BY KEVIN DUGGAN
A north Brooklyn luxury
property manager is trying to
stop tenants from organizing,
according to current and former
residents.
Tenant organizers say
Goose Property Management,
which oversees roughly 1,500
apartments across 10 buildings
for developer Rabsky Group in
Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and
Queens, has tried to stifl e independent
resident communications
for the past year.
“I want us to be able to talk
openly, I want to level the playing
fi eld and if people want to
organize, let them organize,”
said Billy Taylor, who lives at 26
West in Greenpoint.
The Brooklynite set up
a group chat for residents of
the 96-unit building at Calyer
Street on Slack in July due
to what he said was a lack of
COVID-19 safety measures in
the building.
“Their attitude was basically
‘we’re not going to tell people
what to do,’” Taylor said.
He started hanging posters
in the building’s lobby advertising
COURIER L 10 IFE, MAY 28-JUNE 3, 2021
the chat and sent hundreds
of postcards to tenants
at other Goose-managed properties,
however the fl iers were
removed 10 times over the past
year by management, Taylor
suspects.
“We talk about issues and
rent negotiations or random
late fees — yeah obviously
that’s the stuff they don’t want
us to be talking about,” he said.
One early example was
when building managers closed
off the rooftop to guests in July,
but a week later they apparently
rented it to a resident who held
a large birthday party, according
to Taylor.
“There were people spilling
into the hallways,” he said.
“The apathy by the owner and
just the neglect has been astonishing.”
Similar issues plagued the
Rheingold, a massive 500-unit
building at the site of a former
brewery by the same name on
Montieth Street in Brooklyn.
A longtime resident of that
building, who asked not to be
named for fear of repercussions,
said management failed to take
actions against tenants hosting
large parties throughout the
summer, allowing guests into
the building seemingly without
controls in place to prevent the
spread of COVID-19.
“A neighbor was turning
his apartment into a superspreader
event during COVID,”
said the Rheingold resident.
“There were people from the
neighborhood gaining access
to our building and our rooftop,
because they knew there
was only one person at the
front desk for a building of 500
units… They could just blow
right through the lobby.”
The Rheingold building at 10 Montieth St. in Bushwick.
Photo by Craig Hubert
The Bushwick resident
formed her own tenants association
there two years ago and
joined forces with Taylor when
she heard about his efforts.
The resident said that in
2017 when an air conditioning
unit caught fi re on the building’s
roof, no one informed tenants
about what happened as
fi refi ghters stormed into the
building to put out the fl ames.
When he posted a message
warning other residents in
the building’s offi cial bulletin
board, it was taken down.
He recently packed up and
left after years of unaddressed
complaints with Goose. Among
them were issues as simple as
failing to provide legally-required
stove knob covers.
“They made my units uninhabitable
because with two kids
and the safety I don’t want the
gas to leak, because eventually I
could have had a fi re,” he said.
Taylor, of 26 West, believes
management twice tried to infi
ltrate the Slack group with
fake profi les. One of the applicants
he suspected of being
phony provided a unit number
that didn’t exist in the building
and also left a glowing online
review of Goose. Another applicant
reached out to Taylor’s
personal email address which
he never provided with the fl iers.
They’re fed up!
North Brooklyn tenants say property
managers blocking their organizing efforts
LET US BE YOUR
"DESIGNATED
REPRESENTATIVE "
AND
HAVE THE RESPONSIBLE INSURANCE
COMPANY PAY TO REPAIR YOUR CAR TO
FACTORY SPECIFICATIONS AND 'DELIVER
IT TO YOU WITH THAT NEW CAR
SHOWROOM LOOK WHILE DRIVING AN
IMMEDIATE REPLACEMENT CAR RENTAL
A short drive thru the Battery Tunnel from Manhattan