[NYtenants-Online] NY Tenants Online 4/18/00

[tenant]

NYtenants Online                                          4/18/00
-----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, see the bottom of this newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In this issue...

1. Manhattan Task Force on Housing Court Meeting
2. Housing Code Enforcement: Setting the Record Straight
3. Low Rent Means Trouble in High-End Co-ops (Voice)
4. Janitors Struggle at the Edges of Silicon Valley's Success (Times)
5. Downtown Real Estate Salesman Convicted of Harassment (Voice)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Meeting Notice

MANHATTAN TASK FORCE ON HOUSING COURT -- Meeting Notice
WHEN:   TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 2000
WHERE:  THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY
         90 CHURCH STREET, 15TH Floor
TIME:   2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

- April is NYC Fair Housing Month
   Tom Trottier, NYC Commission on Human Rights
- Discussion/Feedback on Citywide Task Force Funding
- New Business and Announcements

Please confirm by calling Deborah Schutt, Manhattan Borough Coordinator, 
City-Wide Task Force on housing Court at (212) 982-5512, Monday - Friday, 
2-5:00 p.m.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
HOUSING CODE ENFORCEMENT: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD… HPD can't provide the same level of code enforcement 
that it used to because the City lost the New York State subsidies for this 
purpose in 1992.

BUT DID YOU KNOW??? In FY 1996 the City received approval from HUD to use 
Federal Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) funds for code 
enforcement. In the coming Fiscal Year, HPD will receive a record 
$11,828,000 in Federal funds for code enforcement, far more than ever 
received from Albany.

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD… The 1999 Housing & Vacancy Survey shows significant 
overall improvements to the housing stock and to neighborhood conditions.

BUT DID YOU KNOW??? There is little indication that these improvements 
occurred where they are needed the most: in lower socio-economic areas. No 
information has been released as of yet which cross-references these 
results with household income or monthly housing costs. An analysis 
completed last year by the Citizens Housing and Planning Council of NY, 
showed that housing deficiencies in NYC increase dramatically as household 
income decreases.

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD… There are more HPD Field Inspectors now than at any 
time during this, or the previous Administration.

BUT DID YOU KNOW??? According to the City’s Financial Management System, 
there were 221 field inspectors at the end of February 2000.  HPD had 
exactly 279 field inspectors when the current Administration took office.

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD… Response time on emergency complaints has improved

BUT DID YOU KNOW??? ANHD has documented situations this winter where 
tenants with no heat waited up to two and a half weeks for an inspection 
(despite constant calls to HPD) in sub-freezing temperatures.

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD… The City already spends a substantial amount of money 
on Code Enforcement

BUT DID YOU KNOW??? The City has significantly reduced spending on Code 
Enforcement since Federal Funds were approved for this purpose. In FY1995, 
$12 million of City-based revenue was used for code enforcement compared to 
only $9 million in the current FY.

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD… If we increase the number of inspectors HPD we will 
have to greatly increase spending on support services (for data entry, new 
cars, etc)

BUT DID YOU KNOW??? As of February 2000, field inspectors have been 
expected to input their own data, significantly reducing the need for 
clerical support.  The vast majority of inspectors use their own cars.

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD… There has been a substantial increase in the number of 
Attorneys in the Housing Litigation Bureau (HLB)

BUT DID YOU KNOW??? An increase from approximately 30 to 38 Attorneys has 
only come about because of a recent amalgamation between HLB and the office 
of Tenant Legal Affairs at HPD.  According to sources at HPD, the new 8 or 
so Attorneys are still litigating against City tenants NOT negligent landlords.

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD… Expanding the Housing Litigation Bureau (HLB) further 
would be unduly fiscally burdensome for the City

BUT DID YOU KNOW??? HPD will receive $6,470,000 in the coming Fiscal Year 
in Federal CDBG money for Housing Litigation1 (the same as this 
year).  Twice the number of Housing Litigation Attorneys were employed 6 
years ago when the City received significantly less Federal funds for this 
purpose. Also, the City budgeted $2,085,000 in the current Fiscal Year for 
the Office of Tenant Legal Affairs which has now been amalgamated with HLB. 
Where will this money go now?

The City Council must ensure that any budget agreement with the Mayor 
includes funds to significantly increase the number of Housing Inspectors 
and Attorneys. For more information call Adrian Di Lollo at the Association 
for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) on (212) 463-9600.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
LOW RENT MEANS TROUBLE IN HIGH-END CO-OPS
Village Voice, April 18-24, 2000
by J.A. Lobbia

Elder Hostile - When Sidney Friedman moved into a 14th-floor apartment at 
277 West End Avenue in 1948, it was a good deal for the young lawyer and 
his family. For $210.84 a month, Friedman got three bedrooms, three 
bathrooms, a dining room, a kitchen, and even servants' quarters. After the 
building went co-op four decades later, Friedman did not buy, choosing 
instead to remain a rent-controlled tenant in what was to become a pricey 
building. But when Friedman died in 1997 at age 83, the apartment that had 
once been such a perk became a source of agitation to his widow, Annette.

"After my husband died, whenever I sent in the rent checks, the landlord 
sent them right back with a letter saying, 'You are not a tenant because 
you're not on the lease,' " says Friedman, now 82. "He sent me an eviction 
letter. I didn't know what to do."

The landlord who rejected Friedman's checks is 269 Realty Company, which 
does not own the building but owns several of the unsold apartments in the 
5-story manse at 73rd Street. In June 1998, 269 Realty sued Friedman for 
nonpayment, claiming she owed $3589.22 in rent and fees. She countersued, 
complaining that the landlord's neglect had caused her classic New York 
apartment to deteriorate into what her daughter, Sandra Friedman-Alpert, 
calls "a work of art that is falling apart." Now, after two years and a 
recent courtroom drama, the case seems headed for a conclusion.

While challenging the tenancy of an octogenarian with 52 years in the same 
apartment might seem unnecessarily aggressive, Friedman's case is by no 
means singular. At least five other elderly tenants at 277 West End Avenue 
complain that they too have been sued, or otherwise bothered, by 269 
Realty, particularly investor Joseph Alpert (who is no relation to Sandra 
Friedman-Alpert), in an effort to get them out.

"It's really very simple," says 73-year-old Sally Spiro, whose 
long-deceased mother moved into the building in 1941. "The apartment is 
valuable and he just wants us out so he can make money. It doesn't matter 
how long you've lived here or anything else," says Spiro, who has lived in 
the apartment since 1975.

Spiro's economic analysis is on the mark: Most of the building's renters 
are under rent control and, like Friedman, typically pay just under $2000 
for apartments that could bring three times as much or sell for well over 
$1 million. But a tenant's longevity is indeed relevant because the 
building's original co-op plan forbade eviction of renters who were covered 
by rent laws. Spouses and children have tenant rights, even if they're not 
on a lease. The trouble arises when landlords try to advance their 
financial goals over renters' legal rights.

"When you have a woman who is 82 years old, you sue and just hope you 
outlast her," says Allen Brill, whose law firm represents Friedman. 
"Because rentals have become so dear in the city, landlords are doing 
everything they can to get people like this out."

Alpert and 269 Realty did not return calls for this story. But attorney 
Lauren Popper, who was put on the case for 269 Realty only last week, 
commented, "This is not a situation where they're trying to evict an old 
lady, and there are not terrible violations in the building." Popper 
declined to elaborate, but remarked, "Do you know how big this place is?"

The suit began with 269 Realty's claim that Friedman owed rent; she says 
she had sent it in but that the firm had rejected it. She responded with 
her own lawsuit listing problems in her otherwise gracious apartment, where 
antique furniture fills rooms so large that a grand piano is hardly noticed 
in a parlor corner. Paint and plaster silt the floor, woodwork is broken, 
and city housing inspectors have found exposed electrical wiring, broken 
sink and tub faucets, and broken ceramic tiles in the apartment. In 1993, 
the state housing agency found that new windows were 
defective—Alpert-Friedman says she won a $25,000 settlement after what she 
calls a "guillotine" window sliced off her fingertip. The state barred the 
landlord from boosting the rent for the "improvement."

In fact, Sidney Friedman, whose clients included Audrey Hepburn and the New 
York Yankees (Friedman sprang several players after a famous 1957 brawl at 
the Copacabana, where they were celebrating Mickey Mantle's birthday), 
represented some tenants who complained about the windows to the state 
housing agency in the early 1990s. "He did it for free, and when the 
tenants won against the co-op and 269 Realty, that's when they really began 
to cut back on our services," says Friedman's daughter, who has a home in 
Washington, D.C., but who lives most of the time with her mother. "It 
appeared to be some kind of punishment."

Last month, the case took an unusual turn. In mid March, Friedman was sworn 
in before Manhattan Housing Court judge Peter Wendt. For three hours, she 
testified about her 57-year marriage, her 52-year tenancy, and her ever 
growing frustration with Alpert. On March 27, all parties signed an 
agreement recognizing Friedman as a rent-controlled tenant. Then, as the 
trial was progressing, 269 Realty decided to take its lawyer, Jason Garber, 
off the case. Garber declined to comment. The move obviously annoyed Wendt, 
who admonished the landlord, saying that he thought Garber had done a fine 
job. Ultimately, Wendt recused himself, making Friedman's testimony moot. 
She is now scheduled for a late May trial before another judge.

"This happens all the time with older people who are vulnerable," says 
Christopher Schulze, an attorney who specializes in law related to the 
elderly and who represented a tenant in her eighties who was being sued by 
269 Realty because she failed to respond to a city form on time. "But we 
demonstrated that the reason she was late was because she was in the 
hospital," says Schulze. "At that point, the landlord should have backed 
off and walked away. But he pressed it and lost.

"This happens in neighborhoods where the markets are advancing, and these 
days, there's no neighborhood that's not hot. But it gets no hotter than 
the Upper West Side."

-----------------------------------------------------------------
JANITORS STRUGGLE AT THE EDGES OF SILICON VALLEY'S SUCCESS
New York Times, April 18, 2000
by Steven Greenhouse

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- From 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. each night, Guadalupe Herrera 
cleans offices at that pinnacle of high-tech success, Cisco Systems, and 
then she heads home to the garage where she, her husband and two sons live.

When María Godinez returns late each night from her $8-an-hour janitor's 
job at Sun Microsystems, she slips into the bedroom she shares with her 
husband and five children: part of a single-family house where four 
families and 22 people live.

Rosalba Ceballos, who also lives in a garage, vacuums carpets and cleans 
bathrooms at another Silicon Valley success story, KLA-Tencor, but because 
her rent comes to three-fourths of that job's monthly pay she juggles two 
other jobs to support herself and her three children.

High-flying companies like Cisco and Sun can rightfully boast that they 
have created a new class of employees -- stock option millionaires -- but 
they have given rise to another class of workers as well: the invisible 
toilers, for the most part janitors, who earn too little to afford decent 
housing in a booming region.

"It's not good that these companies are making so much money, while they're 
benefiting from the low wages they pay us," said Mrs. Herrera, whose 
husband works as a $7-an-hour janitor at a nearby nursing home. "It's not 
fair that they do this with us. In reality, we need more."

The janitors, almost all of them immigrants from Mexico or Central America, 
many of them here illegally, are whipsawed by two powerful forces: the 
influx of immigrants is putting downward pressures on wages while the 
region's red-hot economy is pushing housing costs skyward.

As a result, the rent that many janitors pay for garages usually exceeds 
half their monthly take-home pay and often equals what people elsewhere in 
the country pay for a two-bedroom apartment.

Many high-technology companies said they do not have any responsibility for 
their janitors' wages or living conditions. The janitors, company officials 
say, are not their employees, but rather those of cleaning contractors 
hired by the electronics companies that have made this region symbolize the 
New Economy.

Kern Beare, a spokesman for KLA-Tencor, declined to discuss the janitors' 
situation, saying, "The janitors are not our employees, and we don't 
comment upon other companies' employees."

Mike Garcia, president of a union local that represents thousands of 
California janitors, called the companies' position indefensible, insisting 
that they were hiding behind subcontracting rules to dodge their 
responsibilities to the people who empty their wastebaskets and dust their 
shelves. Whether the janitors work directly or indirectly for them, Mr. 
Garcia said, Silicon Valley stars like Cisco and Sun have a moral 
obligation to make sure these workers do not live in poverty.

"These companies have a heavy responsibility," said Mr. Garcia, president 
of Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union. "They can try 
to hide behind their cleaning contractors, but what they should really do 
is take responsibility for the plight of their janitors and their poorest 
workers. They should give them a fair wage that will lift them out of 
poverty."

Mr. Garcia, a leader in his union's Justice for Janitors campaign, said 
something was wildly askew when Silicon Valley's elite raked in millions in 
stock options, while the workers who hold the grimiest, least desirable 
jobs earned so little that they lived in garages.

Amy Dean, director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Silicon Valley office, said, 
"Unfortunately, the New Economy is looking a lot like an hourglass with a 
lot of high-paid, high-tech jobs at the high end and an enormous 
proliferation of low-wage service jobs at the bottom."

With rents here rivaling those in New York City, many janitors are 
relegated to squalid situations: eight people from two separate families 
sharing a small trailer; nine adults living in a one-bedroom apartment; a 
janitor sleeping on the floor of a friend's metal-working shop; a janitor 
who says the single small window in the garage she lives in makes her think 
she is living in a prison cell.

Although Ms. Ceballos was reluctant to show her windowless garage to a 
visitor, she ultimately opened it up. Behind a clutter of unpacked boxes 
was a bunk bed, with a queen-sized bottom, where she sleeps with her 
1-year-old daughter, Alejandra, and a twin bed on top, where her other 
daughters, ages 3 and 7, sleep. Her 22-year-old brother, a janitor who 
helps her make ends meet, sleeps on a mattress they place on the floor each 
night.

Ms. Ceballos moved into the garage in February because she could no longer 
afford the $1,300-a-month house she was living in after her husband left 
her. At $750 a month, the garage, which is rented out illegally, is a huge 
financial strain since the take-home pay from her night cleaning job is 
$954 a month.

"It's very difficult for the kids," she said. "They really can't play 
inside, but at least they can play in the backyard."

Shoulders slumped and puffy bags under her eyes, Ms. Ceballos seemed nearly 
defeated. After returning from work each night at 3 a.m., she goes to bed, 
and wakes up four-and-a-half hours later to prepare 7-year-old Carmen for 
school. Most days she also works as a cleaner at Macy's or the San Jose 
Convention Center.

Her finances took a big hit this winter when each of her daughters had the 
flu, forcing her to visit the doctor three times. Lacking health insurance, 
she had to pay $195, nearly a week's take-home pay.

Her immediate dream is a job that pays more than the $6.50 an hour she 
earns working for a nonunion cleaning contractor.

"What I'm really hoping for is a job that pays $8," she said, wanting in 
particular a unionized cleaning job with health coverage. "I can barely 
make it right now. It's not fair, we work so hard and they don't give us 
the wages or benefits we deserve."

For most of her eight-hour shift, she said, echoing many other janitors, 
there is nobody to talk to, and her company prohibits her from listening to 
the radio while cleaning.

Many janitors are looking with hope to contract negotiations in which Mr. 
Garcia's union local, which represents 5,700 Silicon Valley janitors, 
including ones at Cisco, Sun and Hewlett-Packard, is asking for raises that 
would lift the cleaners' pay to $12.50 an hour after three years, from the 
current $8.

Although that would be a 56 percent raise, union officials say it is 
reasonable because at $12.50 an hour, the janitors would still earn 
considerably less than their unionized counterparts in San Francisco and 
New York, where living costs are not much higher. Mr. Garcia's union local 
has organized the strike by nearly 8,500 janitors in Los Angeles, who are 
battling for a hefty raise, asserting that their current pay of below $8 an 
hour is too low to live on.

Ridiculing the proposal for a $12.50 wage, many cleaning companies assert 
that they need to keep wages low so they can win contracts through 
competitive bidding.

Richard Sanchez, president of Acme Building Maintenance Company, 
acknowledged that low wages hurt the janitors, but he said that if a 
unionized company like his granted large raises, then nonunion companies 
might underbid him.

Officials at many companies, including Sun and 3Com, declined to discuss 
the janitors' plight, but some executives said the cleaners' living 
conditions were an embarrassment that needed to be addressed.

"People should not live in garages regardless of where they work," said 
Steven Langdon, a Cisco spokesman. "The success of Silicon Valley has 
brought great things to many people, but for some it has made life more 
difficult. Wages are important, and Cisco hopes and expects that our 
vendors will pay the people in their employ fairly."

With the area's housing prices up 60 percent in five years, Cisco has 
joined government agencies and other companies in an effort to build 
affordable housing. But that effort, focusing on units in the $200,000 
range, is geared more to $45,000-a-year teachers and middle managers than 
to $16,000-a-year janitors.

For Alicia Sosa, a janitor at Sun Microsystems, a $200,000 house would be 
as out of reach as Bill Gates's mansion. For now, she shares a bedroom with 
her husband, her 1-year-old son and her two daughters, 5 and 6, who somehow 
sleep together in a crib.

When one child is sick at night, it keeps the whole family awake. Mrs. Sosa 
and her husband never have any privacy, she said, and they see each other 
just a half hour a day, after he returns from work and before she leaves 
for her job.

"In Mexico, people tell you all these great stories about the United 
States, that there is money on the ground that you can grab with your own 
hands," she said. "People never tell you how hard it is to make it here."

-----------------------------------------------------------------
DOWNTOWN REAL ESTATE SALESMAN CONVICTED OF HARASSMENT
Village Voice, April 4-10, 2000
by J.A. Lobbia

Ludlow Street Hang-Up: Marcia Lemmon lives on the Lower East Side. Steve 
Gluck works there. The two, to put it nicely, don't see eye to eye. Central 
to their rift is the future of the neighborhood that brings them together. 
And they have taken a decidedly old-time Lower East Side approach to 
expressing their mutual discontent—an approach that last week earned Gluck 
a a conviction on two counts of aggravated harassment in Manhattan criminal 
court.

Gluck, a salesman with Sion Misrahi Realty, was convicted of harassing 
Lemmon via the telephone—an Omnipoint cell phone, to be precise—annoying 
her with late-night hang-ups and weekend rings. In court, Gluck admitted he 
made the calls but denied that he meant to harass Lemmon. On the stand in 
Judge Neil E. Ross's courtroom, Gluck testified that Lemmon has some pretty 
annoying habits of her own.

"If I was bringing a client around, she'd want to know who they are and 
what are they opening up," testified Gluck, whose employer has been a key 
broker behind the explosion of bars, clubs, bistros, and salons that Lemmon 
says have invaded her neighborhood, particularly on Ludlow, Rivington, 
Stanton, East Houston, and Orchard streets. Complained Gluck, "A lot of 
things happening on the Lower East Side are the result of my office, and 
she didn't like one of them."

Gluck cited one of Lemmon's locally familiar strategies: walking the 
neighborhood with a video camera, aiming it at construction in new bars or 
restaurants where she suspects work is being done without required permits. 
When Lemmon's suspicions are right, work must stop until permits are 
granted, which can take months. "She causes headaches for people who are 
trying to put $50,000 to $250,000 into an old-world building," testified 
Gluck. "She's caused some clients to walk away and rent in other 
neighborhoods."

Which suits Lemmon just fine. As chair of the Ludlow Block Association and 
a member of the Community Board 3 committee that deals with liquor 
licenses, Lemmon has steadily battled what she calls "a nighttime-driven 
economy based on the sale of alcohol, loud music, and people who don't live 
in the neighborhood."

Lemmon, who moved to Ludlow Street nine years ago, says her concern is not 
just the noise and public urination (also videotaped) that come with the 
street-as-party scene. "This kind of development means that people who have 
lived here a long time, Dominicans, Chinese immigrants, people with kids, 
can't afford it anymore," says Lemmon. "And it kills the commercial rents, 
too. The bodegas get driven out, and there's no more diversity."

Seeing Misrahi's firm as a vehicle for that loss, Lemmon has struck out 
against it. Last year, she cybersquatted the Web domain name Misrahi.com. 
In May 1999, she complained to a state agency about a $5000 fee the Misrahi 
firm was charging for an apartment. On the stand, Gluck said the high fee 
was deserved because the apartment—rent-stabilized and renting for less 
than $600—was "very special." Last week, the state declared that there was 
nothing improper about the fee.

The criminal case against Gluck stems from 11 phone calls Lemmon received 
at home from June 9 through August 11, 1999. The calls, traced to Gluck's 
cell phone, were made on the weekend or in the wee hours, including one 
placed at 1:03 a.m. Most were hang-ups. Gluck says he generally doesn't 
leave messages, and once hung up because he got "nervous" when someone 
answered Lemmon's phone. He said he placed the calls because he was trying 
to "reach out" and arrange a meeting between Lemmon and Misrahi to "bring 
peace," but admitted that calls made at 1 a.m. could be construed as 
something less than an olive branch.

Gluck said that he meant no harm, but Detective Kenneth Silvia, who 
arrested Gluck on August 16, testified that Gluck "admitted to me that on a 
few occasions he called, but only to annoy" Lemmon, adding that Gluck 
acknowledged that it was "rather childish and stupid and that he was sorry 
for it." Gluck was convicted on two counts of aggravated harassment and 
acquitted of two lesser counts. He says he plans to appeal.

Lemmon's activism has given her a reputation as fierce. "I won't say 
anything against her on the record because she terrifies me," says one bar 
owner. "She has the power to really screw up some young people just 
starting out. But she's absolutely right about what's happening to this 
neighborhood. If I lived on that block, I would be happy to have her 
advocating for me."

Gluck, who lives in Brooklyn but who has worked on the Lower East Side for 
more than 20 years (five with Misrahi, the rest in women's apparel), is 
dumbfounded that Lemmon isn't "thrilled" with what he calls the "betterment 
of the neighborhood."

Lemmon dismisses Gluck's enthusiasm: "That's just another craven statement 
by someone who is making their money in the neighborhood and taking it 
across the bridge. The fact is, there's really very little benefit in this 
for the people who are living here. There's very little sharing."