Bitter Feud Over East Village Mansion Threatens Greek Man's Home

EAST VILLAGE, NY — A notorious decade-old battle over tenants' rights in the East Village is still haunting the relative of a Manhattan mansion-owner who lives thousands of miles away in Greece, he says.

Nearly 10 years after the wealthy Economakis family turned an East Third Street tenement building into their family mansion, Evel Economakis fears he could lose his home an hour from Athens over a letter he wrote criticizing family members for evicting tenants.

The war of words began in 2008 when the Economakis' began moving out current residents to make the tenement their own abode.

As the tenants fought to stay in their rent-stabilized homes, Evel Economakis, a high school history teacher based in Greece, wrote a letter published in the New York Observer in 2008 in which he called his New York-based younger cousin Alistair Economakis a "rich brat" and alleged his uncle made anti-Semitic remarks.

He complained to a reporter in the letter about the family's tactics to turn the six-story tenement building into their personal dream home at 47 E. Third St. near Second Avenue.

Alistair Economakis, who Evel said is his cousin, filed a libel lawsuit in Greece against him years ago regarding the published statements.

"Everybody forgot about [Alistair], but for me it's kept going, going, going," Economakis told Patch.

"It's like having this cloud over your head for so many years — believing all the lawyers saying, 'Yeah, you have a chance,' and this and that," he said. But, he said, "there's no chance."

Court documents he provided to Patch show he was hit with an 8,000 Euro fine (nearly $9,000) by a Greek judge.

Now, the father of two teenagers who lives in Rafina, Greece with his wife has launched a GoFundMe campaign asking for about $20,000 to pay legal fines. The additional cash he's asking for accounts for interest accrued since the case was first filed in 2008, he said.

"I have to raise the money," Economakis said. "If I don't raise the money, then we lose the house."

His family has already survived deadly fires that blew through cities near Athens in July 2018, killing at least 76 people — an experience he described in Dissent Magazine as "the worst day in my life." Their home was "miraculously spared" by the blaze, but without the cash for legal penalties, he fears his cousin will instead take his home.

"If my family and I do nothing, the Greek state will send bailiffs to evict us and put our home up for auction. We won't survive this without the help of people of good will like yourself," he wrote.

Alistair Economakis did not respond to requests for comment.

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