Tag Archives: lawsuit

A group of residents in a massive building at 3333 Broadway (at 135th Street) are filing a class action lawsuit against the owner of the building, which until 2005 was in the state’s Mitchell-Lama program for moderate-income housing but is now charging market-rate rents. The residents say the owner had not properly notified them of the change to market-rate housing, and they say they’re being systematically harassed to move out so higher-paying tenants can move in.

One of the residents, James Russell Outlaw, a disabled World War II veteran still recovering from bypass surgery, received a letter from his landlord over the summer saying he would be evicted from his apartment after 32 years, all because the city had terminated his monthly housing subsidy after finding evidence of a vermin infestation and a nonworking oven. He tells the Times, “They’re doing different things to get people out. Scare tactics, I call them.” Doug Eisenberg, the COO of the company that owns the building responds, “We own over 18,000 apartments — there are mistakes made.”The 35-story building has 4,000 residents and has changed hands three times in as many years, and the current owner wants to evict more than a third of the tenants, seeing opportunity in Columbia University’s planned $6.3 billion campus expansion that will reach across the street. Continue reading →