Housing 101

 

 

After several years of reading my housing diatribe – it will no doubt awaken not a few people as to what the landlord netherworld is currently up to and show how the City agencies are cooperating in forcing out rent controlled and rent stabilized tenants. HPD is a bad joke as far as an agency where complaints are lodged, the Buildings Department is at the very least a corrupt idiot stepchild of the Bloomberg empire, and the DHCR all but works in collusion with landlords and their attorneys for destroy affordable housing in Manhattan. The deck is stacked against tenants so its time to talk turkey about what is going on.

 

The main characters in this laughable series of bureaucratic horrors are primarily “Mitch & Murray” – the nom de guerre we have assigned to Mark Ramer and Michael Saperstein – two landlords who vaguely resemble the main characters in that Jack Lemon film “Glengary, Glenross.” The similarity, of course, ends there. Both Ramer & Saperstein were former dentists who stumbled upon real estate when their laughing gas ran out. Instead, having taken over a bunch of property through unsuspecting family friends, the inhabitants of the camps were treated better than their tenants or their workers.

 

Two supers died in their forties from the abusive stress and their families were summarily evicted after the dirt settled at the cemetery.

 

Why is this series relevant?

 

We will go through some of the comedic weaknesses of the 311 system which is insulting to the intelligence of many New Yorkers, on to the lack of interest or action by the part of the downtown politicians who should be outraged, and on to the legal system and courts which cooperate in aiding $400 an hour lawyers like Belken, Burden, to slowly shrink the affordable housing stock in Manhattan. 

 

The only Manhattan politician who has come out forcefully for affordable housing is Borough President Scott Stringer. The jury is still out on housing advocate Margaret Chin who recently won Alan Gerson’s seat in the City Council. Precious little has been accomplished beyond those efforts. Speaker Quinn initiated sanctions for landlords guilty of abuse but the fine ($5,000) are the price of a new suit for Mitch & Murray.

 

Stay tuned. 

 

As we delve into the corruption we will assess a system that tolerates abuse and harassment, that permits apartments loaded with lead paint where young children live, permits illegal apartments, allows family to go without heat in the winter and forces them to live with leaks and vermin—all right here in SoHo. While all of this is examined and we can see the workings of a system that is incompetent, abusive and corrupt how is that we tolerate it?  Perhaps we can all learn more about how to fix this severely flawed system.