BY BEN VERDE
Tenants living in a house
owned by a prominent Brooklyn
family say their landlords
harassed them and attempted
to illegally evict them from
their Crown Heights townhouse.
Four tenants say the
landlords — Loretta Gendville,
owner of Area Yoga
and Planted Cafe, and her
husband, Gennaro Brooks-
Church — have attempted
to evict them from the Dean
Street house without any paperwork
from housing court,
and have tried to forcibly
move into the house while
their tenants are still living
there.
“Gennaro walked into my
room while I was asleep and
started demanding rent and
asked for my other roommates
— that’s not okay, I
don’t have to say that,” said
Manar Balh, a tenant since
August 2019. “They’re very
hostile, very rude, very condescending
2021 B E S TO F B K . C O M
COURIER L 12 IFE, JULY 17-23, 2020
— they make us
feel like we’re the crazy ones
for being hurt.”
The tenants said the landlords
originally agreed to
stop charging rent in the
early days of the coronavirus
pandemic after many of the
residents lost work.
However, Scout Gottlieb, a
tenant since April, said that
the landlords later demanded
back rent, telling tenants they
would be selling the building
and that they needed to move
out.
Earlier this week, the remaining
four tenants — who
do not have a lease and have
been paying rent month-tomonth
— said they reached
an agreement with the landlords
that they would have
one month to vacate the building
unbothered. Days later,
the landlords walked into the
dwelling unannounced with
their entire family, two maintenance
men and a dog in tow,
the tenants said. One tenant
was recovering from brain
surgery at the time of the
barge in, the residents said.
Gottlieb alleges that Gendville
swung open the door to
her bedroom while she was
getting changed and placed
her hands on her when she
tried to shut the door.
“I was startled and ran to
go close the door and what
she did was essentially grab
my wrist to prevent me from
closing the door,” Gottlieb
said. “I was terrifi ed.”
Gottleib also claimed that
Gendville brought a crowd of
people into the hallway outside
her bedroom whom she
had to push past to get away
from her landlord.
“I was essentially pushing
past all these people afraid for
my life because I honestly did
Tenants of 1214 Dean Street, and landlord Gennaro Brooks-Church.
Photo by Ben Verde
not know if they were physically
capable of hurting me,”
she said. “I sprinted up the
stairs and started screaming,
‘Help! Help!’”
New York State law mandates
landlords give 24-hour
notice before entering a tenant’s
dwelling for any reason.
It also states that landlords
must prove in court that tenants
without a written lease
owe rent before eviction proceedings
can begin.
Out of the seven tenants
who once lived in the building,
only four are remaining
— and those four are making
arrangements to leave as
soon as they can, the tenants
said, as Brooks-Church has
now moved into one of the
house’s empty bedrooms and
is making the remaining tenants
feel unsafe.
Neither landlord responded
to requests for comment.
‘I WAS TERRIFIED’
Crown Heights tenants accuse prominent
landlords of harassment, illegal evictions
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