COME LEARN WHAT YOUR RIGHTS ARE AS A TENANT. ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT HOUSING LAWS. IF YOU LIVE IN A BUILDING UNDERGOING A POTENTIAL NON-EVICTION CONDOMINIUM CONVERSION GET THE FACTS.
GET EDUCATED AND STAY INFORMED!
WHEN: NEXT MEETING EARLY DECEMBER TO BE ANNOUNCED
WHERE: ?
PINNACLE TENANTS: HAVE YOUR BUILDING REPRESENTATIVE OR TENANT LEADER CONTACT US TO GET MORE INFORMATION
Contact Information:
BRUSH
Hamilton Grange Station
Box 98
New York, NY 10031
646-248-6915 or harlembrush@yahoo.com
HAD ENOUGH! - JOIN BRUSH!
Broken or no locks; Broken mailboxes; Defective windows; Walls/ceilings cracked/buckling/holes; Lead paint; Leaks, Peeling paint in hallways or dirty hallways;
Elevator not working; Stairs broken or loose; Mold; Garbage problems
Fire escapes rusty / broken / defective / missing; Unsecured basement or roof; Exposed wiring; Rent overcharges;No rent receipts given; Rent receipts incomplete (no date);
Inadequate or no super service, missing Co2 Detector
HAD ENOUGH! - JOIN BRUSH!
Questionable major capital rental improvement increases, eviction notice, succession right issues, or any legal action.
HAD ENOUGH! - JOIN BRUSH!
If your Landlord is harassing you in any form or fashion...
HAD ENOUGH! - JOIN BRUSH!
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
PRESS RELEASE
June 10, 2006
VOL. I No. 2
BRUSH has been at the forefront of many media discussions regarding the management practices of The Pinnacle Group. During the month of May, the New York Daily News ran countless articles about the plight of many tenants living in Pinnacle-owned buildings. As a result, various community boards convened a special meeting to discuss the management practices of the company and New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was called upon to take action.
In the Wednesday, June 7th edition of the New York Daily News, Juan Gonzalez again assails the nefarious practices of Pinnacle, the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal has launched an investigation trying to discern a pattern of conduct, Cardinal Egan of the New York Archdiocese of the Catholic Church is speaking at the rally on Saturday June 10th in Washington Heights, and the Housing Committee Chair of the New York State Assembly, the Honorable Vito Lopez of the 53rd Assembly District in Brooklyn is launching an investigation. Also, the Village Voice ran an article about BRUSH’s attempt to preserve affordable and quality housing by examining the management practices of companies like Pinnacle. The President of BRUSH, Kim Powell was featured on cable TV with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! (a cable news program), and the New York Daily News Columnist, Juan Gonzalez, to talk about the “overpriced” proposed condominium conversion plans filed by The Pinnacle Group with the New York Attorney General’s Office.
BRUSH is currently working with tenant associations, legal service agencies, and various non-profit organizations in an effort to challenge the practices of companies like The Pinnacle Group. Thus far, through their general meetings held each month, BRUSH has put pressure on The Pinnacle Group, and successfully forced them to dismiss a few of the eviction proceedings the company brought against tenants.
As a result of the pressure of the community the Pinnacle Group has called upon BRUSH to assist them in developing their community ties. BRUSH has met with the company and reports that their efforts to improve and enhance the company’s relationship with the community is an evolving process.
Elected officials as well as community–based organization, such as, Mirabal Sisters have now joined in BRUSH’s efforts to challenge the company’s practices. BRUSH is currently working with various organizations and other New York City boroughs to organize and develop strong tenant associations.
Donations and suggestions may be sent to:
BRUSH
Hamilton Grange Station
Box 98
New York, New York 10031
NEXT MEETING: TBA
For more information:
Contact 646-248-6915 or kimlpowell@aol.com or harlembrush@yahoo.com
VOL. I No. 2
BRUSH has been at the forefront of many media discussions regarding the management practices of The Pinnacle Group. During the month of May, the New York Daily News ran countless articles about the plight of many tenants living in Pinnacle-owned buildings. As a result, various community boards convened a special meeting to discuss the management practices of the company and New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer was called upon to take action.
In the Wednesday, June 7th edition of the New York Daily News, Juan Gonzalez again assails the nefarious practices of Pinnacle, the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal has launched an investigation trying to discern a pattern of conduct, Cardinal Egan of the New York Archdiocese of the Catholic Church is speaking at the rally on Saturday June 10th in Washington Heights, and the Housing Committee Chair of the New York State Assembly, the Honorable Vito Lopez of the 53rd Assembly District in Brooklyn is launching an investigation. Also, the Village Voice ran an article about BRUSH’s attempt to preserve affordable and quality housing by examining the management practices of companies like Pinnacle. The President of BRUSH, Kim Powell was featured on cable TV with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! (a cable news program), and the New York Daily News Columnist, Juan Gonzalez, to talk about the “overpriced” proposed condominium conversion plans filed by The Pinnacle Group with the New York Attorney General’s Office.
BRUSH is currently working with tenant associations, legal service agencies, and various non-profit organizations in an effort to challenge the practices of companies like The Pinnacle Group. Thus far, through their general meetings held each month, BRUSH has put pressure on The Pinnacle Group, and successfully forced them to dismiss a few of the eviction proceedings the company brought against tenants.
As a result of the pressure of the community the Pinnacle Group has called upon BRUSH to assist them in developing their community ties. BRUSH has met with the company and reports that their efforts to improve and enhance the company’s relationship with the community is an evolving process.
Elected officials as well as community–based organization, such as, Mirabal Sisters have now joined in BRUSH’s efforts to challenge the company’s practices. BRUSH is currently working with various organizations and other New York City boroughs to organize and develop strong tenant associations.
Donations and suggestions may be sent to:
BRUSH
Hamilton Grange Station
Box 98
New York, New York 10031
NEXT MEETING: TBA
For more information:
Contact 646-248-6915 or kimlpowell@aol.com or harlembrush@yahoo.com
AS LANDLORD GROWS, SO DOES CRITICISM
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York TimesTenants at a building at 706 Riverside Drive who have formed a group to oppose Pinnacle. Pinnacle Group has become one of the biggest property owners in neighborhoods from Brooklyn to the Bronx.
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: September 3, 2006
Not long ago, Joel Weiner was a small player in New York City’s residential real estate industry. The properties he owned were neither extensive, nor impressive.
But during the past two years, Mr. Weiner, 57, and his firm, the Pinnacle Group, have spent more than $1 billion on hundreds of apartment buildings and quietly become one of the biggest property owners in neighborhoods from Brooklyn to the Bronx.
But Pinnacle has had problems as it expanded: It is the subject of criminal investigations by the Manhattan district attorney and the state attorney general’s office; it has been denounced by Representative Charles B. Rangel and other politicians; and it has been the subject of angry community meetings and rallies and petitions signed by thousands of people who object to its business practices.
Last week, the attorney general’s office subpoenaed Pinnacle documents, including rent registration forms, as part of its investigation, Pinnacle officials said.
The antipathy generated by Mr. Weiner and Pinnacle is the city’s latest entry in the time-honored landlord-versus-tenant struggle, between those who want to keep their rents down and those who want to raise them. But this one is being played out with perhaps greater passion because of a tight housing market and the breakneck speed of gentrification in recent years, which has seemed to transform many formerly undesirable neighborhoods overnight.
Critics accuse Pinnacle of buying buildings and firing superintendents within weeks. Questions have also been raised about whether the company has violated the city’s rent-stabilization laws by sometimes raising rents higher than is legally allowed, through such measures as passing along the cost of questionable renovation expenses. In one case, the cost of installing five toilets was passed on to a tenant in a two-bathroom apartment.
The critics also say the company has been engaging in harassment to force people out of their apartments. Tenants describe being put through a Kafkaesque tangle of eviction notices slipped under doors at night, and of legal challenges made to their right to live in longtime apartments.
In some buildings, one-quarter to one-half of the tenants have received so-called dispossess notices — typically the start of the eviction process — within a few months of Pinnacle’s purchase of the property. The company’s practices, its critics say, are a case study in the gentrification of some of the last working-class neighborhoods in Manhattan.
“We’ve been living here since it was the drug capital of the world, now we are sitting on a commodity,’’ said Rafael Gomez, 48, who lives in a Pinnacle building in Washington Heights, adding that people ask how “do we end up in such a beautiful neighborhood when we are poor people?”
Mr. Weiner denied criminal wrongdoing and said his goal was to be recognized as a model landlord. He has acknowledged raising some rents, but said the increases were necessary so he could provide safe, quality housing. His lawyers maintain that any errors Pinnacle may have made in seeking to evict tenants or in overcharging on rent have been the result of honest mistakes. The company rightly says costs of improving apartments can be legally passed on to tenants.
Mr. Weiner has not disputed that his company has sent out 5,000 dispossess notices to tenants in its approximately 21,000 apartments in the past 29 months. That, say adversaries, is itself cause for alarm.
“When you are trying to evict one out of four tenants, that is what lawyers call prima facie evidence,” Congressman Rangel said. “It is something that screams out for a criminal or civil or legal remedy.”
Mr. Weiner agreed to be interviewed, but did not want his photograph taken because, his lawyers said, he wanted to protect his privacy and because he had received a death threat on the Internet.
Mr. Weiner, who was born in Brooklyn and lives on Long Island, said his objective was to simply get tenants to pay their rents. And he makes no apologies for Pinnacle’s aggressiveness in moving to evict those late on rent or otherwise not legally entitled to live in his buildings.
“When you are in the trenches and you try to turn around a building, it’s not easy,” he said. He has hired a team of prominent lawyers, including former City Councilman Kenneth K. Fisher and Benjamin Brafman, a defense attorney whose clients have included Michael Jackson.
Mr. Weiner describes himself as a hands-on owner who visits his properties frequently and is a stickler for cleanliness, order and the removal of building code violations.
Although much of the criticism about him has focused on gentrification, Mr. Weiner said his recent purchases of buildings in neighborhoods like Washington Heights, Harlem, Inwood and the South Bronx would not necessarily lead to wealthier tenants moving in and displacing
current residents.
“I don’t want to call it gentrification,” he said. “I want to call it meeting community needs.”
He said he typically raises rents after he buys a building in order to pay for the major improvements he must make because previous landlords have neglected many of the properties. Pinnacle legally passes those costs on to tenants in higher rent bills. “This is a very tough business,” he said. “I have a passion for doing it, and doing it right.”
In December 1997, Pinnacle owned 267 apartments in the city, and Mr. Weiner, though wealthy, was unknown, even to many of his competitors. But by May of this year, after an infusion of cash from the Praedium Group, a real estate fund that specializes in investing in inner cities, Pinnacle’s holdings had jumped to 21,642 apartments.
From May 2004 to May of this year alone, the number of Pinnacle-owned apartments had tripled, with most of the recent purchases concentrated in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. Among its acquisitions — for $500 million — was the 2,900 apartment portfolio of Baruch Singer, who had become one of Harlem’s most notorious landlords because of the number of code violations and fines his buildings incurred.
Kim Powell, who in November 2005 helped start an anti-Pinnacle group called Brush — Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem — said the group’s primary problem with Pinnacle was how it treats renters. “They have shown an absolute disregard for tenants,” Ms. Powell said.
The Pinnacle model has been to purchase what it refers to as distressed properties — typically apartment buildings that have numerous code violations, are in poor repair, and house many tenants who are behind on rent. The tenants in the 104 Singer buildings, for example, were in arrears for a total of $4.3 million, according to Pinnacle.
The company cleans up the building, often starting at the basement. It scrubs graffiti, installs exterior lighting, cameras and new front doors, and works on code violations. The rent-stabilization laws allow some or all of the cost of that work to be passed on to tenants in the form
of higher rents.
Vacant units often get complete makeovers, including new kitchens. Landlords can also increase rents on vacant apartments by as much as 20 percent under state rent regulations. As a result, rents paid by incoming tenants are often significantly higher than what previous renters of the same apartment had paid.
Tenant advocates say Pinnacle is intent on raising rents to the $2,000-a-month threshold, which would remove the units that are vacant from rent-stabilization protection.
The law would then allow a landlord to rent those apartments for whatever the market will bear.
“That’s their business plan,” said Ken Rosenfeld, director of legal services for the nonprofit Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation. “They’re testing the waters, they’re pushing the envelope.”
Mr. Weiner however, said that few of his apartments had reached the $2,000 level, and that he usually charges tenants less than the legally allowed rent because the current market cannot support higher rents. The city allows an occupied rent-stabilized apartment to be deregulated after its rent hits $2,000, but only if the tenants’ household income is at least $175,000 for two years in a row.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office and the state attorney general’s office have sought Pinnacle work invoices, eviction records, responses to tenant complaints and other documents to try to determine whether there is a pattern of fraud, whether the costs of renovations were exaggerated and false billings were submitted, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. Some of the accusations against Pinnacle, as well as some details of the investigations, have been reported by The Daily News.
Mr. Weiner said he was cooperating with the inquiries and has pledged to change Pinnacle’s business methods if either office requests it. The company has also hired two community outreach workers with the goal of forming a community advisory panel that would help guide Pinnacle operations.
Further, the company said it was willing to turn over the files of the 1,256 cases it is currently litigating against tenants to elected officials so they can be examined. Finally, it has agreed not to seek to evict elderly tenants without first contacting the city Department of Aging.
“I am looking every day to improve the operation,” Mr. Weiner said.
Many tenants however, say they have had unsettling encounters with Pinnacle and its lawyers.
Karen Flannagan, 53, said that even after she had presented Pinnacle documents that established her residency rights to her Harlem apartment after her mother died, the company slipped an eviction notice under her door and took her to court. Her mother had been the leaseholder and the family had lived in the apartment along with Ms. Flannagan’s teenage daughter for several years.
“Here I am trying to grieve, and I am having to worry about me and my daughter being thrown out,” she said.
After two years and 10 appearances in housing court, Pinnacle abruptly dropped the case a few years ago, she said. Pinnacle lawyers, however, said recently that Ms. Flannagan’s original documents had not been sufficient, though in a statement this week the company said it regretted any inconvenience it had caused her.
Marjorie Charron, 56, and her husband, Ted Charron, 59, moved into a Pinnacle building in Harlem in 2001, paying $1,900 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. They were told by Pinnacle that by law, the company could have charged as much as $2,500.
When the couple realized that other tenants were paying far less, they found out that Pinnacle had claimed to have performed $20,000 worth of remodeling work on the apartment before they moved in, which gave the landlord the right to raise the rent by a corresponding amount.
When they examined Pinnacle’s invoices for the work done on the apartment, however, they found that the company had included charges for 160 light bulbs, 75 pounds of grout, 130 gallons of paint, a $198 nail gun and a $424 drain cleaning device. They also found that some items listed as installed were not there, including oak flooring and a pedestal sink.
Other costs included maintenance work such as painting walls and sanding floors, the costs of which are not permitted to be passed on to a tenant by a landlord.
Five years later, the couple was awarded $10,000 in rent credits from Pinnacle, although they say the company owes them at least $15,000 more. Pinnacle lawyers acknowledged having made mistakes in the Charron case, but continue to legally challenge some of the couples’ claims.
“The average person can’t do this, so by default, Pinnacle wins almost every time,” Ms. Charron said. In a statement this week, Pinnacle said the items had been “inadvertently misallocated” and apologized.
In another case, Erica Martinez, who lives in a Pinnacle building in Washington Heights, received a $1,317.83 rent credit from Pinnacle after the State Department of Housing and Community Renewal ruled that she had been overcharged. In addition, the agency ordered Pinnacle to pay her triple the amount of the overcharge — or a total of nearly $4,000 — because the overcharge had been deemed “willful.”
Pinnacle lawyers said the company had made mistakes in the Martinez case, but had not done so purposely.
In another case, Pinnacle has attempted to pass on charges to tenants for the $21,700 cost of new front doors in one of its buildings in Harlem, even though they were replaced several years earlier. The state eventually quashed the attempt and the tenants’ rents were not increased.
“Pinnacle, if by the second or third overcharge they had said, ‘Something’s wrong, lets make it right,’ I would have given them credit, but they never have,” said Hazel Miura, a tenant organizer in the Bronx.
Another Pinnacle tenant, Mark Gordon, was charged through his rent for the cost of five toilets for his apartment in 2001, even though he had only two bathrooms. Pinnacle’s invoices also included the cost of replacing electrical wiring that appeared not to have been replaced and a double billing for the installation of kitchen cabinets.
Mr. Gordon said three years and $10,000 in legal fees later, Pinnacle resolved the case by agreeing to lower his rent. While at the time, Pinnacle did not admit making any errors, the company recently acknowledged making a mistake.
But Pinnacle’s lawyers said that in only about 50 cases had the company been found to have overcharged tenants and that only about 6 percent of its units were currently under litigation. Pinnacle says that most of the tenants it has moved to evict have failed to pay rent for at least two months.
Mr. Weiner said he instructed his employees to work out cases with tenants amicably, and that he only used the courts as a final resort. His lawyers say that despite handing out thousands of dispossess notices, no more than 351 people have actually been evicted since 2004.
ELIOT GOES IN PURSUIT OF PINNACLE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Sep 1, 2006
By JUAN GONZALEZ
ATTORNEY GENERAL Eliot Spitzer has subpoenaed thousands of tenant records of the Pinnacle Group LLC, one of the city's biggest owners of rent-regulated housing.
The subpoena, issued Tuesday, is part of a widening probe by Spitzer into allegations that Pinnacle has systematically charged tenants who moved into renovated apartments far higher rents than state housing law allows.
"We received a records request in the form of a subpoena," company attorney Kenneth Fisher said in a written statement. "We had previously volunteered to cooperate with [Spitzer's] inquiry and are confident that Pinnacle's record of investing in and improving properties will result in a favorable outcome after the attorney general's office concludes its review."
Company chief Joel Wiener has defended Pinnacle's actions as legal and aboveboard.
Two months ago, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, in a separate probe, subpoenaed records the company filed with the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal to win approval for rent increases for major capital improvements.
Both investigations followed a series of reports in the Daily News earlier this year on Pinnacle's practices.
That series revealed the company had filed 5,000 eviction proceedings in Housing Court since January 2004 - one for every four of its tenants. The company has doubled or tripled the rents for its vacated units after installing new kitchens and bathroom fixtures. In several cases reviewed by The News, Pinnacle's higher rents were based on fictitious improvements it had claimed to state regulators.
At the Winthrop Gardens, a 330-unit former Mitchell-Lama complex in the Bronx, for example, DHCR recently ordered 19 rent rollbacks on renovated apartments, and the agency is reviewing eight more complaints.
Some tenants won up to $8,000 in back rent, and in at least two cases, DHCR awarded tenants triple damages, which can be assessed whenever the agency deems an overcharge "willful."
Pinnacle has claimed "clerical errors" at Winthrop.
"Any large organization is going to have a certain error rate," Fisher told The News earlier this year.
The Spitzer subpoena has demanded rent records and invoices for all apartment and building-wide improvements at Winthrop and for other Pinnacle properties throughout the city, a source familiar with the investigation said yesterday.
A spokesman for Spitzer declined to comment. But one law enforcement source said the AG's office is working closely with DHCR staff on the probe.
Pinnacle's applications for rent increases based on building- wide improvements - commonly known as MCIs - have also become a focus of Morgenthau's investigation.
In late June, a few weeks after the DA issued his subpoena, Pinnacle withdrew two applications for MCI rent increases it filed with the state, DHCR officials said.
One application was for $46,000 the company said it spent on a new roof at 86-06 35th Ave. in Queens; the other was for $36,000 for a new roof and entrance doors at 91 Fort Washington Ave. in Washington Heights.
"It's unusual for a company to voluntarily withdraw an MCI application," DHCR spokesman Peter Moses said.
Asked about the sudden withdrawal of those MCI applications, a spokesman for Pinnacle cited "business reasons."
Sep 1, 2006
By JUAN GONZALEZ
ATTORNEY GENERAL Eliot Spitzer has subpoenaed thousands of tenant records of the Pinnacle Group LLC, one of the city's biggest owners of rent-regulated housing.
The subpoena, issued Tuesday, is part of a widening probe by Spitzer into allegations that Pinnacle has systematically charged tenants who moved into renovated apartments far higher rents than state housing law allows.
"We received a records request in the form of a subpoena," company attorney Kenneth Fisher said in a written statement. "We had previously volunteered to cooperate with [Spitzer's] inquiry and are confident that Pinnacle's record of investing in and improving properties will result in a favorable outcome after the attorney general's office concludes its review."
Company chief Joel Wiener has defended Pinnacle's actions as legal and aboveboard.
Two months ago, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, in a separate probe, subpoenaed records the company filed with the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal to win approval for rent increases for major capital improvements.
Both investigations followed a series of reports in the Daily News earlier this year on Pinnacle's practices.
That series revealed the company had filed 5,000 eviction proceedings in Housing Court since January 2004 - one for every four of its tenants. The company has doubled or tripled the rents for its vacated units after installing new kitchens and bathroom fixtures. In several cases reviewed by The News, Pinnacle's higher rents were based on fictitious improvements it had claimed to state regulators.
At the Winthrop Gardens, a 330-unit former Mitchell-Lama complex in the Bronx, for example, DHCR recently ordered 19 rent rollbacks on renovated apartments, and the agency is reviewing eight more complaints.
Some tenants won up to $8,000 in back rent, and in at least two cases, DHCR awarded tenants triple damages, which can be assessed whenever the agency deems an overcharge "willful."
Pinnacle has claimed "clerical errors" at Winthrop.
"Any large organization is going to have a certain error rate," Fisher told The News earlier this year.
The Spitzer subpoena has demanded rent records and invoices for all apartment and building-wide improvements at Winthrop and for other Pinnacle properties throughout the city, a source familiar with the investigation said yesterday.
A spokesman for Spitzer declined to comment. But one law enforcement source said the AG's office is working closely with DHCR staff on the probe.
Pinnacle's applications for rent increases based on building- wide improvements - commonly known as MCIs - have also become a focus of Morgenthau's investigation.
In late June, a few weeks after the DA issued his subpoena, Pinnacle withdrew two applications for MCI rent increases it filed with the state, DHCR officials said.
One application was for $46,000 the company said it spent on a new roof at 86-06 35th Ave. in Queens; the other was for $36,000 for a new roof and entrance doors at 91 Fort Washington Ave. in Washington Heights.
"It's unusual for a company to voluntarily withdraw an MCI application," DHCR spokesman Peter Moses said.
Asked about the sudden withdrawal of those MCI applications, a spokesman for Pinnacle cited "business reasons."
Thursday, August 03, 2006
This Is A Wakeup Call!
DOWNTOWN EXPRESS
Volume 19 • Issue 11 July 28- - August 3, 2006
PINES IN THE SKY FOR TRIBECA'S WEALTHIEST TENANTS
By Ronda Kaysen
The residents of 101 Warren St. will not need to trek upstate to enjoy pine trees — they’ll have a whole grove of them right outside their window.
The new luxury development currently under construction will come equipped with a bucolic grove of 101 Austrian pine trees set atop the building’s third floor terrace. The building’s sports center will open out on the grove, and all the residents in the 227 condo units will have access to the trees.
“There’s just the serenity and peacefulness of this grove,” said landscape architect Thomas Balsley. “The needles, the texture, the sound of the wind going through the pine trees above. It’s really an extraordinary experience, it’s almost religious. It’s one that would be transported to this roof as a gift to the residents of this building.”
The “gift” will be reserved for the condo residents only. The public and rental tenants in the building’s 163 rental units will not have access to the forest or any of the other amenities reserved for the condo residents.
“You’ll see the pines rising off from the roof, but you will probably have to go across the street to see them,” said Balsley.
In 2005, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. set aside $15 million in Community Development Block Grants for 77 units of affordable rental housing at the lot, formerly called Site 5B. “They will have their own amenity rooms in the rental building,” Jeffrey Sussman, executive vice president for the developer, Edward J. Minskoff Equities, Inc., said in an e-mail. Rental tenants will have a separate fitness room and lounge and a different address: 89 Murray St.
The 1 million sq. ft. development has no public plaza, either. “The rental building was the giveback for the community,” Lawrence Kruysman, Sunshine Group’s director of sales for the property, told Downtown Express.
The Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill-designed building will open at the end of 2007 and already, buyers are grabbing at the luxury abodes, which range from $1.2 million for a one bedroom apartment to a whopping $16 million for a five-bedroom 34th and 35th floor duplex. Nearly 50 percent of the units have sold since they hit the market in April. “Sales have been great,” said Kruysman.
Promotional materials boast a Whole Foods Market, a sports center and the building’s proximity to P.S. 234, “the city’s top ranked public school.”
A promotional video shows a future Tribeca family—equipped with a handsome couple, their two curly-topped young children and miniature dogs—reveling in their sleek, modernist abode.
Current Tribeca residents have long complained that 234, which is currently at 120 percent capacity, will be further squeezed by the new residential developments in the neighborhood.
http://downtownexpress.com/de_168/pinesinthesky.html
Volume 19 • Issue 11 July 28- - August 3, 2006
PINES IN THE SKY FOR TRIBECA'S WEALTHIEST TENANTS
By Ronda Kaysen
The residents of 101 Warren St. will not need to trek upstate to enjoy pine trees — they’ll have a whole grove of them right outside their window.
The new luxury development currently under construction will come equipped with a bucolic grove of 101 Austrian pine trees set atop the building’s third floor terrace. The building’s sports center will open out on the grove, and all the residents in the 227 condo units will have access to the trees.
“There’s just the serenity and peacefulness of this grove,” said landscape architect Thomas Balsley. “The needles, the texture, the sound of the wind going through the pine trees above. It’s really an extraordinary experience, it’s almost religious. It’s one that would be transported to this roof as a gift to the residents of this building.”
The “gift” will be reserved for the condo residents only. The public and rental tenants in the building’s 163 rental units will not have access to the forest or any of the other amenities reserved for the condo residents.
“You’ll see the pines rising off from the roof, but you will probably have to go across the street to see them,” said Balsley.
In 2005, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. set aside $15 million in Community Development Block Grants for 77 units of affordable rental housing at the lot, formerly called Site 5B. “They will have their own amenity rooms in the rental building,” Jeffrey Sussman, executive vice president for the developer, Edward J. Minskoff Equities, Inc., said in an e-mail. Rental tenants will have a separate fitness room and lounge and a different address: 89 Murray St.
The 1 million sq. ft. development has no public plaza, either. “The rental building was the giveback for the community,” Lawrence Kruysman, Sunshine Group’s director of sales for the property, told Downtown Express.
The Skidmore, Ownings & Merrill-designed building will open at the end of 2007 and already, buyers are grabbing at the luxury abodes, which range from $1.2 million for a one bedroom apartment to a whopping $16 million for a five-bedroom 34th and 35th floor duplex. Nearly 50 percent of the units have sold since they hit the market in April. “Sales have been great,” said Kruysman.
Promotional materials boast a Whole Foods Market, a sports center and the building’s proximity to P.S. 234, “the city’s top ranked public school.”
A promotional video shows a future Tribeca family—equipped with a handsome couple, their two curly-topped young children and miniature dogs—reveling in their sleek, modernist abode.
Current Tribeca residents have long complained that 234, which is currently at 120 percent capacity, will be further squeezed by the new residential developments in the neighborhood.
http://downtownexpress.com/de_168/pinesinthesky.html
Friday, July 07, 2006
Another Battle In The Gentrification War
http://walkthrough.nytimes.com/
Jul, 28, 2006
8:50 pm
The building at Broadway and 151st Street, where Christine Timm’s family considered an apartment before finding a bigger and better deal in the suburbs, is owned by the Pinnacle Group, which buys undervalued buildings in Harlem and Upper Manhattan.
Last spring, a group called BRUSH, an acronym for Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem, sprang up in protest, accusing Pinnacle of harassing and evicting tenants, making substandard repairs and jacking up rents. The BRUSH blogsite details the controversy. – JOYCE COHEN
Jul, 28, 2006
8:50 pm
The building at Broadway and 151st Street, where Christine Timm’s family considered an apartment before finding a bigger and better deal in the suburbs, is owned by the Pinnacle Group, which buys undervalued buildings in Harlem and Upper Manhattan.
Last spring, a group called BRUSH, an acronym for Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem, sprang up in protest, accusing Pinnacle of harassing and evicting tenants, making substandard repairs and jacking up rents. The BRUSH blogsite details the controversy. – JOYCE COHEN
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Tenants to Spitzer: Investigate This!
By Kristen Lombardi
Village Voice
Posted In The Streets
May 25, 2006
Tenants gained some ground in their ever escalating battle against the mega-landlord known as the Pinnacle Group, the most hated landlord in upper Manhattan these days.
This week, the Voice wrote about the litany of complaints that tenants have lodged against Pinnacle and its owner, Joel Wiener, which include everything from aggressive evictions to intentional harassment to possible fraud. Today, tenants took their complaints straight to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, calling on the state's top cop to open a criminal investigation into the real-estate firm's tactics.
Dozens of tenants, members of the Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center, in Washington Heights, gathered outside Spitzer's downtown offices on Broadway Street, carrying signs that read SPITZER INVESTIGUE A PINNACLE and DEMANDAMOS INVESTIGAR A PINNACLE, and chanting,"What do we want? Justice! Now!" City Councilman Robert Jackson, a Harlem Democrat and prime Pinnacle foe, made an appearance, complete with rousing remarks. And then Luis Tejada, who heads the Mirabal Sisters, delivered this message to Spitzer, a.k.a., Champion of the Little Guy: "We are here to tell you to investigate this company because Pinnacle is one of the big landlords in New York and is abusing the poor people of this city."
Thirty minutes into the demonstration, Henry Lemons, Spitzer's deputy chief investigator, descended from his office to the lobby to meet with Tejada and tenants. Tejada handed Lemons a 2,000-strong petition requesting a formal inquiry into Pinnacle for, as the petition states, "illegal rent increases and overcharges, deceiving management practices, illegal eviction, discrimination, and harassment." In an accompanying letter, the group also demands the attorney general review all Pinnacle eviction cases, repair complaints and harassment complaints, and rent increase applications in order to stop what is called "the frauds and abuses of Pinnacle."
Lemons promised to deliver the materials to the criminal investigations unit, which would assign an attorney to review the matter.
Wiener declined to comment on this latest development. But sources close to the firm say the petition is laced with errors and misinformation.
Whether Spitzer believes the same or not? Well, stay tuned.
As Lemons told Tejada today, "I assure you that we will respond."
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/powerplays/archives/002646.php
Village Voice
Posted In The Streets
May 25, 2006
Tenants gained some ground in their ever escalating battle against the mega-landlord known as the Pinnacle Group, the most hated landlord in upper Manhattan these days.
This week, the Voice wrote about the litany of complaints that tenants have lodged against Pinnacle and its owner, Joel Wiener, which include everything from aggressive evictions to intentional harassment to possible fraud. Today, tenants took their complaints straight to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, calling on the state's top cop to open a criminal investigation into the real-estate firm's tactics.
Dozens of tenants, members of the Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center, in Washington Heights, gathered outside Spitzer's downtown offices on Broadway Street, carrying signs that read SPITZER INVESTIGUE A PINNACLE and DEMANDAMOS INVESTIGAR A PINNACLE, and chanting,"What do we want? Justice! Now!" City Councilman Robert Jackson, a Harlem Democrat and prime Pinnacle foe, made an appearance, complete with rousing remarks. And then Luis Tejada, who heads the Mirabal Sisters, delivered this message to Spitzer, a.k.a., Champion of the Little Guy: "We are here to tell you to investigate this company because Pinnacle is one of the big landlords in New York and is abusing the poor people of this city."
Thirty minutes into the demonstration, Henry Lemons, Spitzer's deputy chief investigator, descended from his office to the lobby to meet with Tejada and tenants. Tejada handed Lemons a 2,000-strong petition requesting a formal inquiry into Pinnacle for, as the petition states, "illegal rent increases and overcharges, deceiving management practices, illegal eviction, discrimination, and harassment." In an accompanying letter, the group also demands the attorney general review all Pinnacle eviction cases, repair complaints and harassment complaints, and rent increase applications in order to stop what is called "the frauds and abuses of Pinnacle."
Lemons promised to deliver the materials to the criminal investigations unit, which would assign an attorney to review the matter.
Wiener declined to comment on this latest development. But sources close to the firm say the petition is laced with errors and misinformation.
Whether Spitzer believes the same or not? Well, stay tuned.
As Lemons told Tejada today, "I assure you that we will respond."
http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/powerplays/archives/002646.php
Tenants take allegations of Pinnacle abuses to Attorney General for full investigation
by TALISE D. MOORERAmsterdam News Staff
Originally posted 6/1/2006
Fueled by a desire for justice, tenants from vast properties owned by Joel Weiner, owner of the Pinnacle Group company, who possesses significant holdings throughout Manhattan and the outer boroughs, took their protest of alleged abuses by the real estate giant to the offices of the State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.Just one week since an unprecedented joint hearing hosted by Community Boards 9, 10 and 12 was held at Riverbank’s Civic Center to hear testimony, frontline protestors rallied outside the Attorney General’s office in lower Manhattan. During the afternoon thrust, tenants presented petitions with nearly 2,000 signatures to Henry Lemons, Spitzer’s deputy chief investigator, who vowed to review complaints and respond within two weeks.Luis Tejada of Mirabal Sisters, a principal voice for social justice and better opportunities for immigrants, low income residents and people of color, says that Pinnacle has unleashed an arsenal of abuses using legal proceedings to uproot longtime residents to make way for luxury housing.Pinnacle is accused of filing thousands of eviction proceedings on grounds of non-payment when tenants have actually proved payments; or brought holdover proceedings even after a tenant has gone through great length to prove their tenancy.“They [Pinnacle] have also managed to get HPD-sanctioned recovery of Major Capital Improvement (MCI) expenditures on their properties, and our research shows that in many instances MCI claims that some properties were padded, fraudulent or non-existent,” said Tejada.Citing examples of such irregularities, Tejada said a tenant’s rent at 610 Riverside Drive spiked to $1,300 from her regular $725 per month as a result of “exorbitant” repairs in her apartment. Other examples of “suspicious” accounting include claims to HPD that the company spent $40,000 on a new floor when they allegedly spent between $1,100 and $1,900; the purported use of 105 gallons of paint to paint one apartment; intimated spending $450 for three (3) fuses; and claimed they spent $21,000 for the front door at the Riverside property back in 1998.“We feel that HPD should bear some criminal accountability for allowing such claims by Pinnacle to persist,” said Tejada.In mutual dissent, elected officials including Congressman Charles Rangel, Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, Council Member Inez Dickens, Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell, Jr., and Council Member Jackson, confirm they also suspect that Pinnacle is using dubious tactics to jack up the rent or to evict people from their homes. “Although, their underlying intent seems disguised by legitimate court proceedings,” said Council member Robert Jackson, whose constituency is in the 7th Council District in upper Manhattan.“I represent many of the people who are here today, and if my people feel they have been discriminated against, and that Pinnacle is doing illegal things to displace them to get higher rent, clearly there needs to be an investigation,” said Jackson.Jackson said following last week’s joint CB hearing, he and several other officials have teamed up to identify the best protection for the people they represent. So far, several of them are pursuing a budget of nearly $250,000 to retain two attorneys, paralegals and support staff to take up and review legal remedies; and an autonomous network of resources is taking shape to counterbalance Pinnacle’s purported “takeover.”Calls to Pinnacle for comment were unanswered. Previously, Weiner claimed all his actions are above board.Pending the Attorney General’s response to tenant’s petitions, some elected officials and housing watchdogs believe that a surefire way to end this crisis and prevent others from springing up is to repeal the Urstadt Law, a 1971 law that essentially took away control of rent regulation from New York City’s local government, that was pushed through by then Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and strengthened by the incumbent Governor George Pataki in 2003.The Urstadt Law was named after Rockefeller’s then Housing Commissioner, Charles Urstadt.Skewed by a body of legislators from upstate districts, where few people rent but own private homes, these changes in the rent regulation laws, “have resulted in what some estimate to be more than 100,000 rent stabilized apartments in New York City becoming ‘decontrolled,’ with rents hiked to whatever the landlord wants to charge,” according to a Gotham Gazette report.Repealing Urstadt would help the city regain home rule over rents and evictions and make housing advocates work less onerous.
http://www.amsterdamnews.org/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=69974&sID=4
Originally posted 6/1/2006
Fueled by a desire for justice, tenants from vast properties owned by Joel Weiner, owner of the Pinnacle Group company, who possesses significant holdings throughout Manhattan and the outer boroughs, took their protest of alleged abuses by the real estate giant to the offices of the State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.Just one week since an unprecedented joint hearing hosted by Community Boards 9, 10 and 12 was held at Riverbank’s Civic Center to hear testimony, frontline protestors rallied outside the Attorney General’s office in lower Manhattan. During the afternoon thrust, tenants presented petitions with nearly 2,000 signatures to Henry Lemons, Spitzer’s deputy chief investigator, who vowed to review complaints and respond within two weeks.Luis Tejada of Mirabal Sisters, a principal voice for social justice and better opportunities for immigrants, low income residents and people of color, says that Pinnacle has unleashed an arsenal of abuses using legal proceedings to uproot longtime residents to make way for luxury housing.Pinnacle is accused of filing thousands of eviction proceedings on grounds of non-payment when tenants have actually proved payments; or brought holdover proceedings even after a tenant has gone through great length to prove their tenancy.“They [Pinnacle] have also managed to get HPD-sanctioned recovery of Major Capital Improvement (MCI) expenditures on their properties, and our research shows that in many instances MCI claims that some properties were padded, fraudulent or non-existent,” said Tejada.Citing examples of such irregularities, Tejada said a tenant’s rent at 610 Riverside Drive spiked to $1,300 from her regular $725 per month as a result of “exorbitant” repairs in her apartment. Other examples of “suspicious” accounting include claims to HPD that the company spent $40,000 on a new floor when they allegedly spent between $1,100 and $1,900; the purported use of 105 gallons of paint to paint one apartment; intimated spending $450 for three (3) fuses; and claimed they spent $21,000 for the front door at the Riverside property back in 1998.“We feel that HPD should bear some criminal accountability for allowing such claims by Pinnacle to persist,” said Tejada.In mutual dissent, elected officials including Congressman Charles Rangel, Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, Council Member Inez Dickens, Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell, Jr., and Council Member Jackson, confirm they also suspect that Pinnacle is using dubious tactics to jack up the rent or to evict people from their homes. “Although, their underlying intent seems disguised by legitimate court proceedings,” said Council member Robert Jackson, whose constituency is in the 7th Council District in upper Manhattan.“I represent many of the people who are here today, and if my people feel they have been discriminated against, and that Pinnacle is doing illegal things to displace them to get higher rent, clearly there needs to be an investigation,” said Jackson.Jackson said following last week’s joint CB hearing, he and several other officials have teamed up to identify the best protection for the people they represent. So far, several of them are pursuing a budget of nearly $250,000 to retain two attorneys, paralegals and support staff to take up and review legal remedies; and an autonomous network of resources is taking shape to counterbalance Pinnacle’s purported “takeover.”Calls to Pinnacle for comment were unanswered. Previously, Weiner claimed all his actions are above board.Pending the Attorney General’s response to tenant’s petitions, some elected officials and housing watchdogs believe that a surefire way to end this crisis and prevent others from springing up is to repeal the Urstadt Law, a 1971 law that essentially took away control of rent regulation from New York City’s local government, that was pushed through by then Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and strengthened by the incumbent Governor George Pataki in 2003.The Urstadt Law was named after Rockefeller’s then Housing Commissioner, Charles Urstadt.Skewed by a body of legislators from upstate districts, where few people rent but own private homes, these changes in the rent regulation laws, “have resulted in what some estimate to be more than 100,000 rent stabilized apartments in New York City becoming ‘decontrolled,’ with rents hiked to whatever the landlord wants to charge,” according to a Gotham Gazette report.Repealing Urstadt would help the city regain home rule over rents and evictions and make housing advocates work less onerous.
http://www.amsterdamnews.org/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=69974&sID=4
Sheriff Notices Outlaws
By Juan Gonzalez
NY Daily News
Friday, May 26th, 2006
With evidence mounting that Pinnacle Group LLC has become a landlord run amok, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has finally taken notice.
Spitzer, who made a name for himself ferreting out crooks on Wall Street, has been virtually AWOL when it comes to policing state rent laws.
But his office has been peppered over the past few weeks with complaints against Pinnacle - one of the city's biggest owners of rent-regulated apartments - from elected officials, community leaders and hundreds of irate tenants, some of whose woes have been detailed in the Daily News.
"Our office is looking into this matter," Spitzer spokesman Brad Maione said this week.
Yesterday morning, the Mirabal Sisters Center, a West Harlem community group, gave Spitzer more reasons to get involved: a petition signed by more than 2,000 upper Manhattan residents claiming that Pinnacle is systematically forcing out longtime tenants and then illegally driving up rents to newcomers.
Company chief Joel Wiener says all of Pinnacle's actions are above board, and an independent survey he commissioned shows most tenants are satisfied.
"[Rent laws] are a convoluted and complicated system that at times are unfair to tenants and at times unfair to landlords," offered Ken Fisher, a lawyer and former city councilman who now represents Pinnacle.
For the past three weeks, this column has detailed how scores of tenants in up-and-coming neighborhoods - many of them elderly - have been victimized by Pinnacle.
Some are too poor or too overwhelmed to challenge Pinnacle's eviction mill, and have simply moved away.
Others have fought back.
This column reported last week that four tenants at 706 Riverside Drive in West Harlem won major reductions the past few years in their rents and thousands of dollars in refunds from Pinnacle after they filed successful overcharge complaints with state monitors or in the courts.
Lizette Gonzalez is another tenant who prevailed.
In November, the state's Department of Housing and Community Renewal directed Pinnacle to give her an $8,000 rent refund and reduce her $1,437 rent by nearly $400.
Back in March 2004, Gonzalez, who works for a big Manhattan law firm, moved with her husband and child into a Pinnacle building on Olinville Ave. in Allerton, the Bronx.
At the lease signing, a Pinnacle representative told her the rent was $1,350 for the two-bedroom unit, which had just been outfitted with a new kitchen and bathroom. That went up to $1,437 the following year.
One day, Gonzalez happened to meet a daughter of the previous tenant of the apartment.
"You're paying too much for rent," the woman warned her.
Gonzalez rushed to the local office of the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal and asked to see a rent history for her apartment.
She was stunned to discover that the previous occupant was paying just $594 a month. Pinnacle had more than doubled the rent - simply by claiming a major renovation for the vacant apartment.
Under state law, a landlord is permitted an automatic 20% vacancy increase for rent-stabilized units. If major renovations are done, the landlord can hike the rent by an additional 2.5% of the cost of the work.
Rent laws under Gov. Pataki have become so protective of landlords that owners don't even have to produce proof of those improvements until a new tenant files a formal challenge with DHCR.
If no challenge occurs within four years, the price set by landlord automatically becomes the legal rent.
Most tenants, of course, don't even know they can challenge a rent hike. Gonzalez did - forcing Pinnacle to produce invoices for $9,189 for the new kitchen and bathroom.
Even though the repair costs had not been inflated, Gonzalez's new rent still far exceeded what state law allowed.
DHCR monitors who reviewed Gonzalez's challenge quickly concluded that Pinnacle was overcharging her. In a Nov. 25 opinion, the agency reduced her rent to $1,088, and it directed Pinnacle to refund $8,070 to her.
Then there's the example of Department of Education employee Anthony Casasnovas.
Last June, he and two roommates signed a lease for an apartment at another Pinnacle building, 3657 Broadway in West Harlem. When they moved in, the apartment had not even been painted or cleaned, and mildew was sprouting all over the bathroom ceiling.
Pinnacle told them the apartment's legal rent was $2,200, which would have removed it from rent-stabilization rules.
But the company didn't charge them $2,200 - it offered what it called a "preferential" or discounted rent of $1,800 for the first year.
A few weeks ago, Pinnacle sent Casasnovas a lease renewal form for June 1 that would have increased the "preferential" rent to $1,900, but still claimed a legal rent of $2,200.
Sensing something wasn't right, Casasnovas went to DHCR to get a rent history. He learned the apartment's registered rent had been only $683 in 2002. That year, when a new tenant moved in, Pinnacle nearly tripled it, to $1,700.
Housing experts whom Casasnovas consulted told him the landlord would have to show more than $44,000 in renovations to justify that rent.
"There's no way they put that much money in this place," he said.
Pinnacle hasn't notified the state that it raised Casasnovas' "legal rent" to $2,200. As far as the state knows, the last registered rent for that apartment is $1,700 - still a stabilized unit.
But in Pinnacle's convoluted world, that apartment is already free of rent controls. This week, with the help of his tenant association, Casasnovas filed a rent overcharge claim with DHCR.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/jgonzalez/story/421191p-355459c.html
NY Daily News
Friday, May 26th, 2006
With evidence mounting that Pinnacle Group LLC has become a landlord run amok, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has finally taken notice.
Spitzer, who made a name for himself ferreting out crooks on Wall Street, has been virtually AWOL when it comes to policing state rent laws.
But his office has been peppered over the past few weeks with complaints against Pinnacle - one of the city's biggest owners of rent-regulated apartments - from elected officials, community leaders and hundreds of irate tenants, some of whose woes have been detailed in the Daily News.
"Our office is looking into this matter," Spitzer spokesman Brad Maione said this week.
Yesterday morning, the Mirabal Sisters Center, a West Harlem community group, gave Spitzer more reasons to get involved: a petition signed by more than 2,000 upper Manhattan residents claiming that Pinnacle is systematically forcing out longtime tenants and then illegally driving up rents to newcomers.
Company chief Joel Wiener says all of Pinnacle's actions are above board, and an independent survey he commissioned shows most tenants are satisfied.
"[Rent laws] are a convoluted and complicated system that at times are unfair to tenants and at times unfair to landlords," offered Ken Fisher, a lawyer and former city councilman who now represents Pinnacle.
For the past three weeks, this column has detailed how scores of tenants in up-and-coming neighborhoods - many of them elderly - have been victimized by Pinnacle.
Some are too poor or too overwhelmed to challenge Pinnacle's eviction mill, and have simply moved away.
Others have fought back.
This column reported last week that four tenants at 706 Riverside Drive in West Harlem won major reductions the past few years in their rents and thousands of dollars in refunds from Pinnacle after they filed successful overcharge complaints with state monitors or in the courts.
Lizette Gonzalez is another tenant who prevailed.
In November, the state's Department of Housing and Community Renewal directed Pinnacle to give her an $8,000 rent refund and reduce her $1,437 rent by nearly $400.
Back in March 2004, Gonzalez, who works for a big Manhattan law firm, moved with her husband and child into a Pinnacle building on Olinville Ave. in Allerton, the Bronx.
At the lease signing, a Pinnacle representative told her the rent was $1,350 for the two-bedroom unit, which had just been outfitted with a new kitchen and bathroom. That went up to $1,437 the following year.
One day, Gonzalez happened to meet a daughter of the previous tenant of the apartment.
"You're paying too much for rent," the woman warned her.
Gonzalez rushed to the local office of the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal and asked to see a rent history for her apartment.
She was stunned to discover that the previous occupant was paying just $594 a month. Pinnacle had more than doubled the rent - simply by claiming a major renovation for the vacant apartment.
Under state law, a landlord is permitted an automatic 20% vacancy increase for rent-stabilized units. If major renovations are done, the landlord can hike the rent by an additional 2.5% of the cost of the work.
Rent laws under Gov. Pataki have become so protective of landlords that owners don't even have to produce proof of those improvements until a new tenant files a formal challenge with DHCR.
If no challenge occurs within four years, the price set by landlord automatically becomes the legal rent.
Most tenants, of course, don't even know they can challenge a rent hike. Gonzalez did - forcing Pinnacle to produce invoices for $9,189 for the new kitchen and bathroom.
Even though the repair costs had not been inflated, Gonzalez's new rent still far exceeded what state law allowed.
DHCR monitors who reviewed Gonzalez's challenge quickly concluded that Pinnacle was overcharging her. In a Nov. 25 opinion, the agency reduced her rent to $1,088, and it directed Pinnacle to refund $8,070 to her.
Then there's the example of Department of Education employee Anthony Casasnovas.
Last June, he and two roommates signed a lease for an apartment at another Pinnacle building, 3657 Broadway in West Harlem. When they moved in, the apartment had not even been painted or cleaned, and mildew was sprouting all over the bathroom ceiling.
Pinnacle told them the apartment's legal rent was $2,200, which would have removed it from rent-stabilization rules.
But the company didn't charge them $2,200 - it offered what it called a "preferential" or discounted rent of $1,800 for the first year.
A few weeks ago, Pinnacle sent Casasnovas a lease renewal form for June 1 that would have increased the "preferential" rent to $1,900, but still claimed a legal rent of $2,200.
Sensing something wasn't right, Casasnovas went to DHCR to get a rent history. He learned the apartment's registered rent had been only $683 in 2002. That year, when a new tenant moved in, Pinnacle nearly tripled it, to $1,700.
Housing experts whom Casasnovas consulted told him the landlord would have to show more than $44,000 in renovations to justify that rent.
"There's no way they put that much money in this place," he said.
Pinnacle hasn't notified the state that it raised Casasnovas' "legal rent" to $2,200. As far as the state knows, the last registered rent for that apartment is $1,700 - still a stabilized unit.
But in Pinnacle's convoluted world, that apartment is already free of rent controls. This week, with the help of his tenant association, Casasnovas filed a rent overcharge claim with DHCR.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/jgonzalez/story/421191p-355459c.html
Granny vs. Landlord
May 24, 2006
By Juan Gonzalez
NY Daily News
What kind of landlord tries to evict a 75-year-old woman from her rent-controlled apartment while quietly pocketing welfare rent checks in her disabled husband's name?
Welcome back to the world of the Pinnacle Group - the landlord that's filed an astonishing 5,000 eviction cases since January 2004 against its nearly 20,000 rent-regulated tenants. Many of them are seniors, disabled people or immigrants unaware of their legal rights.
Josephine Colon and her husband, Abdias Venegas, have been ensnared in the Pinnacle eviction mill for nearly two years.
In August 2004, a month after the firm bought a group of buildings on Morrison Ave. in the South Bronx, it sued to evict Colon. Since then, the firm has tried to oust nearly two-thirds of the 300 tenants in the complex.
At first, Pinnacle claimed Colon owed $1,290 in back rent on the two-bedroom apartment, where she has lived since 1983.
"I didn't owe them anything, and I have all my receipts to prove it," Colon said last week.
Her portion of the rent on the $439-a-month apartment is permanently frozen at $267.20. That's because the city's rental assistance program for impoverished senior citizens directly pays her landlord any increases above that amount.
Colon brought to Bronx Housing Court the postal money order receipts for her share of the rent. Yet Pinnacle's lawyers insisted they had no records of receiving four of those payments.
They demanded iron-clad proof: tracking reports from the post office for each money order in dispute - some dating back to August 2003.
In January 2005, after Colon found those tracking reports and brought them to court, Pinnacle credited her for all but $446 - meaning the eviction efforts would continue.
On March 29, 2005, a Pinnacle representative, as part of a motion for a final judgment to evict Colon, signed a sworn affidavit in court that she was still in arrears - now for $229.
It took until June 2005 before Pinnacle finally dropped its nonpayment case, even though they still claimed she owed $90.
But Colon's fight isn't over.
Even before the nonpayment case was settled, Pinnacle started a new Housing Court eviction action against her, this time claiming a horde of cats in her apartment had created such a foul odor that she was a nuisance to the entire building.
Colon and her family acknowledge she kept as many as 13 cats at one point. Such a brood, as you might imagine, left a strong odor. But the family says she has since given away all but three cats and cleaned up the apartment.
An assistant to Civil Court Judge Lydia Lai inspected Colon's apartment on Feb. 23, 2005, reporting there was "smell of urine in the apartment" but "no smell in hall outside."
The judge herself conducted two inspections, including one last December. She agreed with Pinnacle's attorney that the smell "seems to have seeped into the walls" and required professional fumigation.
Obviously reluctant to throw an old lady and her husband out, the judge urged Colon to do a thorough cleaning job.
Colon complied. On Dec. 29, a city health inspector who visited the apartment reported it was clean. There were "some odors," the inspector noted, but "no odor nuisance in hallway."
Pinnacle's lawyers won't give up. Yet another inspection by the judge and a final hearing is set for early June.
But the most amazing and bizarre part of this story is how Pinnacle, while fighting to evict Colon, had quietly cashed 27 rent checks for more than $2,000 from the city's Human Resources Administration for her pad.
The first check was mailed in March 2005, according to HRA records. It was earmarked as rental assistance for her husband, a Guatemalan immigrant partially paralyzed in an accident a few years ago.
The checks have been mailed by the city every two weeks since then, in varying amounts.
"They've never told me anything about that money and haven't given me any rent statements since they took me to court," Colon said yesterday.
Pinnacle also didn't tell the Housing Court about the HRA money. When I asked Pinnacle about those checks, a spokesman asserted last night that payments began in June 2005 and were being applied to Colon's rent. They actually said Colon now has a credit of $1,444.
Even here they were wrong. According to HRA records, Pinnacle started getting the checks in March 2005. By the end of April, the company had received more than $2,256 from the city.
Why would Pinnacle seek to evict Colon when she had a rent credit? And why would they keep Colon's rent surplus a secret from her? As it stands today, Pinnacle owes Colon more money than it demanded from her when they first put her on this eviction mill.
By Juan Gonzalez
NY Daily News
What kind of landlord tries to evict a 75-year-old woman from her rent-controlled apartment while quietly pocketing welfare rent checks in her disabled husband's name?
Welcome back to the world of the Pinnacle Group - the landlord that's filed an astonishing 5,000 eviction cases since January 2004 against its nearly 20,000 rent-regulated tenants. Many of them are seniors, disabled people or immigrants unaware of their legal rights.
Josephine Colon and her husband, Abdias Venegas, have been ensnared in the Pinnacle eviction mill for nearly two years.
In August 2004, a month after the firm bought a group of buildings on Morrison Ave. in the South Bronx, it sued to evict Colon. Since then, the firm has tried to oust nearly two-thirds of the 300 tenants in the complex.
At first, Pinnacle claimed Colon owed $1,290 in back rent on the two-bedroom apartment, where she has lived since 1983.
"I didn't owe them anything, and I have all my receipts to prove it," Colon said last week.
Her portion of the rent on the $439-a-month apartment is permanently frozen at $267.20. That's because the city's rental assistance program for impoverished senior citizens directly pays her landlord any increases above that amount.
Colon brought to Bronx Housing Court the postal money order receipts for her share of the rent. Yet Pinnacle's lawyers insisted they had no records of receiving four of those payments.
They demanded iron-clad proof: tracking reports from the post office for each money order in dispute - some dating back to August 2003.
In January 2005, after Colon found those tracking reports and brought them to court, Pinnacle credited her for all but $446 - meaning the eviction efforts would continue.
On March 29, 2005, a Pinnacle representative, as part of a motion for a final judgment to evict Colon, signed a sworn affidavit in court that she was still in arrears - now for $229.
It took until June 2005 before Pinnacle finally dropped its nonpayment case, even though they still claimed she owed $90.
But Colon's fight isn't over.
Even before the nonpayment case was settled, Pinnacle started a new Housing Court eviction action against her, this time claiming a horde of cats in her apartment had created such a foul odor that she was a nuisance to the entire building.
Colon and her family acknowledge she kept as many as 13 cats at one point. Such a brood, as you might imagine, left a strong odor. But the family says she has since given away all but three cats and cleaned up the apartment.
An assistant to Civil Court Judge Lydia Lai inspected Colon's apartment on Feb. 23, 2005, reporting there was "smell of urine in the apartment" but "no smell in hall outside."
The judge herself conducted two inspections, including one last December. She agreed with Pinnacle's attorney that the smell "seems to have seeped into the walls" and required professional fumigation.
Obviously reluctant to throw an old lady and her husband out, the judge urged Colon to do a thorough cleaning job.
Colon complied. On Dec. 29, a city health inspector who visited the apartment reported it was clean. There were "some odors," the inspector noted, but "no odor nuisance in hallway."
Pinnacle's lawyers won't give up. Yet another inspection by the judge and a final hearing is set for early June.
But the most amazing and bizarre part of this story is how Pinnacle, while fighting to evict Colon, had quietly cashed 27 rent checks for more than $2,000 from the city's Human Resources Administration for her pad.
The first check was mailed in March 2005, according to HRA records. It was earmarked as rental assistance for her husband, a Guatemalan immigrant partially paralyzed in an accident a few years ago.
The checks have been mailed by the city every two weeks since then, in varying amounts.
"They've never told me anything about that money and haven't given me any rent statements since they took me to court," Colon said yesterday.
Pinnacle also didn't tell the Housing Court about the HRA money. When I asked Pinnacle about those checks, a spokesman asserted last night that payments began in June 2005 and were being applied to Colon's rent. They actually said Colon now has a credit of $1,444.
Even here they were wrong. According to HRA records, Pinnacle started getting the checks in March 2005. By the end of April, the company had received more than $2,256 from the city.
Why would Pinnacle seek to evict Colon when she had a rent credit? And why would they keep Colon's rent surplus a secret from her? As it stands today, Pinnacle owes Colon more money than it demanded from her when they first put her on this eviction mill.
Pushed Off the Pinnacle
Tenants accuse mega-landlord of forcing them out
by Kristen Lombardi
Village Voice
May 23rd, 2006 11:47 AM
BRUSH tenants meet in Harlem: (from left) Marge Charron, Debbie Brown, Brenda Tyus Faust, and Kim Powellphoto: Stacy Kranitz
Pedro Garcia got a registered letter from his landlord last August, a few months after his parents moved from the apartment where he grew up in Washington Heights. Garcia, 28, who runs a family-owned grocery store, had lived with them in their rent-stabilized place on Riverside Drive for 15 years. In 2003, the Pinnacle Group bought the building, at 610 Riverside. By the time the letter arrived, Garcia had gotten used to hearing horror stories from his neighbors who'd found similar surprises in their mail.
His showed up after his parents bought a house and moved into it, leaving Garcia and his two kids in the apartment. Under city rental law, he should be able to continue living in the apartment. But Pinnacle moved to evict him, claiming he wasn't the legal tenant. His mother had signed the original lease, and she had tried to renew it in her son's name last year. "He wouldn't accept the lease with my name on it," Garcia says, referring to the company's owner, Joel Wiener. Nor would the firm cash his $620 monthly rent checks, letting him accrue $4,000 in arrears instead.
So Garcia has had to appear at Manhattan Housing Court. Twice, he has produced his birth certificate, utility bills, and rent receipts. Twice, Pinnacle has refused to settle.
"What he's doing to me he's doing to other people," says Garcia, his case still pending. "He wants to kick people out."
Over on West 150th Street, in Harlem, Ray Jones has also gotten a registered letter. His eviction notice from Pinnacle came last fall, after the company bought the 540-unit Dunbar Apartments, where he has lived with his family since 1967. Jones, 45, a retired corrections officer, has turned out to be one of hundreds of Dunbar tenants in jeopardy.
At first, Pinnacle took Jones to housing court for not paying rent. He was deliberately withholding his money to force the company to perform repairs on his rent- controlled apartment. In January, a judge ordered the landlord to fix eight code violations and compensated Jones, wiping away 30 percent of his $1,700 rent debt.
Next, the company challenged his legal tenancy. Over the past six months, he has appeared in housing court five times, armed with phone bills, old driver's licenses, and records dating back two decades to prove he has succession rights to his home. A judge ruled in his favor, yet Pinnacle still refused to give Jones new keys. To get a pair, he had to return to court—twice.
"I feel these are tactics," Jones says. "It's intentional harassment to try to get you out."
That sentiment came across only too clearly at a special May 15 hearing about Pinnacle, one of the city's largest owners of rent-regulated apartments. More than 200 residents from Upper Manhattan turned up for the forum convened by three community boards. There, for over two hours, politicians like Democratic U.S. representative Charles Rangel, of Harlem, and City Councilmember Robert Jackson listened to emotional testimonies from tenants. One of the renters called Pinnacle a "high-tech slumlord."
One by one, residents accused Pinnacle of aggressive court tactics—attempts to violate tenants' succession rights, for example, and to evict for bogus reasons. They complained that the company fails to make repairs, or delays repairs, or does shoddy improvements to raise rents beyond regulated limits. Mostly, they blasted the real estate giant for moving into their neighborhoods and moving them out.
Today, Pinnacle has come to epitomize the gentrification of northern Manhattan, where rents remain relatively low and apartments are large. The company has purchased dozens of buildings throughout Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood, quickly installing floodlights around the perimeters and posting trademark American flags out front. The effect is particularly pronounced at the now ultra- illuminated Dunbar complex, with its 40-odd buildings. "You probably can see the Dunbar from space now," says Michael Drake, who has lived there since 1967.
Nowhere is Pinnacle's stake in the area more apparent than along Riverside Drive, from West 135th north, where 12 or so properties shine brighter than the rest, their flags rustling in the wind. Wiener has owned some of these Riverside Drive properties since the 1990s. But he has quietly bought most of his 200-strong real estate portfolio in Manhattan more recently. A review of city records shows that he and his partnerships owned 19 buildings in 2003, and 37 a year later. Then, in August 2005, he purchased some 70 buildings in and around Harlem for more than $300 million in funding from the Praedium Group, a national private-equity firm. That doesn't take into account properties in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Currently, city officials believe Pinnacle owns 420 buildings in all five boroughs, or 19,085 apartments.
Wiener declined an interview request from the Voice for this article. Instead, he issued a five-paragraph statement in which he insists his company's tactics are aboveboard. To hear him, the firm has never wrongly evicted a tenant. Nor has it done slipshod repairs or cosmetic improvements simply to hike up rent. Pinnacle, Wiener points out, has just done an independent survey of tenants and found that most are "satisfied."
"We work very hard to restore [buildings] into affordable, safe, attractive homes for our tenants," the statement reads. "We want them to be places we are proud of and places in which tenants are proud to live."
Try telling that to Kim Powell, of the newly formed anti-Pinnacle group Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem, or BRUSH. A Pinnacle tenant for nine years, Powell, 45, who lives at 706 Riverside Drive, says she has been battling the landlord's methods. Case in point: In 1999, she noticed her bedroom wall bulging from water damage. Rather than fix the leak, she says, Pinnacle workers installed a layer of Sheetrock to disguise it. Last year, the Sheetrock crumbled and workers returned. Now, Powell says, the wall is buckling again.
"That's the kind of repairs Pinnacle does," she says. "It's one tactic."
BRUSH's Heidi Clyde counts herself a veteran of Pinnacle tactics too. Clyde, 28, has lived in her rent-stabilized apartment at 668 Riverside Drive since age two. Clyde's mother died in 1994, and Clyde remained in the apartment. Then in May 1999, Pinnacle bought the building. Within months, she says, "I started getting court papers from Pinnacle." In the next year, the company moved to evict Clyde repeatedly, claiming everything from nonpayment to illegal tenancy. Finally, in 2000, the company backed off and gave Clyde a lease.
"I've been fine since," she says. But hearing new tenants relay their court experiences has struck a chord for her. "It's obviously systematic."
Tenants and politicians alike fear that a pattern of gentrification is at work: A landlord gets existing tenants out, raises the rents, and in the long run, goes condo.
Says Councilmember Jackson, who has gotten involved with BRUSH, "By operation, Pinnacle is driving people out."
Not everyone believes that Pinnacle has a grand plan. Frank Ricci, of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 property owners in the city, including Pinnacle, doesn't buy the argument that Wiener is just looking to make a buck. Sure, some landlords pay too much for rent-regulated buildings, and they try to squeeze out existing tenants. But not Wiener.
"I don't believe that's his motivation," Ricci says. Two months ago, he says, Wiener came to visit him at the association, giving him a presentation on his real estate purchases. He showed him before-and-after pictures of buildings Pinnacle bought last August—including neglected structures owned by Baruch Singer, who ranks ninth on nycworstlandlords.com and made the NYC Housing Preservation and Development Department's list of "major problem owners" in 2003. During Wiener's spiel, Ricci relays, "he said to me, 'Look, I don't do this for the money anymore. I do this because I believe in preserving old buildings.' I have no reason not to believe him."
Besides, he says, Pinnacle has actually improved buildings. Over at the Dunbar, which had fallen into disrepair under Singer, city inspectors recorded some 2,000 violations before August 2005. Now, the number has dropped to around 400. City records show that the company has 19,470 violations to date, or an average of one violation per unit. As far as slumlords go, that's benign—indeed, city officials say the worst landlord has buildings with 20.9 violations per unit.
Even Pinnacle tenants say things have gotten better. Barbara Nienaltowski, of the Dunbar Tenants Association, says residents "were fighting a different kind of battle before." Under Singer, they couldn't get basic services. Security was weak. Trash littered the halls. Tenants had to fight for repairs.
Now, as it typically does, Pinnacle has installed 84 security cameras in the complex, as well as new doors and intercoms. It has improved the common areas, trimming gardens, collecting garbage, and cleaning out the flea-infested basements. Nienaltowski explains, "A lot of people here look out the window and think Pinnacle has done a good job, and they have. But the question is for who. Is it for the people who live here now or the people who will come and take our places?"
The threat of being pushed out has galvanized tenants to fight back. Back in November, for instance, Powell and eight other tenants got the idea to form BRUSH after receiving news that Pinnacle plans to convert their Riverside Drive buildings into condos. The company's asking price for their longtime homes? $800,000 to $1 million.
"There is clear displacement afoot," Powell says, "so we decided to put on the pressure."
And they have. In the past six months, BRUSH has spearheaded several community meetings drawing hundreds of angry Pinnacle tenants. In March, it pushed for the West Harlem community board to hold a hearing on the company, where board members say they heard more complaints about a single landlord than in recent memory. That month, after getting deluged by tenant phone calls, Democratic state assemblyman Keith Wright, of Harlem, joined BRUSH in what he calls "a good old-fashioned picket line" outside the company's midtown headquarters.
"You don't want this many forces to go up against you," Wright observes. Pinnacle critics may not have the deep pockets, he says, "But I go back to the old philosophy, 'The people united will never be defeated.' That's what has begun."
After last week's hearing, at least, elected officials are pledging to stop the so-called Pinnacle takeover. Congressman Rangel tells the Voice he's reaching out to local bar associations to round up lawyers to help tenants pro bono. And he plans to appeal to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Perhaps the city could investigate Pinnacle, he says, or provide funding to save affordable apartments.
Other politicians have bigger ideas. Jackson talks about raising money for a nonprofit solely devoted to keeping Pinnacle in check.
For tenants, it's personal. "My roots are here," says Jones, who recently became vice president of the Dunbar Tenants' Association. "So I am not afraid to fight. I will organize, agitate, and do everything I can to ensure tenants don't lose their homes."
by Kristen Lombardi
Village Voice
May 23rd, 2006 11:47 AM
BRUSH tenants meet in Harlem: (from left) Marge Charron, Debbie Brown, Brenda Tyus Faust, and Kim Powellphoto: Stacy Kranitz
Pedro Garcia got a registered letter from his landlord last August, a few months after his parents moved from the apartment where he grew up in Washington Heights. Garcia, 28, who runs a family-owned grocery store, had lived with them in their rent-stabilized place on Riverside Drive for 15 years. In 2003, the Pinnacle Group bought the building, at 610 Riverside. By the time the letter arrived, Garcia had gotten used to hearing horror stories from his neighbors who'd found similar surprises in their mail.
His showed up after his parents bought a house and moved into it, leaving Garcia and his two kids in the apartment. Under city rental law, he should be able to continue living in the apartment. But Pinnacle moved to evict him, claiming he wasn't the legal tenant. His mother had signed the original lease, and she had tried to renew it in her son's name last year. "He wouldn't accept the lease with my name on it," Garcia says, referring to the company's owner, Joel Wiener. Nor would the firm cash his $620 monthly rent checks, letting him accrue $4,000 in arrears instead.
So Garcia has had to appear at Manhattan Housing Court. Twice, he has produced his birth certificate, utility bills, and rent receipts. Twice, Pinnacle has refused to settle.
"What he's doing to me he's doing to other people," says Garcia, his case still pending. "He wants to kick people out."
Over on West 150th Street, in Harlem, Ray Jones has also gotten a registered letter. His eviction notice from Pinnacle came last fall, after the company bought the 540-unit Dunbar Apartments, where he has lived with his family since 1967. Jones, 45, a retired corrections officer, has turned out to be one of hundreds of Dunbar tenants in jeopardy.
At first, Pinnacle took Jones to housing court for not paying rent. He was deliberately withholding his money to force the company to perform repairs on his rent- controlled apartment. In January, a judge ordered the landlord to fix eight code violations and compensated Jones, wiping away 30 percent of his $1,700 rent debt.
Next, the company challenged his legal tenancy. Over the past six months, he has appeared in housing court five times, armed with phone bills, old driver's licenses, and records dating back two decades to prove he has succession rights to his home. A judge ruled in his favor, yet Pinnacle still refused to give Jones new keys. To get a pair, he had to return to court—twice.
"I feel these are tactics," Jones says. "It's intentional harassment to try to get you out."
That sentiment came across only too clearly at a special May 15 hearing about Pinnacle, one of the city's largest owners of rent-regulated apartments. More than 200 residents from Upper Manhattan turned up for the forum convened by three community boards. There, for over two hours, politicians like Democratic U.S. representative Charles Rangel, of Harlem, and City Councilmember Robert Jackson listened to emotional testimonies from tenants. One of the renters called Pinnacle a "high-tech slumlord."
One by one, residents accused Pinnacle of aggressive court tactics—attempts to violate tenants' succession rights, for example, and to evict for bogus reasons. They complained that the company fails to make repairs, or delays repairs, or does shoddy improvements to raise rents beyond regulated limits. Mostly, they blasted the real estate giant for moving into their neighborhoods and moving them out.
Today, Pinnacle has come to epitomize the gentrification of northern Manhattan, where rents remain relatively low and apartments are large. The company has purchased dozens of buildings throughout Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood, quickly installing floodlights around the perimeters and posting trademark American flags out front. The effect is particularly pronounced at the now ultra- illuminated Dunbar complex, with its 40-odd buildings. "You probably can see the Dunbar from space now," says Michael Drake, who has lived there since 1967.
Nowhere is Pinnacle's stake in the area more apparent than along Riverside Drive, from West 135th north, where 12 or so properties shine brighter than the rest, their flags rustling in the wind. Wiener has owned some of these Riverside Drive properties since the 1990s. But he has quietly bought most of his 200-strong real estate portfolio in Manhattan more recently. A review of city records shows that he and his partnerships owned 19 buildings in 2003, and 37 a year later. Then, in August 2005, he purchased some 70 buildings in and around Harlem for more than $300 million in funding from the Praedium Group, a national private-equity firm. That doesn't take into account properties in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. Currently, city officials believe Pinnacle owns 420 buildings in all five boroughs, or 19,085 apartments.
Wiener declined an interview request from the Voice for this article. Instead, he issued a five-paragraph statement in which he insists his company's tactics are aboveboard. To hear him, the firm has never wrongly evicted a tenant. Nor has it done slipshod repairs or cosmetic improvements simply to hike up rent. Pinnacle, Wiener points out, has just done an independent survey of tenants and found that most are "satisfied."
"We work very hard to restore [buildings] into affordable, safe, attractive homes for our tenants," the statement reads. "We want them to be places we are proud of and places in which tenants are proud to live."
Try telling that to Kim Powell, of the newly formed anti-Pinnacle group Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem, or BRUSH. A Pinnacle tenant for nine years, Powell, 45, who lives at 706 Riverside Drive, says she has been battling the landlord's methods. Case in point: In 1999, she noticed her bedroom wall bulging from water damage. Rather than fix the leak, she says, Pinnacle workers installed a layer of Sheetrock to disguise it. Last year, the Sheetrock crumbled and workers returned. Now, Powell says, the wall is buckling again.
"That's the kind of repairs Pinnacle does," she says. "It's one tactic."
BRUSH's Heidi Clyde counts herself a veteran of Pinnacle tactics too. Clyde, 28, has lived in her rent-stabilized apartment at 668 Riverside Drive since age two. Clyde's mother died in 1994, and Clyde remained in the apartment. Then in May 1999, Pinnacle bought the building. Within months, she says, "I started getting court papers from Pinnacle." In the next year, the company moved to evict Clyde repeatedly, claiming everything from nonpayment to illegal tenancy. Finally, in 2000, the company backed off and gave Clyde a lease.
"I've been fine since," she says. But hearing new tenants relay their court experiences has struck a chord for her. "It's obviously systematic."
Tenants and politicians alike fear that a pattern of gentrification is at work: A landlord gets existing tenants out, raises the rents, and in the long run, goes condo.
Says Councilmember Jackson, who has gotten involved with BRUSH, "By operation, Pinnacle is driving people out."
Not everyone believes that Pinnacle has a grand plan. Frank Ricci, of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 property owners in the city, including Pinnacle, doesn't buy the argument that Wiener is just looking to make a buck. Sure, some landlords pay too much for rent-regulated buildings, and they try to squeeze out existing tenants. But not Wiener.
"I don't believe that's his motivation," Ricci says. Two months ago, he says, Wiener came to visit him at the association, giving him a presentation on his real estate purchases. He showed him before-and-after pictures of buildings Pinnacle bought last August—including neglected structures owned by Baruch Singer, who ranks ninth on nycworstlandlords.com and made the NYC Housing Preservation and Development Department's list of "major problem owners" in 2003. During Wiener's spiel, Ricci relays, "he said to me, 'Look, I don't do this for the money anymore. I do this because I believe in preserving old buildings.' I have no reason not to believe him."
Besides, he says, Pinnacle has actually improved buildings. Over at the Dunbar, which had fallen into disrepair under Singer, city inspectors recorded some 2,000 violations before August 2005. Now, the number has dropped to around 400. City records show that the company has 19,470 violations to date, or an average of one violation per unit. As far as slumlords go, that's benign—indeed, city officials say the worst landlord has buildings with 20.9 violations per unit.
Even Pinnacle tenants say things have gotten better. Barbara Nienaltowski, of the Dunbar Tenants Association, says residents "were fighting a different kind of battle before." Under Singer, they couldn't get basic services. Security was weak. Trash littered the halls. Tenants had to fight for repairs.
Now, as it typically does, Pinnacle has installed 84 security cameras in the complex, as well as new doors and intercoms. It has improved the common areas, trimming gardens, collecting garbage, and cleaning out the flea-infested basements. Nienaltowski explains, "A lot of people here look out the window and think Pinnacle has done a good job, and they have. But the question is for who. Is it for the people who live here now or the people who will come and take our places?"
The threat of being pushed out has galvanized tenants to fight back. Back in November, for instance, Powell and eight other tenants got the idea to form BRUSH after receiving news that Pinnacle plans to convert their Riverside Drive buildings into condos. The company's asking price for their longtime homes? $800,000 to $1 million.
"There is clear displacement afoot," Powell says, "so we decided to put on the pressure."
And they have. In the past six months, BRUSH has spearheaded several community meetings drawing hundreds of angry Pinnacle tenants. In March, it pushed for the West Harlem community board to hold a hearing on the company, where board members say they heard more complaints about a single landlord than in recent memory. That month, after getting deluged by tenant phone calls, Democratic state assemblyman Keith Wright, of Harlem, joined BRUSH in what he calls "a good old-fashioned picket line" outside the company's midtown headquarters.
"You don't want this many forces to go up against you," Wright observes. Pinnacle critics may not have the deep pockets, he says, "But I go back to the old philosophy, 'The people united will never be defeated.' That's what has begun."
After last week's hearing, at least, elected officials are pledging to stop the so-called Pinnacle takeover. Congressman Rangel tells the Voice he's reaching out to local bar associations to round up lawyers to help tenants pro bono. And he plans to appeal to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Perhaps the city could investigate Pinnacle, he says, or provide funding to save affordable apartments.
Other politicians have bigger ideas. Jackson talks about raising money for a nonprofit solely devoted to keeping Pinnacle in check.
For tenants, it's personal. "My roots are here," says Jones, who recently became vice president of the Dunbar Tenants' Association. "So I am not afraid to fight. I will organize, agitate, and do everything I can to ensure tenants don't lose their homes."
Tenants Say Landlord is Pinnacle Point of Poor Housing Conditions in Harlem
by TALISE D. MOORER Special to the Amsterdam News
Originally posted 5/18/2006
For the first time in the history of Central Harlem, Community Boards 9, 10 and 12 came together to host a joint hearing (chaired by Jordi Reyes-Mont Blanc) aimed at ending dubious practices by greedy landlords that displace longtime villagers, and ending the reign of the Pinnacle Group LLC in particular, whose tenants describe as a slumlord who fattens its burse by operating sub-par to poor housing accommodations.Stepping to the microphone one after another, angry tenants detailed their disgust and frustrations over documented complaints they’ve made concerning poor living conditions within their apartments, owned and operated by Joel Weiner, principal of the Pinnacle Group LLC, the real estate company that has filed an astonishing number of eviction proceedings since 2004 against tenants who live in its nearly 20,000 Apartments.Purportedly, those cases were suddenly dropped within hours after at Pinnacle got wind of media inquiries.Weiner has been under fire lately from housing advocates who say his company harasses rent-stabilized tenants, in order to vacate apartments and sharply increase rents.Weiner claims all his actions are above board.One tenant from Amsterdam Avenue testified that one-week after Weiner took over property from previous the owner, called “Singer,” a notorious slumlord among the city’s Top Ten, the property went up in flames in what investigators allegedly label a “suspicious fire.” Another said she was offered to buy her apartment - which currently has 20 active violations - for $500,000, astronomical she says, considering her struggle to pay the current $600 per month. And Michael Drake of the Lombard Tenants Association said that more times than not, Pinnacle uses unskilled and unlicensed laborers to “fix” things, further compounded by use of inferior materials.Congressman Charles B. Rangel roused the capacity crowd who parked on the edge of their seats at Riverbanks’ Civic Center with an announcement that the Community Service Society has agreed to scrutinize every proceeding or summons brought to housing court by the Pinnacle Group. “You are the wind beneath our political wings,” said Rangel while expressing how moved and proud he is that the community has taken an organized stand. He added, “What we’re doing here is stopping a broader conspiracy to take our community away from us - by stealing away affordable housing,” stated Rangel.Rangel told the audience that they have also earned the appreciation of lawyers working on their behalf - knowing that there is unity in the community. Rangel noted the burden of proof in court in this instance, “should not be on the back of the single mother struggling to care for her family; not the senior citizen; nor any of us.”Activists including candidate for state senator, Bill Perkins, claim that the Pinnacle Group is a front and vanguard of devious efforts that allows landlords to hide their interests while the larger company gobbles up the housing stock for luxury condos, driving up prices beyond the reach of current tenants.Popular opinion among elected officials is that this type of practice in Harlem can conceivably be the dangerous prototype for break out groups elsewhere who will work to displace tenants, particularly in the remaining boroughs.Over the last decade The Pinnacle Group has purchased many buildings and hundreds of units within Manhattan, “many of which have already been converted to luxury housing and others remaining empty, possible evidence of warehousing for profit.”In response to an outcry from constituents, community organizations and leaders in greater Harlem and Northern Manhattan, namely Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright (D-Harlem), mobilized a rally outside Pinnacle headquarters to send a message that unfair tactics and the harassment and unnecessary evictions of tenants located uptown would not be tolerated.“We have been in a long-term battle against gentrification practices and slumlords in Harlem; and, we are well acquainted with Baruch Singer-the notorious slumlord of the Dunbar Houses and five other buildings who reportedly sold his properties to The Pinnacle Group,” said Wright. He added, “In the last few years we have seen a population and development growth never before seen in Harlem. Unfortunately, some of the growth has been at the expense of our current residents, who at the hands of a select number of questionable developers are being pushed out of the neighborhoods they helped form. That is unacceptable and intolerable and must cease and desist.”Representatives of the Pinnacle Group declined an interview with the AmNews, but released a written statement defending their business dealings stating, “It is unfortunate that there are a number of baseless and simply erroneous charges circulating among tenants, public officials and within the community,” writes Robert Barletta, spokesperson for the Pinnacle Group.Pinnacle previously told the AmNews that their employees, “comprise a diverse and dedicated group that work together to provide residents of Pinnacle buildings with the services that all residents deserve.” And, to facilitate home ownership, Pinnacle admits having filed plans to convert certain of its rental properties to condominiums.
Originally posted 5/18/2006
For the first time in the history of Central Harlem, Community Boards 9, 10 and 12 came together to host a joint hearing (chaired by Jordi Reyes-Mont Blanc) aimed at ending dubious practices by greedy landlords that displace longtime villagers, and ending the reign of the Pinnacle Group LLC in particular, whose tenants describe as a slumlord who fattens its burse by operating sub-par to poor housing accommodations.Stepping to the microphone one after another, angry tenants detailed their disgust and frustrations over documented complaints they’ve made concerning poor living conditions within their apartments, owned and operated by Joel Weiner, principal of the Pinnacle Group LLC, the real estate company that has filed an astonishing number of eviction proceedings since 2004 against tenants who live in its nearly 20,000 Apartments.Purportedly, those cases were suddenly dropped within hours after at Pinnacle got wind of media inquiries.Weiner has been under fire lately from housing advocates who say his company harasses rent-stabilized tenants, in order to vacate apartments and sharply increase rents.Weiner claims all his actions are above board.One tenant from Amsterdam Avenue testified that one-week after Weiner took over property from previous the owner, called “Singer,” a notorious slumlord among the city’s Top Ten, the property went up in flames in what investigators allegedly label a “suspicious fire.” Another said she was offered to buy her apartment - which currently has 20 active violations - for $500,000, astronomical she says, considering her struggle to pay the current $600 per month. And Michael Drake of the Lombard Tenants Association said that more times than not, Pinnacle uses unskilled and unlicensed laborers to “fix” things, further compounded by use of inferior materials.Congressman Charles B. Rangel roused the capacity crowd who parked on the edge of their seats at Riverbanks’ Civic Center with an announcement that the Community Service Society has agreed to scrutinize every proceeding or summons brought to housing court by the Pinnacle Group. “You are the wind beneath our political wings,” said Rangel while expressing how moved and proud he is that the community has taken an organized stand. He added, “What we’re doing here is stopping a broader conspiracy to take our community away from us - by stealing away affordable housing,” stated Rangel.Rangel told the audience that they have also earned the appreciation of lawyers working on their behalf - knowing that there is unity in the community. Rangel noted the burden of proof in court in this instance, “should not be on the back of the single mother struggling to care for her family; not the senior citizen; nor any of us.”Activists including candidate for state senator, Bill Perkins, claim that the Pinnacle Group is a front and vanguard of devious efforts that allows landlords to hide their interests while the larger company gobbles up the housing stock for luxury condos, driving up prices beyond the reach of current tenants.Popular opinion among elected officials is that this type of practice in Harlem can conceivably be the dangerous prototype for break out groups elsewhere who will work to displace tenants, particularly in the remaining boroughs.Over the last decade The Pinnacle Group has purchased many buildings and hundreds of units within Manhattan, “many of which have already been converted to luxury housing and others remaining empty, possible evidence of warehousing for profit.”In response to an outcry from constituents, community organizations and leaders in greater Harlem and Northern Manhattan, namely Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright (D-Harlem), mobilized a rally outside Pinnacle headquarters to send a message that unfair tactics and the harassment and unnecessary evictions of tenants located uptown would not be tolerated.“We have been in a long-term battle against gentrification practices and slumlords in Harlem; and, we are well acquainted with Baruch Singer-the notorious slumlord of the Dunbar Houses and five other buildings who reportedly sold his properties to The Pinnacle Group,” said Wright. He added, “In the last few years we have seen a population and development growth never before seen in Harlem. Unfortunately, some of the growth has been at the expense of our current residents, who at the hands of a select number of questionable developers are being pushed out of the neighborhoods they helped form. That is unacceptable and intolerable and must cease and desist.”Representatives of the Pinnacle Group declined an interview with the AmNews, but released a written statement defending their business dealings stating, “It is unfortunate that there are a number of baseless and simply erroneous charges circulating among tenants, public officials and within the community,” writes Robert Barletta, spokesperson for the Pinnacle Group.Pinnacle previously told the AmNews that their employees, “comprise a diverse and dedicated group that work together to provide residents of Pinnacle buildings with the services that all residents deserve.” And, to facilitate home ownership, Pinnacle admits having filed plans to convert certain of its rental properties to condominiums.
Battle Against Pinnacle Group Resembles '78 Riverdale Row
Norwood News
PUBLISHED BY MOSHOLU PRESERVATION CORPORATION
Vol. 19, No. 10
May 18 - 31, 2006
By HEATHER HADDON
Deirdre Burke and Laura Spalter thought something was fishy when their rent checks went uncashed and new leases weren’t issued after their Riverdale complex was sold. Those warning signs led to a protracted legal battle waged by tenants of the Vinmont Houses against their new landlord, Joel Wiener. That was 28 years ago. But today, Wiener and his current company, the Pinnacle Group, has been using many of the same tactics to push out long-term tenants, as the Norwood News has reported in a series of articles. In 1978, Wiener bought Vinmont, a small complex of 1- and 2-family homes along Mosholu Avenue and West 255th Street. The 30 units were the brainchild of Robert Weinberg, a prominent city preservationist and architect. He nestled Vinmont into a wooded area, constructing a series of affordable rental homes where residents did much of the maintenance work themselves. The charming houses, with front and back yards, are attached with shared utilities. They were a renter’s dream.“People loved them,” said Burke, the principal of PS 340 in North Fordham, who moved into the complex in 1975. “I paid $194 a month for … an apartment with a fireplace, with trees around it.”Wiener purchased Vinmont, and two neighboring complexes, after Weinberg’s death. The two did not share the same vision. Wiener’s goal was to sell off the homes for about $100,000 each within roughly six months, according to tenants. The ensuing battle lasted for over three years.(Wiener did not respond to questions for this story, but a spokesman for his company issued a statement. “It is absolutely ridiculous and unfair to ask Pinnacle about something from more than a quarter-century ago,” said the statement, released by the Marino Organization, a public relations firm retained by Pinnacle.) After the deal, tenants noticed that they stopped receiving rent increases, and rent checks weren’t even cashed. “At the time, we thought it was cool,” said Spalter, a longtime MS 80 teacher, who was then in her late 20s. Tenants eventually grew suspect, and started talking and meeting together. They were alarmed when Wiener fired the property’s longtime caretaker. And they were further angered when they realized Wiener intended to separate the houses into individual properties, sell them and evict those who couldn’t pay. His attitude was, “I’m an owner. I can do it and I will do it,” as Spalter put it. That didn’t sit well with tenants, even among wealthy residents who could have bought the complex outright. They stuck together and formed an association, first successfully moving to get Vinmont recognized as a rent stabilized property. Wiener brought in bulldozers to begin separating the connected sewer and water lines. Tenants went to court and got a restraining order to stop the work.The cat and mouse game cycled on. Wiener filed paperwork to carve out the different parcels later in 1978. Residents would sneak out in the middle of the night and dig up the pipes being installed. And in one of the most important victories, not one resident would let Wiener into their homes to shut off their water connection.“He intimidated the 80-year-old senior citizens, but they still said no,” Spalter said.The war escalated. Residents hired Sheldon Lobel, a lawyer specializing in zoning issues, and Spalter began a letter writing campaign. Burke mastered the pipe blueprints, and searched for permit irregularities at the Buildings Department. Wiener sent eviction notices, but never acted on them.Residents were relentless. “He was so afraid of us,” said Spalter, a lifelong Bronxite who has fought many civic battles. “One day he came to my door and [my husband] yelled out, ‘If he’s bothering you, I’ll go get the gun.’” The firearm was fictitious, but the tenants’ unified resistance was a real source of consternation for Wiener. Franklin Illfelder, a resident who was a teenager at the time, refused to let Wiener inspect his family’s garage. Illfelder, 50, who still lives at Vinmont, says Wiener shoved him in response.Finally, Wiener offered the 1- and 2-family homes to tenants for $50,000 and $60,000, respectively. With $20,000 in fees and a difficult legal road ahead, residents went for the offer, but not before making sure all tenants had a route to ownership. In 1981, Wiener sold them the properties. It was a huge, hard-fought and immensely satisfying victory. “This was the whole basis of our being,” Burke said. The fight was chronicled in a New York legal journal, according to Spalter, but tenants shied away from local reporters’ inquiries for fear it would distract them from their objective. As some of the original residents died or moved away, the story went untold. While the Vinmont battle is long over, thousands of other tenants in buildings bought by Wiener’s current company, the Pinnacle Group, are now facing an uphill contest against him. A growing number of tenants citywide are complaining about the same issues — harassment, eviction notices, the removal of existing building staff — since Pinnacle purchased over 400 rent stabilized buildings beginning in 2002. They fear that Wiener plans to convert their homes into condos. Burke’s and Spalter’s advice to these tenants is to stick together and fight hard. “If you are unlucky enough to live in a Wiener building, form a tenants association and get a lawyer right away,” Spalter said.
http://www.bronxmall.com/norwoodnews/news/N60518page2.html
PUBLISHED BY MOSHOLU PRESERVATION CORPORATION
Vol. 19, No. 10
May 18 - 31, 2006
By HEATHER HADDON
Deirdre Burke and Laura Spalter thought something was fishy when their rent checks went uncashed and new leases weren’t issued after their Riverdale complex was sold. Those warning signs led to a protracted legal battle waged by tenants of the Vinmont Houses against their new landlord, Joel Wiener. That was 28 years ago. But today, Wiener and his current company, the Pinnacle Group, has been using many of the same tactics to push out long-term tenants, as the Norwood News has reported in a series of articles. In 1978, Wiener bought Vinmont, a small complex of 1- and 2-family homes along Mosholu Avenue and West 255th Street. The 30 units were the brainchild of Robert Weinberg, a prominent city preservationist and architect. He nestled Vinmont into a wooded area, constructing a series of affordable rental homes where residents did much of the maintenance work themselves. The charming houses, with front and back yards, are attached with shared utilities. They were a renter’s dream.“People loved them,” said Burke, the principal of PS 340 in North Fordham, who moved into the complex in 1975. “I paid $194 a month for … an apartment with a fireplace, with trees around it.”Wiener purchased Vinmont, and two neighboring complexes, after Weinberg’s death. The two did not share the same vision. Wiener’s goal was to sell off the homes for about $100,000 each within roughly six months, according to tenants. The ensuing battle lasted for over three years.(Wiener did not respond to questions for this story, but a spokesman for his company issued a statement. “It is absolutely ridiculous and unfair to ask Pinnacle about something from more than a quarter-century ago,” said the statement, released by the Marino Organization, a public relations firm retained by Pinnacle.) After the deal, tenants noticed that they stopped receiving rent increases, and rent checks weren’t even cashed. “At the time, we thought it was cool,” said Spalter, a longtime MS 80 teacher, who was then in her late 20s. Tenants eventually grew suspect, and started talking and meeting together. They were alarmed when Wiener fired the property’s longtime caretaker. And they were further angered when they realized Wiener intended to separate the houses into individual properties, sell them and evict those who couldn’t pay. His attitude was, “I’m an owner. I can do it and I will do it,” as Spalter put it. That didn’t sit well with tenants, even among wealthy residents who could have bought the complex outright. They stuck together and formed an association, first successfully moving to get Vinmont recognized as a rent stabilized property. Wiener brought in bulldozers to begin separating the connected sewer and water lines. Tenants went to court and got a restraining order to stop the work.The cat and mouse game cycled on. Wiener filed paperwork to carve out the different parcels later in 1978. Residents would sneak out in the middle of the night and dig up the pipes being installed. And in one of the most important victories, not one resident would let Wiener into their homes to shut off their water connection.“He intimidated the 80-year-old senior citizens, but they still said no,” Spalter said.The war escalated. Residents hired Sheldon Lobel, a lawyer specializing in zoning issues, and Spalter began a letter writing campaign. Burke mastered the pipe blueprints, and searched for permit irregularities at the Buildings Department. Wiener sent eviction notices, but never acted on them.Residents were relentless. “He was so afraid of us,” said Spalter, a lifelong Bronxite who has fought many civic battles. “One day he came to my door and [my husband] yelled out, ‘If he’s bothering you, I’ll go get the gun.’” The firearm was fictitious, but the tenants’ unified resistance was a real source of consternation for Wiener. Franklin Illfelder, a resident who was a teenager at the time, refused to let Wiener inspect his family’s garage. Illfelder, 50, who still lives at Vinmont, says Wiener shoved him in response.Finally, Wiener offered the 1- and 2-family homes to tenants for $50,000 and $60,000, respectively. With $20,000 in fees and a difficult legal road ahead, residents went for the offer, but not before making sure all tenants had a route to ownership. In 1981, Wiener sold them the properties. It was a huge, hard-fought and immensely satisfying victory. “This was the whole basis of our being,” Burke said. The fight was chronicled in a New York legal journal, according to Spalter, but tenants shied away from local reporters’ inquiries for fear it would distract them from their objective. As some of the original residents died or moved away, the story went untold. While the Vinmont battle is long over, thousands of other tenants in buildings bought by Wiener’s current company, the Pinnacle Group, are now facing an uphill contest against him. A growing number of tenants citywide are complaining about the same issues — harassment, eviction notices, the removal of existing building staff — since Pinnacle purchased over 400 rent stabilized buildings beginning in 2002. They fear that Wiener plans to convert their homes into condos. Burke’s and Spalter’s advice to these tenants is to stick together and fight hard. “If you are unlucky enough to live in a Wiener building, form a tenants association and get a lawyer right away,” Spalter said.
http://www.bronxmall.com/norwoodnews/news/N60518page2.html
Took Panes to Hike Bills
By Juan Gonzalez
NY Daily News
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006
Three months ago, the landlord at 610 Riverside Drive applied to the state for a special rent increase for the rent-regulated building.
Standard procedure - unless the landlord happens to be Pinnacle Group LLC.
Pinnacle, one of the city's biggest owners of rent-stabilized housing, claimed on its state application that it spent $21,770 two years ago for a major capital improvement (MCI): brand-new lobby entrance doors.
Under state rent law, a landlord can pass such MCI costs on to a building's tenants. State approval of such increases is usually a formality once the landlord submits a claim and backup documentation.
But not at 706 Riverside.
"What new doors?" said Adriana Peterson, a tenant association leader who says her neighbors in the west Harlem building were furious when they learned of Pinnacle's application.
"All they did was replace the old locks and the plexiglass on the sides and top of the doors with real glass," Peterson said.
Her account was backed up by a half-dozen residents who spoke to the Daily News. The tenant association immediately filed an objection with the state.
Peterson says she counted 51 new pieces of glass, which would mean each piece cost more than $400.
Pinnacle's application also claimed the "new" doors were replacements for ones that were 35 years old.
Not exactly.
Peterson has lived in the building for more than 40 years and she keeps meticulous records for her tenant group. She quickly produced copies of an MCI rent increase the state had granted to the previous owner for lobby doors back in 1998. The useful life of lobby doors, according to state regulations, is 15 years.
Peterson even confronted Joel Wiener, the chief executive of Pinnacle, at a tenants meeting March 28.
Wiener has been under fire for months from housing advocates, who claim Pinnacle is harassing longtime tenants by systematically filing questionable eviction cases in Housing Court and delaying repairs of major violations. Critics say the company tries to empty and renovate apartments, then sharply drive up rents for newcomers.
The News reported last week that Pinnacle filed more than 5,000 eviction actions in Housing Court against its nearly 20,000 tenants since January 2004.
Wiener, who denies any improper actions, has sought to improve the company's image of late by meeting with his tenants and local political leaders.
"I told Mr. Wiener, 'You're gonna lose this one because we're not paying you $22,000 for 51 pieces of glass.'" Peterson said.
Two weeks later, the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) denied Pinnacle's request for a rent hike at 610 Riverside. In its decision, the agency cited the previous MCI increase and concluded that the entrance doors' "useful life has not yet expired."
The agency did not look into the tenants' more serious claim that Pinnacle never installed new doors to begin with.
Two weeks ago, I asked Wiener about the MCI application for the building and his tenants' claims.
"I contract with an outside firm to file those MCIs and I'm looking into what happened," Wiener said.
But these are not the only allegations of false documents being filed by Pinnacle. As The News reported Monday, several tenants at 706 Riverside complained to DHCR that the company improperly raised rents by claiming thousands of dollars in renovations that were never made.
NY Daily News
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006
Three months ago, the landlord at 610 Riverside Drive applied to the state for a special rent increase for the rent-regulated building.
Standard procedure - unless the landlord happens to be Pinnacle Group LLC.
Pinnacle, one of the city's biggest owners of rent-stabilized housing, claimed on its state application that it spent $21,770 two years ago for a major capital improvement (MCI): brand-new lobby entrance doors.
Under state rent law, a landlord can pass such MCI costs on to a building's tenants. State approval of such increases is usually a formality once the landlord submits a claim and backup documentation.
But not at 706 Riverside.
"What new doors?" said Adriana Peterson, a tenant association leader who says her neighbors in the west Harlem building were furious when they learned of Pinnacle's application.
"All they did was replace the old locks and the plexiglass on the sides and top of the doors with real glass," Peterson said.
Her account was backed up by a half-dozen residents who spoke to the Daily News. The tenant association immediately filed an objection with the state.
Peterson says she counted 51 new pieces of glass, which would mean each piece cost more than $400.
Pinnacle's application also claimed the "new" doors were replacements for ones that were 35 years old.
Not exactly.
Peterson has lived in the building for more than 40 years and she keeps meticulous records for her tenant group. She quickly produced copies of an MCI rent increase the state had granted to the previous owner for lobby doors back in 1998. The useful life of lobby doors, according to state regulations, is 15 years.
Peterson even confronted Joel Wiener, the chief executive of Pinnacle, at a tenants meeting March 28.
Wiener has been under fire for months from housing advocates, who claim Pinnacle is harassing longtime tenants by systematically filing questionable eviction cases in Housing Court and delaying repairs of major violations. Critics say the company tries to empty and renovate apartments, then sharply drive up rents for newcomers.
The News reported last week that Pinnacle filed more than 5,000 eviction actions in Housing Court against its nearly 20,000 tenants since January 2004.
Wiener, who denies any improper actions, has sought to improve the company's image of late by meeting with his tenants and local political leaders.
"I told Mr. Wiener, 'You're gonna lose this one because we're not paying you $22,000 for 51 pieces of glass.'" Peterson said.
Two weeks later, the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) denied Pinnacle's request for a rent hike at 610 Riverside. In its decision, the agency cited the previous MCI increase and concluded that the entrance doors' "useful life has not yet expired."
The agency did not look into the tenants' more serious claim that Pinnacle never installed new doors to begin with.
Two weeks ago, I asked Wiener about the MCI application for the building and his tenants' claims.
"I contract with an outside firm to file those MCIs and I'm looking into what happened," Wiener said.
But these are not the only allegations of false documents being filed by Pinnacle. As The News reported Monday, several tenants at 706 Riverside complained to DHCR that the company improperly raised rents by claiming thousands of dollars in renovations that were never made.
Dwellers & Pols Rip Apartment Firm
BY KERRY BURKE and LEO STANDORA, STAFF WRITERS
NY Daily News
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
A parade of angry and frustrated apartment dwellers complained last night of being pushed around by the Pinnacle Group LLC, a real estate company with holdings around the city.
They accused Pinnacle of overcharging them, dragging them into court for no reason, failing to make repairs, violating their succession rights and warehousing empty apartments to get higher rents.
Nearly 300 people from Community Boards 9, 10 and 12 turned up at the Cultural Center in Riverbank State Park for the joint public hearing. On hand were Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, but the words of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) most roused the gathering.
"What you're doing here is stopping a broader conspiracy to take our community away from us," Rangel declared.
"This isn't just Pinnacle. Developers and speculators have been removing tenants illegally from apartments which they return to the market at ridiculous rents," he said.
The chief purpose of the meeting was to collect testimony and documentation relating to investigations into alleged Pinnacle wrongdoing, which the Daily News has detailed in a series of reports.
The company had filed an astonishing 5,000 eviction proceedings since 2004 against tenants in nearly 20,000 apartments. But all suddenly - were dropped recently, within hours of an inquiry by The News about the particulars.
Thomas Delaney, who is in his 70s, disabled and barely able to walk, says fire drove him from his building in September. He said he lives in a shelter now because although repairs were promised, "little has been done."
Another renter, Bobby Jones, said Pinnacle has dragged him into court six times in six months over phony allegations.
"But I will not leave," he declared. "They can't make me. I'm not going anywhere." A Pinnacle official at the hearing declined comment.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/418139p-353186c.html
NY Daily News
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
A parade of angry and frustrated apartment dwellers complained last night of being pushed around by the Pinnacle Group LLC, a real estate company with holdings around the city.
They accused Pinnacle of overcharging them, dragging them into court for no reason, failing to make repairs, violating their succession rights and warehousing empty apartments to get higher rents.
Nearly 300 people from Community Boards 9, 10 and 12 turned up at the Cultural Center in Riverbank State Park for the joint public hearing. On hand were Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, but the words of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem) most roused the gathering.
"What you're doing here is stopping a broader conspiracy to take our community away from us," Rangel declared.
"This isn't just Pinnacle. Developers and speculators have been removing tenants illegally from apartments which they return to the market at ridiculous rents," he said.
The chief purpose of the meeting was to collect testimony and documentation relating to investigations into alleged Pinnacle wrongdoing, which the Daily News has detailed in a series of reports.
The company had filed an astonishing 5,000 eviction proceedings since 2004 against tenants in nearly 20,000 apartments. But all suddenly - were dropped recently, within hours of an inquiry by The News about the particulars.
Thomas Delaney, who is in his 70s, disabled and barely able to walk, says fire drove him from his building in September. He said he lives in a shelter now because although repairs were promised, "little has been done."
Another renter, Bobby Jones, said Pinnacle has dragged him into court six times in six months over phony allegations.
"But I will not leave," he declared. "They can't make me. I'm not going anywhere." A Pinnacle official at the hearing declined comment.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/418139p-353186c.html
Tenants Rally Against Pinnacle Group
Joint Public Hearing Held by Three Community Boards Draws Hundreds, Elected Officials
By Tanveer Ali, Staff Writer
Columbia Spectator
May 16, 2006
Residents of buildings owned by Pinnacle Group LLC had a message Monday night for their landlord—they are ready for a fight.
Hundreds were present at a public hearing held in Riverbank State Park concerning Pinnacle, headed by large-scale developer Joel Weiner, over allegations that it has been abusing its tenants in rent-controlled and rent-stabilized housing.
The event, held in conjunction with Community Boards 9, 10, and 12 of Manhattan, drew several elected officials to voice support for the tenants including City Councilwoman Inez Dickens (D-Harlem), Councilman Robert Jackson (D-Washington Heights), Borough President Scott Stringer (D-Manhattan), Representative Charles Rangel (D-Harlem), and the city’s Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.
“The purpose of this effort is to gather factual information and whatever documentation we can for those facts,” said Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, chair of CB9. He said that information would then be conveyed through the appropriate legal and governmental avenues.
Twenty-five tenants approached the podium presenting their cases against Pinnacle, which has reportedly filed over 5,000 eviction notices against its tenants over the past three years. Some said that Pinnacle has been trying to force out lower income residents to make way for more lucrative real estate.
Residents of 706 Riverside Drive have been in an ongoing legal battle concerning rent overcharges with Pinnacle since it bought the building. According to Ernestine Temple, member of the 706 Riverside Tenants’ Association, Pinnacle had appraised the building far above its actual value.
Holding up a part of her apartment’s roof that had broken off three months ago to cameras from the local news media, Temple said that Pinnacle had failed to provide necessary services and repairs for families that had been living in the building for years.
“I truly believe a picture is worth a thousand words,” Temple said.
Bobby Jones, a Pinnacle tenant who has been brought to court by his landlord six times in the past eight months, echoed the words of several others present at the hearing.
“I have a message for Pinnacle … I am not afraid. You cannot make me leave,” Jones said.
Many tenants voiced concern that city and state officials have ignored the tenants, with a few saying that state and city agencies have even been complicit with Pinnacle and similar landlords. But, all the elected officials present at the meeting said that they would ally themselves with the tenants’ cause.
“We have the law on our side. We have morality on our side. We will have the appreciation of the lawyers that know that you [the tenants] are organized,” Rangel said to the receptive crowd.
By Tanveer Ali, Staff Writer
Columbia Spectator
May 16, 2006
Residents of buildings owned by Pinnacle Group LLC had a message Monday night for their landlord—they are ready for a fight.
Hundreds were present at a public hearing held in Riverbank State Park concerning Pinnacle, headed by large-scale developer Joel Weiner, over allegations that it has been abusing its tenants in rent-controlled and rent-stabilized housing.
The event, held in conjunction with Community Boards 9, 10, and 12 of Manhattan, drew several elected officials to voice support for the tenants including City Councilwoman Inez Dickens (D-Harlem), Councilman Robert Jackson (D-Washington Heights), Borough President Scott Stringer (D-Manhattan), Representative Charles Rangel (D-Harlem), and the city’s Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum.
“The purpose of this effort is to gather factual information and whatever documentation we can for those facts,” said Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, chair of CB9. He said that information would then be conveyed through the appropriate legal and governmental avenues.
Twenty-five tenants approached the podium presenting their cases against Pinnacle, which has reportedly filed over 5,000 eviction notices against its tenants over the past three years. Some said that Pinnacle has been trying to force out lower income residents to make way for more lucrative real estate.
Residents of 706 Riverside Drive have been in an ongoing legal battle concerning rent overcharges with Pinnacle since it bought the building. According to Ernestine Temple, member of the 706 Riverside Tenants’ Association, Pinnacle had appraised the building far above its actual value.
Holding up a part of her apartment’s roof that had broken off three months ago to cameras from the local news media, Temple said that Pinnacle had failed to provide necessary services and repairs for families that had been living in the building for years.
“I truly believe a picture is worth a thousand words,” Temple said.
Bobby Jones, a Pinnacle tenant who has been brought to court by his landlord six times in the past eight months, echoed the words of several others present at the hearing.
“I have a message for Pinnacle … I am not afraid. You cannot make me leave,” Jones said.
Many tenants voiced concern that city and state officials have ignored the tenants, with a few saying that state and city agencies have even been complicit with Pinnacle and similar landlords. But, all the elected officials present at the meeting said that they would ally themselves with the tenants’ cause.
“We have the law on our side. We have morality on our side. We will have the appreciation of the lawyers that know that you [the tenants] are organized,” Rangel said to the receptive crowd.
Housing Wars: Pinnacle of Greed
By Heather Haddon
The Indypendent
From the May 10, 2006 issue Posted in Local
“I am full of stress,” said Hernandez, who is facing the twin burdens of a lawsuit and difficulty walking. “When will Pinnacle’s abuses stop?”
Thousands of residents citywide are asking that same question. The Pinnacle Group andits owner, Joel Saul Wiener, have unleashed an arsenal of threatening letters, eviction notices, and lawsuits against tenants. Wiener’s goal, according to tenants and advocates, is to push out long-term residents,use renovations and suspicious accounting toraise rents beyond stabilization limits, and then turn them into condos.“Pinnacle is a monster,” said Luis Tejada of the Mirabal Sisters, a Harlem organization supporting the growing ranks of angry tenants.
BANKING ON VACANCY DECONTROLUnscrupulous landlords have always thrived in New York. But Pinnacle is unique in itsscale and financing through the Praedium Group, a real estate investment trust (REIT)on steroids. REITs have been around for decades, but only in the late 1990s did big banks get in the action – just as New York State began allowing apartments with rents exceeding $2,000 to exit stabilization programs.
A handful of banks suddenly saw Harlem and the Bronx in a whole new light. “It’s viewed as a decent investment,” said Jerry Salama, a NYU professor and real estate expert. “The large investment banks are…going to Harlem and buying rundown multifamily homes and fixing them up.”
Credit Suisse First Boston, one of the country’s biggest investment banks, establishedPraedium in the nineties. One Praedium REIT, Praedium Fund V, pooled $465 millionfrom pensions, endowments and foundations to leverage $1.7 billion in acquisitions, according to financial industry reports. The bulk of that went to buy New York apartment buildings. A Praedium spokesperson said they do not comment on their individual holdings. But Kim Powell, a Pinnacle resident from Harlem, spoke candidly about Praedium, “They are not seeing that within their real estate work, there are habitants and human lives.”
Some housing experts are also wary about Praedium and its ilk. “Enron predicted growth in a certain way, and a lot of people lost money,” said Abbott Gorin, an attorney with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development who has sued Pinnacle for code violations. “Renegade actors ruin the investment for everyone. They accelerate a crash.” Praedium is especially brash. As its website states, the company seeks “properties that are ‘broken’ and can in turn be fixed and then sold upon stabilization.” What constitutes a broken property? Not one with faulty boilers, but those that fail to “aggressively manage the current tenant/leasing base.” To fix that, it recommends “strategic capital improvements and proactive leasing.”
MEET JOEL WIENERWho better to carry out that prescription than Joel Wiener? He comes from an oldschool Brooklyn real estate family. Two children from the third generation, Arthur and Joel, carry the torch. Their father, Paul Wiener, gave ownership of a Riverdale co-op to his children. One of the tenants, a woman who asked for anonymity because she is suing the Wieners, sought help when her roof collapsed in 1984. The damage was extensive, but the Wieners didn’t seem to care. “I could squeeze water out of my insulation. Paul said ‘I don’t see any water,’” the tenant said.
Joel has a reputation for being ruthless among many tenants. “He’s so evil. It’s just amazing,” said Laura Spalter, a Riverdale resident who fought the Wieners in the late seventies. Spalter and other residents managed to wrest control of their property, but only after extensive court proceedings. Wiener has done well for himself. He has a fancy car and high-end office, along with a luxury home. He is flattering and laudatory to some, a snide hothead to others, according to those who have tangled with him. Spalter found that Wiener’s own lawyers often couldn’t stop his rants.
Praedium, however, has rewarded Wiener for his behavior. Beginning in 2002, they financed Pinnacle’s acquisition of entire real estate portfolios, including those owned by veteran slumlord Baruch Singer. That deal – an off-market transaction of almost 3,000 northern Manhattan apartments for $500 million – is rumored to be one of the largest multi-family building deals in city history. Even in the hyperactive world of city real estate, Pinnacle’s sprawling web has grown enormously. Wiener owns thousands of apartments in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.
His company controls entire swaths of Harlem, Sugar Hill and Washington Heights, along with significant chunks of the Bronx, Upper West Side, Flatbush and Crown Heights. In these areas, Pinnacle targets rent-stabilized properties that are a haven for lowincome residents – from Hispanic families to starving artists.
WIENER’S ARMYWiener runs his operation with military resolve. He maintains a cadre of loyalists, and fires outsiders. Among Pinnacle’s first purchases were former Mitchell-Lama buildings in the Bronx in 2002. Pinnacle proceeded to fire much of the staff within days, according to the Daily News. That year, the city passed a law barring new owners from firing existing staff within 90 days. Wiener has broken the rule since.
Pinnacle has fired more than 200 building supers, as stated in a class action lawsuit filed in federal court last fall. Some were forcibly removed. “[A property manger] threw a Brooklyn super down the stairs,” said Luis Tejada, who spearheaded the suit with a labor law firm. “He walked away and told someone else to call an ambulance.” Most of the supers had decades of management experience. Many were replaced with inexperienced workers from Yugoslavia, according to the suit.
Frank Marino of the Marino Organization, a PR firm hired by Pinnacle, said that while staffing is done on a “building by building basis,” the net result is positive. “If you look at the number of staff working in the properties, you would find an increase,” he said. Perhaps, but the property managers don’t seem very attentive. “They don’t even get out of their cars,” said Fred Criswell, whose mother was fired by Pinnacle after it acquired a building in Inwood where she was the super. Harry Hirsch, Wiener’s right-hand man, revealed in court testimony that he had never visited a building he’d managed for years, nor could he name its super. Neither Hirsch nor Wiener keep complaint records for their buildings, nor do they have a tangible system for managing them, according to the suit. “It’s kooky,” stated Hirsch in his testimony. “I don’t know how we do it.”
FIX IT UP, PUSH ‘EM OUTWhen it comes to renovations, tenants say it’s the supers who are on the job, not licensed contractors. A laundry room erected at 706 Riverside Dr. was condemned because of serious code violations, according to Powell. Rebecca Gilmore, Powell’s neighbor, hired her own carpenter after supers doing a lead abatement left her unit mired in toxic dust. “They also lost my doors,” she said. “It was really shoddy work.”
All of the properties go through the same transformation: an army of security cameras are installed, mailboxes are replaced, then new front doors, lighting and other structural improvements are performed. Compared to some city slumlords, Pinnacle seems saintly. “We’re trying to bring these places back. Why see this as deceiving?” Wiener asked during an interview in which he denounced his critics. “Rather than criticize a landlord who puts in new front doors, you should provide good coverage of them.” But residents worry that the underlying goal is to push enough of them out for a condo conversion.
Pinnacle tenants all over Manhattan have seen vacancies increase, and two Riverside Drive buildings are in the process of becoming condos. Pinnacle says they are generously allowing current tenants to buy their homes. Few can afford the prices, however. “They are trying to sell apartments for over $1 million in buildings with bad pipes and elevators that are always down,” said Paula Odellas, a resident.
Pinnacle does make plenty of major capital improvements, like new windows and boilers.Some of these repairs, which create permanent rent increases, are necessary. Others appear fabricated say tenants. A former Bronx super was told to futz with the electrical plates in his building, and bill for an entire rewiring, according to a source close to the situation. The company intended to replace the entryways at 2300 Olinville Ave. in the Bronx without any obvious need. “I don’t want a new door,” said Joseph Brown, standing next to his solid entryway.
The needs of current residents are at the mercy of Praedium’s drive to “aggressively manage the current tenant base.” In that spirit, Pinnacle frequently takes residents to housing court. The suits are for back rent, but also use creative charges like rent checks using a married name instead of the maiden one, according to tenants. Kim Smith, who worked as staffer for former Councilman Bill Perkins, was shocked to find that a large percentage of residents in a 149th Street building were served court papers. According to city Housing Court records, Pinnacle has initiated over 1,500 cases in the Bronx alone since 2002.
Pinnacle disputes that number, but has yet to provide a different total. People on rent subsidies, including the elderly, have been a frequent target. Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz helped a 90-year-old Riverdale resident after Wiener sued him for back rent. Dinowitz’s staff found that the man had actually overpaid through credits from a state program assisting low-income seniors living in regulated apartments. “He was double dipping,” Dinowitz said.
Wiener has since said the property is owned by his brother, but Dinowitz’s staff says the management is one and the same.
“THE LANDLORDS HAVE THE EDGE”New tenants have also encountered problems. Those who request documentation of renovations – typically assessed at $25,000 per unit – sometimes learn that their apartments supposedly contain half-a-dozen toilets or hundreds of sheets of drywall.
Erica Martinez, a resident of 801 Riverside Dr., received a court-ordered rent rebate of $300 a month after bogus bills were nullified. “He tried to put all the construction supplies for the whole building onto my apartment,” she said. Frank Marino said the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), which oversees rent-stabilized apartments, would never approve inflated bills. “DHCR has been through this thousands of times,” he said. “They know what a realistic ballparkfigure is.”
They might, but DHCR is notoriously lax. “When a landlord goes to DHCR, they get quick results,” Dinowitz said. “When a tenant goes to them, it can take years. In every way, the landlords have the edge.” DHCR punished Pinnacle for overcharging two Bronx tenants, but the agency dismissed future suits when the company issued a building- wide credit due to a “clerical error,” as letters to tenants stated. When Denise Prescod, a Riverside Drive tenant, went to DHCR to check if she was being overcharged, her unit had no listed rent history. DHCR also can’t determine the number of times a landlord has been sued for overcharges, as the agency “does not compile or maintain such information,” as stated in a letter.
“DHCR is of no help,” Prescod said dryly. Peter Moses, a DHCR spokesperson, said he had “little luck” in getting the department’s history of oversight for several Pinnacle buildings. Then he asked, nervously: “Are you really going to write about them?”
CULTIVATING POLITICAL ALLIESThere are no records of campaign contributions from Pinnacle, but Wiener likes to cultivate influential political allies. “Their strategy is to say they have friends in high places,” said former Councilman Perkins, who was approached for support by Wiener while he was in office.
Perkins says he received a call from Ken Fisher, a lobbyist from a politically connected Brooklyn family, to tout Pinnacle’s merits. Earlier this year, Pinnacle also made a $500,000 contribution to Youth Turn, a group run by Rev. C. Vernon Mason, a disbarred lawyer and ally of Rev. Al Sharpton. But most of Wiener’s sense of entitlement comes from within. “He’s extremely aggressive,” said Spalter, the Riverdale resident who fought Wiener successfully. “Any group that wants to fight Joel has to have several fronts going on at once.”
Many Pinnacle tenants are pragmatic. They know that prices will go up and neighborhoods will change. But they are indignant at being driven out of areas that have only now healed from years of crime and neglect. “You can’t expect to continue paying $200 [in rent],” said Marjorie Moore, a tenant at 725 Riverside Dr. “But we are looking at regional planning that is seeking to relocate us. Wiener wouldn’thave these buildings if we hadn’t stayed here to preserve them.”
http://www.indypendent.org/?p=230
The Indypendent
From the May 10, 2006 issue Posted in Local
“I am full of stress,” said Hernandez, who is facing the twin burdens of a lawsuit and difficulty walking. “When will Pinnacle’s abuses stop?”
Thousands of residents citywide are asking that same question. The Pinnacle Group andits owner, Joel Saul Wiener, have unleashed an arsenal of threatening letters, eviction notices, and lawsuits against tenants. Wiener’s goal, according to tenants and advocates, is to push out long-term residents,use renovations and suspicious accounting toraise rents beyond stabilization limits, and then turn them into condos.“Pinnacle is a monster,” said Luis Tejada of the Mirabal Sisters, a Harlem organization supporting the growing ranks of angry tenants.
BANKING ON VACANCY DECONTROLUnscrupulous landlords have always thrived in New York. But Pinnacle is unique in itsscale and financing through the Praedium Group, a real estate investment trust (REIT)on steroids. REITs have been around for decades, but only in the late 1990s did big banks get in the action – just as New York State began allowing apartments with rents exceeding $2,000 to exit stabilization programs.
A handful of banks suddenly saw Harlem and the Bronx in a whole new light. “It’s viewed as a decent investment,” said Jerry Salama, a NYU professor and real estate expert. “The large investment banks are…going to Harlem and buying rundown multifamily homes and fixing them up.”
Credit Suisse First Boston, one of the country’s biggest investment banks, establishedPraedium in the nineties. One Praedium REIT, Praedium Fund V, pooled $465 millionfrom pensions, endowments and foundations to leverage $1.7 billion in acquisitions, according to financial industry reports. The bulk of that went to buy New York apartment buildings. A Praedium spokesperson said they do not comment on their individual holdings. But Kim Powell, a Pinnacle resident from Harlem, spoke candidly about Praedium, “They are not seeing that within their real estate work, there are habitants and human lives.”
Some housing experts are also wary about Praedium and its ilk. “Enron predicted growth in a certain way, and a lot of people lost money,” said Abbott Gorin, an attorney with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development who has sued Pinnacle for code violations. “Renegade actors ruin the investment for everyone. They accelerate a crash.” Praedium is especially brash. As its website states, the company seeks “properties that are ‘broken’ and can in turn be fixed and then sold upon stabilization.” What constitutes a broken property? Not one with faulty boilers, but those that fail to “aggressively manage the current tenant/leasing base.” To fix that, it recommends “strategic capital improvements and proactive leasing.”
MEET JOEL WIENERWho better to carry out that prescription than Joel Wiener? He comes from an oldschool Brooklyn real estate family. Two children from the third generation, Arthur and Joel, carry the torch. Their father, Paul Wiener, gave ownership of a Riverdale co-op to his children. One of the tenants, a woman who asked for anonymity because she is suing the Wieners, sought help when her roof collapsed in 1984. The damage was extensive, but the Wieners didn’t seem to care. “I could squeeze water out of my insulation. Paul said ‘I don’t see any water,’” the tenant said.
Joel has a reputation for being ruthless among many tenants. “He’s so evil. It’s just amazing,” said Laura Spalter, a Riverdale resident who fought the Wieners in the late seventies. Spalter and other residents managed to wrest control of their property, but only after extensive court proceedings. Wiener has done well for himself. He has a fancy car and high-end office, along with a luxury home. He is flattering and laudatory to some, a snide hothead to others, according to those who have tangled with him. Spalter found that Wiener’s own lawyers often couldn’t stop his rants.
Praedium, however, has rewarded Wiener for his behavior. Beginning in 2002, they financed Pinnacle’s acquisition of entire real estate portfolios, including those owned by veteran slumlord Baruch Singer. That deal – an off-market transaction of almost 3,000 northern Manhattan apartments for $500 million – is rumored to be one of the largest multi-family building deals in city history. Even in the hyperactive world of city real estate, Pinnacle’s sprawling web has grown enormously. Wiener owns thousands of apartments in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.
His company controls entire swaths of Harlem, Sugar Hill and Washington Heights, along with significant chunks of the Bronx, Upper West Side, Flatbush and Crown Heights. In these areas, Pinnacle targets rent-stabilized properties that are a haven for lowincome residents – from Hispanic families to starving artists.
WIENER’S ARMYWiener runs his operation with military resolve. He maintains a cadre of loyalists, and fires outsiders. Among Pinnacle’s first purchases were former Mitchell-Lama buildings in the Bronx in 2002. Pinnacle proceeded to fire much of the staff within days, according to the Daily News. That year, the city passed a law barring new owners from firing existing staff within 90 days. Wiener has broken the rule since.
Pinnacle has fired more than 200 building supers, as stated in a class action lawsuit filed in federal court last fall. Some were forcibly removed. “[A property manger] threw a Brooklyn super down the stairs,” said Luis Tejada, who spearheaded the suit with a labor law firm. “He walked away and told someone else to call an ambulance.” Most of the supers had decades of management experience. Many were replaced with inexperienced workers from Yugoslavia, according to the suit.
Frank Marino of the Marino Organization, a PR firm hired by Pinnacle, said that while staffing is done on a “building by building basis,” the net result is positive. “If you look at the number of staff working in the properties, you would find an increase,” he said. Perhaps, but the property managers don’t seem very attentive. “They don’t even get out of their cars,” said Fred Criswell, whose mother was fired by Pinnacle after it acquired a building in Inwood where she was the super. Harry Hirsch, Wiener’s right-hand man, revealed in court testimony that he had never visited a building he’d managed for years, nor could he name its super. Neither Hirsch nor Wiener keep complaint records for their buildings, nor do they have a tangible system for managing them, according to the suit. “It’s kooky,” stated Hirsch in his testimony. “I don’t know how we do it.”
FIX IT UP, PUSH ‘EM OUTWhen it comes to renovations, tenants say it’s the supers who are on the job, not licensed contractors. A laundry room erected at 706 Riverside Dr. was condemned because of serious code violations, according to Powell. Rebecca Gilmore, Powell’s neighbor, hired her own carpenter after supers doing a lead abatement left her unit mired in toxic dust. “They also lost my doors,” she said. “It was really shoddy work.”
All of the properties go through the same transformation: an army of security cameras are installed, mailboxes are replaced, then new front doors, lighting and other structural improvements are performed. Compared to some city slumlords, Pinnacle seems saintly. “We’re trying to bring these places back. Why see this as deceiving?” Wiener asked during an interview in which he denounced his critics. “Rather than criticize a landlord who puts in new front doors, you should provide good coverage of them.” But residents worry that the underlying goal is to push enough of them out for a condo conversion.
Pinnacle tenants all over Manhattan have seen vacancies increase, and two Riverside Drive buildings are in the process of becoming condos. Pinnacle says they are generously allowing current tenants to buy their homes. Few can afford the prices, however. “They are trying to sell apartments for over $1 million in buildings with bad pipes and elevators that are always down,” said Paula Odellas, a resident.
Pinnacle does make plenty of major capital improvements, like new windows and boilers.Some of these repairs, which create permanent rent increases, are necessary. Others appear fabricated say tenants. A former Bronx super was told to futz with the electrical plates in his building, and bill for an entire rewiring, according to a source close to the situation. The company intended to replace the entryways at 2300 Olinville Ave. in the Bronx without any obvious need. “I don’t want a new door,” said Joseph Brown, standing next to his solid entryway.
The needs of current residents are at the mercy of Praedium’s drive to “aggressively manage the current tenant base.” In that spirit, Pinnacle frequently takes residents to housing court. The suits are for back rent, but also use creative charges like rent checks using a married name instead of the maiden one, according to tenants. Kim Smith, who worked as staffer for former Councilman Bill Perkins, was shocked to find that a large percentage of residents in a 149th Street building were served court papers. According to city Housing Court records, Pinnacle has initiated over 1,500 cases in the Bronx alone since 2002.
Pinnacle disputes that number, but has yet to provide a different total. People on rent subsidies, including the elderly, have been a frequent target. Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz helped a 90-year-old Riverdale resident after Wiener sued him for back rent. Dinowitz’s staff found that the man had actually overpaid through credits from a state program assisting low-income seniors living in regulated apartments. “He was double dipping,” Dinowitz said.
Wiener has since said the property is owned by his brother, but Dinowitz’s staff says the management is one and the same.
“THE LANDLORDS HAVE THE EDGE”New tenants have also encountered problems. Those who request documentation of renovations – typically assessed at $25,000 per unit – sometimes learn that their apartments supposedly contain half-a-dozen toilets or hundreds of sheets of drywall.
Erica Martinez, a resident of 801 Riverside Dr., received a court-ordered rent rebate of $300 a month after bogus bills were nullified. “He tried to put all the construction supplies for the whole building onto my apartment,” she said. Frank Marino said the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), which oversees rent-stabilized apartments, would never approve inflated bills. “DHCR has been through this thousands of times,” he said. “They know what a realistic ballparkfigure is.”
They might, but DHCR is notoriously lax. “When a landlord goes to DHCR, they get quick results,” Dinowitz said. “When a tenant goes to them, it can take years. In every way, the landlords have the edge.” DHCR punished Pinnacle for overcharging two Bronx tenants, but the agency dismissed future suits when the company issued a building- wide credit due to a “clerical error,” as letters to tenants stated. When Denise Prescod, a Riverside Drive tenant, went to DHCR to check if she was being overcharged, her unit had no listed rent history. DHCR also can’t determine the number of times a landlord has been sued for overcharges, as the agency “does not compile or maintain such information,” as stated in a letter.
“DHCR is of no help,” Prescod said dryly. Peter Moses, a DHCR spokesperson, said he had “little luck” in getting the department’s history of oversight for several Pinnacle buildings. Then he asked, nervously: “Are you really going to write about them?”
CULTIVATING POLITICAL ALLIESThere are no records of campaign contributions from Pinnacle, but Wiener likes to cultivate influential political allies. “Their strategy is to say they have friends in high places,” said former Councilman Perkins, who was approached for support by Wiener while he was in office.
Perkins says he received a call from Ken Fisher, a lobbyist from a politically connected Brooklyn family, to tout Pinnacle’s merits. Earlier this year, Pinnacle also made a $500,000 contribution to Youth Turn, a group run by Rev. C. Vernon Mason, a disbarred lawyer and ally of Rev. Al Sharpton. But most of Wiener’s sense of entitlement comes from within. “He’s extremely aggressive,” said Spalter, the Riverdale resident who fought Wiener successfully. “Any group that wants to fight Joel has to have several fronts going on at once.”
Many Pinnacle tenants are pragmatic. They know that prices will go up and neighborhoods will change. But they are indignant at being driven out of areas that have only now healed from years of crime and neglect. “You can’t expect to continue paying $200 [in rent],” said Marjorie Moore, a tenant at 725 Riverside Dr. “But we are looking at regional planning that is seeking to relocate us. Wiener wouldn’thave these buildings if we hadn’t stayed here to preserve them.”
http://www.indypendent.org/?p=230
Tenant Davids Take On Goliath
By Heather Haddon
The Indypendent
From the May 10, 2006 issue Posted in Local
The movement against the Pinnacle Group started with a few dozen neighbors meeting over homemade lemon bars in February. It has grown quickly since. A few years ago, tenants on Riverside Drive in Manhattan began to see disturbing patterns – the removal of their supers, apartment warehousing,lots of superficial improvements – after their buildings changed hands. When Pinnacle moved to covert two properties into co-ops, residents started sleuthing. They discovered Pinnacle had snapped up hundreds of properties citywide, and was using the same tactics elsewhere. “We’re checking how [he’s] been flouting the law,” said Kim Powell, a Riverside Drive resident and lawyer who has done much of the organizing.Powell and other local residents formed Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem (BRUSH), and began knocking on doors all over northern Manhattan. Each month, their meetings draw more residents expressing remarkably similar stories. A few local elected officials have started attending. The group is now fielding calls from Pinnacle residents all over the city, some of who have started organizing their own buildings.
Throughout the last few years, growing numbers of Hispanic supers sought help from the Mirabal Sisters,a Harlem civic organization, after they were abruptly fired by Pinnacle. Mirabal organized a class action lawsuit against Pinnacle last year, and has joined BRUSH’s efforts. The groups held a joint protest outside Pinnacle’s plush office at 1 Penn Plaza in March.
Housing groups have started to take notice. The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a veteran organizing group, is assessing the situation with Bronx tenants. Housing Here and Now, a city organization affiliated with ACORN, is looking into Praedium’s financing of the deals. While energy is high, the battle ahead is formidable. Unlike some landlords, Wiener hasn’t hidden from his critics, outspokenly defending his case at local forums. He’s also hammering against opposition. Powell says Wienerbarred an independent inspector hired by tenants from doing an assessment of their building.
Local officials have pledged their support, and helped tenants on an individual basis. The city housing department says it’s looking into Pinnacle. But it will take a Herculean effort to derail Wiener’s operation. “[They] have a tremendous amount of power,” said Paula Odellas, a resident.
The end of Governor George Pataki’s reign may offer a chance to strengthen state housing regulations, which he helped to weaken. “We need to have much tougher laws against landlords who abuse the system,” said Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Bronx Assemblyman. “It’s a real problem.”
The Indypendent
From the May 10, 2006 issue Posted in Local
The movement against the Pinnacle Group started with a few dozen neighbors meeting over homemade lemon bars in February. It has grown quickly since. A few years ago, tenants on Riverside Drive in Manhattan began to see disturbing patterns – the removal of their supers, apartment warehousing,lots of superficial improvements – after their buildings changed hands. When Pinnacle moved to covert two properties into co-ops, residents started sleuthing. They discovered Pinnacle had snapped up hundreds of properties citywide, and was using the same tactics elsewhere. “We’re checking how [he’s] been flouting the law,” said Kim Powell, a Riverside Drive resident and lawyer who has done much of the organizing.Powell and other local residents formed Buyers and Renters United to Save Harlem (BRUSH), and began knocking on doors all over northern Manhattan. Each month, their meetings draw more residents expressing remarkably similar stories. A few local elected officials have started attending. The group is now fielding calls from Pinnacle residents all over the city, some of who have started organizing their own buildings.
Throughout the last few years, growing numbers of Hispanic supers sought help from the Mirabal Sisters,a Harlem civic organization, after they were abruptly fired by Pinnacle. Mirabal organized a class action lawsuit against Pinnacle last year, and has joined BRUSH’s efforts. The groups held a joint protest outside Pinnacle’s plush office at 1 Penn Plaza in March.
Housing groups have started to take notice. The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a veteran organizing group, is assessing the situation with Bronx tenants. Housing Here and Now, a city organization affiliated with ACORN, is looking into Praedium’s financing of the deals. While energy is high, the battle ahead is formidable. Unlike some landlords, Wiener hasn’t hidden from his critics, outspokenly defending his case at local forums. He’s also hammering against opposition. Powell says Wienerbarred an independent inspector hired by tenants from doing an assessment of their building.
Local officials have pledged their support, and helped tenants on an individual basis. The city housing department says it’s looking into Pinnacle. But it will take a Herculean effort to derail Wiener’s operation. “[They] have a tremendous amount of power,” said Paula Odellas, a resident.
The end of Governor George Pataki’s reign may offer a chance to strengthen state housing regulations, which he helped to weaken. “We need to have much tougher laws against landlords who abuse the system,” said Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Bronx Assemblyman. “It’s a real problem.”
Phony Repairs Add to Abuse
By Juan Gonzalez
NY Daily News
Monday, May 15th, 2006
A hundred gallons of paint for a two-bedroom apartment. Five new flushometers for two toilets.
New doors, range hoods and pedestal sinks that were never installed.
These are just some of the renovations that Pinnacle Group LLC claimed to state officials when it sought to justify huge rent increases for several vacant apartments at 706 Riverside Drive, a rent-stabilized building the company owns in west Harlem.
A group of tenants who moved into the renovated units in 2001 later complained to state housing officials and the courts that Pinnacle was illegally overcharging tenants.
The dogged tenants eventually won major rollbacks in their monthly rent from Pinnacle - a big city landlord that has filed 5,000 eviction proceedings since 2004 against tenants who live in its nearly 20,000 apartments.
In the long 706 Riverside Drive legal battle, Pinnacle submitted hundreds of documents to the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal to try to justify charging as much as $2,000 in monthly rent to new tenants in a building where most current residents were paying about $600.
When they saw copies of Pinnacle's invoices, the new tenants said they were astonished to find their landlord had reported tens of thousands of dollars for work that either was never done, was double- or triple-billed or couldn't legally be claimed as rehab work.
"There was blatant fraud and padding of bills," said Mark Gordon, a Web designer who moved into a seventh-floor apartment with his wife, Anne Beaumont.
Pinnacle eventually agreed in Housing Court to reduce Gordon's rent from $1,900 to $1,100 and paid him $10,000 for overcharges. In doing so, the company admitted no wrongdoing.
Pinnacle originally claimed to the state that it spent $47,000 for improvements to Gordon's 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment, including a new kitchen and bath.
Under state law, a landlord who renovates a rent-stabilized apartment is allowed to increase its monthly rent by one-fortieth of the cost of those improvements. Thus, a $40,000 makeover translates into a $1,000-a-month increase.
But because the law doesn't require landlords to produce evidence of their repairs unless a tenant challenges the new rent, the system is vulnerable to abuse, housing advocates say.
Among the questionable invoices Pinnacle filed with the Division of Housing and Community Renewal for Gordon's apartment:
· $1,500 for a new main electrical box. A construction expert hired by Gordon concluded there was no new box.
· $1,029 for 100 gallons of latex paint and $454 for 45 gallons of ceramic adhesive. That's enough paint and adhesive for an entire building.
· $1,800 for labor to install two new front doors and door handles, installed by contractor Shaban Cecunjanin. There were no new front doors or handles, and Cecunjanin is the building's superintendent.
· $490 for 10 pieces of 3/4-inch, 4-foot-by-8-foot plywood and for 20 pieces of 4-foot-by-8-foot Sheetrock. There was no new plywood or Sheetrock installed in the apartment, Gordon's expert said.
· Three separate invoices totaling $336 for five toilet flushometers. The apartment has only two bathrooms, and Gordon's expert concluded the existing flushometers showed no signs of recent replacement.
· $396 for more than 120 brass nipple pipe fittings; Gordon's expert couldn't find any in the apartment.
· $17,800 for two men to install new sinks, toilets and medicine cabinets in the two bathrooms. One of the contractors Pinnacle claimed it paid was Rasim Toscic, who also happens to be Pinnacle's super for other northern Manhattan buildings. The other was Toscic's brother, Rafaet.
A floor below, tenants Ted and Marjorie Charron found the same story with their invoices:
There was one invoice of $3,948 paid to Rasim Tokic (sic) for supplies purchased at Home Depot for rehab work on three apartments, including the Charrons' and Gordon's.
The actual Home Depot receipt that corresponded to the invoice revealed a few curious items, such as $169 for 240 light bulbs - 80 per apartment.
There was another invoice for the shipment on June 27, 2001, of 30 gallons of paint for the Charrons' apartment. Problem was, they had moved into their new apartment on June 5.
Other Charron invoices were for a new 30-inch range hood and a new pedestal. None was ever installed.
Most comical of all was Pinnacle's Houdini-like use of the invoice that included Gordon's 100 gallons of paint.
The total amount of that invoice was for $1,920. In addition to the paint, it included a bunch of supplies that Pinnacle claimed it used renovating other apartments in the building.
But in the documents it filed with the state, Pinnacle charged $1,200 from that invoice to the Charrons' apartment, $1,456 to Gordon's and $1,724 to tenant Don Gilmore on the eighth floor. Thus, $1,920 in supplies was magically transformed into $5,100 in charges.
All of these "costs" were used by Pinnacle to justify sharp increases to the rents of all the vacant apartments.
Asked about the fraud charges from the tenants of 706 Riverside, company spokesman Robert Barletta said Friday in a prepared statement: "Pinnacle believes that work [full renovations] and invoices were proper." In some cases, the company "settled with the tenants in order to avoid a lengthy litigation process," Barletta said.
Ted and Marjorie Charron eventually got their rent lowered from $1,900 to $1,300, though Pinnacle is appealing that decision.
To get that rollback, however, they had to battle not only their landlord but the bureaucrats at Division of Housing and Community Renewal and the city's Buildings Department. Those agencies repeatedly refused to investigate evidence of false filings by Pinnacle, the Charrons say.
"We're a complaint-driven agency," said Division of Housing and Community Renewal spokesman Peter Moses. "We have no records showing that anyone filed any allegations of fraudulent improvements by Pinnacle."
The agency may want to recheck its records.
On March 24, 2003, Marjorie Charron hand-delivered it a detailed complaint alleging the fictitious renovations by Pinnacle. The letter was time-stamped by the agency, and Charron has supplied a copy of it to the Daily News.
It included photographs of her apartment to prove what work had not been done.
More than three years later, state housing officials have not even bothered to look into whether anything improper occurred at 706 Riverside Drive, and if so, how prevalent such practices are among city landlords - especially Pinnacle.
Housing hearing
Four Northern Manhattan community boards will conduct a joint public hearing at 6:30 p.m. today to examine some of the problems in Pinnacle Group LLC buildings highlighted by the Daily News' Juan Gonzalez. Tenants, company officials and elected officials are expected to attend the meeting at Riverbank State Park, 145th St. and Riverside Drive.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/417773p-352913c.html
NY Daily News
Monday, May 15th, 2006
A hundred gallons of paint for a two-bedroom apartment. Five new flushometers for two toilets.
New doors, range hoods and pedestal sinks that were never installed.
These are just some of the renovations that Pinnacle Group LLC claimed to state officials when it sought to justify huge rent increases for several vacant apartments at 706 Riverside Drive, a rent-stabilized building the company owns in west Harlem.
A group of tenants who moved into the renovated units in 2001 later complained to state housing officials and the courts that Pinnacle was illegally overcharging tenants.
The dogged tenants eventually won major rollbacks in their monthly rent from Pinnacle - a big city landlord that has filed 5,000 eviction proceedings since 2004 against tenants who live in its nearly 20,000 apartments.
In the long 706 Riverside Drive legal battle, Pinnacle submitted hundreds of documents to the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal to try to justify charging as much as $2,000 in monthly rent to new tenants in a building where most current residents were paying about $600.
When they saw copies of Pinnacle's invoices, the new tenants said they were astonished to find their landlord had reported tens of thousands of dollars for work that either was never done, was double- or triple-billed or couldn't legally be claimed as rehab work.
"There was blatant fraud and padding of bills," said Mark Gordon, a Web designer who moved into a seventh-floor apartment with his wife, Anne Beaumont.
Pinnacle eventually agreed in Housing Court to reduce Gordon's rent from $1,900 to $1,100 and paid him $10,000 for overcharges. In doing so, the company admitted no wrongdoing.
Pinnacle originally claimed to the state that it spent $47,000 for improvements to Gordon's 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment, including a new kitchen and bath.
Under state law, a landlord who renovates a rent-stabilized apartment is allowed to increase its monthly rent by one-fortieth of the cost of those improvements. Thus, a $40,000 makeover translates into a $1,000-a-month increase.
But because the law doesn't require landlords to produce evidence of their repairs unless a tenant challenges the new rent, the system is vulnerable to abuse, housing advocates say.
Among the questionable invoices Pinnacle filed with the Division of Housing and Community Renewal for Gordon's apartment:
· $1,500 for a new main electrical box. A construction expert hired by Gordon concluded there was no new box.
· $1,029 for 100 gallons of latex paint and $454 for 45 gallons of ceramic adhesive. That's enough paint and adhesive for an entire building.
· $1,800 for labor to install two new front doors and door handles, installed by contractor Shaban Cecunjanin. There were no new front doors or handles, and Cecunjanin is the building's superintendent.
· $490 for 10 pieces of 3/4-inch, 4-foot-by-8-foot plywood and for 20 pieces of 4-foot-by-8-foot Sheetrock. There was no new plywood or Sheetrock installed in the apartment, Gordon's expert said.
· Three separate invoices totaling $336 for five toilet flushometers. The apartment has only two bathrooms, and Gordon's expert concluded the existing flushometers showed no signs of recent replacement.
· $396 for more than 120 brass nipple pipe fittings; Gordon's expert couldn't find any in the apartment.
· $17,800 for two men to install new sinks, toilets and medicine cabinets in the two bathrooms. One of the contractors Pinnacle claimed it paid was Rasim Toscic, who also happens to be Pinnacle's super for other northern Manhattan buildings. The other was Toscic's brother, Rafaet.
A floor below, tenants Ted and Marjorie Charron found the same story with their invoices:
There was one invoice of $3,948 paid to Rasim Tokic (sic) for supplies purchased at Home Depot for rehab work on three apartments, including the Charrons' and Gordon's.
The actual Home Depot receipt that corresponded to the invoice revealed a few curious items, such as $169 for 240 light bulbs - 80 per apartment.
There was another invoice for the shipment on June 27, 2001, of 30 gallons of paint for the Charrons' apartment. Problem was, they had moved into their new apartment on June 5.
Other Charron invoices were for a new 30-inch range hood and a new pedestal. None was ever installed.
Most comical of all was Pinnacle's Houdini-like use of the invoice that included Gordon's 100 gallons of paint.
The total amount of that invoice was for $1,920. In addition to the paint, it included a bunch of supplies that Pinnacle claimed it used renovating other apartments in the building.
But in the documents it filed with the state, Pinnacle charged $1,200 from that invoice to the Charrons' apartment, $1,456 to Gordon's and $1,724 to tenant Don Gilmore on the eighth floor. Thus, $1,920 in supplies was magically transformed into $5,100 in charges.
All of these "costs" were used by Pinnacle to justify sharp increases to the rents of all the vacant apartments.
Asked about the fraud charges from the tenants of 706 Riverside, company spokesman Robert Barletta said Friday in a prepared statement: "Pinnacle believes that work [full renovations] and invoices were proper." In some cases, the company "settled with the tenants in order to avoid a lengthy litigation process," Barletta said.
Ted and Marjorie Charron eventually got their rent lowered from $1,900 to $1,300, though Pinnacle is appealing that decision.
To get that rollback, however, they had to battle not only their landlord but the bureaucrats at Division of Housing and Community Renewal and the city's Buildings Department. Those agencies repeatedly refused to investigate evidence of false filings by Pinnacle, the Charrons say.
"We're a complaint-driven agency," said Division of Housing and Community Renewal spokesman Peter Moses. "We have no records showing that anyone filed any allegations of fraudulent improvements by Pinnacle."
The agency may want to recheck its records.
On March 24, 2003, Marjorie Charron hand-delivered it a detailed complaint alleging the fictitious renovations by Pinnacle. The letter was time-stamped by the agency, and Charron has supplied a copy of it to the Daily News.
It included photographs of her apartment to prove what work had not been done.
More than three years later, state housing officials have not even bothered to look into whether anything improper occurred at 706 Riverside Drive, and if so, how prevalent such practices are among city landlords - especially Pinnacle.
Housing hearing
Four Northern Manhattan community boards will conduct a joint public hearing at 6:30 p.m. today to examine some of the problems in Pinnacle Group LLC buildings highlighted by the Daily News' Juan Gonzalez. Tenants, company officials and elected officials are expected to attend the meeting at Riverbank State Park, 145th St. and Riverside Drive.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/417773p-352913c.html
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