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Judge Orders Landlord to Provide Electric Stoves After Months of No Gas

By Gwynne Hogan | August 2, 2016 4:39pm
 Residents of 36 Linden St. rallied in front of their building.
Residents of 36 Linden St. rallied in front of their building.
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Courtesy of St. Nick's Alliance

BUSHWICK — A housing court judge ordered a controversial landlord to provide full electric stoves to the residents of a Linden Street who haven't had cooking gas for seven months.

Tenants, who have been cooking on hot plates since Jan. 20, won a small victory Friday in an ongoing battle with Icon Realty Management, also known as Smicon Realty Management, according to the housing court settlement. 

Building residents said they've put up with a campaign of harassment in the form prolonged demolition, construction and heat and hot water shutoffs without notice, since the company took over at 36 Linden St. last September.

Icon started managing the building after it was purchased by an LLC last year for $10.5 million, property records show.

Soon after a woman wearing an NYPD T-shirt was going door to door, serving residents eviction papers, tenants said.

"They were just kind of serving everyone regardless," said resident Sarah Greenberg, 34, who'd asked the woman if she was a police officer. The woman has replied that she was just wearing her boyfriend's T shirt, but tenants suspected it was a thinly veiled effort to intimidate them.

Then the demolition began in several of the building's vacant apartments. Dust swirled around common areas, while bits of ceiling in two tenants' apartments collapsed during the construction, residents and tenant organizers said.

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"I would walk in every day and under my door was completely covered in dust," John Milligan, 27, who's lived in the building since 2012, "The whole front hallway was covered in dust.”

Then on Jan. 20, the cooking gas shut off in 12 units with no warning, court records show.

"I'm a student and I work full time. I end up getting take out a lot," said Nicole Denuccio, 28, who said Icon had given her a hot plate in the interim. "It's really hard to cook on just those two small burners."

Tenants also complained about getting stonewalled by the landlord for basic repairs to broken windows, leaks, and mold in their apartments. 

"They put all of their energy into getting people out as quickly as they could and renovate apartments as quickly as possible," said Denuccio.

A group of residents in the building formed a tenant association with tenant organizers at St. Nick's Alliance earlier this year and sued their landlord to restore cooking gas, court records show. 

On Friday a judge ordered the management company to replace their gas stoves with full electric stoves within a month, according to their attorney Brooklyn Legal attorney Adam Meyers and court records. 

But some residents have had enough. Milligan is moving out later this week, he said. 

“There wasn’t really a reason for me to move until all this other stuff started happening,” he said. “It’s so much hassle and what's next? I just don’t want to deal with it anymore."

Chris Coffey, a spokesman for Icon Realty Management  pointed out that the company had purchased the building with a number of serious safety issues and the Department of Buildings ordered the gas to be shut off during a safety inspection. 

"There is no doubt that the residents have been living with a hardship, and we regret that," Coffey said, adding that the company has done a number of repairs in the last 60 days including fixing windows, repainting bathroom walls, new flooring in some apartments. 

"We are confident that once the vital safety repairs and the building improvements are made, the entire building and all of its residents will be better off."