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Ms. Marlene Saunders, a long time resident and homeowner of 1217 Dean Street (Photo by Tsubasa Berg)
Ms. Saunder’s home, center, 1217 Dean st, is a well-kept brownstone building in a rapidly gentrified neighborhood in Crown Heights (Photo by Tsubasa Berg)
Ms. Saunders’ son, Paul, has done everything he can to rectify the misunderstanding before contacting KCP (Photo by Tsubasa Berg)
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City Caught Trying To Grab Senior Citizen’s Brownstone
The city today abruptly reversed a decision to take a senior citizen’s brownstone house on a gentrified Crown Heights block after pressure from City Council Member Robert Cornegy Jr.(D-Bedford-Stuyvesant, Northern Crown Heights) and Kings County Politics.
While the incident, in which the retired nurse, Marlene Saunders, 74, nearly lost her paid-off brownstone at 1217 Dean Street, resulted in a happy ending, Cornegy said it should serve as a red flag to other longtime brownstone owners in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods of Central Brooklyn.
“Home-ownership is one of the most important ways a family is able to build and transfer wealth from one generation to the next. In that light, and with the ever-increasing cost of living in this city, preserving home ownership opportunities is critical in predominantly black and brown communities like ours,” said Cornegy.
The incident unfolded last month when Saunders received notice that the city’s Department of Housing and Preservation (HPD) was taking the property under the city’s Third Party Transfer (TTF) program. The program designates qualified sponsors to purchase and rehabilitate distressed vacant and occupied multi-family properties in order to improve and preserve housing affordable to low-to moderate-income households.
This was news to Saunders’ family as their 100+ year old three-story brownstone with famed historical architecture has been in their family for more than 30 years, maintained immaculately and is free from loans, mortgage and had no current Department of Buildings violations. What’s more the property is located on a rapidly gentrifying block and has been appraised at over $2.2 million.
The Saunders family never heard about the TPT program and had paid their required amount of property taxes on April 30, 2018 to make sure the building was in good standings.
They later found out that while the payment was deducted from their personal account, it didn’t reflect that payment for over 120 days to their property tax account with the city.
In the meantime, the city used their in-rem process (Property Taxes and other property related charges that are late) to transfer ownership from Saunders to a Third Party because of a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) water bill of $3,792.20.
This too was news to the Saunders family as there was no DEP documented information about the threshold in place for an over $1000 limit in which you could lose your property due to the program. There was no documents stating the reason the property could be foreclosed, and for what amount.
Even though the water bill was not in a foreclosure status, the family also went ahead and eliminated the total bill September 12, 2018 to clear any water charges.
But after contacting HPD, the family was told the property was already in a transfer process to Neighborhood Restore a Non Profit third party through a court proceeding that Ms. Saunders was not made aware of so she could attend and defend what is rightfully hers.
After KCP and Cornegy were called, they both reviewed all the documentation and ascertained that it appeared the city was trying to take their property for no clear reason.
Late today,a HPD spokesperson emailed both KCP and informed Cornegy that, “Upon investigation, it appears the owner made a mistake in applying the necessary payment to the wrong property. It is obvious this was a simple error and so we will reverse the transfer so that the owner can sustain ownership of the property.”
While the Saunders family will now get their property back, Cornegy said there was at least one other property in Brooklyn he knows of where there is a similar situation, and perhaps more across the city. He is also vexed that HPD blames the family for the error when all their documents point to it being an error on the city’s part.
“As both the elected council member for this district and the Chair of the Council’s Committee on Housing and Buildings, preserving these opportunities by fighting for homeowners is something I take very seriously,” said Cornegy.
“The issue of deed fraud and deed theft in this city is pervasive and I have spent my time in the Council vehemently advocating for laws and policies to prevent it. We must as a City take seriously the need to protect homeowners from threats to these valuable assets, and not take actions that would only serve to intensify this burden,” said Cornegy.
Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s office did not give a comment in time for publication but just last month he claimed that the properties erroneously placed on the transfer list were a “small reality” in relation to those that needed the city’s help.
Yudy Ventura, President of the co-op owners at 19 Kingsland Avenue, is excited for the freeze and is hoping it will give her and her fellow tenants the opportunity to finally fight for their property back.
“I have a lot of hope that we can get our building back. You know there are a lot of similar cases like ours and we just want to own our property again. With the Public Advocate behind us, I think we really have a chance now,” said Ventura.
But Lamaar Jones, who is fighting the city in court to get the 25 McDonough property back to their family which has owned it for 50 years, thinks differently. He noted there were over 60 properties – almost all in fully paid off and in communities of color – that had a foreclosure judgement against them in one preceding.
“Contrary to Mayor de Blasio’s belief that these are isolated incidents, I find it hard to believe these are insignificant properties,” said Jones, a finance graduate from the prestigious historically black school, Morehouse College. “The evening news will report a petty crime in the local Bodega, but the city lifts about $60 million and it takes weeks and weeks of reporting before anyone pays attention.”
City Takes Black-Owned Property, Tells Residents They Have To Move
ByStephen Witt
Posted on October 15, 2018
The tenants of 25 MacDonough St. are angered that the city has not been forthcoming about the takeover of the building. (Photo by Tsubasa Berg)
Editor’s Note: The following is the ninth of a KCP investigative series by reporters Kelly Mena and Stephen Witt on how New York City is taking paid off properties from longtime small property owners, including black and brown seniors, and giving them to connected non-profit and for-profit developers as gentrification sweeps across Brooklyn.
If the city’s justification for taking fully paid off black-owned properties is to keep the apartments affordable and the buildings better kept, they’re off to a rocky start with the longtime tenants of 25 MacDonough Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
That after the new “sponsors” under the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) told the new tenants nothing will get repaired until they start paying them rent, and they will likely have to vacate the building in two years because they plan to gut renovate the building.
“They put a flier up in the hallway saying they are the new owners with no official documentation and told us that we have to pay rent to them and if we don’t pay it nothing will get fixed,” said Bernard Mayers, a long-term resident who lives in the building with his wife and three kids.
Mayer and other tenants said they’re not even sure who the new owners are or if there is in fact new owners. They were told, though, that once the building is gut renovated they will have a choice of giving them a low down payment to buy their apartments back as co-ops, or they can find another place to live.
Bernard Mayers, a long-term resident who lives in the building with his wife and three kids (Photo by Tsubasa Berg)
The 19-unit building, which the city has taken with no compensation to the black family which owned the property for 50 years, did so for back property taxes and water bills totaling about $120,000, and after labeling it a “distressed property.” It is currently worth about $3.2 million and sits on a choice block near two subway stations and a stone’s throw from Fulton Street – Bed-Stuy’s main commercial thoroughfare.
HPD took the property in a bundled and alleged secretive court foreclosure proceeding under its Third Party Transfer (TPT) program. The program started when the city had thousands of abandoned and neglected properties on its hands – long before gentrification greatly increased the value of even vacant lots all across Brooklyn.
In this case, HPD transferred the property to its city-affiliated Neighborhood Restore Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC), which gave the property to the Wall Street-based non-profit Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) as the building “sponsor,”who in turn gave it to Long Island-based Concord Management of New York to manage the property.
Ronald Callender, a Barbadian immigrant who worked as a mechanic on Atlantic Avenue, bought the rent stabilized apartment building in 1968, kept it during the city’s lean years, paid it off and left it to his son and two daughters under the name Gilmer Holding Corp.
However, the son, who was named executor of the estate mismanaged the building and several months ago, the two daughters enlisted their first cousin, Lamarr Jones, a graduate of finance from the prestigious historically black school, Morehouse College to come in and straighten things out.
Jones entered into a property payment installment agreement with the city on Nov. 2, 2017 and made an initial payment of $25,000 for back payment of the property and water taxes, as well as an additional $535 to get the property in a payment plan to stop the city’s collection process.
Jones also participated in HPD’s Alternative Enforcement Program (AEP) and cleared up 82 percent of the relatively minor building code violations. What neither he nor the AEP director nor the tenants knew at this time was that the family already lost the building in a foreclosure court to the TPT program.
The Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB), according to one of the tenants, left this timeline of Third Party Transfer process by the entrance of the building a few days ago (Photo by Tsubasa Berg)
Jones, who said Ronald Callender always wanted to keep the property in the family as a legacy, retained attorneys who successfully got a temporary restraining order from the city to proceed any further with the foreclosure. They did so on the grounds that both the Gilmer’s procedural and substantive due process rights have been violated, the property itself is not a “distressed property” as the city alleges and the program used to take the property was both untimely and caused irreparable harm.
But the restraining order apparently did not stop the new managers from changing the locks and meeting with the tenants to tell them of their plans to displace them and gut renovate the building.
Meanwhile, the tenants are angered that the city has not been forthcoming about the takeover of the building and several told KCP they were never given proper notice that the city took it. Additionally, they are not sure who actually owns the property now – Neighborhood Restore, UHAB, Concord Management or Gilmer Corp .
While the tenants complained that the building is in disrepair, the building’s handy man, who identified himself as Tony, and who does work on several buildings in the neighborhood, said the boiler is in good shape and while some repairs are needed, the older building is more in need of some tender loving care and not a gut renovation.
Mayers said he thinks it would be better if the city worked with Gilmer and gave them a chance to both repair and make up the property taxes so the building can stay in the family and remain black owned.
While the building’s tenants are black and it is in a traditionally black neighborhood, whites now walk up and down the street as gentrification transforms the neighborhood. A gut renovation could likely include more square footage such as the new building next door, in which several of the new white neighbors now live.
Jones, meanwhile, questioned the city’s plan to displace tenants, many of whom have not had rent increases in years. They also include some family members and several of the tenants trace their roots to Barbados, much like the Callender family.
“The economics here just doesn’t work,” said Jones. “We have a tenant in a studio apartment here that pays $667 a month. They’re going to take everybody out and gut renovate this place, and that same tenant not only will not be able to find a place to live at that price in the interim, but when they come back to that apartment they won’t be able to do so at anywhere near that price. The affordable housing agenda of this administration is bogus.”
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