Landlord Fakes Burglary After Harassment Complaints, Tenants Say

BEDFORD, STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Simone Gamble returned home from work this week to find her door damaged and her lock changed. It frightened her, not only because someone had entered her apartment without permission or because her roommate has a serious illness that requires daily medication that was now inaccessible to her, but because she suspected she knew who had done it – and why.

Gamble, 31, who runs the tenants association at 693 Madison St. and has spent months protesting against building conditions that include toxic fumes, cold apartments and a five-day stretch without hot water, believes she was targeted by her landlord.

“It’s a scare tactic and he tried to make it look like a burglary," she said.

Gamble and her roommate Jane Ledesma waited for hours outside their apartment door Monday as police — who first demanded proof of residency and to know if the women had paid their rent — called the landlord Isaac Hirsch repeatedly, she said.

“The cop told him he needed to come let his tenants in, that he had a legal responsibility,” said Gamble. “He kept repeating he was too far away, he wasn’t coming.”

After numerous phone calls from at least two police officers, Gamble and an Equality For Flatbush activist, Hirsch claimed he had called A-One Locksmith, but Gamble called to check and their offices was closed.

Reached by Patch, Hirsch denied that the tenants had contacted him and said he responded by immediately sending a locksmith, but refused to disclose the name of the service he called. "I don't know who they contacted," said Hirsch. "The tenants made this up to make a story."

Meanwhile, residents and activists gathered outside Gamble's door and called out the landlord on social media.

“It’s a disgrace, it’s inhumane to lock people out in frigid cold temperatures,” said Ledesma in a Facebook video.

“I have to take my medication every day at the same time,” she said. “How can I get to my medication? I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

A man, who Gamble believes is related the landlord and Hirsch said was a professional locksmith, arrived at 10:30 p.m and let the two women back inside the apartment three hours after Gamble first returned home, she said.

Gamble and Ledesma said they rushed back inside their home, only to discover their bedrooms had been ransacked — personal items knocked over and strewn about — but nothing was taken.

“It was just really sketchy,” said Gamble. "Even the cops said, 'Burglars don't lock you out.'"

But when she tried to file a report with police, they refused to take it. “The cops said we had no right to file a report — the landlord had to do it.”

Hirsch denied changing the lock or entering the apartment, adding he believed Gamble and Ledesma might have changed the locks themselves to "make a story."

"They're trying to play the victim game," said Hirsch. "You'd have to ask them why."

Gamble believes her landlord has been trying to force rent-stabilized tenants out of his building for the past eight months.

“Half the units are being flipped over, divided down and rented by the room,” said Gamble. “He’s definitely determined.”

Building residents spent five days without hot water in January, resident Ava Penny, 59, said. She added she was hospitalized when paint fumes came wafting into her apartment in October and forced her to flee with her 3-month-old grandson in her arms.

Penny, who said she was hospitalized for heart palpitations, said the fumes started after the management company — JIH Builders — told rent stabilized tenants their leases would not be renewed.

Once again, Hirsch denied any wrongdoing, stating that the paint used in the hallways and in renovated apartments was "regular Benjamin Moore Paint." He declined to provide receipts.

The tenants are currently battling JIH Builders and Hirsch in court, but meanwhile the ceilings collapse, cracks appear in the walls, the hot water goes out for days and the locks get changed, said Gamble.

“Oh my god, it was horrible,” Penny said of the five days she spent boiling water to wash. “It was like we were back in caveman days.”

"We have nothing to be shy about," said Hirsch. "The building is in gorgeous condition."

Gamble, in protest of the treatment she calls "tenant harassment," recently put a sign in her window that read, “JIH Builders, We Will Not Be Displaced.” She believes the sign is why she was locked out.

“We know we were a target because we had signs in our windows,” Gamble said. “No other neighbors had those visible.”

Gamble and Ledesma — too afraid to go back into their wrecked bedrooms or to be alone — spent the night curled up together in their living room, she said.

But they vowed not to be discouraged from fighting their landlord.

“We’ll continue to have tenant association meetings and get community support,” Gamble said. “We’re going to bring this incident to court.”

Photos courtesy of Equality for Flatbush/Facebook