Renita Williams has struggled to survive in her own home since she moved in a decade ago. In a rainstorm, water cascades through the roof of her fifth-floor apartment at 2268 Washington Avenue in the north Bronx. She covers the holes in the ceilings above her children's beds with plastic tarps, but has lost three televisions and a computer to rain damage. The moisture has led to fungus growing, which has caused asthma among her family. In the morning, when she wakes up in a room of crumbling walls and heads into a kitchen with leaking pipes, she seeks solace in a cup of joe. But, she said, "You can't set your coffee down, because roaches are in your coffee."

Williams is one of many tenants around the city who endure foul living conditions in exchange for cheaper rent. But a legal decision stemming from her neighborhood indicates change may come. Bronx Supreme Court Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels last month ruled for the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition in a decision the group sees as a clear defense of the right to speak out against negligent landlords.

When the NWBCCC began to work on tenants' behalf in Williams' neighborhood in 2003, the titular landlord then-responsible for five buildings, Steve Tobia, filed suit against housing organizers. When they picketed and posted flyers on the properties, he claimed the activists were trespassing and committing libel and wrongful interference with the landlord's bank, Washington Mutual. "The actions of these activists groups scared off WaMu," said attorney Lawrence Gottlieb, who represented the landowners, then seeking refinancing. "We in essence had to go to other banks."

But the NWBCCC filed a counter-suit, alleging the landlords' action was a "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation," or SLAPP, under a state statute created in 1992 to protect speech rights. SLAPP suits are filed in response to citizen organizing and communication with an influential party to quell public activism. It took a few years, but in July Justice Manzanet-Daniels dismissed all of the landlords’ claims. Because this is the first case in which an anti-SLAPP suit was used in tenant-landlord relations – it's more often used in the context of land development disputes – the NWBCCC team is claiming that a precedent has been set for tenant organizing and free expression.

The decision "says loud and clear to landlords, 'You cannot sue community-based organizations'" for exercising their First Amendment rights, said Albany Law School assistant professor Ray Brescia, who served as lead attorney in the case in collaboration with the Urban Justice Center. Harvey Epstein, executive director at the Center, said the message to landlords is: "If you do this, you are going to get SLAPP'd."

The five properties Tobia was responsible for, which included two apartments on Washington Avenue, two on Walton Avenue, and one at 1055 Grand Concourse, were among about 100 buildings – including Renita Williams' – that were part of the New Line Realty group. This collection of Bronx real estate corporations is thought to be ultimately controlled by Westchester businessman Frank Palazzolo.
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When the court battle began, Chloe Tribich was the NWBCCC's lead organizer in the neighborhood. She described the Palazzolo apartments as "easily the most dilapidated, poorly cared-for buildings in the Bronx." She met with tenants to discuss a slew of grievances that included vermin infestation, falling ceilings, and faulty locks on their doors. Tribich, who is currently a lead housing organizer for advocacy group Housing Here & Now, helped communicate these complaints to Tobia’s mortgage lender, Washington Mutual Bank, in the hope that WaMu would enforce its "good repair clause" on the buildings.