On an empty road nook in Purple Hook, Brooklyn, landlord Humberto Lopes is making an inventory of “rubbish folks.”
“Lydia Velasquez, Carlos Vachaco, Machaco — regardless of the fuck his title was,” Lopes says. “And Frank Ortiz. Three politicians that had been nothing, rubbish politicians.”
The three lawmakers — names all barely misstated by Lopes — had apparently criticized his resolution to lease area within the neighborhood to a non-public faculty.
“I don’t give a fuck who says something,” Lopes says, after calling Rep. Nydia Velásquez “one other shithead.”
That in-your-face style has helped Lopes amass greater than 115,000 social media followers and land appearances on Fox Information and conservative radio. Now Gotham Housing Alliance, the membership and advocacy group he based, is celebrating its first anniversary.
Lopes, who says he owns a portfolio of no less than 100 properties in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Florida, needs to show that following into political clout for New York property house owners.
Getting consideration comes simply. Navigating the detail-oriented world of housing coverage and politics is one other matter. Lopes’ bombast — and his eccentricities — have made him an outsider in a world the place affect is often constructed via relationships, coverage experience and cash.
Lopes is undeterred. The query is whether or not he can flip his rising digital viewers into one thing extra highly effective: precise affect.
Gotham’s lair
Lopes, 61, is about 5-foot-6, bald on the highest and wears wiry glasses. He can conjure a jovial smile however his default on-camera demeanor reads aggravated.
In February, he requested different landlords to affix him in a property tax strike in opposition to New York Metropolis.
“You’re going to fucking bow right down to us,” he stated in a video posted to social media.
His pitch is that Gotham, not like different landlord teams, makes things happen.
“Numerous these folks simply discuss, discuss, discuss,” Lopes says. “I’ll discuss to you and I’ll present you actions.”
The message has resonated with no less than some landlords. Gotham Housing Alliance now has 193 paying members, plus 17 tenant members.
Zion Equities, which owns 1,000 condo items in New York, is amongst them. Co-founder Lav Bauta attributes Lopes’ viewers partly to his aggressive persona.
“I believe [Lopes is] very deliberate concerning the tone that he makes use of, as a result of he’s very completely different in non-public,” Bauta stated. “However I believe he thinks that’s essential in an effort to type of flip up the amount on what we’re making an attempt to realize right here. The opposition is aware of his title due to his strategy.”
“Numerous these folks simply discuss, discuss, discuss. I’ll discuss to you and I’ll present you actions.”
Off-camera, Lopes is certainly hotter.
The places of work of his agency, H.L. Dynasty, in Sundown Park, are notable for the omnipresence of Batman. His private workplace is full of boxed Batman collectible figurines, a Batmobile and the occasional Robin. Some had been presents, he says. Within the hallway, a larger-than-life Batman statue stands with its fists raised.
“I purchased Iron Man, Darth Vader,” Lopes says when requested concerning the statue. “We purchased 4 if I’m not mistaken.”
Lopes has taken on some comedian ebook qualities himself. He has his personal colour scheme: forest inexperienced.
His buildings, together with his workplace and people surrounding the non-public faculty in Purple Hook, are all painted the signature shade. Inside H.L. Dynasty, desk dividers, chairs and partitions are all various hues of inexperienced. He guzzles Perrier seltzers in inexperienced bottles.
The inside of his black Porsche Cayenne, nevertheless, is crimson, not inexperienced.
“Porsche stopped it this 12 months,” he defined.
If the buildings of Brooklyn and Staten Island are his empire, then South Florida is his retreat. He lives within the city of Southwest Ranches part-time, the place he has developed a non-public zoo, H.L. Safari. He has two wildlife licenses that enable him to usher in macaws, lemurs and different creatures, however no huge cats. “Tiger King,” he explains, made licensing harder.
A household affair
Lopes’ oldest son, Jovian, is H.L. Dynasty’s chief artistic officer and runs his father’s social media. A former rapper who opened for Ne-Yo on the Barclays Heart, Jovian has since left the music business and transformed to Islam. He additionally pushed for the title “Gotham Housing Alliance” after his father and others proposed names he thought sounded too severe and “homosexual.”
The advocacy factor continues to be new to Lopes, who additionally goes by “H.L.” He initially needed to write down a ebook earlier than Jovian pushed him into social media.
That led to a dinner with then-Mayor Eric Adams. In June 2025, Lopes organized a landlord city corridor with Adams and several other of his commissioners. Just a few months later, he held a landlord useful resource honest at Business Metropolis that included metropolis businesses such because the Division of Buildings.
Gotham has but to register any lobbyists. However landlords are paying a minimal of $500 a 12 months to affix, with dues scaling based mostly on the variety of items they personal.
By comparability, membership within the Small Property House owners of New York begins at $95 a 12 months, whereas the New York Condo Affiliation, which represents rent-stabilized landlords, fees $10 per unit yearly. SPONY and NYAA are registered with the IRS as membership organizations; Gotham is registered as a social welfare group.
Fight scene
Lopes’ skill to eschew professionalism with little regard for names and dates grew his viewers. It could additionally restrict his affect.
It’s not but clear how Lopes’ antics are going over with Democrats who management state authorities in New York.
“He has but to interact Albany-centric lawmakers,” stated Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, who represents components of Lengthy Island and described Lopes as quirky. “On the finish of the day, let’s see what you do with this newfound vitality.”
Others have been much less charitable.
In February, Lopes was invited to handle the state Senate housing committee. He was there to debate an appliance-related invoice however rapidly broadened his remarks to the economics of rent-stabilized flats.
The state had made it troublesome for landlords to recoup cash from repairing rent-stabilized flats, Lopes informed the committee, explaining that he may put $18,000 into an condo and solely get a $30 per thirty days lease enhance in return.
“Anyone right here wanna give me $18,000 and wait 18 years on your cash? Anyone? I don’t see arms,” Lopes informed lawmakers. “You’re squeezing us a lot and then you definately’re nickel and diming us on the state aspect for all these charges you cost us.”
One lawmaker who was current known as Lopes’ presentation a “rant” that left some colleagues “disgusted” and seemed that he was “unserious.”
His strategy has additionally put him at odds with different landlord advocates, who’ve historically relied on a extra behind-the-scenes model of affect.
“His vitriol, the way in which he treats folks, the way in which he treats lawmakers, the way in which he interjects his opinion, I don’t assume it’s constructive for property house owners,” stated Jay Martin, a former spokesperson for NYAA. “His job as an advocate for small property house owners isn’t to get likes.”
Martin stated he had been on the receiving finish of Lopes’ aggression.
“He bought inside three centimeters of my nostril and stated, ‘You understand, you’re not advocating on behalf of property house owners correctly, since you’re not prepared to punch folks within the face,’” Martin recalled.
Lopes chalks their dangerous blood as much as envy.
“I used to be higher than him in lower than a number of months,” Lopes stated. “I’ve made extra noise, extra details, bought extra issues achieved within the seven, eight months than he’s achieved now in 10 years.”
Lopes remembers their first assembly in another way. He says Martin belittled him after a panel occasion, stoking his anger.
“I’m so old style, I’m so from the road. You understand what meaning, proper?” Lopes tells me, recalling the occasion. “You get slapped within the face. Don’t fuck with me. I’ll slap you.”
Building a military
Lopes boasts that he can draw a number of state senators to his occasions. They’re all Republicans, the minority get together in Albany.
Lopes is a registered Republican in each New York and Florida, complicating his efforts to construct relationships with Democrats, who management state authorities and New York Metropolis.
“We’d change to Democrat to play slightly sport,” Jovian says when requested about his father’s registration.
Requested to call a politician doing a very good job, Lopes searches round for the title of Vickie Paladino, the outspoken Republican Metropolis Council member from Queens. Paladino has repeatedly drawn controversy for her rhetoric, together with a since-deleted 2025 submit calling for the “expulsion of Muslims from western nations.”
Lopes’ personal makes an attempt to command consideration haven’t at all times gone in accordance with plan.
In Might, he informed reporters he would convey dozens of “zombies” to a Lease Tips board assembly because it thought-about a lease freeze on town’s regulated flats.
As tenant teams rallied outdoors, Lopes pulled up with his team of zombies — actors who provided their very own clothes and make-up. The zombies marched with landlords beneath a Gotham Housing Alliance flag, some grunting on the tenant aspect of the rally.
Then the zombies started to fall again.
A number of actors informed The Actual Deal that they had not been informed they might be demonstrating on behalf of landlords and personally supported a lease freeze. They’d been employed by a third-party contractor for what was described to them as a “mock demonstration.”
Requested if he would do something in another way, Lopes doubled down.
“I didn’t spend sufficient cash,” he stated. “I’d have gotten 100 of these motherfuckers. I’d have crammed the fucking road and get a allow. Are you kidding me? You don’t know who you’re fucking with.”
Origin story
Lopes was born and raised in Purple Hook. His father, a longshoreman from Portugal, died when Lopes was 9.
“My father was a moonshiner,” he recalled. “I keep in mind that as a result of once I was slightly boy we used to squeeze the grapes.”
With such profound childhood loss, it’s maybe not shocking that Lopes hangs on to the trimmings of adolescence, or that he feels a connection to Batman — the orphan who grew to become a hero.
“He stops crime, he stops corruption,” Lopes says of the character. “I’ve a number of comparable components of that story in my life.”
In Lopes’ telling, his personal origin story is considered one of conquer circumstance. He went to work at a grocery retailer on the age of 9. At 18, he says, he began a development firm. A 12 months or two later, he purchased his first property, a trucking warehouse in Purple Hook, for $110,000. In the present day, he owns the constructing that after housed the grocery retailer the place he labored.
On the prompting of The Actual Deal’s photographer, Lopes poses beside the larger-than-life Batman statue in his workplace hallway. He raises his fists and offers the digital camera a hopeful grin.
Then he returns to his desk, surrounded as soon as once more by inexperienced.
“Conquering issues takes time,” he says. “There are issues we’re engaged on proper now that can shock the shit out of you.”
