Housing Judge Backs JTS Tenants; Bars Eviction of at Least Ten Households
By Vajra Kilgour

Tenants at 515 and 521 West 122nd Street and their lawyer, Catharine A. Grad of Grad & Weinraub, have a significant victory to celebrate. Housing Court Judge Laurie L. Lau found that the Jewish Theological Seminary does not have a legal right to evict at least ten households of rent-stabilized tenants—the majority of whom are immigrants from Haiti—at the two buildings on West 122nd Street. The seminary has been trying for three years to force out long-term residents in order to make dormitory space for students. The decision will also stop the seminary from seeking to evict at least half a dozen other tenants at the buildings.

Under the rent stabilization code, in order to be able to evict the tenants, the seminary had to show that it owned the buildings before they moved in. But in fact, the seminary had transferred the buildings to a for-profit corporation shortly after acquiring them, probably in order to gain a tax benefit and shelter itself from liabilities. That for-profit corporation owned the buildings until April of 1983, by which time most of the tenants the seminary has been trying to evict had already moved in. Although the seminary argued that, despite the transfer, it was still the real owner of the buildings, Judge Lau ruled that it “may not avail itself of the benefits of a corporation and then invite the courts to pierce its [corporate] veil to its double benefit.”

The seminary’s original notices and petitions did not state that it owned the buildings when the tenants moved in, and were thus deemed “fatally defective” in Housing Court. The Appellate Term reversed that decision on appeal, but it continues to be litigated in the Appellate Division, with with Kenny Schaeffer of the Harlem Neighborhood Office of the Legal Aid Society representing the tenants.

The seminary stopped renewing leases in the fall of 1995, and began court proceedings in the fall of 1996, after a year in which both tenants and elected officials unsuccessfully attempted to persuade seminary administrators to agree to a negotiated solution.

The seminary recently offered leases to several tenants with especially strong cases. During the summer of 1998, several other tenants, who faced substantial legal obstacles in fighting their cases, accepted a modest settlement from the seminary and moved out. A family of seven that was forced to move out during the summer has still not found a home. The tenants do not believe that the seminary can win an appeal of Judge Lau’s decision. “The only way that they can ever win is if we give up—and we’re not going to give up,” said Jocelyne Daniel, co-chair of the tenants’ association.