Washington Heights Landlady Tries to Evict Legal Tenants
By Jeanie Dubnau

Flerida Florentín, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, has been living with her daughter, Sofia Torres, for 10 years in an apartment at 540 W. 157th St. Florentín is 78 and suffers from heart disease and a nervous condition. In October 1998 Sofia Torres took a job as a child-care provider in Connecticut, leaving her three children with Florentín during the week and coming home on weekends.

As soon as the landlady, Mary Rodino, found out about this arrangement, she sent them a “Notice to Cure,” charging that they were violating their lease because Sofia Torres had moved out of her apartment and left an unknown person (Florentín) in it—and would be evicted unless the situation was corrected.

Rodino has harassed the tenants in 540 W. 157th St. for years. She has a reputation for not making repairs and for not offering leases to legal tenants in her other buildings in Washington Heights. She lost no time in trying to evict this family and soon sent them a holdover eviction notice. Legally, Florentin, as mother of the leaseholder, has the right to continue living in the apartment and also to have her name added to the lease. However, with the case in court, Torres had to quit her job because her mother was too nervous to go to court by herself. The women went to the Harlem Legal Aid offices, and were assigned a lawyer who convinced the judge to order the landlord to accept their rent. They began to pay their rent and thought the case was settled.

After about six months, however, the nightmare started all over again. Rodino’s lawyers had filed a motion to continue the case, and the judge granted it.

Sofia Torres is trying to hold down several jobs as a cleaning woman, and has been forced to go to numerous depositions where she is grilled by the landlady’s attorneys. Although she and her mother are in the United States legally, they have been repeatedly asked about their passports and for the passports of Torres’ children. They were asked to provide proof of where the children went to school, and asked whether the three children were “fathered by the same man?”

On June 23, Sofia and her mother appeared for a deposition at Rodino’s lawyer’s office, and were held there for two hours while the attorneys kept asking them the same questions over and over. Sofia became very nervous. She fell down and could not walk; she went to the bathroom because she felt like vomiting. Augusto Payano, a Riverside Edgecombe Neighborhood Association member who was there to provide some moral support, was thrown out of the office, amidst joking and laughter from the landlady and her lawyers.

Rodino first offered a new lease with a rent increase from $534 to $750. Recently she offered another lease at $610, more than three times the 4% renewal increase allowed by law for rent-stabilized tenants. Florentín is elderly and nervous, and her daughter cannot hold down a job because of the repeated legal appearances. She and her daughter have documentation that they both have been living in the apartment together for over 10 years—but if their landlady can pressure them into moving out, she can get a 20% vacancy increase.