Tenant activists thought that they had the proper goal in Michael Geylik. They thought fallacious.
TakeRoot Justice and its puppy-dog politician Harvey Epstein known as the media to a protest Tuesday morning outdoors Geylik’s single-room occupancy, a creaky, 160-year-old constructing at 109 East Ninth Avenue.
They chanted and held indicators, spinning a story of a landlord who marred the harmless tenants’ fantastic constructing and refuses to make it good once more.
Then one thing occurred that hardly ever does at such demonstrations: The proprietor confirmed up and advised his facet of the story.
Out of the blue, the straightforward narrative of an evil landlord making an attempt to drive out hapless tenants from one of many metropolis’s few remaining SROs grew to become much more difficult.
PIX11 was among the many media shops that confirmed up. However after Geylik welcomed the crew into his East Village constructing, gave his model of occasions, and emailed a slew of paperwork backing it up, the information station canceled its phase and apologized for losing his time.
The story of 109 East Ninth Avenue — which The Actual Deal told last August — is definitely worthy of media protection. It simply doesn’t match right into a two-minute phase on the night information.
For one factor, the tenants are usually not so harmless. One, a CUNY professor named Shiras Patterson Beckwith, claims his 80-square-foot unit with no kitchen or rest room is his major residence, as hire stabilization regulation requires. However he and his spouse, CUNY adjunct assistant professor Amy-Beth Gartrell, have a rent-stabilized condominium in Brooklyn and a weekend home in Pennsylvania.
“We’re fortunate to have already got an condominium filled with the whole lot we want,” they wrote to their marriage ceremony visitors three years in the past, “so please get pleasure from shopping our Honeyfund want record, the place you may contribute funds to our new house. It’s a rowhouse in Pittsburgh — small however cute.”
They added, “We personal the home outright.”
Geylik is in housing court docket making an attempt to evict Beckwith on residency grounds. Jenny Ackchin, a TakeRoot lawyer for the professor, claimed he was so poor that the decide ought to waive all of his court docket charges.
One other renter, Remigiusz Chlapek, has a protracted arrest document and is being held at Rikers Island on intercourse trafficking costs, charged with forcing an undocumented immigrant into prostitution for 11 months. Ultimately, the alleged sufferer took refuge in one other unit and advised the tenant her scenario. Chlapek was additionally charged with a narcotics offense, violating an order of safety and witness tampering — for allegedly making an attempt to stop her from testifying.
Geylik is in court docket making an attempt to get Chlapek out for nonpayment of hire.
One other tenant was accused of stalking by a fellow resident of the SRO. The alleged stalker was seen on the protest Tuesday beside Metropolis Council member Harvey Epstein, who despatched a press launch and posted an Instagram message about how he was standing up for tenants.
(Epstein by no means talked to the owner. When Geylik known as the Epstein staffer who wrote the press launch, she refused to say the place she bought her info.)
Two tenants have unlawful bathtubs of their rooms and one has an unlawful bathe. The fixtures had been apparently put in lengthy earlier than Geylik purchased the constructing. A decide ordered an inspection by the Division of Buildings, which flagged the violations.
At Tuesday’s protest, a weird scene unfolded as Geylik and the tenants he’s combating with had been displaying the media across the constructing. At one level, the owner dared tenant Thomas Dukleth to point out reporters his unit with the allegedly unlawful rest room fixture. Dukleth refused.
Proof gathered by the owner confirmed one other tenant, James Hicks, was renting out his SRO unit, which is forbidden by hire stabilization guidelines. Hicks dared Geylik to take him to court docket, so the owner did. Hicks ultimately agreed to vacate, leaving 5 renters within the constructing, plus Geylik’s workplace on the bottom ground.
Clearly, this isn’t essentially the most sympathetic group of tenants. They usually proceed to disgrace Geylik for eradicating and never changing the third-floor kitchen and toilet, relatively than blame the true culprits — which embody metropolis companies, native politicians, TakeRoot Justice and the tenants themselves.
With regulated rents of as little as $155 a month, some residents don’t wish to depart and others are usually not keen to and not using a profitable buyout. However the proprietor has no purpose to offer one as a result of the constructing’s footprint is simply too small for any important redevelopment.
Moreover, Geylik just isn’t a developer. He’s a marketing consultant and part-owner of a few different small buildings. The one purpose he purchased the 13-unit, largely vacant East Ninth Avenue constructing for $3.35 million in 2021 was to renovate the bottom ground — a former dive bar — to make use of as his workplace. Which he did.
To get a certificates of occupancy, he needed to clear violations issued within the late Nineteen Nineties for unlawful gasoline and plumbing work, which meant eradicating the kitchen and toilet on the third ground.
Since doing that in 2022, Geylik has been making an attempt to legally change them however has been tied up in a Gordian knot of forms, activism, litigation, emotion and politics.
The difficulty started with the 4.8-magnitude earthquake of April 2024.
Tenant Judy Sabin reported scary cracks inside 109 East Ninth Avenue, and a structural engineer advised Geylik the constructing was in such unhealthy form that it could be harmful — to not point out silly — to put in the communal kitchen and bogs earlier than doing structural repairs.
The issue is, Geylik has not been in a position to do main work within the constructing as a result of final 12 months the Division of Housing Preservation and Improvement — pressured by TakeRoot Justice and native elected officers — suspended the certificates of no harassment it had granted him in 2023, and this month persuaded a decide to revoke it.
The revocation, paradoxically, was what activists at TakeRoot Justice — an offshoot of tenant organizer Cooper Sq. — had been celebrating with their Tuesday morning protest.
“They introduced this downside on themselves,” stated certainly one of Geylik’s attorneys. “I feel the tenants’ attorneys now understand what they’ve completed.”
The no-harassment certificates was created by the Metropolis Council to stop landlords from doing pointless work for the aim of harassing tenants. Geylik, nonetheless, has a stack of paperwork from the Division of Buildings ordering him to do the very work that tenants and HPD deemed harassment.
The Division of Buildings revoked Geylik’s constructing permits when the certificates of no harassment was issued and is now giving him the runaround. The company’s counsel advised one other metropolis lawyer that Geylik might do work and not using a certificates of no harassment if he didn’t contact any residences. The lawyer relayed that to Geylik’s legal professional, who in flip advised the Manhattan buildings commissioner. The commissioner replied that the data was not credible and denied Geylik a constructing allow.
An HPD spokesperson advised TRD, “The proprietor is allowed to make customary repairs,” and something past that’s as much as the Division of Buildings.
However the Division of Buildings, citing tenants’ litigation demanding renovations, refuses to satisfy with Geylik about granting permits to do the work. Due to this fact the litigation and the stalemate proceed.
The saga is rife with different contradictions and Catch-22’s. For instance, housing court docket is the correct venue for resolving landlord-tenant disputes, of which Geylik has received one and would possibly win the remaining two. However his eviction filings had been deemed harassment by the tenants, their attorneys on the nonprofit TakeRoot Justice and HPD.
The HPD official who moved to revoke Geylik’s certificates by no means consulted his colleague who initially granted it after a radical character investigation of the owner.
Town made Geylik treatment the Nineteen Nineties violations within the widespread areas, however wasn’t conscious of the cast-iron bathtubs — which may weigh 1,000 kilos when full — in not less than two items. This would possibly assist clarify why the higher flooring are sagging towards the center of the constructing.
The upshot of all that is that Geylik is shelling out tens of 1000’s of {dollars} in authorized charges, his newly renovated workplace is marred by short-term help columns and the SRO tenants live in a wreck of a constructing.
Not as soon as has a metropolis official or politician put everybody in a room to work out an answer.
As a substitute the activists protest, the politicians hold forth and the attorneys litigate. Metropolis companies cross memos backwards and forwards and deny the permits wanted to repair the property. And 109 East Ninth Avenue slips, ever so steadily, towards the abyss.
Learn extra
The Daily Dirt: Communication breakdown makes life hell for landlord
Buildings Department punishes illegal SROs, architect
Rent control escape is possible, but ain’t easy
