BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — Tenants at the historic Riverside Apartments in Brooklyn Heights say they have endured rats, a mite infestation, mold, leaking ceilings, heat failures, water shutoffs and other unsafe living conditions for years.
On Wednesday, they joined elected officials and housing advocates at a rally to protest what they say are deplorable conditions caused by years of neglect by notorious landlord Pinnacle Group, and to oppose a steep rent increase affecting 20 tenants.
Tenants display posters showing some of the conditions at the Riverside Houses, including a radiator falling through the floor, mite bites and dangerous stairs. Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
“We’ve endured leaks so bad that I’ve had to stay up all night during storms to empty buckets of water,” said Jean Campbell, a resident of Riverside since 1973. “We’ve had collapsing ceilings, rodent infestations, and now mites from the vermin. We’re not asking for anything extraordinary; we’re asking for a safe home and a landlord who fulfills their responsibility.”
“When I say I’m having a mice problem — it’s so bad that my daughter started naming them, ‘Well, that’s Josh over there,’” said tenant Farhia Hagi, whose daughter is 14. “When I complained about the mice, I was told to get a cat.”
An exterior ceiling leaks when it rains, and gets more damaged over time. Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
Hagi pointed to a photo showing a jar filled with orange-brown water, saying that’s what comes out of her pipes. “We are humans — tenants, mothers, daughters, grandmothers — who deserve water that’s not brown and stairs that are safe to climb,” she said.
Some older tenants have already given up their rent-stabilized apartments because they could no longer take the mites, said Hew Evans, who moved in just two years ago.
One family repaired a hole under the sink, where rats were coming in, by themselves. Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
“That’s mites, and I continue to emphasize this. M-I-T-E S. As small as a pepper flake, these mites are tiny, blood sucking parasites,” he said. The bites leave an itchy red rash that “further develop into incredibly painful, pus filled rashes,” he said. Thousands of mites will infest any fabric surface, clothes, furniture, bedding and toys, and they can only be removed by professional extermination, he said.
Evans said he has spent more than $1,000 so far on hotel stays, laundry and medical care, due to the mites. “And I’ve spent over two months in itchy burning pain from these mites and the resulting rashes.”
Amanda Trees, who was born at Riverside Houses, said she gives her dog medicine so he doesn’t get ticks or mites. Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
Tenants say Pinnacle Group, with thousands of housing violations at buildings across the city and in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings, is trying to pressure the long-term rent-stabilized tenants out of their homes pending a preliminary offering plan for condominium conversion.
On top of that, 20 families are fighting eviction in housing court after the Division of Housing and Community Renewal overturned a rent freeze, which is allowing Pinnacle Group to claim rental arrears.
In the 1990s, the Riverside Tenants Association won a lawsuit against the landlord after the central courtyard was illegally paved as a parking lot, securing a rent freeze for tenants. These 20 families are now fighting eviction in housing court after the DHCR overturned the rent freeze.
The RTA’s attorney is filing a lawsuit in state court to challenge the DHCR rent restoration, which has placed the building’s rent stabilization status at risk.
Landmarked and historically affordable
The five Riverside buildings are made up of 156 rent-stabilized apartments at 10, 20, and 30 Columbia Place and 24and 32 Joralemon St.
The apartments were built in 1890 by philanthropist Alfred Treadway White, who believed that the working poor deserve a healthy standard of living, with light, fresh air and a courtyard with trees. Designed by William Field & Son architects, Riverside is considered one of the earliest examples of multi-family affordable housing in the United States.
It’s “disgusting” what Pinnacle has allowed to happen to the architecturally notable brick buildings with exterior stairwells, said elected officials who represent the area.
Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon stands with young tenants of the Riverside Houses. Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
“These repairs have been neglected for years and years and years,” said Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon. She read from a letter her predecessor Joan Millman sent to DHCR in 2007, asking the agency to address “the very neglected state of disrepair.”
“This is somebody who categorically has waged war on their tenants for decades,” Simon said. “And now they’re trying to convert to condominiums, and making believe they can just do that. You know, we have rent stabilization laws. They cannot just beat everybody out because they want to make condos.
Simon said it was a “well-known pattern” among landlords who do “this sort of thing, that is, to harass people, to fail to repair, to make people want to move out.”
Councilmember Lincoln Restler said Pinnacle Group’s CEO Joel Weiner “should be ashamed of himself.” Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
Councilmember Lincoln Restler called out Pinnacle Group’s CEO by name. “The conditions here are despicable, and Joel Weiner should be ashamed of himself,” he said.
Restler said his office is working closely with the city’s Housing Agency and the Mayor’s Office to ensure that there are more consistent inspections, “And that Joel Wiener gets every damn violation thrown at him, that the book is thrown at him.”
Restler said his office would also work with the state’s Homes and Community Renewal agency, which “somehow allowed for this egregious rent increase to happen for two dozen tenants. We are going to fight back and make sure that it is overturned.
A full power strip sits on top of a radiator that emits hot steam in the winter. Photo: Mary Frost/Brooklyn Eagle
“What Joel Wiener is doing is disgraceful,” Restler added. “It is why on Zohran Mamdani’s first day in office, he went to a Pinnacle building and said, ‘What this man is doing cannot go on.’”
Wiener was forced to sell two-thirds of his buildings he owned across the city — 93 out of 146 buildings, Restler said.
Kathleen, secretary of the Riverside Tenants Association who did not want her last name published, said there were 168 open violations at Riverside. The groups’ attorney confirmed Tuesday that the courts must now decide two things, she said. First, whether DHCR was correct to approve a rent increase at all. “And second, if the increase is not overturned, whether conditions in the building warrant rent abatements for tenants instead.”
“We are calling on (the New York City Department of Housing, Preservation and Development), HCR, and every relevant agency to come to the table, enforce the law, and protect one of Brooklyn Heights’ last significant rent-stabilized communities,” said John Leyva of the Southwest Brooklyn Tenant Union.