With Beers & Cheers, Neighbors Join Flatbush Tenant Coalition’s Fight For Affordable Housing

With Beers & Cheers, Neighbors Join Flatbush Tenant Coalition’s Fight For Affordable Housing
Flatbush Tenant Coalition fundraiser crowd

Fingers clamped around cups brimming with beer, the neighbors crammed into Bar Chord for the Flatbush Tenant Coalition fundraiser Sunday afternoon maneuvered hands past the wall of shoulders and bulky winter coats surrounding them in the standing-room-only crowd to raise their glasses and cheer as phrases like “fight back against landlord harassment,” “reform Brooklyn Housing Court,” “crack down on criminal landlords,” and “save affordable housing” were said.

Neighbor and longtime community organizer Steve Kest and Aga Trojniak, of the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, at Sunday's fundraiser.
Neighbor and longtime community organizer Steve Kest and Aga Trojniak, of the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, at Sunday’s fundraiser.

“People from all walks of life, all parts of the world have gathered in Ditmas Park – that’s why we love living here and why we love staying here,” said neighbor and longtime community organizer Steve Kest, one of the hosts of yesterday’s fundraiser. “…But there’s a huge threat to the diversity in this neighborhood.”

That threat, as Kest and the many other social justice advocates in the room said – and as so many neighbors know, is the dramatic decrease in affordable housing and the push by landlords to force residents from homes where they have long lived.

“We’re losing affordable housing at an alarming rate,” Aga Trojniak, of the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, said at the event celebrating her organization that was founded in 2011 and has gone on to organize tenant associations representing more than 11,000 people in the Flatbush, East Flatbush and Prospect Lefferts Gardens areas.

In Flatbush, Trojniak went on to say, 70 percent of residents live in rent stabilized apartments, with these being “the source of affordable housing for the neighborhood.”

“But rent stabilization has been gutted over the last few years,” Trojniak continued. “It’s now a set of loopholes where landlords can dramatically increase rents… What’ we’re seeing in the neighborhood is large corporations buying up apartments in bulk, and they’re waging war on longterm residents.”

This push by landlords to force rent stabilized tenants from their buildings has resulted in the loss of about 3,500 rent regulated apartments in Flatbush between 2008 and 2011, Trojniak said – and, as she and other neighbors pointed out, this landlord harassment has included everything from withholding repairs to taking neighbors to housing court over being one month late in paying rent.

Tenant leader Tammy Brake said her landlord allowed her building to fall into serious disrepair.
Tenant leader Tammy Brake

Tammy Brake, a tenant leader with the tenant coalition who lives in a building on E. 22nd Street between Newkirk and Foster Avenues, told Sunday’s crowd that her landlord allowed the building to fall into disrepair.

“Around 2007 we started fighting back,” said Brake, who has lived in the area since 1985. “The building I live in – I can tell you the work they claim they did, it wasn’t done.”

“I don’t have a problem with gentrification – I like to be able to come home and now have a restaurant that my husband and I can go to,” Brake continued. “I like the creperie on Foster; I like Milk and Honey… It’s not the gentrification that’s the problem, it’s the landlords who are the problem. They want to push out the people who built this neighborhood.”

Tenant leader Thomas Williams said once Shamco purchased his building, the company immediately began taking tenants to court if they fell one month behind in rent.
Tenant leader Thomas Williams

Thomas Williams, another tenant leader with the coalition who lives on a building on E. 21st Street between Dorchester Road and Ditmas Avenue, noted that once Shamco bought his building, they immediately began taking tenants to housing court. (If you want to read more about Shamco, which owns numerous buildings in the area, Prospect Lefferts Gardens Tim Thomas has written about the company on his blog, The Q at Parkside.)

“If you were one month late (in rent), you’d go to court with Shamco,” Williams said, and Trojniak noted that the coalition is “working to reform Brooklyn Housing Court – it’s become a mill for housing evictions.”

Like Brake, Williams said the landlord allowed the building to fall into serious disrepair.

“Pipes were bursting,” he said. “We had no elevator  for two months.”

To fight this kind of landlord harassment, Trojniak, Brake and Williams stressed the importance of tenants, elected officials and other area leaders working together – and Borough President Eric Adams and Councilman Jumaane Williams, both of whom attended the fundraiser, agreed.

Borough President Eric Adams urged Gov. Andrew Cuomo to make affordable housing a priority.
Borough President Eric Adams

“They must start prosecuting landlords,” Adams said. “…What I’m asking is for the DA to join us, to finally crack down on the criminal aspect of what these landlords are doing.”

The borough president also called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to make affordable housing a priority, stressing that in June 2015 the rent regulation system expires.

“We can’t allow him to be in the shadows on this,” Adams said. “…We must demand the governor get in this fight.”

Councilman Jumaane Williams called for the repeal of the Urstadt Law, which transferred the power to pass local rent laws from the city to Albany.
Councilman Jumaane Williams

Councilman Williams, meanwhile, urged the state legislature to “repeal Urstadt and bring home law back to New York City,” referring to a state law that transferred the power to pass local rent laws from the city to Albany in 1971.

The fundraiser ended much the way it began – with the crowd cheering for the creation and maintenance of affordable housing, for an end to landlord harassment, for the neighbors who have lived here for years and years to be able to stay in the community they love.

Bertha Lewis, right, with Aga Trojniak and Thomas Williams.
Bertha Lewis, right, with Aga Trojniak and Thomas Williams.
Bertha Lewis and Steve Kest
Bertha Lewis and Steve Kest

“It’s a new day. Tenants are fired up, and they ain’t gonna take it no more,” said Bertha Lewis, president of The Black Institute and the former leader of ACORN, who got the crowd on their feet and chanting , “We believe that we will win! We believe that we will win!”

To find out  more about the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, you can go to its website and Facebook page.