New Map Charts Bed-Stuy Evictions Block By Block

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — A new map shows more than 300 buildings saw tenants evicted in 2018, according to new data released Monday.

Nearly 450 families were evicted in 2018 from Bed-Stuy, with more than 130 evictions enacted by anonymous landlords whose names could not be found on public record, tenants rights activists from The RTCNYC Coalition and JustFix.nyc discovered.

Approximately 345 buildings — which can be seen on the groups' Worst Evictors NYC map launched Monday — in the area bordered by Broadway, Classon, Atlantic, and Flushing avenues saw evictions last year, according to the map, which draws from city Marshals evictions data.

Unknown landlords accounted for the most evictions in Bed-Stuy and the city's own public housing authority claimed second place.

NYCHA evicted about 24 families from their homes in the Lafayette Gardens development on Classon Avenue, the Tompkins Houses near Park Avenue and the Marcy Houses on Nostrand Avenue, to name a few.

Brooklyn's top five worst evictors are also ranked on the new website.

The Pinnacle Group — which reportedly include filing 5,000 eviction notices in less than two years — took top prize with 27 families evicted, according to the map. Their tactics spurred an Attorney General's investigation in 2006 and a 2008 city law allowing tenants to sue for harassment, according to the New York Times.

Landlord Shalom Drizin evicted 16 families in 2018 from the Ebbets Housing Development, where tenants report dangerous conditions going unfixed, frequent fires and possibly illegal rent hikes.

Jacob and Naftali Hager, with property in Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx, evicted 11 families.

Moshe Piller — who owns several Brooklyn buildings as well as the development where two babies were killed in 2016 when a faulty radiator sent steam pouring into their home — evicted eight families in 2018, according to the map.

And landlord Michael Niamonitakis, seventh on the 2016 list of New York City's worst landlords, also evicted eight families, advocates said. Meridian Properties, Niamonitakis' realty company, was subject to a lawsuit in 2018 after a 58-year-old man froze to death in his Crown Heights apartment, where tenants frequently complained about a lack of heat.

Piller was the target of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project's public demonstration outside Brooklyn Housing Court Monday morning. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams joined the group to call out bad actors who rely on mass evictions to flip increasingly valuable Brooklyn property.

Williams championed the recently passed Right to Counsel law, which mandates tenants be provided attorneys in housing court, as a possible means of curbing the trend.

"This is our time to make sure that we not only strengthen rent regulation but expand it to many people with no protections at all," Williams stated. "People are waiting for action."

New Yorkers curious about the eviction practices of their own home owners can use the Who Owns What tool to track evictions in multiple buildings owned by the same landlord.