Bed-Stuy Rent Strike: Tenants Want Repairs In 'Crumbling' Homes

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Bed-Stuy tenants who live with chipped lead paint, broken fire alarms and deteriorating walls have organized a rent strike to force their landlord to make a host of vital repairs, according to residents and city records.

The Grand Putnam Tenants Association — which represents residents at 90 Downing St., 29 Putnam Ave., 425 Grand Ave. and 435 Grand Ave. — launched a rent strike on March 2 that they hope will force the company that owns their buildings into action, organizers said.

Tenants accuse Coastline Apartment Investors — the California-based developers who bought the buildings for $38 million in 2015 — of failing to maintain their homes, sending erroneous rent demands and divvying up apartments illegally.

“One of the things I’ve experienced in my apartment is the sound of raining rocks,” said resident Karma Johnson, “which is the inside of the wall crumbling as the apartment above mine is being demolished and redone.”

The four buildings — which once belonged to Bernard Miller and Yechiel Weinberger, who has thrice made the Public Advocate’s list of 100 Worst Landlords — have racked up 160 violations for peeling lead paint, broken fire alarms, leaking sinks, unflushable toilets and fire escape ladders that don’t work, Department of Housing Preservation and Development records show.

Activists from Equality For Flatbush, a grassroots organization that represents Brooklyn tenants, also accused developers of taking away the buildings’ live-in supers, failing to repair a leaking lobby ceiling that later collapsed, and failing to send city-mandated lease renewal agreements on time.

“They have sent false arrears notices to people whose rent has already been paid,” Johnson said in a video posted to the tenant association’s GoFundMe page. “They sent me a notice saying you owe us this much money and the amount was not the amount that corresponds to my actual lease.”

The tenant association hopes to take their landlords to civil court and demand they address the repairs, Johnson said. A GoFundMe campaign that hopes to raise funds for legal fees had earned $480 of its $3,000 goal as of Aug. 13.

Patch’s multiple attempts to contact Lori Casey, whom Department of Buildings and HPD records indicate manages the buildings for Coastline Apartments, were unsuccessful. Neither the telephone number or email address Casey provided the DOB were set up to receive messages.

Note: Yechiel Weinberger is the former landlord of this reporter.

Photo courtesy of YouTube