FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM AUGUST 6, 2020 • THE QUEENS COURIER 17
Sleep-out event demonstrates potential of mass evictions
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
aacevedo@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
Hundreds of people marched from
Glendale to Bushwick, and back to
Ridgewood where they held a sleep-out
to demand an eviction-free New York on
Saturday, Aug. 1.
“Today is the day to pay rent, unfortunately,
more than 1 million people have
lost their income and haven’t been able to
pay rent,” said Raquel Namuche, an organizer
with the Ridgewood Tenants Union
(RTU). “Th at’s why we’re here demonstrating
to tell Gov. Andrew Cuomo …
we need ‘universal rent relief, the actual
cancellation of rent.’”
While the city has entered phased opening
and hundreds of thousands returned
to work, the city has 1.3 million workers
out of work with the unemployment rate
at about 20 percent as of July — “a fi gure
not seen since the Great Depression,”
according to Th e New York Times.
Th e demonstration,organized by RTU
with support from Mi Casa No Es Su
Casa and various other tenants associations
representing Queens and Brooklyn,
began at theGlendale Veterans Triangle
on Myrtle Avenue and Cooper Avenue
with some English and Spanish speeches.
Th roughout the introduction, protesters
were repeatedly heckled by a group of
people and passersby watching the event.
Th e event was one of many eviction
protests held throughout the city during
the months of the COVID-19 pandemic
lockdown, as advocates fear for the
safety of tenants at risk of eviction once
Cuomo’s eviction moratorium expires
entirely on Aug. 20.NYC Housing Court
began accepting new eviction fi lings on
June 20.
Caty Seger, a lifelong resident of
Glendale, called out Cuomo as well
as Councilman Robert Holden and
Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan for not
doing enough to protect tenants.
“Bob Holden has spent his time in offi ce
being anti-homeless and racist,” Seger
said. “He’s spent more time fi ghting a
homeless shelter than he’s actually spent
guaranteeing housing for all.”
Seger, a member of RTU, told QNS that
in the 11385 ZIP code, tenants are not the
majority and very little live in rent-regulated
buildings.
“Most of the time they’re
in private houses
where a
family will
just rent
out the second
floor,
and there’s usually no lease, no protections.
It’s actually, most of the time not
legal, so because of that we’re particularly
vulnerable to eviction,” she said.
Aft er some speakers, the march began
toward Ridgewood on Myrtle Avenue,
with a fl eet of bicyclists acting as barriers
and traffi c guards. Several police cars
followed them throughout the route from
behind.
Th e chants ranged from, “Get up, get
down, there’s a housing crisis in this
town” to “I said once I pay my rent, damn
all my money is spent.”
Once the march reached the Myrtle-
Wyckoff Avenues train station, they turned
onto Knickerbocker Avenue toward Starr
Street, receiving cheers from bystanders
throughout the route. Once they reached
Starr Street and Wyckoff Avenue, organizers
paused in front of what they said
is notorious landlord Deodat Lowtan’s
home. Lowtan was number 19 on Public
Advocate Jumaane Williams’ list of
the city’s “Worst Landlords” last year,
with about 583 Housing Preservation
and Developmentviolations and 17
Department of Buildings violations.
One person trying to organize tenants
of Lowtan’s 39 buildings took to the mic
to talk a bit about his buildings.
“I wish we had more of his tenants to
tell y’all but … there’s so many stories of
the b——- that this guy does,” he said.
“He’s a big fat wart in this neighborhood
and we’re really trying
to hold him accountable
because he’s been doing it for a long
time.”
By 9:30 p.m., they returned to the
Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues train station
plaza, which they turned into the “people’s
plaza” for the sleep out.
Several dozen protesters set up camp
by the station’s triangle that’s closed off to
traffi c. Organizers gathered bedding and
pizza, set up a projector, and had music
playing throughout the night.
Th e sleep out was meant to demonstrate
what could happen if families were
to get evicted because of an inability to
pay rent due to a lack of income as a result
of job loss.
Maria Gil, a resident of Bushwick,
thought of this idea when commuting to
work in Brooklyn and watching unhoused
people make the streets their home.
“Th is is just a refl ection of what
may happen if the gov- ernor
doesn’t do anything to
cancel rent,” she said in
Spanish.
Gil talked about
some friends who
were too afraid to
join the demonstration,
but have
been struggling
to pay rent since
March. She said
she’s friends
with one family
with a disabled
child that had a parent temporarily out
of work from his restaurant that closed in
March. Once they reopened a few months
ago, he was not asked to return and don’t
qualify for government benefi ts. Th eir
rent is $2,500 and they have only been
able to pay for food with their savings.
“I know many families like that,” Gil
said, adding that they wanted to ask
Cuomo how he’d feel being in their shoes.
Ana Gil, one of Maria’s daughters who
helped organize the event, said they were
there marching for those who feel they
can’t speak up in fear of retaliation.
“We planned this because a lot of what’s
happening right now, it’s aff ecting everyone,
not just the poor,” she said.
Ana said that even before the pandemic,
families have experienced landlords
trying to price them out or employ
other measures to get them to leave. She
said their own family experienced this
aft er almost 22 years of living in the same
home when their landlord off ered them
money to leave.
“We used to fi ght our landlord,
and still to this day we do, to
fi x our building … but ever
since people started gentrifying
Bushwick or
Ridgewood, they’re
like, ‘Oh wait,
these people
could pay
more,’” she
said.
But Maria
added that in
their building,
there have been
vacant apartments for
some time now.
“We want to represent
those who have been
evicted from communities
to bring in people who
could pay higher prices of
luxury buildings that weren’t
bu i l t for people like my family, lowincome
families, families with a lot of
kids,” Ana said. “It’s been very devastating
to see so many people and so many of my
neighbors getting high amount of rent for
such a tiny space.”
Photos by Angélica Acevedo
Tenants in Queens and Brooklyn marched to demand an “eviction-free New York” in Ridgewood on Saturday, Aug. 1.
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