Sunnyside tenants protest housing conditions

“Welcome to my palace,” joked Mahboobur Rahman, as he recently stepped into the second-floor, Sunnyside apartment that he shares with his wife and two kids.
Rahman pointed to his refrigerator, which he said constantly leaks liquid, to his windows, stuffed with clothing to prevent drafts, and lastly to his bathroom, where a patch of the ceiling hangs down because of frequent flooding.
“If someone showers upstairs, the water is coming down,” Rahman said.
With the fluctuating temperatures, Rahman worries that his 22-month-old son Yasser and 15-year-old daughter Towhida will get sick, so shirts and scarves are stuffed between window joints to prevent the outside chill and heat from coming in.
“The windows are constantly out of the frame,” said the Bangladeshi immigrant who works as a security guard at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and has lived in his apartment for the past 15 years.
Rahman, whose apartment building was bought by real-estate company Urban American in 2006, said that conditions worsened after the sale. Consequently, along with neighbors and advocates from Housing Here and Now, Rahman protested along Skillman Avenue on Thursday, April 17.
“We all deserve a decent place to live,” Rahman said.
However, a spokesperson for Urban American said that they are providing just that, saying that the company has invested about $2.5 million to fix up the building and others in the four-building complex at Skillman Avenue and 45th Street.
“These grand buildings were abused and neglected for decades prior to our ownership. We are committed to restoring them,” said Urban American Chief Operating Officer Douglas Eisenberg in a statement.
According to Urban American, the company has corrected more than 900 Housing and Preservation Department (HPD) violations between the four buildings - and 224 at the building where Rahman lives.
A breakdown of the renovations states that about $58,000 has been spent to upgrade occupied apartments in Rahman’s building - about $217,000 in all four buildings.
Following the rally, Urban American also released a video of a tenant dropping a bag of garbage in front of the building’s compactor, then photographing the trash. In published reports, the company charged that the resident’s behavior was “disrespectful” to neighbors.
“While we of course have a financial commitment to our partners, our entire business model is based on the belief that all people, regardless of the amount of rent paid, have a right to quality housing,” Eisenberg said in a statement. “We also believe that both the landlord and the resident have a long term interest in maintaining the viability of the housing stock and that this is only achieved by consistently working with our residents.”
Still, residents of 43-31 45th Street, including Rahman, said that repairs, including a lock on the front door and fresh paint in the lobby, are mostly superficial.
“When you look at it from the outside, you think, ‘Oh that is a beautiful place,’” Rahman said. “But when you go inside, it’s not.”
Several residents even accused their landlord of harassment and violating provisions of the lease, like adding in late charges, in order to force low-income tenants out and charge higher rents.
Rahman complained that he has been hit with late charges, so far totaling $75, even when he pays on time, and Seema Agnani, the Executive Director of Chhaya CDC, a group aimed at improving housing conditions for South-Asian immigrants, said that unless a late-charge stipulation is written into the original lease, tenants of rent-regulated apartments could not be charged late fees.
However, Urban American refuted the claims in their statement, saying that building improvements and repairs were made within “individual-occupied apartments” as well as to boilers, common areas, front doors, intercoms and fire escapes.
At Rahman’s building, 225 work orders within apartments were completed within the past six months, Urban American said.
In addition, new security systems were added, and landscaping was performed, representatives said.