Tenant Sara Lopez marches on Thursday
July 6th 2012 The electrical box in the basement of multifamily brownstone on 46th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, looks like a middle-school science fair project gone horribly wrong.
Despite the darkness, Trelles was up until almost two a.m. making posters and banners for the following day’s protest to expose her building’s slumlord, Orazio Petito, and implore city officials to intervene in a case of housing violations that tenants are now describing as human rights abuses.
As foreclosures continue to displace millions and put historic pressure on the nation’s rental market, slumlords now have more opportunity than ever to prey on the most vulnerable of tenants.
“We are people,” said Sara Lopez, a retired public employee who was the first to begin withholding rent payments almost two years ago. “We deserve to live with dignity.
We pay for our apartments, so we deserve our rights as tenants.” After months of door knocking by Lopez and Trelles’ mother, Sue, the rent strike now includes 80 families across three of Petito’s buildings—and Lopez hopes to spread the movement to his other properties.
Petito, for his part, is a classic exploitative building owner. Ranking 51 on city’s watch list of worst slumlords.
He owns approximately twenty buildings across the boroughs and dozens of small real estate corporations that flit in and out of existence like fireflies and list PO Boxes for addresses. He’s frequently fined and issued court dates, which he rarely shows up to, and he seems quick to take out million-dollar mortgages that he never repays.
Once again, if you already have money, you can cheat the system, treat people like dirt and get away with it. These are PEOPLE, they deserve human dignity!
No comments:
Post a Comment