Bricked in by Landlord

Forget suspicious fires to smoke out tenants - the new tenant intimidation tool might be masonry! The Daily News reports that all the windows of a Prospect Heights apartment building on Dean Street have been bricked over, except for those belonging to lone holdout Migdalia Barreto. Barreto's rent is $535/month for a two bedroom, and she and her mother refused landlord Mark Schiner's offer of $30,000 to move out (five other families took some sort of deal). Scheiner claims the brickwork is to protect Barreto, but Barreto says, "He is so full of s--t." Well, the bricking has caused police to stopy by, suspicious there are squatters. Barreto adds, "He just wants us out so he can renovate the building and rent it for thousands and thousands of dollars." Well, yes, that's probably his goal, given the other buyouts.

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By Jen Chung in News on September 27, 2006 4:17 PM

Comments [rss]

Hunter H. Cashdollar

Good for her. Hang in there lady! I would think it's good they're bricked. Keeps the real squatters out. Hunter H. Cashdollar

Louis

This sounds like what's been going on the past two years in the city -- landlords forcing/harrassing tenants out to gut renovate their bldgs and turn them into condos or quick flips.

While I think rent-regulation hasn't helped affordability overall (there are about 700,000 rent-regulated apartments now, down from 1 million a few years ago), this ploy isn't to get market-rate rents. It's to get market-rate condo prices. Forcing these tenants out and taking these apts out of the rental stock is only going to make affordability/availability WORSE.

My only hope is that they can't sell them and are forced to "re-partment" them in a couple of years, now that the housing market is tanking.

Dahlia

ha, they list all the apartments as 3 brs? the building i lived in was almost identical (though fixed up significantly) from the outside, and they were all 2 brs, so i have a hard time buying them as 3 brs unless they got much smaller.

Miquel

I had a friend on Dean St, who would wake up to the security alarm going off and hookers banging johns in her garage...she'd only join in occasionally so she said.

Jimmy Legs

it's gonna be hard to get 1.6 million if it ain't vacant:

http://devonnerealty.com/featured_ALPHA%20PRIME.html

Dahlia

i actually used to live a few houses down from this house - its not in the AY footprint - only the corner of that block is and the rest is staying the way it is - its in the middle of a row of brownstones, so chances are they are just going to gut the inside since most of the buildings are in pretty bad shape. Sounds like he's going to sell condos, not change rentals, though, because otherwise he could do the work with her there.

rodnye allen rippy

Just like the episode in The Odd couple where the landlord removed Oscar's and felix's door and no heat. Just like the episode of The Honeymooners when Ralph was the lone hold out.

I'm surprised I got everything right without reading the Daily news article. Cops are assuming it's a crackhouse.

Desk Sgt.

I wish they would brick-up the windows on the White House to keep our retard president inside and under control.

em

He can make plenty of money from the other 5 units, whose tenants (really crazily) took the bait to leave. He is lucky only one unit out of six will remain below market.

frank lloyd wrong

wow, I've heard of these slumlords remove windows and doors but never heard of one try and use bricks to seal one in a building.

But we know what his plan was really. When crack heads see a bricked building, they use it and along comes more squatters, making it unlivable.

The making it unlivable is the common link.

This has been going on for decades only moreso now.

b

LOL - that's a brilliant way to get rid of your tenants

bthirsch

It should be noted that the building location is either inside the Atlantic Yards footprint, or between a couple of Ratner's planned mega-towers.

IF this person holds on to the apartment and IF the AY project goes through, they will have to virtually live inside a construction zone for several years. Two bedroom apartments at market rate in this neighborhood go for about 16-2,200 a month, so they are probably paying less then a third of the market value.

ecv

How dare that landlord try to make money off his property, and passive-aggressively brick over windows that look into nobody's apartments. Or something. Misleading headline of the day?