As I sit at my desk writing this rant, a house fly is bumbling around my head. Though they don’t bite, house flies are a plague because they carry filth on their feet, from the rotten food leavings and animal excrement they feed on. And my apartment is infested with them, because my landlord is a henchman of Beelzebub, which means “Lord of the Flies” in Hebrew.
My wife Patsy and I live in a New York City apartment building that is falling apart. The building, 210 West 107th Street, along with 220 and 230, was recently acquired by a satanic outfit called ArchRock Management, which is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau. It’s based in Brooklyn, and owns other properties there and in Manhattan, all in the same state of disarray. A holding company called Emerald Equity Group LLC, based Beelzebub only knows where, owns ArchRock. According to my brother George Kirchwey, an investment analyst with a background in commercial real estate, Emerald is even dirtier than its subsidiary. Its 35-year-old President, Isaac Kassiner, openly boasts about his plan to turf out the rent-stabilized tenants in his East Harlem buildings, so he can replace them with tenants paying well above market rate. His attitude goes far to explain why there’s no redress for us when things fall apart here.
Back in April, there was a gas leak in 210, and Con Edison shut off the gas to our stove pending the installation of new pipes. ArchRock gave us a two-burner hot plate and a small convection oven, both electric, knowing that New York City tenants pay for electricity, and gas, but by law, landlords have to provide both, through their contracts with the utility. Our electric bill rose considerably over the next months, but, naturally, our gas bill was zero.
Meanwhile, ArchRock (named, perhaps, for the keystone that caps the entrance to Dante’s Inferno) failed even to begin the pipe replacement process. Representatives from the city’s Housing Board and Board of Health, aware of the problem, went door-to-door in the building, talking to tenants and inspecting the conditions in their apartments. In addition to the lack of gas, they found heating pipes that were not sealed where they met floors and ceilings, broken floor tiles in the kitchens, and an infestation of rats and roaches.
Finally we formed a tenants’ association and engaged a lawyer who specializes in tenant-landlord cases. On his advice, we went on rent strike, paying our monthly rent into an escrow account the lawyer set up. And he represents us in a lawsuit we have filed against ArchRock.
ArchRock was ordered by the Board of Housing to pay a large fine for every week that went by with the necessary repairs and improvements left undone. In the shared basement of 210, 220, and 230, a disused coal chute next to a trash chute was found to be not only infested by rats, but also covered with mold. Management has since claimed to have exterminated the rats, but either they lied, or did a piss-poor job, because there are still a lot of them running up and down inside our apartment’s walls. Nothing has been done about the mold in the basement.
Early in July, a crew finally arrived to start replacing the pipes. But they quit a few days later, because they were not getting paid. ArchRock’s building manager disappeared, no one knows why. He has been replaced, but there’s still no sign that the work has recommenced, and the new manager is deaf to tenant complaints. We have extended our rent strike into August.
The flies in my apartment breed in the filthy garbage-collecting bin in the basement, which hasn’t been emptied on a regular schedule since ArchRock acquired the building. I asked the building super for a supply of fly traps, or even old-fashioned flypaper, but he refused to provide them, saying that management would not pay to exterminate flies. I said that the flies had invaded the building because of the filth in the basement, and he just shrugged and walked away.
Patricia and I are rent-stabilized tenants of long standing, and previous scumlords have tried to force us out by denying basic services. ArchRock (with Emerald) is doing the same thing, on a far more aggressive scale.
As some large apartments in our building have fallen vacant, the company has hired construction crews, without approval from the Housing Board or the requisite city permits, to turn them into three, four, even six-unit complexes, each rented at market value to short-term tenants, mostly Columbia University graduate students from China, here to pick up MBAs and go home to apply their expertise to China’s bid for global dominance. It’s possible, though I have no proof, that these dormitory-style units are air bnbs, which are illegal in New York City. Certainly the Chinese kids seldom stay longer than a month or so. Privileged and cossetted children of China’s rich élite, with few exceptions they are rude to Anglo, Hispanic, and African-American tenants, as if they believe that if you’re not Chinese, you’re not really human.
Their bad manners extend to the way they dispose of their trash. On every floor there is a trash room, and the requisite chute. Instructions about separating one’s trash into metal and plastic recyclables (blue can), paper (green can), and garbage (down the chute), are posted on the wall in both English and Mandarin. Our bad neighbors just leave everything on the floor, which further encourages the population of rats, roaches, and flies. Needless to say, none of the Chinese kids attend tenant meetings. Why should they? They’re just passing through.
Of course not all New York City landlords are villains. Owning and managing property here is a difficult balancing act, and you have to spend money to make money. At the moment, the state housing laws are weighted in favor of tenants (that could change in 2020, if the state legislature turns Republican). And it’s true that some tenants are deceitful and destructive, constantly finding ways to avoid paying the rent, engaging in illegal sublets, and trashing their apartments because of their careless lifestyles.
But the good landlords tend to be those who own luxury high-rises, where the rents are as steep as the buildings are tall. And even among high-rise owners, there are scammers and shitbirds. The name Donald J. Trump springs to the lips: before he turned his grabby little paws to politics, he and his father were notorious for mismanaging even the fanciest properties they owned, stinting on basic services, hiring Russian Mafia contractors to do substandard construction and maintenance work, and refusing to rent to African-Americans. Ironically, even Trump Tower, which The Donald built as a monument to himself, has structural issues due to cost-cutting schemes, and there are problems involving its elevators, central air conditioning system, and even lighting. When the Mango Mussolini announced his candidacy for President of the United States in 2016, riding down the long escalator to Trump Tower’s gilt-walled atrium, he embodied the adage, “All that glitters is not gold.”
At the moment (9 August 2019), the outcome of the lawsuit is pending. ArchRock wanted to settle; our lawyer refused, because the company has done nothing to correct the major problems in the building. In my wife’s and my apartment, the super showed up four days ago and capped off one of the heating pipes. He also gave the pipe a new coat of silver paint. However, there is a second floor-to-ceiling pipe right next to my desk which has not been capped or painted.
Some twenty years ago we hired an artist friend to paint the walls of our apartment, and he did a lovely, multi-color job. He’s long since moved out of town, and the paint’s beginning to flake. We’re very reluctant to contact ArchRock about repainting. Even if they agree to do it, they’ll hire a gaggle of incompetants like the motley crew of Chinese workers who sawed the cap off a steam pipe by mistake a couple of winters ago, and caused a flood that seeped through our ceiling and made all the plaster crash to the floor. Our landlord then was Dermot Management Company, almost as sleazy as ArchRock; they slapped on a thin coat of plaster, but left my wife and me to clean up the mess.
The two ArchRock building managers we’ve met both wore yarmulkes, an indication that they are observant Jews. One of the essential ethical concepts in Judaism is Tikka olam: restoring balance to the world through pursuing social justice, fulfilling promises, and honoring contracts. I guess the ArchRock guys slept through that lesson at their yeshiva. Or perhaps they think that Tikka olam applies only to their fellow Jews, just as the Chinese consider only Chinese people worthy of respect.
I should qualify that last phrase: the rich, urban Chinese brats occupying the illegally subdivided apartments in the building despise poor, countrified Chinese immigrant workers like the bumpkins who flooded my apartment. It’s class hatred, which is delightfully ironic in a communist country. But then, contemporary Chinese communism is Maoist, not Marxist, and not even all that Maoist, now that Xi Jinping has established a form of state capitalism that is making China the foremost economic power in the world. Der Drumpfenfuehrer can blather all he wants about having restored America’s wealth and power, but during his negotiations with Xi, the Chinese President stole the shirt off his back. Trump didn’t even notice he’d been had, but the rest of the world did.
We and the other long-term tenants will persevere in resisting the Landlord of the Flies’ attempts to force us out. Already there are signs that like a schoolyard bully, he’s caving in because we’re fighting back. He shares that fundamental cowardice with the loudmouthed squatter in the White House, who is learning that actions speak louder than tweets, and that the dwindling number of die-hard MAGA-hatted bigots who attend his rallies are by no means representative of the American people.
Trump will soon wind up in the dumpster of history, either through impeachment, or, more likely, because of a resounding defeat at the polls in 2020. Isaac Kassiner and his ilk will be harder to dispose of, because speculating in New York City real estate is a game that has always attracted unprincipled men (and women), who regard it as a get-rich-quick scheme. But according to a recent paragraph in The Wall Street Journal, forwarded to me by by brother George, Kassiner is getting sued by tenants in three of the building Emerald owns, for charging market rates on rent-stablized apartments, and the news of his perfidy has been widely publicized. Like Bram Stoker’s blood-sucker, the Landlord of the Flies can’t stand the light of day.
But the stake through his heart is made of money. Just yesterday, work recommenced on replacing the gas pipes in 210, and it continues today. The rent strike and the heavy fines levied by the Board of Housing, are hitting the greedy schmuck where it hurts. I won’t fully believe that ArchRock/Emerald has finally capitulated until I’m standing on new tiles in my kitchen, cooking a meal on the gas stove. And I fully expect another attempt to get rid of me and my wife. Hey, the first cold snap isn’t far off, and they haven’t tried cutting the heat and hot water yet.
