Once Homeless Tenants Not Protected By Rent Stabilization: Report

PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS, BROOKLYN -- A Brooklyn Supreme Court justice ruled formerly homeless residents of a Prospect-Lefferts Gardens building can be evicted because they are not protected by rent stabilization laws, according to reports.

Acting Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Peter Sweeney ruled last week that residents of a cluster site at 60 Clarkson Ave. are not legal tenants under the state's rent stabilization laws and therefore cannot sue landlord Clark Wilson for trying to evict them in 2015, according to a New York Law Journal report.

The 60 families — participants in the Department of Homeless Services' cluster site program which pays nonprofits to provide transitional housing — alleged their landlords created an illegal sublet situation through the nonprofit We Always Care, according to the report.

Residents told Gothamist in 2015 that landlord Barry Hers recieved $3,000 a month per apartment, yet refused to address roach infestations, violent crimes, collapsing ceilings and wouldn't let them have birthday parties in the common areas.

But Wilson's attorney Nativ Winiarsky successfully argued that the cluster-site residents were not tenants, but licensees, and that landlords were entitled to evict them after the city stopped paying We Always Care to direct homeless people to the Crown Heights buildings, and the contract was not registered with the city comptroller.

The Legal Aid Society attorneys who represented the tenants told New York Law Journal they will appeal the decision on the grounds that the 60 Clarkson Ave. landlords also received rent from some residents who contributed 30 percent of their income and housing vouchers.

Read the full New York Law Journal report here.

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