that adds insult to injury, he might get kicked out of his home by the producers of the Blue Man Group. In 2001, the moneymen behind the indigo-hued performance troupe purchased the building that houses their theater on Lafayette Street's Colonnade Row, where the 59-year-old thespian has lived in a fifth floor walk-up since 1978. Since then, the producers have been buying out tenants to convert the residences into their own apartments, a move that housing laws allow.

A Queens judge ruled that a 45-year-old man can be evicted from the Woodside, Queens co-op his dad has let him live in for 18 years. According to the Daily News, even though Richard Carnivale was allowed to live in the apartment and paid $250,000 in maintenance fees over the two decades—his dad welcomed him to the new pad with a kiss and said, "Here are the keys to your new home"—he never had actual ownership. The judge wrote, "The son's claim of ownership is essentially predicated on the handing over of keys to the co-op apartment. No writing exists to evidence an intention by the father of making the son the owner of the property." Plus, the father and son had a falling out, and Carnivale stopped paying maintenance in 2007. A lawyer for Carnivale's father said his client has health problems, "The father didn't want to do this, but he needs the money. It's a shame that it had to come to this. We're not looking to take the apartment and throw him out in the street." Carnivale may appeal the ruling.

The NY Times reports that the Department of Homeless Services is enacting a new policy giving shelters more power to evict homeless families: "Homeless families can be kicked out of city shelters for repeatedly breaking rules like staying out past curfew or for refusing apartments offered to them." While DHS Commissioner Robert Hess claims it'll be used only in "egregious situations," pointing out some families use the shelters as permanent housing, Legal Aid's attorney in chief Steven Banks said, "With all of the problems that the state has and all of the problems that the city has right now, in the midst of this economic downturn, it’s shocking that the state and the city are prepared to invest the resources to put innocent children and their families out of safety-net shelters onto the streets." But one shelter operator said, "There’s not a caseworker alive that wants to realize that threat, and as an agency, we don’t want to move people to the streets. That’s not what we’re in business to do. But if you enter the shelter, if you know there’s a threat of being put out of the shelter, you’ll be more likely to follow the rules."

After a woman set a pit bull on cops, prompting them to fatally shoot the dog in an Upper East Side public housing building on Tuesday night, there are some inevitable arrests: NY1 reports that the dog's owner, Milagros Martinez, and five others were arrested on "charges of possession of a controlled substance after police said they found crack residue in a crack pipe." Martinez was also previously evicted; according to the Daily News, she was "booted from her First Ave. apartment in April for not paying rent - but a judge let her back in." Apparently she was evicted because her husband was arrested "in a kiddie-toy drug bust," but was allowed back after paying back rent; Mayor Bloomberg said, "We had disagreed violently with the judge that let these people go back into their apartment." The News also spoke to the neighbor who claims she called 911 on Tuesday because she was "sick of the drugs" in the apartment; the woman felt bad about the dog's death, "I cried. But I feel the dog's probably in a better place than being with them."

We've all heard nightmare tales reminding us of why you shouldn't date your boss, but a Long Island woman learned an even tougher lesson when things went sour with her boyfriend, who also happened to be her landlord. Kim Hookey wanted a full 30 days notice when things went sour with boyfriend Robert Drost—because what's better than living together with your ex for the first month after everything goes haywire? Drost insisted that he wasn't trying to play Hookey; he merely was following the letter of the law which said he only had to give her ten days to pack up her things and leave his Northport house. A judge agreed with Drost that she did not have rights as a "tenant-at-will." Drost's lawyer believed the case could be summed up succinctly by saying, "He owns the house. He asked her to leave. She said she wouldn't." The Suffolk judge said the it's the first time an appellate court "has directly addressed the paramour licensee issue." A Hofstra law professor told Newsday, "It doesn't mean that when all relationships go sour that a boyfriend can evict his partner lickety-split."

The number of court cases filed by landlords over nonpayment of rent jumped about 19 percent in the first two months of 2009 from the same period last year, to 42,257 from 35,588. And lawyers, judges, and tenant advocates tell the Times that more and more middle-class renters are finding themselves in the unexpected position of facing eviction. The spectrum of "middle-class" includes a former Merrill Lynch employee thrown out of his $5,700/month Tribeca apartment (he owed $20,000 in back rent) as well as the single mom of three fighting to keep her $1,750/month apartment after losing her bookkeeping job (previously, she lost her house to foreclosure when she lost her job as a legal recruiter). Then there's Kevin Brewster-Streeks and his partner Greg Armstrong, both in their 20s and both buried in debt since Brewster-Streeks lost his $36,450 job as a records clerk at a law firm. After two bouts in housing court, they moved out of their $1,650/month Bronx apartment in February, owing nearly $7,000 in back rent. Brewster-Streeks says, "It’s kind of dehumanizing. They see you as a certain kind of person. We’ve never been that certain kind of person."

Rent-controlled tenants living in the artist studios above Carnegie Hall received eviction letters last week from the state, but at least one of the six remaining holdouts remains defiant. 96-year-old Editta Sherman has been fighting to stay in her $530/month rent-controlled, 800 square foot studio apartment ever since the concert hall announced its expansion/renovation plans last year. The Carnegie Corporation has offered to relocate the remaining tenants "to equivalent or superior apartments in the neighborhood, paying any differential in rent for the remainder of their lives," but Sherman tells the Post, "They'll have to drag me out. They'll have to use their bare hands." Unless, of course, the corporation can come up with the $10 million figure she floated in October as the price of her evacuation.

The Times takes a look at a tradition followed by the city's 45 marshals, who take a break from evicting tenants for two weeks every year around the holidays. The unofficial "eviction moratorium" isn't sanctioned by the city, and the marshals insist it has more to do with year-end paperwork than any Christmas spirit. But one marshal, 31-year veteran Danny Weinheim, admits to having a bit of a heart: "Could you go into an apartment with a Christmas tree and evict everybody and be Scrooge? I wouldn’t do that. It’s Christmas Eve. I’m Jewish, but it’s still Christmas Eve." The article also gives an insightful peek at the makeup of the city's marshals: two have Ph.D.’s, one was an exterminator, and another was a haberdasher before taking up one of the most hated occupations. And one unnamed marshal will be breaking ranks and carrying out evictions this week (it's said he has a heart two sizes too small).

The DAily News reports that as foreclosures and evictions rise all over the city, many of the victims are renters--NYU's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy counts 38,000 were affected. And in many cases, "renters have been given just weeks to find new digs, while unscrupulous landlords collect rents for homes they no longer own." In one case, some tenants told a judge they had no idea their landlord didn't own the building anymore--and after paying their September rent, the landlord "told them she would keep their security deposits as payment for October rent." Even the bank's lawyer believes they are innocent victims!

Bianca Jagger's attempt to get her $4,600/month rent-stabilized Upper East Side apartment back failed at the Court of Appeals today. The court upheld her eviction from 530 Park Avenue, citing her status as a tourist with a B-2 visa and the fact that residents of rent-stabilized apartments must use them as their primary residences.

The Hotel Chelsea bloggers are reporting from the front lines that yesterday "eviction notices signed by Chelsea Hotel general manager Andrew Tilley were posted on the doors of a large number of residents, ordering them to pay up in three days or else face eviction proceedings." The targets were long term residents of the hotel, some allegedly owing just a month's rent, and "some being elderly and physically disabled." Tilley had reassured the tenants this summer that something like this wasn't going to happen on his watch, so the news comes as a surprise to all, though the bloggers note that "the fact that these notices follow directly on the heels of an economic downturn is not likely a coincidence." Changes started going down at the Chelsea a little over a year ago.

A group of residents in a massive building at 3333 Broadway (at 135th Street) are filing a class action lawsuit against the owner of the building, which until 2005 was in the state’s Mitchell-Lama program for moderate-income housing but is now charging market-rate rents. The residents say the owner had not properly notified them of the change to market-rate housing, and they say they're being systematically harassed to move out so higher-paying tenants can move in.

Joseph Wintje, a 51-year-old convicted rapist and registered sex offender, is suing his former landlord because she allegedly evicted him from his Brooklyn apartment for racist reasons. According to the Post, Wintje's discrimination complaint against 70-year-old landlord Domenica Pedone asserts that after just four days in the apartment he was given an ultimatum by Pedone when she noticed his black girlfriend around. Wintje says Pedone told him, "I don't want her coming over here." But Pedone insists she only evicted Wintje after her neighbors said he was a "bad man," what with his rape-y past and all. One thing's for sure; after this Post article, Wintje's going to have a tough time signing a lease anywhere with access to the Google machine.

On January 20th, residents of 475 Kent in Williamsburg were evicted from their apartments, which were deemed illegal, after the Fire and Buildings Departments found multiple violations (including a matzo factory housed in the building).

A real estate developer with close religious and social ties to the Lubavitcher Hasidim community managed to swindle 40 families out of their homes in what the Daily News describes as one of the biggest scams of the recent housing crisis.

Pet-owning tenants of eight buildings in the Bronx are distressed over letters recently sent out by the South Bronx Management Company, who took over the buildings that were once owned by the city. The letters point out that leases prevent the keeping of pets in the building and threaten that if tenants don't get rid of their animals, they will be evicted. This sounds like a case for the pet lawyers!

A piece in The New York Times today shows that that the residents of 475 Kent are not prepared to go quietly after their recent eviction due to fire safety violations. Even the landlord of the owner of the nearly block-long building near the Navy Yard in Brooklyn wants his tenants back in and is cooperating with them to that end.

On Sunday Gowanus Lounge received frantic emails from tenants in a blocklong loft building at 475 Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg who were being suddenly tossed out into the frigid night by the FDNY; we went to the building on Monday morning and talked to some of the shell-shocked residents as they moved out, one of whom told us, “Sheila [Properties] owns the whole lot and I don’t want to speculate but there’s a reason they want to empty the whole lot.”

An appellate court ruled this week that a 71-year-old woman could remain in the West Village apartment she shares with her two cats, despite a no-pets clause in her lease. Siiri Marvits has lived in the same apartment for 43 years and has had her two cats Athena and Apollo for more than ten years. The Daily News reports that according to the New York City Law Journal, a landlord must begin eviction proceedings within...