‘No One is Safe:’ Tenant Advocates Say Loophole in State Law Threatens Millions

Greg Marshall lives all alone in a six-story apartment building on the Upper East Side. He’s been the building’s only tenant for the past decade—and he says his landlord will do anything to get him out.

An advocacy group that has taken up Marshall’s cause, now claims that a loophole in a New York State law puts 2.5 million rent-stabilized tenants statewide at risk of eviction, drawing the attention of numerous state legislators and advocacy groups. The Save Affordable Rent campaign works to address the City’s housing crisis, and help those like Marshall and the millions of others in jeopardy.

“Everyone knew that this was a ridiculous interpretation of the law,” he said. “It’s been 13 years I’ve been fighting. It’s been stressful. It’s been pervasive.”

It was Marshall who decided to stay at 352 E. 86 Street. He had no intention of leaving, he said. He contested his landlord’s initial request for eviction by First NY LLC, controlled by Gary Barnett, one of the City’s most prolific developers of luxury residential housing.

Marshall got pretty used to doing things by himself. His fourth-floor walk-up has been his home of almost 25 years, and he’s seen many come and go after landlords started pushing the legislation on their tenants.

His yearslong fight kept him at his address even when everyone else was forced out. But it all resulted, he claims, in him being the subject of menacing and intimidation by the landlord— all in the developers’ hopes that he’ll finally leave so they can demolish the building.

“In New York, you expect tenants to be protected,” he said. “Landlords don’t want people to know about this law unless you’re their tenant.”

Marshall described a number of amenities either stripped back or completely removed from his residence. Landlords deny him any urgency in security complaints, he said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his empty building became the unofficial home to a number of squatters, breaking in to steal pipes and vandalize the space.

When his landlords tore up the hallways of his building, they claimed it was an inspection for asbestos. Marshall, who works in construction, said he knew something was up and called an inspector of his own. That inspector called it harassment.

Marshall said he fears one of the squatters will come in, heat his spoon and cause a deadly fire.

“It’s like a boa constrictor...It’s a slow, glacial, insidious thing,” he said. “It gives you a dark outlook on life.”

With no central air, Marshall said, his building reaches up to 95 degrees, especially in a particularly extreme NYC summer.

His water will be turned off without notice, forcing him to carry buckets of water up four flights of stairs each day to shower, brush his teeth, cook and keep cool.

“A lot of people didn’t fight. They just thought you had to roll over, [but] you have to stand up to a bully,” he said. “They do everything in an obsequious manner.”

Marshall recalls a once colorful, vibrant, affordable community that surrounded him at East 86th Street. Hairdressers, diners, pizzerias and many families he called friends—particularly a mother and child that lived adjacent to him—are now all gone.

“[The developers] don’t think much of it,” he said. “They destroyed the culture of that part of the world.”

The Black Institute, a partner in Save Affordable Rent, was one of the first organizations to put their name on the Blame Gary For It campaign: a comedic approach taken by the people of New York, targeting Barnett of First NY as a major culprit in the statewide housing crisis.

Bertha Lewis, TBI’s president and founder, said affordable housing is an issue that disproportionately affects Black New Yorkers and people of color. Lewis said she had no idea there was a threat to over a million NYC units—including her own home.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been advocating for affordable housing all these years? I’m just as much in danger as any other rent-stabilized tenant in New York City,’” Lewis said.

Renters came to her when concerned about prices getting “too damn high” or a shortage in affordable apartments, she said. No one ever mentioned this loophole or any other legal technicality that could lose them their home.

“We are in danger. We are under a threat. It may be invisible: you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t feel it. But boom—one day, here comes the developer and says, ‘That’s it. I’m knocking this building down,’” she said.

That developer can build a 90-foot skyscraper and gentrify an entire neighborhood, she said—“and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

Tenants, and especially tenants of color, she said, believe that following all the rent-stabilization rules means they’ll be okay. Most think there are regulations in place acting as a “security blanket” to stop anyone from evicting them. But this law could evict millions, she said.

“You’ll always find a developer who’s only interested in making money and growing his empire who will find that loophole,” Lewis said. “It’s not just Gary Barnett—other developers, other landlords have gone, ‘Whoa, all I have to do is just demolish a building? I don’t have to say that I have the money to build anything? I don’t have to protect and relocate any of the stabilized tenants? Well, I’m going for it.’”

The way out of the housing crisis, she said, cannot be to simply just build more affordable housing. The City needs to look at the threats to existing units, and ensure that renters and working families—especially communities that are mostly Black or Brown, she said— are protected from any kind of unsteady legislation.

Lewis said she knows of many others who struggle, like Marshall, with vindictive landlords that use cruel strategies to get their tenants to leave—casting a dark shadow on their quality of life. They turn their environments against them, she said, naming numerous code violations, from massive infestation to their ceilings falling down.

Lewis said she believes an “unscrupulous” landlord messes with a tenant on purpose, saying: “How do I get them out? Oh, I know—I’ll mess with the water supply! Oh, I know — no heat, no hot water! Oh, I know—no extermination! Oh, I know—make sure that there’s no ventilation. Make sure that whether it’s next door, in the front or in the back, that I pollute the air to make it unbearable.”

Not everyone can seek asylum in the Hamptons, she said. Housing violations that inhibit tenants’ resources disproportionately affect New Yorkers of color, glorifying environmental racism: the idea that ecological degradation is exacerbated in marginalized communities.

“Our legislators tell us, ‘You know, affordable housing is very expensive to build,’” she said. “If you live in New York City...what do you see? Somebody’s got the money. Because every time you turn around, high rises, skyscrapers.”

Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal of District 67 both pushed for legislation that would transfer the power out of the hands of landlords and developers into the District of Homes and Community Renewal, which would close the loophole.

A spokesperson for Sen. Krueger said there was a long history of “phony demolitions,” in which a building would force tenants out with no intent to actually demolish, only to evict rent-stabilized tenants.

Marshall said he was thrilled to learn he had elected officials behind him—something he’d been after for the past decade. But an unfortunate run in the Assembly and the Senate took the bill out of the conversation, and it was never voted on.

“They hit a brick wall...I don’t know why it didn’t go through,” he said.

Krueger “was very disappointed” that the bill didn’t gain enough traction, according to her office.

“The bill absolutely remains a priority for Sen. Krueger,” the spokesperson told Straus News.

Marshall said it’s preposterous this story hasn’t made more headlines. He supposes a cover-up of some kind.

“This was kept out of legal journals...Why wasn’t it in legal journals?” he said. “Maybe people were paid off.”

Marshall said eliminating rent stabilization pushes an entire fabric of people out of New York. It isn’t fair, he said, to let gentrification impact not only the buildings around you, but the one you’ve called home for decades. In his mind, developers thought: “As long as I turn a profit, we’re going to destroy an entire neighborhood,” he said.

“No one is safe,” Lewis said. “People are being displaced...They struggle from paycheck to paycheck, hoping that their landlord doesn’t have any plans to sell or enter into a partnership with a developer that would threaten their homes.”

Officials seem to be “completely unaware” that this won’t just affect housing, she said. This threat also brings a domino effect that hinders New Yorkers’ health, their job, their childcare and their transportation.

People like Gary Barnett want to turn renters’ environments against them, she said. “[They] want to harass, terrorize and get rid of lawful tenants in buildings that they want to demolish, knock down and put up a high rise.”

“This is an entire New York City, five-borough problem, and I theorize that this is going to take hold in city after city, county after county,” she said.

“Whatever you think about rent stabilization, it’s kinda enshrined in New York,” Marshall said. “I have a connection to the community. I’m a part of the neighborhood, entrenched in the neighborhood.”