One lawyer, in the midst of complicated litigation to put a building into receivership, says that he has been asked to back off the case. Others say they must get permission from the bureau head before bringing contempt charges against a landlord, where in the past they relied on their own judgment. "Every time a landlord makes a phone call, you have to jump through hoops to respond to them," charges one staffer.
City Limits Magazine
For years, the tenants of 392 Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn lived with leaky ceilings, broken buzzers, dangling electrical wiring and broken windows in their four-story Clinton Hill walk-up. At their wits' end, they decided in 1997 to organize and seek legal help to force their landlord to fix the more than 700 violations against the building, according to Hamilton Steele, the leader of the tenants' association. It didn't occur to them to turn to the city for assistance. After all, they had been in and out of Housing Court for years without learning that HPD even had a staff of lawyers to enforce the housing code.
Local tenant activists at the Pratt Area Community Council referred 392 Clinton's residents to Brooklyn Legal Services, which brought the landlord to court. "The reason why we got Pratt Area Community Council and Brooklyn Legal Services is because the city wasn't doing anything," Steele says. The case is still in Housing Court, but Pratt has taken over administering the building and is arranging for repairs.
It's a roundabout way to handle the work that the city has abdicated. "We presume that we will get absolutely no help from the city," says Benjamin Dulchin, director of organizing at the Fifth Avenue Committee, a tenant advocacy group in Brooklyn. This extra load is taxing some nonprofit legal groups that have taken up the slack. They're hoping that Mayor Giuliani meant it when he said that changes needed to be made.
