Department of Homes and Community Renewal<\/a>, means the apartment stays rent-stabilized until the tenant moves out. And Harold and Elena had no plan to move out.<\/p>\nBut what if something changed their mind? Like a neighbor who let the smoke alarm go off for a week at a time or a series of police visits in the middle of the night. \u201cHaving me in the building would make their goal of destabilizing all of these units more difficult,\u201d Harold said. Other tenants in the building had their own suspicions that the landlord was up to something. They claim upkeep had fallen off \u2014\u00a0snow shoveling, pest control, typical maintenance. And tenants in other rent-stabilized buildings owned by Wolfe Landau and Watermark Capital described similar patterns: deferred maintenance and a lack of responsiveness to general complaints. \u201cThere\u2019s garbage everywhere, there\u2019s rat problems,\u201d another tenant in the Joyces\u2019 building told me. \u201cYou know, I feel like it\u2019s quite intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no conspiracy, according to Wolfe Landau, the principal at Watermark Capital Group. When he bought 56 South 11th in 2004, \u201cit was falling apart.\u201d He put work into the building, and now he\u2019s waiting to start collecting real rents. Yes, he\u2019s letting vacant apartments stay empty, he told me, but that\u2019s perfectly legal. \u201cI won\u2019t rent it right now because if I rent it next year, six months from now, I\u2019m gonna get free-market rent,\u201d he said. \u201cOf course I\u2019m waiting until my J-51 expires.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Harold? \u201cHe\u2019s a miserable person. And he decided to make my life miserable for no reason at all,\u201d Landau said. Any allegations about how he managed his buildings or ran his business were baseless. \u201cI\u2019m not looking to make the last dollar to torture my tenants,\u201d he said. \u201cI take care of my tenants. I treat people like human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
So much so, in fact, that he let someone going through a hard time stay in one of his empty apartments while he got back on his feet. The person staying in 2B, right next to Harold, was a friend\u2019s son, he said. \u201cHe\u2019s a kid. This kid was sleeping on the street,\u201d Landau told me. \u201cAround here I\u2019m known for that. I do a lot of this type of stuff. I gave him an apartment. I get nothing from him. Just put him to sleep there.\u201d<\/p>\n
If anything, Harold was actually the one doing the harassing, Landau said \u2014 \u201ctorturing\u201d the poor kid sleeping next door, who was in a motorcycle accident that left him disabled. \u201cEverybody should be helping him.\u201d The new neighbor\u2019s name was Moshe.<\/p>\n
Moshe was apparently starting to develop a reputation with other tenants in the building. He often looked a little disheveled, neighbors said. People noticed his ankle monitor. In late September, after Moshe had been in the building off and on for months, another neighbor got into an argument with him about whether or not he had a lease for the apartment. Elena witnessed the argument and tried explaining to Moshe their concerns about previous squatters in the building.\ufeff A week later, in early October, Elena stepped out of their apartment and saw Moshe waiting for the elevator. Both started filming the other. In that footage, Elena asks him if he\u2019s squatting. Moshe tells her it\u2019s none of her business. She accuses him of trespassing and of following another neighbor to her apartment. He asks her how she would know he was trespassing and says, \u201cI\u2019m going to put this video everywhere, all right, with your apartment number.\u201d Elena called for Harold, who ran out in his boxers \u2014\u00a0both men screamed at each other and threatened to call the cops.<\/p>\n
That evening, Harold received a text from Elena: \u201cCall me. It\u2019s an emergency.\u201d She had just gotten off the phone with the city\u2019s Administration for Children\u2019s Services. An anonymous hotline call had been placed sometime that day, alleging there was \u201cscreaming, excessive consumption of alcohol, and child abuse occurring\u201d in their apartment, and an ACS agent needed to investigate the claim.<\/p>\n
\u201d\u200aThat was not something I ever, ever \u2014 in my wildest, most catastrophic catastrophizing that I usually do \u2014 ever thought would be a factor,\u201d Elena said. The report led to visits from agents at the kids\u2019 schools and interviews with teachers, friends, and family. The claim was ultimately confirmed by the department as unfounded. \u201d\u200aI feel that something in me kind of broke in that moment. I just was ready to take my kids and get out of New York City,\u201d Elena said.<\/p>\n
In November, the Joyces sued. In a suit filed against Moshe (\u201cJohn Doe\u201d), Dov Land USA LLC, which owns the building, as well as Wolfe and his son, Mordechai Landau, the Joyces allege a harassment campaign that began soon after Moshe moved in next door and that, as the harassment escalated, the landlords \u201chave been consistently made aware of such harassment and have at all times continued to ignore and enable such conduct.\u201d In their response to the lawsuit, the landlords deny all of this, writing that the tenant in 2B, Moshe, was given permission \u201cto use and occupy\u201d the apartment \u201cfor living purposes only.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things stayed tense through the winter. One day in mid-December, the Joyces\u2019 car was towed from outside their building. When Harold and Elena picked up the car in East Flatbush, they managed to convince the tow-truck driver to share the phone number of the man who had called in the tow.<\/p>\n
And it was through a public-records report associated with the phone number that the Joyces learned Moshe in 2B was Moshe Berger, who was almost 30 and out on bail in a federal interstate extortion-threat case in the Southern District of New York. Prosecutors say Berger followed and threatened a man to whom he\u2019d lent money then demanded he be paid $750,000 \u201cto resolve the case\u201d or else he would kill him. (In a letter filed in that case, one of Berger\u2019s previous attorneys writes that his client was the true victim in this incident \u2014\u00a0\u201ca person with a severe disability\u201d who was preyed upon for a payout from his personal-injury case.) Multiple requests for comment to Berger\u2019s lawyers went unanswered.<\/p>\n
\u201dAll of this was publicly documented,\u201d Harold said of the allegations against Berger.<\/p>\n
In February 2026, a full year after he first showed up on South 11th, Berger disappeared from the building. He had apparently violated the terms of his bond. Soon after, in March, the super and other landlord representatives began knocking on doors in the building, asking tenants to sign a form notifying them of the upcoming J-51 expiration.<\/p>\n
The Joyces\u2019 lawsuit is still pending in state court. Moshe was subpoenaed in early May. (Later that month, he was remanded to Brooklyn\u2019s Metropolitan Detention Center for again violating the terms of his pretrial release. Prosecutors are also asking he be evaluated for competency.) The Joyces are set to be deposed when discovery is complete. Until then, it\u2019s just waiting. Elena and Harold are unsure how the case will turn out, but they\u2019re determined to stay, they told me. Where else would they go? They built a life on South 11th Street. \u201cIt\u2019s a big thing to have that sense of stability,\u201d Elena said of their longtime home. Harold agreed: \u201cIt\u2019s something worth fighting for.\u201d<\/p>\n
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