-
Arakiba 12/26/2009 10:33:00 AM
Those 'hipsters' don't need to displace families just so their kids can store their bikes there. How selfish! What will they do next, buy an orphanage so they can kick out the orphans and put in a wine bar?
-
Katy 01/25/2009 3:40:00 AM
I absolutely love this story! The "Australian-American" hipster yuppies fight the "paid off the books" welfare queen with the two flat screen TVs!
Two different types of leftists battling one another, calling one another "greedy" - it's funny as hell!
Of course rent control is theft, and rent control is part of the reason why apartment rents are so HIGH. There's no market mechanism at all for determining a FAIR (that is, MARKET) price for rental housing. The government stepped in and stole the value from the property owners, and didn't compensate them for the theft.
The cancer queen of COURSE has taken advantage of it. Poor people don't own two flat screen TVs. She's got a live-in boyfriend - does he work? She operates a babysitting service. The article also alludes to her other off the books employment. Has this woman EVER paid taxes? Has the IRS looked into her situation?
Then when lefties refer to this parasite as part of a "working family," it makes you laugh your ass off!
Then we have the tony, high-style "Australian-American" couple, probably the type who says "WE are pregnant" instead of that the wifey is knocked up. These are JUST the sort of folks who vote for Obammy and congratulate themselves on their elevated, refined, leftist sensibilities.
Of course, they're leftist until it affects them personally, then all of a sudden they are all about "this property is MINE!" (but I don't care what the govt does with YOUR property.)
When worlds collide! Now the yupsters are fighting the "gimme dat" welfare queen so their little monsters can turn her slum into a playroom - how exquisitely sublime!
As far as I'm concerned, ALL these people DESERVE the worst that can happen to them! The parasite deserves to get her fat ass kicked out of her govt-stabilized theft nest, and the yupsters deserve a hundred years of imbecile protests at their "greed," all at their front door (from other off-the-books slobs and the leftie vermin who love them.)
I truly love New York City. Nowhere in the world could you find such marvelous hypocrisy on both sides coming to the fore!
Thanks for the entertainment! Here's hoping they all get fucked up royally!
-
chess master 10/14/2008 11:26:00 PM
that woman suarez has HOW MANY rats in that small little apt??
plus baby sits seven???
no way is she disabled plus i bet you a million bucks those two teenage girls and that 17 boy are all selling drugs like mad.
they are probably the local go to family seems they been there forever with no doubt knowing how the city is especially low income rat hole areas like this htis is the local dime bag family
-
Lovesherhockey 10/14/2008 1:48:00 AM
Puhhhlleeeasse InsideJob!!!!! It's ridiculous that someone who doesn't have a lease feels they have any claim on an apartment they don't own. If I were to lease a car and at the end of it the lease wasn't renewed, would I be able to keep the car just because I USED to have a lease? NO! And this shouldn't be any different.
She's poor because she's lazy and from the sound of it she's not paying a dime in taxes from her under-the-table jobs. Has she ever even HELD a job??? Or just scamming off the rest of us who have to work for a living? I think it's insane that she admits to "off-the-books jobs" and no one is looking into that - it's called TAX EVASION.
These landlords paid a boatload of money for the building and should be able to do with it what they want. There is no reason anyone who can work should pay $402 for a three bedroom apartment ANYWHERE in NYC....that would definitely not cover the maintenance for the landlords so why should they lose money? Because as Suarez puts it, she's "comfortable" there??? Not at all a valid reason...hell, I'd be comfortable too at that rent! But that shouldn't give me any rights over an apartment I don't own.
It's time for the system to be reformed so that greedy tenants aren't enabled like this.
-
InsideJob 10/13/2008 10:24:00 PM
No, what's really sickening is people who defend the wealthy landlords who buy buildings with every intention of evicting the rent-stabalized tennents!
These rich carpetbaggers need to buy one-family homes, not destroy multiple-unit housing for the poor!
-
Lovesherhockey 10/13/2008 9:21:00 PM
What's sickening is how these tenants are taking advantage of the system and mooching off society when they're perfectly capable of holding a job. I don't think anyone can argue that if you're healthy enough to babysit that many children, then you can sit behind a desk and answer a phone. But then you'd have to DO something and god forbid you have to pay taxes when you can live off someone else's tax dollars!
These landlords have gone above and beyond to accommodate the tenants - they gave them $12,000 to move out - without any legal reason to do that! They're totally within their legal rights to do what they are doing.
I'm so sick of the whining when people are so obviously being parasitic. Get out and stay out leeches!
-
Lovesherhockey 10/13/2008 9:15:00 PM
What's sickening is everyone making these poor landlords out to be villains when they've done nothing wrong! Seriously people, you need to get a grip. At least someone is coming in and fixing up these old rundown buildings. Don't be bitter just because you can't afford to do it yourself.
These landlords are totally within their rights. And they paid the other tenant $12k to move out - so that is beyond generous since there is absolutely no legal reason for them to do it. Why is everyone ignoring that fact? Sounds like Ms. Suarez is taking money under the table to run a babysitting service but no one is questioning that???These tenants are clearly taking advantage of the landlords and living off the system (and OUR TAX DOLLARS!)
Get out and stay out leeches!
-
Lovesherhockey 10/13/2008 9:15:00 PM
What's sickening is everyone making these poor landlords out to be villains when they've done nothing wrong! Seriously people, you need to get a grip. At least someone is coming in and fixing up these old rundown buildings. Don't be bitter just because you can't afford to do it yourself.
These landlords are totally within their rights. And they paid the other tenant $12k to move out - so that is beyond generous since there is absolutely no legal reason for them to do it. Why is everyone ignoring that fact? Sounds like Ms. Suarez is taking money under the table to run a babysitting service but no one is questioning that???These tenants are clearly taking advantage of the landlords and living off the system (and OUR TAX DOLLARS!)
Get out and stay out leeches!
-
InsideJob 10/13/2008 12:34:00 PM
It's sickening how so-called "hip young couples" are buying multi-family buildings at bargain prices to rid them of their long-term, rent-stabilized tenants! ("DavidM" explained this perfectly in his above comment.)
Even Australians are getting in on this racket. I guess they find it easier & more lucrative than further exploiting Aborigines back home.
Someone needs to make a documentary about these vile schemes or at least put this filth on YouTube for all to see.
-
Ralph 10/12/2008 7:09:00 PM
Why is it a news item when property owners choose to exercise their rights? This article gives muckraking a bad name.
-
Mike'sbird 10/09/2008 8:46:00 PM
Wait - she babysits all those kids and she's claiming she's disabled? SERIOUSLY - SEVEN KIDS!?!? Even 1 or 2 kids are a handful if you're fully healthy. This is so fishy - if you're healthy enough to babysit all those rugrats, then get a real job and pay fair market value or get another apartment. There's no way this lady is disabled - or if she is, I hope the landlords call Child Protective Services!
-
ordet 10/09/2008 11:27:00 AM
i don't like what's happening to a lot of our cities forcing lower and middle-income families out. it's happening all over the country (well it was more voraciously till the past few years) and it may even be despicable at times, but guess what? we live in a free-market economy (if you don't like it - i don't, at least unreigned - change it through the political process - btw do you really think obama will change any of this?? mccain certainly won't.).
they bought the property, they followed the rule of law to develop it the way they want it and currently have every right to. don't blame them. and it does seem from this article that the tenants are expecting much more (to the point of unreasonable - the rent increase seems perfectly reasonable for the property) than any tenant could ever expect in my city (baltimore) or just about any other city in our county.
the owners are being scapegoated and by all appearances haven't done anything wrong. matt on oct 2 was perfectly right.
-
Sally 10/09/2008 8:05:00 AM
Wow, I bet Ms. Suarez has never even had a job. I mean it sounds like she's just been living off our hard-earned tax dollars. It lists jobs for the landlords - they are clearly working - so why should they have to work just to pay to support a healthy 51 year old who could clearly afford an apartment if she got off her butt ? I have two friends with cancer right now and never in a million years would they use the fact that they had it (god-willing, they kick it) to take advantage of the system. I think it's really an evil thing to use as an excuse.
I am almost always on the side of the underdog - wait, guess I still am because clearly that is the landlord in this case. Sucks that they won't just let you evict people if they don't pay the rent....squatters' rights is an archaic and outdated law that only helps the deadbeats. I say - give them 1 month to pay market value (or actual rent if not paid) or be able to evict them. Enough is enough with society's leeches (I agree with the comment above!!!) while the rest of us work our fingers to the bone.
-
ColeyNYC 10/09/2008 7:43:00 AM
OH Evelyn, you ridiculous parasite! Get a job - you're 51 years old...people, she doesn't HAVE cancer, she HAD cancer. Yes it sucks, but now she's in remission so stop mooching off the system and do something!!! I wonder if this woman has ever even paid a dime in taxes? I guarantee that your ridiculously low $400 or so rent for a THREE BEDROOM APARTMENT (!!!) couldn't feasibly cover the landlord's maintenance costs. The sense of entitlement of those who refuse to work but just take, take, take is appalling. Why do I have to work for a living? I am currently so grateful for my rent stabilized apartment - but it's not a God-given right. I don't own the building, so I'm just renting the space...it's great while it lasts, but it's not a right. If my lease ran out and there was a reason they didn't renew it, I'd be grateful I ever paid below market value in the first place. I also can't believe the tone of the article - what happened to objective journalism? It's a joke how much it's trying to steer people to have sympathy for the users / system-abusers. These people paid almost a million dollars for this place - they should have a right to do with it what they choose...they OWN it. Also, the article said they paid someone $12,000 to move out - so that hardly sounds like they don't care....personally, I'd kick everyone out on their ass and change the locks.
-
Theo from CA 10/09/2008 3:55:00 AM
Why don't the politicians who are against this policy simply buy the buildings and then open them to low-income tenants at the rent-controlled prices? It seems if it is legal, and the city does not own the property, why should elected officials then get to tell people what to do with their land?
-
taffeydollar 10/07/2008 8:20:00 PM
What I find most apalling about these comments is the total lack of compassion and humanity. THIS WOMAN HAS CANCER. Good god! You people are all horrible fucks and I hope you all die of colon cancer! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU. And, let me tell you something else...ALL of you greedy fuckfaces would live in Ms. Suarez' apartment and pay her $402 rent if you had the chance...so get off it. This is pure ugly materilistic greed. NYC used to have a heart...what happened? As for the scum landlords--you are pittiful indeed. As for the article, its too bad VV didn't include a quote from The What...."some day this war's gonna end"!
TO MS. SUAREZ: Stay strong, take care of yourself and you are in my prayers..god bless you.
-
Rob MacKay 10/06/2008 10:00:00 PM
It's hard to have empathy for this particular tenant although it's even harder to have empathy for the landlords. Like all good fights this one is about something other than what the parties are stating. This is about the system and it's about greed (on both parts). Obviously the tenant should be paying more rent than she is. She is likely collecting rent from her relatives and she is working under the table. But the landlords knew what they were getting into when they bought the property. Why not build somewhere else? Betcha they didn't plan on all this publicity when they hatched their little scheme? There is nothing wrong with a landlord buying a place and fixing it up and charging reasonable rents. But the same people that believe in capitalism to this extreme are likely the same people that don't believe in healthcare for everyone, etc. etc. That kind of greed will come back to haunt them. Whenever you push poor people (not this tenant that's for sure) to the brink they will get you back. Muggings, robbery, etc. will all go up again. The Bloomberg bubble is about to pop. I believe you wacky capitalists call it a "correction".
-
jen 10/06/2008 11:56:00 AM
It isn't just Suazez -- it's a boyfriend, a teenager, a niece and nephew and other children during the day. Suarez is running a business out of this place, most likely getting income for taking care of the niece and nephew and living with her boyfriend. If this woman wasn't clever enough to sock away some income for her own down payment in all those years she's been sucking off the system, that's her problem. Move her out!
-
John 10/06/2008 6:28:00 AM
Well said, DavidM.
-
John 10/06/2008 2:28:00 AM
Well said, DavidM.
-
DavidM 10/05/2008 4:58:00 PM
What everyone seems to have failed to notice is that these souless yuppie slimeballs gamed the system by buying the building for $800,000, a fair valuation that was made on the basis that it contained rent stabilized tenants. They then exploited a law that was meant to allow landlords to inhabit a single residence in order to take over the entire building. By doing so they are massively increasing the value of the building, it would easily be worth $2 million+ after this conversion. Why aren't those who claim that rent stabilized tennants are somehow stealing (?!) also irate about the fact that these creeps have totally exploited a system of laws that are meant to protect the rights and yes, the basic humanity, of both landlords and tenants in order to massively enrich themselves? For those who think evicting half a dozen working class families with ties in the neighborhood going back decades so that a crowd of magazine designer hipseter twits can move in is just an example of capitalism at work I would reccomend that you read Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'. You will probably enjoy it.
-
DavidM 10/05/2008 4:35:00 PM
What everyone seems to have failed to notice is that these souless yuppie slimeballs gamed the system by buying the building for $800,000, a fair valuation that was made on the basis that it contained rent stabilized tenants. They then exploited a law that was meant to allow landlords to inhabit a single residence in order to take over the entire building. By doing so they are massively increasing the value of the building, it would easily be worth $2 million+ after this conversion. Why aren't those who claim that rent stabilized tennants are somehow stealing (?!) also irate about the fact that these creeps have totally exploited a system of laws that are meant to protect the rights and yes, the basic humanity, of both landlords and tenants in order to massively enrich themselves? For those who think evicting half a dozen working class families with ties in the neighborhood going back decades so that a crowd of magazine designer hipseter twits can move in is just an example of capitalism at work I would reccomend that you read Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'. You will probably enjoy it.
-
Sean Mulligan 10/04/2008 12:48:00 PM
Goldman's comment about anything being legal being ethical is idiotic. By his logic, that would make segregation, slavery and the Nurenberg Laws ethical.
-
ab 10/04/2008 8:35:00 AM
i've lived in manhattan for the last 3 years. If i only had to pay paid 2/3 of my rent, it would be equal to the amount of rent that suarez has paid for the last 28 years! ... and that is figuring it at $402 per month for the entire time, not gradual increases from $97/month. i'm sorry, but i have no sympathy for her. she needs to move to a cheaper neighborhood. i just had to do that...moving from chelsea to murray hill.
-
Michael Fortunato 10/04/2008 7:45:00 AM
This woman has lived there for near free for 28 years. Enough is enough. She is not disabled. She was sick and is now well. She is only claiming that to look for a legal loophole to allow her to continue to take advantage of the landlords. As to the rest of the people bitching about these landlords, hey go buy a building yourself and rent it out to your deadbeat friends for $400 per month per unit.
-
Matt 10/04/2008 7:04:00 AM
Capitalism is overrated. We've had increasing capitalism since
Reagan took office and the middle and lower classes
are worst off now as a result. We need even more government
protections like rent stabilization, rent control, etc..
Pure free market capitalism increasingly concentrates
wealth, resources, and power to the topmost few who don't
need it, and this puts the rest of us at a disadvantage in these areas.
Government must set up policies and protections that prioritize
and benefit the working majority. The rich have more than enough
to take of themselves.
-
gg 10/04/2008 5:23:00 AM
A 3500 square foot apartment for a family is not even that big? And it's brooklyn! who cares!!
-
Lizzie's Sugardaddy 10/04/2008 1:52:00 AM
Private property is theft, pure and simple. Any tenant should be able to do whatever she wants with her residence, and the Aussie Grups should quit living at the expense of others. Because of multiple property ownership, others are having to pay more. That is theft.
-
Lizzie 10/04/2008 1:20:00 AM
Rent control is theft, pure and simple. The owners of the property should be able to do whatever they want with their property, and Ms. Suarez should quit living at the expense of others. Because she is paying such a low rent, others are having to pay more. That is theft.
-
Marty 10/03/2008 9:11:00 PM
What's the big deal? It's called CAPITALISM?...
You don't like it, move to a socialist state!
I took over an apartment that was in a dilapidated building with all kinds of lazy, unemployed, wannabe rappers and drug dealers and babymamas and the city did the right thing by moving more police into the neighborhood to get tough on these social parasites.
Now the area is definitely improving, we have some good gourmet food shops opening, some coffee shops and restaurants that serve something other than malt liquor and ox-tail, and it's safer, getting cleaner, getting cleaned up and the people (if you want to call them that) that have made the area so gross are being made to get with the program or go live in the projects where they belong.
I am not a racist, either. I went to college with quite a few black and asian people back in Michigan, and they worked hard for what they have, and so should anyone else. Just because you lived somewhere for a long time doesn't give you any right to stay there if someone else's property rights are violated. That is the whole basis of the American system of government.
-
Ernesto Ciccarelli 10/03/2008 5:49:00 PM
to: maria luisa tucker...you probably think Charles Manson is a Hippie if you think these people are Hip...Better read your Library's copy of Norman Mailer's book - Advertisements for Myself -then check out Lord Richard Buckley and pray for a little Hipness..
-
Dana 10/03/2008 8:55:00 AM
People who complain about rent controlled apartments ALWAYS have more LOTS money than the working poor who live in those apartments.
Those 30-ish millionaires who move-in on poorer renters, and demand "living-space" are not unlike Adolf Hitler & the Nazis moving-in on the Sudetenland and demanding "living space" from defenseless Czechoslovakia in 1938.
These wealthy usurpers, just like their "defenders" who have posted above, aren't real New Yorkers, in any case. They are foreign born, or wealthy kids from the midwest, who like to move here and "Pretend" to be New Yorkers.
Any couple with one or two kids that needs an 8-apartment building for their "own living space" needs to build a house of their own, out in the country.
And for this selfish, smug couple, that "country" should be Australia.
If there was any REAL justice in this state, that couple would be put on a Qantas jet and told that these plenty of "living room" in the Outback.
In short, such "landlords" make me feel like puking.
NYC: RIP.
-
Mary 10/03/2008 4:17:00 AM
I can't help but think that the landlords have never worked a real day in their lives. Where exactly are the working people in New York to live? They perform all the work that keeps that city, and indeed all cities, running. I'm sure if the landlords had ever worked for minimum wage, or worried about making the rent
and the electric bill, or came from working stiff families, that they would never consider evicting a sick woman from her home of 20 plus years. They should hang their heads in shame, but they probably don't have a moral conscience.
-
jase 10/03/2008 1:53:00 AM
what i dont get is that rent-stabilization is not subsidized by the city at all.
the owners of these buildings don't get any tax concessions, maintenance compensation, or anything
all they get is a bunch of tenants paying far less than market value which is therefore not enough to keep a building in nice condition or an attractive buy for anyone else
if the city wants to continue rent-stabilization, then it should help foot the bill. right now the system supports buildings falling into disrepair and landlords trying shifty ways to move tenants on. there is just no incentive for owners to have rent-stabilized tenants.
sure low-income tenants should be protected, but it's what out tax dollars should go towards
the way the system is run, i believe every sane owner wants/needs to get rid of rent stabilized tenants or risk going under themselves...
-
James 10/03/2008 12:09:00 AM
The landlords had no illusions about the building before
they bought it. They knew about the rent situation with
the existing tenants, BEFORE THEY BOUGHT THE BUILDING.
These rich bastards are an example of the many, also
egged on by the Bloomberg development crazy
administration, who now want to force their way onto
the working and poor of this city. Their greed is just
a repetition of what's happened throughout history, and
you know what happened next: the pheasants eventually
revolted and took what these rich pigs valued the most,
their property and also the pigs themselves. It's now
just a matter of time before today's "peasants" have
enough of this crap and revolt also. Human greed and
history repeating itself...
-
Almighty 10/02/2008 11:55:00 PM
The sickest idea of home ownership is that others can own another's residence. This is what keeps us all in slavery as a nation, when someone else can own the home you live in (whether it is a financial institution as a lender or a third party). We need to change the laws to "owner occupied housing only", meaning that if you live there, you own it.
-
matt 10/02/2008 7:45:00 PM
A quick point. People seem very concerned with the situations of the two parties involved in the despute. The sympathic grandma versus the new money hipsters. This is an error in thought, the rights of tenents and landlords can't be desided on a case by case basis, otherwise you will have massive discrimination in lending, can't force an old person out, won't rent to them, etc.... Also it gives us very high transaction costs, because disputes all have to be desided by very complex rules, or by a judge, leading again to higher rents and more discrimination.
Ask youself if this were some really large immegrant family that scrimped and bought the building as a group to all live together vs some yuppies living under rent control would your feelings differ? if so, how would you make a workable system that respected you different views?
There is an impulse I would call marxist, to look a the situation through a lense of the powerful exploting the weak, but that is an emotional impulse not a rational one.
-
Luke 10/02/2008 8:00:00 AM
Ok, the Hipster Landlords may not be coercing her out of her apartment (unless you consider them more then doubling Mrs. Suarez's rents coersion) But seriously, stop and think...How greedy are they? Do they really need to displace a family so that they can have a playroom and a place to put their bikes? And for crying out loud, shes an older disabled woman, whose recovering from CANCER! She has kids and they all need a place to live, she's out of work, and she's helping her neighbors by babysitting. I mean, laws and ethics aside, what they are doing is the reason why I loose a little more faith in this country each day.
They should go back to Australia, and leave New York to the New Yorkers.
-
matt 10/02/2008 5:37:00 AM
People have this really visceral reaction to change, they hate it. What I see in the pro-rentcontrol comments, is an assumption, that communities never change. That when you move someplace it has to stay exactly the same otherwise it is somehow unfair. If the neighborhood changes via wealth getting poorer or richer, or via ethnicity as new immegrent groups replace the ones the came before, people consider it a tragedy that must be avioded.
Well communities change and get used to it, its healthy and normal. People can't expect that rents will always stay the same, and that they will always be able to afford the place they are living in, this is normal, this is how life works.
If we made it easier to build and rent in NYC people like ms. S would have many affordable options in terms of where to live.
Dignity means never having to move from a place you randomly choose to rent when you were 30? Is that really your argument. I wish that was a strawman but it doesn't seem to be.
I am not opposed to helping out poor people, I used to be one. However there are better ways to do it then with a mandate to landlords.
-
David Schneider 10/02/2008 3:41:00 AM
I agree that $402 for a 3-bedroom in this market is low enough to get me annoyed; I'm paying almost double that for a room in a lousy loft in the South Bronx. But the owners have an outrageous disregard for the welfare of their tenants and for the community in which they live. It strikes me as immoral, this new snatch-and-convert of multi-tenant dwellings into urban mansions. But more than its immorality, it does not, in the long run, make good economic sense. As we've seen on Wall Street, when the wealthy have free reign to exploit the less well-off, the exploitation ends up consuming itself.
If landowners insist upon having the right to play this way, I have a couple of suggestions:
1) Okay, you can buy out the building for single-family use. But you have to demolish the building and start anew. Sorry, those are my rules in David's Fantasy New York.
2) At the very least, ye land-barons, accept a doubling of your property tax, which then goes to improved public transportation. Your worker ants have to get to Brooklyn from their hovels in south Philly *somehow.*
3) Every single-family mansion must make an outlay for battlements, arrow-slits, boiling-oil platforms, ballistae towers and moats with drawbridge and portcullis. Because we in New York want to make sure you're protected when the peasants revolt, as they inevitably do when they're reduced to such feudal conditions.
-
sam 10/02/2008 3:25:00 AM
You people are absolutely despicable. You have to think of this situation through someone else's perspective and not just your own. The people who live in the building have lived their for years and that is why their apartments are rent-stabilized. They couldn't possibly be "stealing" from their landlords because that's what they have been paying for years. For the most part the people living in this building would not be able to afford to live there if the rent was higher; so would you like to picture families kicked out on the street so some hipster scum can build their ridiculous "dream home". Instead of being blinded by your blatant jealousy, how about you start campaigning for the reinstatement of rent stabilization and control!
-
bob 10/02/2008 2:29:00 AM
These tenents are theives plain and simple. This nice couple owns the building. It is their choice not to renew the lease. They aren't using baseball bats to force people out. Politicians are always so generous with other peoples property. Mitchell-lama was voluntary, rent controll is coerision. I am sorry this women can no longer afford to live in that neighborhood, but that is not the new owners fault.
-
matt 10/02/2008 2:18:00 AM
People who live in rent controlled apartments are stealing. Not only from the landlords, who should be free to do what they choose with thier properties, but from the rest of us new yorkers, who pay higher rents as a result from the limited supply of apartments.
I didn't always feel this way, I grew up poor and worked like hell to get ahead, my parents and I lived in crappy east new york for most of my childhood, the rent was affordible. I am sorry that desirable places have high rents but that isn't unfair, its life.
-
James 10/01/2008 7:53:00 PM
$402 for a THREE bedroom apartment? In New York? No wonder Suarez doesnt want to move out! I'd pretend to be disabled and make death threats too!
