Brooklyn Renters, Abused By 'Slumlord' And Ignored By Electeds, Resort To All-Out Strike

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — We don't know what's more depressing: a) the findings of our recent investigation into the brazen career of NYC's 95th "worst landlord," Mendel Gold, and other affordable-housing flippers like him across the city, or b) the fact that — weeks after we published said findings — Gold and his management team are apparently still going about business as usual with no fear of intervention from city or state officials.

"It’s outrageous," Naomi Dann, a representative for the couple dozen tenants living in Gold's building at 80 New York Ave., said by phone Thursday. "There are a million loopholes and no enforcement."

Gold did not answer multiple calls for comment.

Read the full Patch investigation into his toolbox of tactics: "The Flipper's Playbook: How NYC Slumlords Terrorize Tenants And Get Away With It."

In the story, we identified all the city and state policies, largely unchanged under the administrations of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, that allow landlords like Gold to plunder the city's affordable housing stock, make tenants’ lives hell and cash in big.

We found these serial "flippers" have little reason to quit. They face few, if any, consequences — Gold being no exception.

After the story dropped, Patch once again asked Cuomo and de Blasio through their spokespeople if they found it acceptable that, on their watch, a middle-aged woman living in a rent-stabilized apartment at 80 New York Ave. had been forced to endure two below-freezing NYC winters without heat. (And counting.)

The mayor and governor did not respond.

Meanwhile, Gold's tenants at 80 New York Ave. — who've already endured a year-and-a-half of rat infestations, crumbling walls and ceilings, construction dust and debris, verbal harassment, power outages and long, cold winters without heat, according to two slow-moving tenant lawsuits in Brooklyn court — say things have continued to go south.

City workers cut off the building's gas supply for more than a month this spring, Department of Buildings records show, after they found the landlord had installed seven gas lines in the cellar without permission from the city. Residents say they were unable to cook or bathe during this time.

And Gold has yet to fix the year-and-a-half-long heat situation, city records show.

So his tenants have taken matters into their own hands.

Back in early May, at a rally outside the state office that oversees rent-regulated NYC housing (pictured above), fed-up renters at 80 New York Ave. threatened to launch an all-building rent strike on June 1 if their landlord didn't meet three core demands — a rare and legally risky tactic, but one tenants believe is necessary to win the fight for heat before temperatures start to cool again this fall.

Their demands, verbatim:

• Heat and hot water for all residents: Management must reinstall the boiler responsible for central heat and hot water for all apartments.
• Fair rent: All renovated apartments must immediately be returned to rent stabilized status.
• An end to harassment: All tenants deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and to live in a safe, warm, pest-free home.

"I think it's time," tenant Angelica Blalock said at the rally on May 3. "Besides what I've been going through, the other people in the building have had it so much worse. It's ridiculous."

So when tenants still hadn't heard from Gold by June 1, not a single resident of 80 New York Ave. put a rent check in the mail.

"If we can hurt their pocketbook... that's the last card we have left to play," Dann said.

Photos courtesy of Naomi Dann