Tenants Not Allowed to Contact NY Agencies

After half a century living and working in Harlem, a nurse's aid and a meat butcher retire from their jobs. They expect to spend the rest of their lives paying under $500 a month in rent; after all, their Harlem apartment is rent-stabilized, and they've lived in it for decades without ever missing a payment.

There's just one problem: the apartment is falling apart, and the landlord is unwilling to bring in outside contractors to make repairs. So the couple calls the Department of Housing Preservation and Development--and is consequently served with an eviction notice.

Sound familiar? Welcome to the New Harlem, where commerce is thriving, middle class families are flourishing, and--increasingly--real estate moguls are buying into the booming housing market before learning how to be responsible landlords.

The nurse's aid in this particular story is Delores Early, 67. In 1984 she and her husband moved into a five-room apartment at 1 Convent Avenue. That same year the building was sold to siblings George and Lissette Sabbagh, owners of Big Pond Realty. The Sabbaghs were looking to cash in on a second Harlem renaissance--but they weren't up to the challenge of maintaining a run-down building that was still partially occupied by statutory tenants.

The Earlys never got along with their new landlords, but the rent was always too good to give up. For the first few years of their tenancy they received a rent reduction from the Department of Housing and Community Renewal, paying just $25 per month. Even in today's housing market, stabilization keeps their monthly rent at just $464.93.

Now, however, the Sabbaghs are trying to expel the Earlys for good. The elderly husband and wife are not convenient tenants; their rent is very low, they complain to city authorities when the Sabbaghs neglect building maintenance or complete it shoddily, and they have tried to organize a tenants association. So--unable to snag the couple for nonpayment--the landlords opted instead to sue them for complaining too much to city authorities.

At first, the Earlys were too shocked to act. Then they began calling city agencies to their assistance, at various times recruiting the Legal Aid Society, the office of Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, the Harlem Tenants Council, and the office of their City Councilmember, Robert Jackson. Finally, Mrs. Early called up Councilmember Jackson's Chief of Staff, Susan Russell, who provided free legal advice and eventually signed on as the couple's attorney.

But when Russell spoke to the judge who was deciding the Earlys' case, he advised her to settle the case instead of fighting for the Earlys in court. Believing settlement was the only viable option, Russell met with the Sabbagh's lawyer to negotiate a written stipulation.

"The judge was telling me my clients had one foot out the door," Russell said. "I believe he wanted a settlement because I think he had pretty much decided that he was going to evict these folks. So I had them sign a settlement--a stipulation that is irritating to Mrs. Early but that does not put her in any danger."

The settlement stipulates that when the Earlys need repairs or services they must go through Russell instead of calling city agencies themselves. It states that they are forbidden to call the HPD, the DHRC, "or any other agency or forum with respect to repairs and/or conditions in the apartment and the subject building." In short, the Earlys are no longer allowed to talk to the City of New York about the condition of their apartment.

The reigns are held tight. Since Mrs. Early signed the settlement there have been two alleged violations of the stipulation, and in each instance the landlords have responded by attempting to evict the couple. Upon receiving each eviction notice Russell has obtained an order from the judge to stop the eviction, the landlords and the Earlys have been hauled back into housing court, and the judge has decided not to evict the couple--at least not this time.

On Wednesday the Earlys were served a third eviction notice, this one filed without a clear reason.

"There have been no more complaints, there have been no more calls," Russell said. "The landlord just wants to fight. He's invested in the fight."

The Sabbaghs declined to comment for this article and demanded to be told the source of any information Spectator had obtained about the case.

Fighting with the Sabbaghs has taken its toll on the Earlys.

"It's very nervy, living like this," Mrs. Early said. "You don't know what to do. A lot of times you're just afraid to go out and leave the apartment, because when you come back all your things might be gone."

And the Harlem tenant advocates who have assisted the Earlys say that the couple's case is not unique. Nellie Bailey, president of the Harlem Tenants Council, has worked off and on with the Earlys for the past year. Occasionally she has accompanied them to court.

Bailey says the Earlys' problems are emblematic of the plight of many Harlem residents.

"A major concern for the Harlem Tenants Council is the ongoing harassment of senior citizens and the inevitable displacement that occurs as a result," Bailey said. "That is how bad the situation is in Harlem."

And indeed, tenant organizing itself sometimes incites landlords' anger. Mrs. Early says her trouble with the Sabbaghs first began nearly a decade ago when she tried to organize a tenants association.

"The landlords threatened the tenants and told them that I was crazy and not to get involved with me," Early remembered. "They told them they'd have to move if they got involved in the tenant association, and most of them stepped back."

Early moved the tenants association meetings to St. Mary's Episcopal Church, a Manhattanville parish that has opened its doors to many progressive community-based organizations. Still, as the Reverend Earl Kooperkamp recalls, at the time most tenants were too nervous to attend.

"She always had a tough time getting people to come," Kooperkamp said. "They were feeling intimidated by the landlords' threats."

In the end, only Early and two other tenants stayed with the tenants' organization, and ultimately all three paid steeply for their actions. They were placed on two years' probation for their apartments, and one--a subway motorman--was arrested twice and eventually harassed into moving out.

Today, when Mrs. Early most needs a tenants association, none exists to come to her aid. She must look instead to Russell's pro bono services, which she does not trust, and to community advocates like Bailey and Kooperkamp, who can offer support but not security.

"They're after me," Mrs. Early declares, sighing long and low. "They're after me like a dog after a bone."