Posted on 06/14/2012 7:56:50 AM PDT by JoeProBono
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – How would you like to not pay your rent, year after year, and get away with it?
A Brooklyn woman has done just that for the past six years.
Artist Margaret Maugenest, 60, stopped paying rent for several years, but instead of getting evicted, the state’s highest court said she was justified, CBS 2′s John Slattery reported.
“Yeah, I feel very good about that, John. I feel very relieved,” Maugenest told Slattery.
Since 1984, Maugenest has lived in a loft — a converted manufacturing building on Nevins Street in Gowanus – with rent of less than 600 a month.
Several years ago, however, Maugenest began withholding rent because over no maintenance and safety concerns.
“The wooden pillars in the basement were rotting,” Maugenest said.
Under the city’s 1982 Loft Law, former commercial buildings could be rented to residential tenants if safety issues were met. But this tenant says a gas leak in the building wasn’t fixed — it was just shut off.
“We didn’t have gas for about a year-and-a-half,” Maugenest said. “That meant I couldn’t cook.”
She also said she had no hot water.
After six years of non-payment with the landlord trying to evict her, she was forced to pay 2 1/2 years of court-ordered rent. The landlord won two lower rulings, but now, the state’s highest court said that since the landlord missed deadlines for building improvement, there’s no eviction, and back rent can’t be collected.
The landlord’s lawyer, David Berger, counsel for Chazon LLC, citing an overburdened Loft Board, said, “”The result is that the tenant may live rent free in a very large apartment, that she obviously feels safe in, under the guise that she is just trying to get the Landlord to make her apartment safe, with no end or limit.”
Maugenest gets to keep the back rent for the past 6 1/2 years which amounts to roughly $35,000.
Call it what you want but it's the law in Indiana. One must vacate the premises to maintain a claim of constructive eviction.
I say a deal is a deal and this landlord should be expected to live up to the deal.
He frustrated the front door closure mechanisms with nothing more than a chain (prohibited under UBC) and the cops were delayed in getting into the bulding to save the students.
UBC is always something to check out to see what more you need to do.
Metal pans! A tea kettle? Put kettle on stove, bring to a boil, pour hot water in pan. Add cold water to desired temperature. Take washcloth and a little soap. Wash up.
There was a time not so long ago when that was all we had. Then once every week or two, we had a large galvanized tub where we enlarged on the smaller metal pan/tea kettle method.
Yep. Times wuz hard.
Yes but you can pass on a rent-controlled apartment to someone else (family, friend, or person who wants to pay you a bunch to get a rent-controlled apartment) and fulfill that requirement.
Market conditions in the region are different in the many sub-markets.
That’s Pittsburgh.
The LL didn’t live up to the terms of the contract, but she’s a stinky, out of work artist. Artists are always libs. For that reason alone, I’m positive that she’s full of BS. So I side with the LL.
She paid the rent up until several months after the building ceased to be maintained. So in her market, no you wouldn’t. It sucks to be you in a municipality where compliance with your obligations is a prerequisite for legal standing in a dispute of this type.
The LL apparently had not increased the rent between 1984 and 2003, when the tenant started withholding rent. No reason to think the LL would have started increasing rent after that, and there's no suggestion that the LL attempted to do so.
Are you suggesting that the tenant should have been required to continue paying rent, but that the LL should NOT have been required to perform necessary maintenance and repairs? If not, how else would you ensure that the LL does the maintenance/repairs?
#35
$35,000 back rent (or at least the court award of not having to pay.) Be generous and figure just 6 years back to 2006 and you get about $486/month....you are an idiot if you think a well-maintained Bronx loft over 1000 sq ft. costs only this much...I don’t know what to tell you....I’m done...you can do/say what you want.
——Artists are always libs.-——
I’m an artist (an illustrator), and I tell my girls, “Never marry an artist —they’re all nuts.”
It took a while, but eventually they picked up on the contradiction.
Anyway, here’s how it goes. The wackier the art, the crazier/more leftist the artist. Those who can, lean conservative.
I was once told, by a donk, that I could not be conservative because I am an artist.
I have made a living with art/craft since 1978. I have won awards. I have always paid taxes and my own health insurance, which is now my supplemental. I have been told my studio is too clean.
It is much more difficult to be considered an artist by liberals if you are either a realist or an artisan producing something functional.
-—It is much more difficult to be considered an artist by liberals if you are either a realist or an artisan producing something functional——
Yup. In the “art community,” the nuts hold all the cards.
I went to a local artist’s gallery and was told that my work was “too commercial” for their gallery. I guess they didn’t want anything that might sell. That was enough for me.
I started my own company and sell direct. No way am I going to kiss some libtard’s butt.
She had innoculated the trash chutes in the building with cockroaches (one of her better known tricks for screwing with the tenants).
Like your typical slumlord she imagined everybody she ran into liked to live in a slum so she was turning our modest but serviceable apartment complex into her kind of slum with typical slum tenants.
It was a hard battle but we attracted an investor who bought up the place and turned it into a co-op.
BTW, remember when Leona got in trouble with taxes? Half the tenants of my building were either federal police, embassy employees or IRS lawyers.
Well, just darned!
Slumlords should always check on their tenants bonafides before messing with them.
Right on and WTG! You know, back in the day, graphic arts were called “commercial art”. Use that term today and people think it is some sort of insult.
Some years ago, a very wealthy lib *expressionist* moved into the area. His wife does *feminist art*. I was told:”Now, there is a _real_ artist here.” However, I became friends with the new folks and when I told them this quote, the wife laughed and said:”At least you make money!”
My reply was: “I think that is the problem.”
-—WTG! You know, back in the day, graphic arts were called “commercial art”.-——
I remember that. I thought it was the coolest thing —making a living creating art?! Wow! Really?!
Who knew that making money was evil?
But the landlord didn't provide heat or hot water, as obligated. I wouldn't pay my rent either.
I discovered some years ago that making money was only evil for conservatives.
An actual quote from a progressive dupe:”They make money and they already have money? That is unfair!” This same idiot opined that lottery and other gambling wins should only go to those “that need it.” By their definition, of course. Another one told me recently, with a straight face, that is was more *humane* to tax and cap incomes of high salary CEOs, considering how *little* teachers, such as himself, make. Pointing out that the taxes paid by the corporation and the CEO provide the teachers’ salaries was ignored. Discussing the comparative value of the two work products, given the current total failure of public education, was ignored. All that mattered was the progressive’s ability to assign a moral label that made their argument unassailable, in their own mind.
Yes, of course, that was in Wisconsin before Walker won the recall.
There was all this umbrage taken at the amount of out-of-state money Walker raised, when my District’s Congresscritter, Ron Kind, routinely raises his campaign cash from outside the district and the State. Mention Kind and progressives respond with the deer-in-the-headlights stare.
They simply hate anyone who provides for themselves and doesn’t *share enough* with them. As for artists, we all know what is elevated as art and what is sneeringly dismissed.
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