Gladstone.
I wonder what a $7000/month apartment looks like in the West Village.
Scarier than a horror movie.
Gladstone.
Guess who will NOT EVER RENT to this loser???
The landlord should have engaged in a little “self-help” and relocated this tenant to the Hudson River.
A Biden voter if there ever was one.
Now it was July, and Russell settled on a strategy of stubborn, sunny denial. “Good morning girls, Happy Friday!” she texted on the 5th, as if she hadn’t just told them to leave. “Another beautiful day. Please let me know when you can get me the July payment.” Gladstone ignored her. On the 15th, Russell called a peace summit on the couch, saying that she had a “compassionate solution” — to offer July and August free if Gladstone signed an agreement to leave by August 31. Clearly, Gladstone didn’t have the money, Russell reasoned with herself, and she and Bajada could handle being out $4,000 if it meant avoiding any more confrontation. (Or more fees — the lawyer she consulted told her an eviction would cost thousands of dollars and could take up to a year.) Russell shared her own woes, including her mother and Bajada’s health issues, and Gladstone described how her ex-husband had filed for emergency custody, embroiling her and Lily in an expensive court case that made her miss work. “It feels like this crazy novel,” Gladstone lamented. “Is this a great person who messes up here and there,” she said of her former husband, “or is this a bad person? It’s really hard to tell.”But Gladstone did not sign. Instead, the conversation seemed to embolden her in her campaign to occupy the 14-by-21-foot living room. She started planting Lily, out of school for the summer, in front of the TV for hours. When Russell asked to watch The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,Gladstone said the movies were educational, mandated by Lily’s custody lawyer. (One was the Dustin Hoffman–Meryl Streep divorce drama Kramer vs. Kramer.) Their dynamic became excruciatingly petty. At one point, Russell retaliated by hiding the remote in her purse. And once, when Russell managed to stretch out on the couch, Gladstone came into the room and perched silently behind her on the windowsill. The bathroom became another zone of contention; Russell began brushing her teeth in the building’s laundry room because Gladstone would run into the bathroom as soon as she heard her get up. On August 1, after a month of nonpayment, Gladstone began urgently asking for a second set of keys, sending Russell a text so long it arrived as an attachment.
In Gladstone’s version of these events, it was Russell who was waging the campaign of terror. She wrote in the text: “You intentionally intimidated us and used what you know is our biggest vulnerability: our home and safety […] We didn’t owe anything we weren’t dirty we’re so clean and organized we’re respectful beyond reason.” Gladstone said Lily was “profoundly afraid” of Russell but that she was “trying to make it livable and peaceful so I remain (beyond) civil but am I showing her that people can treat you like that and you just smile and fake it?”
Though Gladstone and Lily had arrived with virtually no belongings (other than Happy), Russell realized by the end of the summer that they had taken over the living room. Where there had been just a couch, a few chairs, a desk, and the TV, now there were dozens of shopping bags, schoolbooks, paperwork, cleaning supplies, candles, and empty Amazon boxes filling the room. When Russell moved her TV into her bedroom, Gladstone fashioned its stand into an arts-and-crafts table.
Bajada, the legal owner of the apartment, was still out of the country, but she was insistent that they start eviction proceedings. On August 31, Russell, who has power of attorney, finally taped a 30-day eviction notice she had filled out at the courthouse to Gladstone’s door. (Though served correctly, the notice was ultimately filed wrong because Russell waited a day to mail it in.) Gladstone had taken to locking the door to their room — the apartment’s only route to the fire escape — from the inside, so Russell had to jimmy it open to remove some of her and Bajada’s things.
In response, Gladstone accused Russell of stealing $500 from her daughter. “Never touched your money,” she replied. “And what you are doing is considered harassment and extortion.” She had never seen cash in the room, much less the “neat stack” on the table Gladstone described. “Do not attempt to turn this back on us,” Gladstone responded. “You are not the victim here, Heidi. Give it all back. What you did is atrocious, and this is just the latest version.” She texted repeatedly about it for two weeks, threatening to call the police. “What you’ve done was illegal and intentionally disturbing. Provide the list of people who broke into our room along with you,” the messages say. She also accused Russell of taking their paintbrushes and leaving “behind something that has caused major rashes ever since that night.”
Russell started to feel like she was going crazy. She had Googled Gladstone before, but not exhaustively — she’d once found an associated person with the last name “Klein” and addresses in Pittsburgh — and didn’t want to pay for a background check. Sometime in September, going on the third month, it occurred to Russell that Gladstone could be using another name. Searching for “Katherine Klein,” she pulled up an address on Christopher Street.
One morning, Russell made her way over. She was stunned to see that the ground-level apartment of the prewar condo building was just steps away from her own. After chatting with a tenant, she got an email from a former resident of the building who confirmed that she knew Gladstone. Russell and the woman, who turned out to be Gladstone’s ex-girlfriend, met up. For Russell, their conversation was like falling down a rabbit hole. She learned that she was not the first person in the West Village to have had trouble kicking Gladstone out. She was just the latest New Yorker with a room for rent on whom Gladstone had worked a convincing routine, in the city in which she has an absolute fixation on living for free.
The punishment inflicted on the property owner was over three years of H-ll.
What sort of justice system leaves a person such as Gladstone unpunished? The only way New York City sustains itself is through a constant inflow of immigrants who do not know any better, and through constant graft and crime.
In the three years living there, Gladstone — who has a pending 2019 criminal case for forgery and grand larceny after allegedly stealing an ex’s credit card to pay for hotel rooms — paid only a single month’s rent.
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Can’t imagine why her husband left her. She seems like a keeper. As in keep her away from me.
If you want to be a landlord, DO NOT be one in a Blue City, much less a Blue State. And if you’re city/state changes color, SELL OUT before they have a chance to dish out their punishment to you.
can she sues the witch for back rent? garnish her wages or whatever?
All New Yorkers should be aware of the law that permits someone to become an official resident of an apartment after 30 days of living there, regardless of whether or not a written or even an oral agreement was made and regardless of whether any money has changed hands.
In this world, a visitor who stays 31 days can become impossible to remove.
I assume this was passed in order to alleviate the overwhelming homeless problem, which in turn was partly created by the law that NYC must house any homeless person during the night.
Now they are overwhelming our hotels, ordering room service when they are hungry. Thousands have arrived, thanks to Bidey Boy.
The US Open started a few days ago. I wonder where everyone is staying. Lots of people with big suitcases around but where do they go to sleep?
Where are Moose and Rocko when you really, really need them?
Bet the landlord still votes democrat.