Housing Advocates Rally for Displaced Bushwick Tenants Following Multiple Fires

Residents, local elected officials and housing advocates rallied on Friday to call on a private equity landlord of a Bushwick rental building to allow the city to investigate the property after several fires displaced tenants from their homes. 

Isabella Bastiani and Angel Kaba, residents of 441 Wilson Ave., said they were ordered to evacuate from their homes in March after several fires in their building. Despite many attempts to get their landlord, the Raisner Group, a private equity firm, to fix the building during and after the fires, the tenants say their requests fell on deaf ears. Now they suspect the company is renovating the apartments for new tenants that will pay higher rent, an example of tenant displacement and gentrification.

Elected officials are pushing the city to do more. City Council Member Sandy Nurse is not only trying to help the tenants deal with the "maze of bureaucracy" to secure housing as they continue to be locked out of their homes, but she is also considering drafting legislation to ban private equity firms from owning small homes and rent stabilized buildings. 

Private equity firms don’t have a stake in their communities and are using New York’s housing stock “as long term investments to seek profit and they want to maximize their profit," Nurse told BK Reader.

Evelyn Cruz, district director for U.S. House Representative Nydia Velázquez, said city agencies are failing to exercise their duties.

"They have all the tools in the box and they are not using the tools to protect our tenants," she said.

Officials from the offices of Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez, State Senator Julia Salazar and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said unpermitted renovation work should be halted, a comprehensive review of the work after the fires by the Department of Buildings and Housing and Preservation & Development was needed, and all displaced residents should be guaranteed to return to their homes. 

“We talk about expanding housing in New York City when they cannot even protect our existing tenants,” Cruz added. “We should have a right to know who are these landlords, who are these 'predator' equity investors because they are investors.”

Bastiani said she was forced to leave the building eight months ago after repeated electric fires and gas leaks, which caused the heat and hot water to be shut off.

“You don't realize what living without heat and hot water and power will do,” Bastiani said. “We were all losing weight. We were so anxious about everything.”

Despite Bastiani and Kaba calling the building’s management company, Taube Management, numerous times, help never came.

“They were pretending they were doing things,” Bastiani said. “Like sending us little blurbs about, ‘oh, we're getting somebody in to do this’ and then they wouldn't show up or it would be somebody that didn't actually have any licenses to do electrical work.”

The Raisner Group, under the name BK Immobilier LLC, was cited six times this year by the Department of Buildings for conducting electrical or construction work without a permit. The violations have racked up over $54,000 in fines. City HPD has also recorded over 140 violations on the property since the company took ownership in 2018.

Juan Mayancela, director of Community Organizing for Council Member Gutierrez, called on developers and landlords “to respect our tenants, you have to not neglect them, not harass them.”

Not only does Bastiani want a “livable” apartment but for “these rich people, to be taken down.”

“They're just taking advantage of people that don't have money,” she said.

The Brooklyn Reader reached out to Remy Raisner Rufenrach, who heads the Raisner Group and Taube Management, multiple times but did not receive a comment or response.

The Bushwick building is now padlocked and Kaba and Bastiani have been forced to seek shelter elsewhere. Kaba, who has a 7-year-old daughter and is a survivor of abuse, relocated to a homeless shelter.

“I don’t wish [this] on my worst enemy” Kaba said, describing the conditions of the shelter. “You don't have privacy, you don't have a personal life, you cannot have your own furniture, you have a curfew, you have to sign in and out… I want to have my life back.”