Clinton Hill Co-op Fights To Keep Handyman After Sudden Eviction

CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN — For the residents of a housing cooperative in Clinton Hill, the past month has been a quiet, or at times not so quiet, race against the clock — and one that isn't over yet.

Shareholders from the Clinton Hill Cooperatives, a 12-building complex made up of 1,2000 apartments, are rushing against a 90-day window and a, so far, unresponsive board to save one of their longtime, live-in handymen from being evicted.

Hector Caballero, who has worked at the co-op for three decades, received a letter back in January telling him that he could continue to work for the cooperative, but that he and his family would no longer be able to live in the rent-free apartment they'd called home for 19 years.

The news of his eviction, decided by the co-ops board, immediately struck a nerve with many of the tenants who had grown to know and love Caballero and the work he does.

"I was completely horrified that the board would seek to remove a family that is a treasured part of our community," one resident, Heather Benjamin said, adding that her three-year-old son counts some of the maintenance staff as his closest friends. "It's beyond callous."

Benjamin is part of a group of residents who learned about Caballero's eviction through an email chain and quickly decided they needed to do something. Caballero was not immediately available for comment.

The group held a meeting, organized smaller groups with captains and decided to spread out and start collecting signatures for a petition to get the decision reversed. Within a week, they had over 700 signatures to bring to their board.

But, when they were told they couldn't attend a meeting on the issue, decided to stage a protest outside the closed-door board meeting.

Tenants were confused, they said, about the reasons the board would evict Caballero. They assumed, and would later be told during a meeting with the board, that reducing the live-in handymen was part of a capital plan for the building, Benjamin said.

But residents contended that Caballero, and another handyman who residents would find out had already been evicted, were necessary to the health of the building. He had always been able to respond to maintenance emergencies in the co-op because he lived on site and, being there for 19 years, he knew the quirks of the testy 1940s buildings and how to fix them.

"It's quite amazing what Hector does," another tenant Diana Crum said. "He knows the buildings really well and he's incredibly qualified and experienced. When I call (maintenance) they often say: 'Hector would be best for this.'"

The board did not return a request for comment, but outlined their reasons for the eviction in a memo obtained by Gothamist. Here, members said the management company recommended that having so many handymen was unnecessary and that having only some live in the buildings for free was unfair to others without that arrangement.

But, tenants said even these reasons didn't sit well with them.

"(The board) kept using the phrase 'fiduciary responsibility,' meaning we’re supposed to make sure we do things for the financial health of the co-op," another tenant, Jim Fields said. "...Which is true, but as one of the residents said, you need to balance the financial piece with the human and community piece — you can't let one destroy the other."

Fields added that only a couple months ago he was at a meeting where an auditor went over the co-op's finances and found that the cooperative had no financial problems. Benjamin added that Caballero's rent-free arrangement comes at the cost of being on call 24 hours, which she considers a fair trade.

Three of the nine board members did eventually discuss these questions in an open meeting over the weekend, tenants said, but most said they were left more confused than before.

"It's sort of one of those things that snowballs," resident Diana Crum said. "The more we learn the more questions I have. Questions never get answered."

Crum said residents were also frustrated because board members told them the petition could not be accepted because its format didn't fit the co-op's bylaws. The group said the plan is to start another, correctly formatted, petition to request a special meeting on the issue.

If a certain threshold of tenants in the co-op formally vote to reverse the eviction, the board has to comply, tenants said.

Some residents said the eviction issue particularly struck a nerve because the co-op has dealt with a similar problem in the past. A year ago, some residents led an effort to change their bylaws when they realized a large number of co-op tenants were ending up in housing court if they fell behind on their rent.

"This is particularly charged because Hector is a person and there is a real personal element to this story, but it does really speak to these larger issues," Crum said.

Others even suggest the eviction is representative of gentrification creeping its way into the housing complex.

"This situation is like a microcosm of gentrification in New York-- people of color build vibrant, close-knit communities that are attractive to wealthier white families, and then are displaced by those newcomers when financial interests prevail over preserving the fabric of that community," Benjamin said.

Even so, some have said the fight could turn out to be a positive thing for the community, if it ends well. Fields, who moved to the co-op two years ago, said it has brought the tenants together in a way that he hasn't yet seen.

"To me, I'm hoping this is a learning experience," he said. "The good thing about this is it's bringing people together and, in a lot of ways, it's having a positive effect on the community...You don't mess with people from Brooklyn."