Tenants Association sues Tishman Speyer

Lawsuit accuses landlord of improperly using nonrenewal notices to boot tenants

By Sabina Mollot

The Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association filed a class action lawsuit against Tishman Speyer on Tuesday, along with a few tenants, in an attempt to seek monetary damages by those who were wrongly accused of living in their apartments illegally.

The lawsuit accuses the owner of improperly accusing rent-stabilized tenants of not using their ST/PCV as their primary residences “in a malicious, willful, reckless and wanton manner solely in an attempt to oust plaintiffs from their homes and to cause the apartments to be vacated and deregulated.” The lawsuit also alleges that under the Rent Stabilization Code, the burden of proof to establish a tenant’s non-primary residency status is on the landlord, not the tenant.

The Tenants Association and local elected officials have blasted Tishman’s policy of sending out notices of lease nonrenewal for the past couple of years, so the class action may not come as a surprise to the owner, who declined to comment. (The company has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation.)

So far, over 1,000 such notices of nonrenewal, also called golub notices, have been sent out, although Tishman has previously said close to half of the primary residence challenges resulted in those tenants voluntarily vacating their apartments.

The lawsuit seeks to stop Tishman Speyer from continuing with eviction proceedings against the named plaintiffs: Patricia Anderagg, John Noonan and Joel Bucheim, and get $10 million in damages and attorney fees. The attorney representing the tenants is the Tenants Association’s counsel, Jack Lester.

According to the association’s president, Al Doyle, the suit was filed because Tishman Speyer has been unresponsive to the requests to compensate the legitimate tenants who got golub notices for their legal costs and time off from work.

“We have asked that the landlord compensate tenants for the costs—often running into thousands of dollars—that they have had to incur to protect their right to live in their homes,” said Doyle.

The other object of the suit was to prevent tenants from being hit with primary residence challenges more than once.

While there is no single factor determining a tenant’s legal residence, the top criteria are: living in the apartment at least 183 days a year and having that address on one’s voting and income tax records as well as using it as one’s billing address. Tenants are allowed to own properties as long as they don’t live in them full-time, although often those targeted are current or former property owners. Each of the plaintiffs named in the suit were sent nonrenewal notices that made mention of their ownership of properties.

In related news, although the nonrenewal notices have been sent out to tenants on an ongoing basis, in recent months, they may have tapered off somewhat.

In January of 2008, Council Member Dan Garodnick set up a hotline for tenants in his district facing housing problems, as part of a Council initiative. For a while, the hotline got about 50 calls a week, the majority being from ST/PCV residents who’d gotten golub notices. However, lately, the hotline has only been getting about 20 calls a week.

Garodnick still gave the lawsuit his support, saying the landlord ignored a request he’d made for a freeze on the golub notices.

“We asked Tishman Speyer to reimburse tenants for those fees voluntarily, but they declined,” said Garodnick. “We asked for a moratorium on golub notices, but we were ignored. We made countless attempts to get Tishman Speyer to commit to fair standards and procedures before sending these legal notices, but they made no changes and simply stayed the course. It is understandable that the Tenants Association felt that they had no choice but to pursue legal action to compensate tenants for their costs.”

Earlier this year, a story in the New York Post reported that the Tenants Association would be filing a lawsuit against Tishman Speyer, which the association at the time denied. According to Doyle, the association at the time was just pursuing its legal options.

Source: Town & Village