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Michael G. Rizzotto, Manager
COURIER L 16 IFE, JUNE 4-10, 2021
Park Slope tenants fi ght
units to rent for a substantial markup.
“This gross business entity was
spawned during a global pandemic,
and they’re coming in like a thief in
the night to buy up all these buildings
while there’s vulnerability,” Penn
said.
Organizers of 70 Prospect Park West
and other affected buildings have been
contacting affected tenants to inform
them of their rights as renters, and to
discuss their options moving forward.
“We’re trying to make contact with
a lot of these buildings just to let them
know there are others in their situation
and give support where we can,”
said Emily Parent.
Rent-stabilized tenants in the
buildings purchased by Greenbrook
are not affected by the non-renewals,
and cannot be easily forced out — but
many of them have been offered buyouts,
or forced to live amid disruptive
construction conditions as apartments
in their buildings are gutted.
At 38 Prospect Park Southwest in
Windsor Terrace, all but a small handful
of apartments have been vacated,
with a few holdouts in rent-stabilized
units. Those that remain claim they
have been subjected to constant construction
noise and dust, with one
tenant rushed to the hospital after
suffering an asthma attack allegedly
brought on by the dust, according to
tenant organizers.
“To be a rent-stabilized person
in an environment where the landlord
is just negligent and harassing,
that’s really tough,” said Charlie Curwen,
an organizer at a building on
12th Street recently bought by Greenbrook.
“You’re effectively being terrorized.”
The fi rm has shown a similar ruthlessness
towards commercial tenants
in the area, such as D’Mai Urban Spa,
which closed after failed negotiations
with Greenbook owner Greg Fournier
during the pandemic, who then sued
the spa’s owner over $300,000 in back
rent.
“I think he’s wreaking havoc on
the neighborhood,” spa owner Daniella
Stromberg told Brooklyn Paper
in August 2020.
Most of the market-rate tenants affected
by Greenbrook’s buying spree
are younger tenants, or younger families,
many of whom lack the resources
to dig in for a battle against the wellresourced
fi rm, which counts the London
real estate investment fi rm NW1
Partners as a backer.
For the tenants, the threat of losing
their apartments has come as a
destabilizing blow, with many market
rate tenants opting to leave instead
of fi ght.
“There’s a part of me that thinks
they are targeting young people, and
young families specifi cally,” Nguyen
said.
The fi rm has gone so far as to issue
notices to vacate to tenants at 225
13th St., even though the entire building
is made up of rent-stabilized units
— which organizers suspect was done
in hopes that the tenants would be naive.
But when some younger tenants
reached out to organizers, they urged
them to check their leases and assure
they were stabilized, which they
were. When the tenants reached out
to Greenbrook for clarifi cation, they
never heard back.
“They’re betting on people not having
the bandwidth to kind of cope with
a housing crisis, especially if they are
a young family, they have small children,
they have lost work in the past
year,” said Parent. “I think that’s really
been successful for them so far.”
When Curwen was hit with a notice
of non-renewal, he managed to renegotiate
the lease for his 12th Street building
— but with a 30 percent increase
in rent. Because of the pandemic, he
was able to temporarily negotiate the
increase down by about half, but that
will expire in a year, and he’ll fi nd his
rent increased by $1,000 from what it
is now, forcing him to leave his apartment
of six years.
“I’m not going to stick around for
that,” he said. “It’s just such bad timing.”
While Greenbrook’s practices are
not illegal, they are frowned upon
even by landlord groups during the
pandemic. Jay Martin, who runs the
landlord group the Community Housing
Improvement Program told the
Real Deal that his group has advised
members to avoid issuing notices of
non-renewal during the pandemic.
Bushwick State Sen. Julia Salazar’s
stalled Good Cause Eviction Bill
would prevent landlords from evicting
tenants or not renewing their
lease without proper reasoning —
such as failed rent payments, or if the
owner wished to occupy the property
themselves — but the measure has
failed to gather the support it needs
to pass in Albany.
“All I want is good cause eviction,”
said Curwen. “They need a
good cause to not renew my lease,
that’s all I want.”
The tenants are now working with
Park Slope Councilmember Brad
Lander to pressure the fi rm on the investor
level — namely the Texas Permanent
School Fund, a fund set up
to benefi t public schools in the Lone
Star State that has a $100 million
commitment towards NW1 Partners,
one of Greenbrook’s biggest backers.
Lander, along with Assemblymember
Robert Carroll, plan to rally with
tenants on June 4 to put pressure on
the investors, Meanwhile, the organizers
are working to connect with
as many tenants as they can.
“Market rate, rent-stabilized,
we’re all coming together because we
recognize that we need each other,”
said Curwen.
A spokesperson for Greenbrook
Partners declined to comment for
this story.
Continued from page 6
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