Posted on 03/01/2023 6:26:46 PM PST by Right Wing Vegan
He’s called the mayor of Benkard.
Liebert Galloway, better known to his friends as Lee, had lived in his Benkard Street apartment in Newburgh for the last 20 years.
“We get along like one family," Galloway said. "I never walk on the street without somebody calling to me.”
Sitting out on his front stoop, willing to talk to anyone and everyone, he was a staple there. But now he lives in a hotel, blocks away. He’s already had to switch rooms because he found blood on one of the blankets.
His former apartment was recently purchased by New York City-based developer Thaer Abuqare and his company, Imperium Construction. The address even has its own Instagram page, laying out plans for remodeling.
Lee said his lease was allowed to expire and he wasn’t offered a new one, leaving him in the hotel while he looks for a new place. State law doesn’t mandate new landlords to offer a renewal lease to existing tenants.
Abuqare said that notice was given a year and a half in advance of the remodels, which couldn’t happen while people lived there.
“I said that I would assist him in if he would like to move his stuff," Abuqare said. "Only because the building itself has structural issues and the renovation can’t be done with anybody in it, because the main structure has to be, I’m a structural engineer, the main structure itself has to be fixed.”
An eviction moratorium in New York greatly decreased the number of evictions between March 2020 and the beginning of 2022. According to data from New York Courts, there were nearly 194,000 evictions in 2022, up from 69,000 the year prior. Before the pandemic, the state saw more than 260,000 evictions in 2019.
Gov. Kathy Hochul's office said it's committed to expanding the state’s Tenant Protection Unit and increasing funds for legal services to prevent evictions.
Brahvan Ranga, political director of grassroots advocacy group For The Many, said more needs to be done, namely, passing a statewide Good Cause Eviction law.
“Local leaders have stood up for tenants' rights, and now those laws are being challenged," Ranga said. "So now it's up to the state Legislature to take action and pass this law. It would protect tenants from arbitrary evictions, protect them from predatory rent hikes and just give them that sense of security in their homes that they can live without fear.”
Ryan McCall, an attorney who often represents landlords in housing disputes, said a Good Cause law would create good protections for tenants, but some considerations for landlords need to be put in place.
“It becomes difficult for landlords who have tenants that are longtime problems, meaning that they pay their rent but there's constantly issues," McCall said. "Whether it's a noise, complaints, things of that nature.”
Lee will spend the next few days, maybe a week at the hotel while looking for permanent housing. He said more help is needed for people facing eviction.
“Suffering bad with this sky-high rent," Galloway said. "Now, the landlord kicked me out, I can’t go to my building. Imagine that rent being jacked up when they finish remodeling it.”
The governor’s office also said the state has provided more than $2.8 billion in relief to more than 225,000 tenants through the Emergency Rental Assistance Program.
I guess 18 months isn't enough notice. How can the tenant act surprised in any way???
If his lease expired, and he doesn’t have a new one, what right does he have to be there at all?
Haha yep.
Don’t you know that ALL landlords are “entitled and privileged”..whatever the #### that means.
Making good money through hard work and buying buildings to rent is frowned upon by the left...unless they’re the landlords.
Bernie Sanders would burn his tenants out if he had a building and they didn’t pay.
Hypocrites...the entire left.
They can publish a guide: How to make a tight rental market impossible.
He’s not an illegal alien ...
= social services pay their rent, and meanwhile they operate weed grows, crack houses, brothels, and guests break in to neighboring units.
the man just upped my rent last night cause whitey is on the moon
no hot water, no toilets, no lights but whitey is on the moon
I wonder why he’s uppin’ me? cause whitey is on the moon
well I was givin’ him 50 dollars a week and now whitey is on the moon
Must be Gil Scott-Herron Night, here on FR, I referenced “Johannesburg” on the “South Africa in Freefall” thread.
So sick of this “tenant rights” garbage.
What about landlord rights?
What about just plain natural rights? You know, the right of people to handle their property the way they wish?
Because Communism.
If you want more secure housing, buy, don’t rent. I can’t imagine wanting to be a renter.
Many folks are poor.
Just plain poor. Not bad people, drug addicts, criminals . . . Just poor.
Many are simply not competitive in the job market.
Where do they live? What do they eat?
When they get sick, how do they get help?
Places like “The Burgh” have been a mess for decades. Orange County dumps their problem cases there, and in Middletown. Goobermints Section 8 pays double or triple actual market value rents for the poor, for a time. Without that largess, rents would be lower.
And Taxes in NYS are beyond anything non-New Yorkers could even have nightmares about. Property owners are squeezed between low income folks, astronomical taxes and regulations, and political tribes on both sides that use the poor as fodder in their power struggle
Lots of areas are now filled with new immigrants of various legal standings.
The former cheap rents have tripled.
Landlords who benefited from years of Goobermint supported rents are booting the old renters and modifying to get the new rent groups.
Poor folks priced out. Rent Control laws kicked in in NY when tenants were being dragged out, and locked out of their units back in the 70’s.
Ending the flood of unregulated immigration will help restore some sanity to the Low Rent market.
What do we do for our Fellow Citizens that are poor?
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