Rent Strike Looms In Rat-Ridden Park Slope Apts Without Gas: Tenants

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Park Slope tenants who've waited four months for their tabloid-fodder landlord to turn on the gas — and, in one case, hand over a toilet seat — are preparing a rent strike as they face a cold winter ahead.

Residents of 219 13th St. rallied outside their 6-story apartment complex Saturday to demand immediate fixes to rat infestations, leaks and shoddy repairs they say owner Michael Shah has ignored for months.

The motivation behind the rally was best summed up by 8-year-old tenant Milo Byrd-Howard, who told Patch he was scared to face a winter without heat.

“It feels different,” Milo said of his first time attending a protest for an issue that directly impacted his day-to-day life.

Milo's takeaway: “Don’t pay for something you don’t get."

Another organizer unfurled a banner with a message for any passing apartment hunters: “NO GAS DON’T RENT HERE.”

The crowd cheered.

"Watch Out"

The Park Slope tenants said they haven’t had gas in their apartments since May, but that's not their lone complaint.

The heat went out regularly last winter, and one tenant gave Patch a tour of an apartment with broken kitchen tiles and a leaky toilet with a bucket underneath to catch its drippings.

Rats and mice suddenly appeared in tenants’ apartments after building management began leaving loosely-bagged refuse simmering for days in the alleyway, another resident said.

The building has racked up more than 100 violations — 22 deemed "immediately hazardous" —with the city's Housing Preservation and Development department for complaints that include gas outages, roaches, mice and rats, city records show.

The Buildings department is also waiting to receive $2,700 in penalties for wiring issues that date back to 2019.

Reese Hirota, 21, is still waiting for her toilet seat.

Hirota moved into the building in January and was stunned when her request for a basic necessity was brushed off in a “really rude and unresponsive” manner, Hirota said.

Before the manager began ignoring her calls completely, Hirota said he demanded to know, "do you really need a toilet seat?”

Hirota says the hot water is frequently out as well, and a pest problem has grown worse. “All floors in the building have a roach problem,” she said.

The toilet seat-denying manager has since left, but the new one is just as impossible to reach and tenants' issues remain unresolved, they said.

One day tenants came home to a notice on the door that clued them in on what might be happening: the owners owed National Grid $10,000.

Milo's mom Tay Howard, 33, moved to the building just last August — with her husband, and their 3-year-old — and without any warning there was no gas in the building, she told Patch.

Howard thought a hot plate with bow on it was a kind gesture, but her neighbor soon set her wise, she said.

The neighbor told her that the previous winter, they had no heat nor hot water. The current problem: no gas.

“It was like a mom-to-mom,” Howard said, “like: ‘watch out.’”

“I knew then that the problem wasn't just a gas pipe that was turned off for a couple of weeks,” Howard said, “obviously there was a systemic problem in the building.”

Sydney Chu, 24, walks over broken tiles in her kitchen where a a hot plate sits atop what used to be a working gas stove. In her bathroom, a bucket collects water from leaky toilet pipes.

Chu has lived in the building for almost two years, and says it wasn’t always like this. She claims that while repairs were completed at a sluggish rate, they did happen.

The aspiring social worker says things took a turn last November when tenants started getting regular emails from the building manager warning of intermittent heat, which was on and off all winter long.

That's when Hirota, Howard and Chu started talking to other residents, and learned that not only were they suffering the same issues as her — gas or otherwise — but that they were going to get together and talk about it.

“After corresponding with all the tenants, we've realized there's probably 14 different reasons as to why we don't have gas,” Chu said, “we just don’t know.”

Part Of A $1.2 Billion Picture

The 13th Street building is owned by a New York City millionaire whose bodybuilding priorities and questionable City Hall ties have been making headlines for years, city records and reports show.

Michael Shah, of Delshah Capital LLC, boasts a $1.2 billion portfolio with 50 properties with roughy 2,000 units, according to the company website.

A lawyer by training, Shah manages lots of pricy real estate. The firm recently sold their interest in a nearly finished 180 unit building in downtown Brooklyn for $147 million, according to The Real Deal. In another interview with the magazine, he described business during the 2008 recession as “phenomenal.”

His history of making tabloid headlines is less so.

Shah was sued by the city in 2012 for alleged real estate tax avoidance, according to a profile on The Real Deal.

In 2013, the Daily News reported that Shah may have had help from then-public advocate Bill de Blasio in keeping his name off of the notorious “Worst Landlords” list.

The Post also put Shah's worth at least $300 million and reported in depth on the personal coach who cost $15,000 a month and helped him lose 30 pounds.

Shah purchased 219 13th St. for $11 million in 2018 as part of a larger, $100 million deal to scoop up 28 buildings from former owners Silvershore Properties, according to city property data and reports.

Shah’s name is linked to at least 44 building in the city, with 219 13th Street taking the honor of having the most open HPD violations at 103.

Yet even as tenants say conditions have deteriorated, the rents have continued to rise.

A lawsuit alleges that Shah, and the building's LLC, DS Brooklyn Portfolio Owner LLC, illegally deregulated their unit and is engaged in tenant harassment. The building's lawyers deny the claims of deregulation — even disputing that Shah is an owner, despite the portfolio sale being widely covered by real estate press — and have yet to respond to harassment claims.

According to the building's registration with HPD, which expired earlier this month, Michael Shah is listed as the head officer for 219 13th St.

The website justfix.org claims that all 25 units left rent stabilization since 2007. On a database provided by the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, there were seven rent stabilized units in 2019.

According to StreetEasy, the 13th Street building has listed nine units for rent since June and has two listings currently active. Rents range from $2650 to $4400, with most above $3,000.

A recent listing shows an apartment at 219 13th St. was claimed last month at a rent of $4,300 per month. In 2016, it cost $2,600.

"Gorgeous," the listing reads. "GUT Renovated."

Multiple efforts to reach Shah and Delshah Capital LLC by email or a phone number listed for the firm were unsuccessful. Calls placed to the current building manager, whose number was provided by current tenants, went unanswered.

“Free reign to exploit”

Mounting concerns and lack of action finally spurred the tenants to make their association formal. One tenant reached out to the housing organization Brooklyn Eviction Defense's hotline for help organizing the association.

On Saturday, the newly formed tenants association held a rally.

The message: Unless the problems were fixed by the end of the month, the tenants will go on a rent strike.

“We're not going to allow more conditions to push our neighbors out of their homes," Brooklyn Eviction Defense founding member Nicolas Vargas told the crowd.

“We're here to say that we're not going to allow evictions to happen.”

Local politicians also appeared to show their support, with Comptroller Brad Lander — a neighbor — speaking briefly, and Council member Shahana Hanif who came to show solidarity with the struggling tenants.

"Folks see an opportunity to make money by displacing people from their homes by denying services...regardless of whatever the tenants rights," Lander said.

"[It's] so that they can hopefully evict folks from the building and double, triple, quadruple the rents.”

A Kind Note

While the deadline of the October 1 rent strike looms, some tenants have already refused to pay for the lack of gas and maintenance.

Hirota, a data analyst, says that she, like many other tenants, have already started to withhold rent to try and get repairs from management.

A neighbor, who told Hirota that he’s lived there for 30 years, said to her that problems started when Shah purchased the building in 2018.

A few weeks ago, Hirota noticed that some former tenants who had moved out after suffering from the same problems had posted a letter on the building’s front door.

“They posted this nice handwritten letter of solidarity saying that they’re standing in solidarity with the tenant association and that they were going to be there for us,” she said.

"That was really sweet.”