Eviction

A new Oakland ordinance requires relocation payments of thousands of dollars to renters evicted by landlords who are moving back to their properties.

Passed by the City Council on Jan. 16, the Uniform Relocation Ordinance creates a schedule of relocation payments that will increase every year based on consumer price index fluctuations

A Brooklyn landlord is trying to drive out Latino tenants, demanding they prove their legal immigration status and cooking up baseless eviction cases, according to a federal lawsuit.

Now current and former residents at two Sunset Park buildings are looking to bring Adel Eskander’s years of alleged discrimination to a halt with the class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

A week before Christmas, Linda Morales spotted a bright orange notice from the Planning Department taped to the side of her Potrero Hill apartment building.

The notice at 701 Hampshire St. informed tenants of planned renovations by the building’s landlord.

The plans include adding a fourth story to the six-unit apartment building — increasing its height from 26 feet to 37 feet — and removing five ground-floor parking spaces to make room for two additional residential units.

Two East Harlem residents filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the city’s recent rezoning of the neighborhood, claiming the move was preceded by analyses that failed to account for pressures facing them and other rent-stabilized tenants.

The suit claims the city did not consider rent-stabilized housing tenants when estimating how many East Harlem residents could be vulnerable to displacement after a rezoning, and what the city could do to protect them.

On the night of January 7, as temperatures around the city plummeted to 6 degrees, a pipe burst in the hallway at 1231 Broadway in Brooklyn, cutting off the cold water supply to Gabriel Martinez’s second-floor apartment.

Some survivors of the wine country wildfires are being evicted from their homes after sharp rent increases. Evictions in burn-affected areas are up – and up dramatically.

The wine country wildfires killed 24 and displaced thousands more.

But three months later, there is now a second wave of victims: losing their homes not to flames, but to evictions.

RENITA BARBEE, 52, was still grieving the death of her mother last fall when she received another shock. Her landlord, the Wall Street rental behemoth Invitation Homes, was raising her rent to $3,000 a month, an increase of more than $800 all at once. Barbee had shared the three-bedroom Los Angeles rental home with her mother, husband, and daughter. But her husband wasn’t working after a recent stroke, and without her mother’s Social Security payments to help cover the bills, there was no way that Barbee’s family could afford to stay put on just her salary as a city dispatcher.

It was a car accident that catapulted Gina Owens into advocacy. In 2000, Owens was working as a medical assistant and activism wasn’t on her radar, but a collision left her with disabilities that prevented her from continuing with her job. The landlords of her Central District apartment were understanding … for a time. They allowed her to pay about 75 percent of her $475 rent as she searched for new work. She survived on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families prior to earning disability payments. But she was evicted from her apartment once the backlog on her owed rent reached $1,000.

Rats left to breed unchecked. Heat and electricity cut off. Landlords demanding to see tenants’ IDs. Those are only a few of the tenant harassment tactics detailed in a new report that chronicles one of New York’s more insidious problems: predatory equity.