Photo by davidfg's flickr. On January 20th, residents of 475 Kent in Williamsburg were evicted from their apartments, which were deemed illegal, after the Fire and Buildings Departments found multiple violations (including a matzo factory housed in the building). Some of the evictees weren't going down without a fight, however, and have kept the incident in the public eye through everything from art shows to simply fighting the good fight. And while they spent......

A real estate developer with close religious and social ties to the Lubavitcher Hasidim community managed to swindle 40 families out of their homes in what the Daily News describes as one of the biggest scams of the recent housing crisis. Eliyahu Ezagui sold pre-construction homes to 40 different families in Crown Heights, and years after the buildings were in place and the families moved in, he took out mortgages on the condos and left......

Pet-owning tenants of eight buildings in the Bronx are distressed over letters recently sent out by the South Bronx Management Company, who took over the buildings that were once owned by the city. The letters point out that leases prevent the keeping of pets in the building and threaten that if tenants don't get rid of their animals, they will be evicted. This sounds like a case for the pet lawyers! Indeed, many tenants have......

A piece in The New York Times today shows that that the residents of 475 Kent are not prepared to go quietly after their recent eviction due to fire safety violations. Even the landlord of the owner of the nearly block-long building near the Navy Yard in Brooklyn wants his tenants back in and is cooperating with them to that end. The City and the Fire Dept. so far have been unyielding. At issue, they......

Photos via loveitmadly's flickr. On Sunday Gowanus Lounge received frantic emails from tenants in a blocklong loft building at 475 Kent Avenue in South Williamsburg who were being suddenly tossed out into the frigid night by the FDNY; we went to the building on Monday morning and talked to some of the shell-shocked residents as they moved out, one of whom told us, “Sheila [Properties] owns the whole lot and I don’t want to......

An appellate court ruled this week that a 71-year-old woman could remain in the West Village apartment she shares with her two cats, despite a no-pets clause in her lease. Siiri Marvits has lived in the same apartment for 43 years and has had her two cats Athena and Apollo for more than ten years. The Daily News reports that according to the New York City Law Journal, a landlord must begin eviction proceedings within......