Major Rent Strike Against Millionaire Slumlord Catches Fire in Brooklyn

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/activism/156192/major_rent_strike_against_millionaire_slumlord_catches_fire_in_brooklyn_/

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The electrical box in the basement of multifamily brownstone on 46th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, looks like a middle-school science fair project gone horribly wrong. The door to the box is ajar and a cheap plastic fan, positioned only inches from the fuses, desperately tries to keep the wiring from catching fire when it sparks and overheats, plunging the building’s 51 apartments into darkness and threatening to set the entire structure ablaze.

“Last night was so bad, the lights were going on and off every ten minutes,” said 20-year-old Riccey Trelles, a recent college graduate who lives with her family on the first floor. “It was pitch-black; I couldn’t see the person across from me.”

Despite the darkness, Trelles was up until almost two a.m. making posters and banners for the following day’s protest to expose her building’s slumlord, Orazio Petito, and implore city officials to intervene in a case of housing violations that tenants are now describing as human rights abuses.


As foreclosures continue to displace millions and put historic pressure on the nation’s rental market, slumlords now have more opportunity than ever to prey on the most vulnerable of tenants. The problem is especially bad in an owner’s market like New York City, where average rent price increased more in the second quarter of 2012 than in any other city in the country, sending landlords into a frenzy to evict old tenants--especially those with stabilized rent--and jack up the prices for newcomers. But despite a vicious landlord and a city that prefers aiding the housing market's rise than enforcing tenants' rights, Trelles and her neighbors are fighting back: speaking out, occupying an assemblymen’s office and launching a rent strike that tenants hope will spread across Brooklyn.

[HiPointDem]

1. kr

[eridani]

2. Title a bit scary, IMO

Some slumlords have no problem with burning tenants out.

[nanabugg]

3. All rents are too damn high!!! The "rent" candidate was right!

High rent is as mush a barrier to job creation amnong small business owners as anything else. I you actually do the research you will find that small business owners themselves have been brainwahseced to concentrate on "taxes" instead of their unreasonable costs associated with high rent and poor landlord services. Check with any stripmall renter in your area and you will find this to be true.

[Starry Messenger]

5. k&r