After Manhattan-based Vantage Properties, LLC bought his building in Oct. 2006, the deep-pocketed real estate investment firm sued Aguaiza three times, including twice for not paying rent. He had sent his payment in – he even had proof from the post office – but the company sued him anyway.
"They are looking for opportunities to kick me out of the building. Three times I went to court, but I was right," said the 45-year-old who works as a doorman, a naturalized citizen originally from Ecuador. He estimated more than half of the building's residents, many undocumented, have left since the property changed hands. "They are trying to kick out old tenants. An apartment like mine, they rent for $250 more."
When longterm residents leave and are replaced by those paying more, piece by piece the city's affordable housing stock diminishes. Driven by tens of millions of dollars in new improvements, which typically lead to higher rents, this loss of stock has caught city and state housing agencies off guard – while lower-income tenants are displaced in droves, housing advocates say. A variety of companies are investing in real estate that formerly held less commercial appeal, bringing new threats to residents – but Vantage tenants, for one, are pushing back. Six tenant-plaintiffs, with the help of the Catholic Migration Office, the Legal Aid Society and Queens Legal Services, filed suit earlier this month against Vantage for engaging in deceptive practices through repeated legal actions against tenants.
Other tenant groups also are making noise to protest real estate investors’ ever-growing holdings in lower-end properties. They say it's unsustainable for rent-stabilized buildings in Queens, for example, where one-bedrooms average little more than $800 per month, to be renovated and then offered for $1,400 or more.
Housing Here and Now’s lead organizer Chloe Tribich said that is exactly what is happening in Sunnyside, where she led a protest April 17. She said Urban American, a New Jersey-based firm that owns and manages more than 100 buildings, was taking advantage of vacant apartments. “It is very clear that there is a significant difference in the amount of rent between tenants who moved in five or six years ago" and new tenants, she said.
Housing advocates charge that the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) and the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) are fighting last century's enemy – the urban slumlord – and are not yet tuned in to the latest assault on low-income renters: massive private-equity investment that has snowballed over the past five years to control nearly 10 percent of the more than 1 million rent-regulated apartments in the city.
Since 2003 there have been marquee purchases – such as Tishman Speyer buying largely rent-stabilized Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan for $5.4 billion – but less attention has been paid to the purchase of outer-borough apartments with rents ranging between $700 and $1,000. The number of such units has been shrinking dramatically, according to the 2005 Housing and Vacancy Survey. The Survey found that from 2002 to 2005 the supply of apartments renting between $500 and $800 fell by 90,000 units. Those renting from $800 to $1,000 declined by 28,000 units. But apartments renting for $1,000 to $1,500 increased by 80,000.
