Are NEP Tenants Being Frightened Into Not Speaking Out?
By Roselene Dolce

On Feb. 17, Councilmember Bill Perkins (D-Manhattan) invited members of Action for Community Empowerment and representatives of the Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program to tour a few of the city-owned buildings that NEP has taken over for reconstruction.

This was a rare opportunity, as ACE has met with Councilmember Perkins four times in the last few years demanding an oversight hearing on NEP and its policies, and an investigation of landlords using threats of eviction, harassment, and intimidation to keep tenants from speaking out about conditions in their buildings.

I was one of the three NEP tenants who participated in the tour along with Nia Mason of ACE. The first building we visited, 224 West 140th St., has been rehabilitated. It has 18 units, 12 of which are occupied. The entrepreneurs bragged about how nice it was compared to the way it was under city ownership. We walked two flights up, and one of the entrepreneurs rudely knocked on a tenant’s door in order to show us her apartment. The woman was in her pajamas and half asleep when she opened her door. I was shocked by the way they encroached into her apartment at 9:25 in the morning, unannounced, unexpected, and accompanied by 10 strangers taking a tour.

We visited another building, at 151 West 140th St. between Seventh and Lenox avenues. This building has 55 units, 47 of which are occupied, but has not been refurbished. When NEP entrepreneurs take over a building, they are supposed to make emergency repairs to the tenants’ apartments in order to make the place livable before reconstruction begins. Yet this is not what usually happens. Most tenants must continue to pay their rents despite the awful conditions. If they withhold their rent, they are served an eviction notice. I know many tenants who have done their own repairs because the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development has neglected to do them.

The entrepreneur for 151 West 140th St., Mr. Morrison, told us that all of the tenants in the building have had repairs done in their apartments. I suggested that we knock on the doors of two or three tenants and ask if this was true. Councilmember Perkins said this was a good idea, but he was in a rush to another meeting. He told me to ask his aide. I did, but she was surrounded by five entrepreneurs and NEP directors assuring her and Nia Mason that NEP is a great program and that no tenants have been mistreated.

While this heated discussion was going on in the lobby, I asked a few tenants who were passing by if they had had repairs done in their apartments. Some were afraid to say anything and kept walking. All five of the ones who did talk told me they needed repairs and had not had them done. One of the tenants, a senior citizen not in good health, invited me to her third-floor apartment. There was a leak inside the walls of her bedroom and bathroom. The paint was bubbled on the walls and the floors were constantly wet. She said she has been calling and writing to NEP to fix the problem, but to no avail. She said she tried not to get aggravated because of her failing health, but that dealing with her landlord has not helped.

When I tried to tell the NEP directors that tenants had just told me their apartments were not livable, they all jumped on me like white on rice. I told them I just saw one of the apartments with my own eyes. They told me the tenants were lying. Then Mr. Morrison took the same tenants aside and asked them if it wasn’t true that he’d personally met with each one of them and made sure they got repairs. Except for the woman I had visited, the answer was yes. So who was lying? What I saw in the eyes of those tenants was fear and intimidation. Most of them were afraid to speak out. They did not want to become a target and end up being displaced or evicted. I could clearly see the fear because for three years I was one of the tenants who suffered in silence.

As the elderly woman whom I had visited was leaving to go to a doctor’s appointment, I pointed her out to Mr. Morrison, who was still debating in the lobby. I told them that I had visited her apartment just four minutes before and seen the leaky walls. All of a sudden, he and the others started questioning her as if she were a criminal on trial. I was outraged. I said that she was not lying and they should stop intimidating her. I asked them to go see the conditions for themselves. They kept insisting that they had fixed her ceiling not too long ago. She replied, “Yes, you did, but the problem has gotten worse and you have not done anything about it.” They did not like that at all. They kept questioning her intimidatingly, requesting the same things over and over. Nonetheless, she stood her ground.

The tenants fear these men in expensive suits who are coming in and taking over the buildings they have called home for years, and who are promising them that they will be returning to a brand-new building after reconstruction. The tenants usually believe them. At least, they want to believe them. They are tired of living in deteriorated, drug-infested, abandoned buildings, so they see these entrepreneurs as gods. They are afraid of what might happen if they challenge them. But NEP does not want low-income working families back in those buildings. They want to throw out as many tenants as possible in order to rent the apartments at market rate.

The so-called tour was very informative because it allowed me to see where I was three years ago. All the threatening, harassing and intimidating techniques brought back very bad memories, yet I was glad that I went. I saw for myself why the tenants are frightened. When I was going through it, I felt so powerless, with nowhere to turn for help.

The assistant director of NEP, George Armstrong, tried to make light of the suffering I endured. He accused me of being a tenants’ advocate because I was supporting the frail woman they picked on. He asked me whether I was happy with the outcome of my apartment situation. I told him the point was that HPD/NEP should never have put me through that hardship in the first place. HPD never took responsibility for their buildings. They never cared about the people living in them. Then NEP came in and started harassing tenants, refusing to give them documents in writing, shipping them to other dumps and shelters.