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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, JULY 28, 2019
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August 31
Midwood landlord
faces federal suit
Civil rights organization alleges real estate
honcho won’t rent to African-Americans
The landlord of this 48-unit apartment building in Midwood refuses to lease to African American
tenants at his “Jewish building,” according to a new lawsuit. Photo by Trey Pentecost
BY AIDAN GRAHAM
A Brooklyn landlord
won’t rent apartments to African
American tenants at
a “Jewish building” in Midwood,
a new lawsuit claims.
The Fair Housing Justice
Center — a nonprofi t civil
rights organization — fi led
the suit in Federal Court on
July 17, alleging that real estate
honcho Zev Pollak systematically
refuses to lease
apartments to non-white
tenants at his 48-unit apartment
building at 1411 Avenue
N between E. 14th and
E. 15th streets.
Census bureau statistics
from 2010 shows that the African
American population
in that section of the neighborhood
accounts for less
than 2 percent of the area’s
population, according to the
center.
The organization claims
they ran four sting operations,
in which they sent several
people — some white,
some black, but all with similar
socio-economic characteristics
— to the apartment
posing as prospective renters,
and found vastly different
results based on their
skin color.
The investigations began
in September 2016, when the
building superintendent
Eldina Balic allegedly allowed
a white man to tour
two vacant apartments and
claimed they were available
for rent, only to deny any vacancies
to an African-American
man the following day,
according to the lawsuit.
The day after that, Balic
allegedly allowed a second
white “tester” to tour the
same vacant apartments —
in addition to providing him
with rental applications. On
this occasion, Pollak met
the supposed renter and encouraged
him to apply to the
“Jewish building,” which
was fi lled with “good” and
“stable” tenants, located in
a “quiet and safe neighborhood,”
according to court
documents.
The three other sting
operations outlined in the
lawsuit depict similar results.
The most recent sting
operation came last February,
when Pollack allegedly
told an African-American
man that there was “nothing
available” — despite allowing
two white operatives
for the Justice Center to tour
the same vacant apartment
before and after that denial,
according to the lawsuit.
The Justice Center’s
leader said discriminatory
practices like the
ones Pollak allegedly engaged
in are responsible
for promoting racial segregation,
which continues
to infect the borough.
“Residential racial segregation
is not, and never
has been, a matter of choice.
It was created and is now
perpetuated by intentional
discriminatory housing
practices like those documented
in our complaint,”
said Fred Freiberg, who
heads up the Fair Housing
Justice Center as executive
director. “It is beyond vexing
that a real estate broker,
licensed by the State
of New York, is directly involved
in making housing
unavailable to people based
on race.”
Pollack’s real estate
company — Zev Pollak Co
LLC — did not immediately
respond to request
for comment.
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