HAMILTON HEIGHTS — Enraged tenants are accusing a woman of turning two apartments into her personal piggybank by subletting them for nearly double the actual rent.
According to the tenants, their landlady Meng Liu collects more than $4,000 a month for each apartment even though the actual rent is $2,600 for one and $2,500 for the other, according to management company Alma Realty.
“They are doing something illegal, this isn’t just taking advantage,” tenant Wenbin Dong, a PhD candidate at City College, said. “What happens in this apartment is not a trick, it is a business.”
Liu gave her tenants phony one-bedroom leases in two three-bedroom apartments at 476 W. 141st St., he added.
Jim Meyer, 50, a trained actor who moved to Hamilton Heights after his girlfriend died of cancer this spring, found the apartment on Craigslist. It advertised a large three-window bedroom with photos of a recently renovated kitchen and bathroom for $900.
A man named Yayun “Jerry” Zhang shows potential renters the apartment and gives them a one-room lease — for anywhere between $700 and $940 — and Liu collects the rent through a Chase bank account, Meyer said.
The pair run the apartments 23 and 33 like a hotel or dormitory. Each room comes with a desk, chair and mattress. If someone moves out, they are replaced in days. Most of the tenants in the apartments are graduate students at Columbia and City College.
“When a room becomes vacant, Jerry comes in and shows the apartment,” Meyer said. “He handles the business. Meng Liu is a wildcard; no one knows who she is.”
None of the tenants of apartment 23 have ever seen Liu in person. Although Liu is listed as the landlord of the lease she does not own the apartment.
Although she doesn't live there, Liu is the tenant of record at apartment 33, where she and her roommates pay $2,600, according to Alma Realty.
Neither Liu nor Zhang responded to phone calls or emails with questions about the apartments on West 141st Street.
The management company said they were unaware that Liu was subletting two apartments until DNAinfo told them about the one-bedroom leases.
“This is news to us,” said Anthony Novella, Alma Realty's general council. “We do not permit subletting of this nature in our buildings.”
Subleasing the unit is a clear violation of the lease. The management company will try to resolve the issue amicably with Liu but they are prepared to go to housing court, he added.
While Alma Realty declined to name the tenants of record for apartment 23 because of privacy concerns, they said Liu is not the landlord and the $4,200 per month the five roommates are paying is more than the $2,500 Alma is charging the current tenant of that unit.
Meyer and his roommates found out about what they are calling a "rent scam" with the help of Edwin Torres, the president of the building’s tenant association. Torres started the association in July in order to hold their landlord accountable and make basic repairs like fixing the lock on the front door (which has been repaired) and correcting the building’s 157 violations with HPD.
"There are educated people living in these apartments," Torres said. "One of them is studying to be a doctor, another is a PhD candidate for engineering. Anybody can get taken advantage of like this."
Part of the motivation behind organizing the tenants was to get every apartment to check their rent history to see if anyone was being overcharged.
The rent history showed that in 2012, the most recent year the rent was registered, apartment 23 was rent stabilized and the rent was $1,995. When they started doing the math, things didn’t add up, according Dong.
The five of them pay $4,200 to Liu for the apartment every month. If the tenant of record is only paying the $2,500 Alma is charging them, Liu is making a monthly profit of $1,700. That adds up to $20,400 a year and double that if you add the five bedrooms from apartment 33.
Novella said both of the units are no longer rent stabilized.
The building’s property manager said that subletting the units without their consent is a violation of the lease and the tenants of record will likely be evicted.
It is unclear what will happen to Meyer, Dong, and the eight other people renting from Liu.
“It seems like they are innocent victims,” said Nick Conway, the building’s property manager. “My action would be against (Liu).”
The tenants are looking into filing rent overcharge claims with the state. Mayer stopped paying rent in October.
In September he sent Liu and email asking for a $2,000 cash refund and a reduced rent of $500 per month. Liu responded by asking him to leave his room.
“Move out and because I am moving back,” she wrote in an email to Meyer obtained by DNAinfo. “There is no right for you to live in my apartment if I move back.”
