Formerly Homeless Flatbush Residents Face Eviction After Ruling

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK -- Brooklyn women who thought they'd left homelessness behind them openly wept in the halls of Brooklyn Supreme court Monday afternoon after a judge ruled their landlord had the right to evict them.

Residents of a cluster sites on Clarkson Avenue packed a Brooklyn Supreme Court on Nov. 5 to hear Justice Peter Sweeney confirm his October ruling that they were not protected by rent-stabilization laws and therefore could be evicted by landlord Barry Hers.

"I'm about to be homeless with my kids," said Irene Dowdy, a mother of five who has lived at 60 Clarkson Ave. for four years. "We're not going to have no place to stay."

"It's horrible," added Diane Moody. "I pay my rent and they still want to put us out?

"Come on, something has got to give, we're suffering."

Sunny Noh, one of the Legal Aid Society attorneys representing the tenants, said the judge promised to place a hold on the evictions until Nov. 13 so that attorneys could file an appeal, but could not promise her clients they would be able to stay in their homes.

"He is going to allow us to keep the tenants in place while we go up to a higher court," Noh said. "We've already prepared the paperwork."

Many residents remained fearful of impending eviction and outraged that the judge ruled against them, even when they'd paid their rent in the face of what they said are deplorable conditions: rats, roaches, mold and kitchens without basic functioning appliances.

Tashawn Sutherland, 46, the tenant leader of 250 Clarkson Ave. and a mother of two, fears what uprooting her family will do to her 8-year-old daughter, who has special needs.

"I'll have to relocate, my kids will have to transfer to another school," she said. "It will be very hurtful."

This case has hung in the balance since 2015, when Hers tried to evict tenants he housed through a Department of Homeless Services cluster site program that paid nonprofits to provide transitional housing to homeless people.

The city paid Hers' nonprofit We Always Care about $2,700-per-month for every formerly homeless family placed in one of his developments, according the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, the housing advocacy group representing the tenants.

The tenants have since been engaged in a complicated legal battle that set out to prove formerly homeless residents were protected under the same laws that protect rent-stabilized tenants.

But the landlords' 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 their rents, the New York Law Journal reported in October.

Mooney clutched a tissue to her eyes after the verdict and called on her fellow residents to make time to show up at the polls on Tuesday.

"We gotta vote tomorrow," she said. "We don't get no help from these people that we elect."

And, even though Dowdy wiped away tears, she said what she felt most of all was anger.

"As a human, being I don't understand how people move like this," she said. "It's a shame."

Photo by Kathleen Culliton