Sunset Park Landlords Tried To Evict Latinos, Lawsuit Says

SUNSET PARK, NY — The landlords of two Sunset Park buildings tried to evict Latino tenants, saying they don't like to rent to them because "they're sedentary" and demanding immigration documents during lease renewals, a new lawsuit claims.

A group of eight tenants in 601 and 614 40th St. filed a lawsuit Tuesday against building owners Adel and Linda Eskander claiming the couple discriminated against and tried to force them out to deregulate rent-controlled apartments, the New York Daily News first reported.

"I don’t like having Latinos, blacks or Chinese here because they’re sedentary," Adel Eskander told tenant Altagracia Tejada, according to court papers. "They never move. I need people to move."

The tenants joined with the Legal Aid Society to file the suit against the landlords, which also claims the stress from constantly going to housing court over evictions led Tejada to have a miscarriage.

"The Eskanders have bullied rent-regulated immigrant tenants to vacate their homes and refused to make much needed repairs to bolster their bottom line," said Sunny Noh, an attorney for the Tenant Rights Coalition at Legal Aid, said in a statement.

"Their unchecked reign of terror on vulnerable Brooklynites stops today. Years of unconscionable, malevolent and illegal behavior will catch up with them and they will soon reap what they’ve sown in federal court."

The Eskanders could not be reached for comment by Patch, but Linda Eskander told the Daily News that she's Puerto Rican and her husband is Egyptian.

The couple first bought the buildings, which were mainly filled with Latino tenants, in 2003 and immediately started an "aggressive displacement" of renters inside to decrease the amount of rent-controlled units, the lawsuit claims. From 2007 to 2008, more than 50 percent of them were deregulated, Legal Aid said.

"The Eskanders and their like have flouted the law and forced people from their homes for far too long," Councilman Carols Menchaca said in a statement. "Our affordable housing crisis is accelerated when rent stabilized apartments are lost through unethical and unlawful landlord tactics."

The Eskanders forced long-term Latino tenants to sign lease agreements that required documentation showing their immigration status at the time, but didn't ask the same of white renters, according to the suit. Residents of the 601 40th St. building sued over the leases in 2003 and a judge ruled they were unlawful, but the Eskanders continued the practice, the suit claims.

Aside from the lease agreements, the Eskanders also tried to kick-out Latino tenants from their buildings over "baseless" allegations, according to the suit. In one instance, Tejada pre-paid her rent while she visited her native Dominican Republic for the winter, but the landlords never cashed the checks and started an eviction process in 2012 over nonpayment.

The case was eventually resolved in Housing Court and Tejada was allowed to stay, but the Eskanders tried to evict her for nonpayment several other times afterwards, including once when she was pregnant with twins, the lawsuit claims. Tejada claims the stress from repeated court visits caused her to miscarry.

Later, when Tejada complained that the water was dangerously hot in her apartment and one of her children burned their hand on it, the Eskanders texted that she was "a bad mommy" and threatened to call child services, the suit claims.

The landlords also threatened to make similar calls to the NYPD and Administration for Child Services on other tenants in the building, according to the suit.

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