Imagine that you are a New York City resident and the victim of theft. You ask the police for help, but because the thief who stole from you returned your property, they say their hands are tied. You press charges, but the judge tells you the same thing.
Sounds far fetched, doesn't it? Think again. This exact scenario is being played out right now in NYC Housing Court. The role of the Thief is being played by a landlord, Laurence Gluck of Stellar Management, and the role of You is being played by, well, YOU. Your understudies are the tenants of Independence Plaza North, who have been fighting for what's right for years now. They have been fighting, the way the tenants of Stuyvesant Town fought. The way those at Starrett City fought. And Co-op City, too. They fight for themselves and for their stolen stabilized rents. But they fight for you too. And for a city that may become unrecognizable in a decade or less if someone doesn't speak out.
The long story short is that Gluck took J-51 tax abatement money from the government and then went ahead and destabilized the rents at Independence Plaza North. This is illegal. Once caught, he tried to give the money back. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development apparently helped him do just that. They went in and retroactively changed the paperwork to make it look as if the landlord gave the taxpayer money - your money, OUR money - back at an earlier date. Something that might be called aiding and abetting.
But for Laurence Gluck, a landlord hell-bent on getting the poor and middle class out of his buildings, HPD bent over backwards to change the paperwork. And change it they did, there's no question. If not for a group of intrepid IPN tenants who smelled a rat, Stellar and HPD might have gotten away with it too. But not so fast. These tenants, many of them paying fair market rent, brought a lawsuit against Gluck. They knew that he wasn't allowed to take tax abatement money AND destabilize rents at IPN. And so the battle was joined. The sides were clear: Tenant vs. Landlord. But who would these housing agencies, the ones that are supposed to PRESERVE and DEVELOP housing units in our city, support in this fight? The man who stole from them or the people he stole from?
Former HPD Commissioner and YOUR Housing Secretary under Barack Obama, Shaun Donovan, looked at the same evidence I just outlined for you and wrote that it would be a "disaster" for landlord/tenant negotiations going forward if the rents at IPN were to be stabilized because of Stellar's illegal actions. What?! The only disaster is that Donovan's pro-landlord-at-all-costs stance cost many good, hard-working people their homes. Donovan's HPD is the actual agency that GAVE Gluck the money - YOUR money, OUR money - they drove the getaway car - and then he turns around and says, Well, it's OK. Is it OK with YOU?
And what did The Division of Housing and Community Renewal determine? They determined that they have no say in this and passed the buck, but not before saying that Stellar didn't steal the money, in their estimation, because when he was frisked he no longer had it on him. What?! These determinations defy all law and all logic. Ya know, if we didn't know better, we might draw the conclusion that these Government Agencies defend Stellar's stealing ways because in the end, they don't want affordable housing in NYC. Hmm...
So back to Court it goes. Now for a trial. A final battle in this long war. Meanwhile, the casualties pile up: those evicted because they couldn't pay the illegal rent increase imposed by Stellar (which was allowed by HPD and DHCR), those who moved out after their rents were raised, and those who died, seeing their apartments go back to the landlord and to illegal fair market rates.
There is a new development in all this, beyond the tenant's battle. It seems that the Feds are now involved. Apparently, some of that HPD money Stellar stole belonged to them. The Feds don't like to be stolen from and they are now investigating the landlord. You can steal from citizens. You can steal from ineffectual city agencies. But don't steal from Uncle Sam. Maybe that's the lesson of this tale.
Hopefully when the final word in this case is written and the courts do their job, there will be one more lesson: That stealing is stealing, no matter how many bureaucrats look the other way and say it isn't. Maybe then and only then will tenants who've committed no crime be given the justice they deserve. Maybe then will a small part of our city be ours again. Maybe.