Landlords Pay off Former Tenants

By Jorge Casuso

April 7 -- Two apartment owners who refused to let their tenants return to a building they reopened after going out of the rental business have paid the displaced tenants $22,050 in “fines,” City officials announced Monday.

The landlords’ attorney, however, challenged the use of the word “fines,” saying it was a routine payment made without any pressure from the City.

The tenants were evicted after Ross Vaisburd, the former owner of the seven-unit rent-controlled building at 1330 Tenth Street, used the Ellis Act to shut down the building, which he deeded last year to a company controlled by his friend, Daniel Smith, said Deputy City Attorney Adam Radinsky.

When the owners filed a notice with the City that they intended to re-rent the units, the Rent Control Board notified the former tenants, who “promptly sent certified letters stating their intent to return to their old apartments,” Radinsky said.

Although evicted tenants have the right under State law to return to their former units at the original rent level, Radinsky said, the owners refused to sign for the letters or claim them at the post office.

Under the Ellis law, owners who fail to re-rent to their former tenants after proper notice are subject to pay them six times the monthly rent, Radinsky said. The displaced tenants - who had been paying between $400 to $1,200 a month for the one-bedroom units -- were paid between $2,400 and $7,200 each, Radinsky said.

But Rosario Perry, who represents the landlords, tells a very different story. Vaisburd, he said, had offered to pay the tenants the relocation fees, but didn’t hear back from them.

“They’re not fines,” Perry said. “It’s just the normal amount you pay if you don’t want he tenants to move back in.”

The tenants sent the letters stating their intention to return to their units to a P.O. Box and requested a certified receipt, Perry said. Since Vaisburd was out of the country for three months, the letters sat unopened. “There was no one to sign them,” he said of the receipts.

Perry said he was surprised that most of the tenants didn’t send the letters to him when they received no response. The two who did, Perry said, were paid off.

Perry said he was also surprised that the City didn’t contact him until recently. “The City Attorneys office sat on the complaints for four to five months,” he said.

“They sent us the envelopes, and we sent them the money,” Perry said. “When we saw the problem, we resolved it immediately.”

The current fines were not the first Vaisburd and Smith have paid for violating laws protecting tenants' rights. In May 2001, they paid the City a fine of $20,000 rather than face charges brought by the City Attorney's Office for allegedly harassing a tenant in an effort to force him out of another building.

In that case, Vaisburd and Smith were accused, among other things, of refusing to accept rent payments at their post office box made by the tenant -- who was paying the lowest rent in the building --, then trying to evict him for non-payment of rent.