Cached from The Tribeca Trib,
http://www.tribecatrib.com/archives/newsjune06/dutch.htm

Tenants: 'Phony Demolition' Behind Eviction

By Carl Glassman
JUNE 2, 2006

Though his arthritic hands are twisted into fists, Burt Hasen still crafts delicate, figurative drawings in pen and ink. Suffering from bad circulation that led to the amputation of a leg five years ago, the 84-year-old artist spends his days in a wheelchair, often sketching by the window light in his studio at 7 Dutch Street, between Fulton and John Streets.

So it has been for the last 33 years of his long and well-regarded career that Hasen has painted and drawn in the Lower Manhattan home where he lives with his wife and fellow artist, Mary Hasen, 72. And so it's been, too, that Harumi Ando, 62, a photographer and video artist, has lived and worked in his loft on the top floor of the five-story walkup for 32 years, and Barbara Mayfield, 70, a former public television producer and artist, has resided on the third floor for the past 20 years.
Feeling safely ensconced in rent-regulated apartments, the tenants received notice this spring that their leases would not be renewed. Like a growing number of rent-stabilized tenants in the city, they live in a building targeted for demolition by their owners. A provision in the state's rent laws allows landlords who want to demolish a building to evict rent-stabilized tenants who are 62 or older—an age that is protected from other types of owner takeovers. "It's terrible when you're older and you have such insecurity," said Mary Hasen. The tenants at 7 Dutch Street are appealing the non-renewal of their leases to the state's Department of Housing and Community Renewal (D.H.C.R.). They claim that the landlord is using renovation in the guise of demolition to skirt state regulations and rid the building of its low-rent, elderly tenants. The owner is Michael Greenburger, an associate acquisitions director at Time Equities, Inc., a company with real estate holdings of more than 18 million square feet in 25 states, according to its Web site. Time Equities, Inc., is headed by Francis Greenburger, Michael Greenburger's uncle. Francis Greenburger is a patron of the arts and founder of an artist retreat in Omni, N.Y. He serves on the boards of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Alliance for Downtown New York and each year gives a cash prize, named for himself, to under-recognized artists.

A number of artists, including Mayfield and Ando from 7 Dutch Street, joined a press conference on the steps of City Hall last month. They stood behind Assemblywoman Deborah Glick and City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, who were promoting their recent sponsorship of state and city legislation that would help protect tenants from what they call "phony demolitions."

Glick has proposed amending the Rent Stabilization Code to define demolition as razing a building to the ground, and to mandate a hearing on evictions. Mendez's bill would require an owner with a non-renewal application before D.H.C.R. to notify the community board and councilmember in the affected tenants' district. Tenants like those at 7 Dutch Street are closely watching a case involving artists and longtime tenants at 131 Duane Street, above City Hall Restaurant. The proposed demolition of that building would leave intact the facade and the restaurant, which is owned by one of the building's landlords, Henry Meer.

D.H.C.R. approved Meer's plans and the tenants now have an appeal before the agency. If they lose, they likely will take their case to court.

Like the plan filed for 131 Duane Street, the 7 Dutch Street demolition calls for keeping the building's facade and structural skeleton intact, although it would include demolishing the ground floor. According to Greenburger's application to the city's Buildings Department, the new construction would cost less than $1 million. (The building was purchased in 2001 for just under $1 million.) A new loft in the building would likely sell for more than $2 million.

Arlene Boop, the Hasens' lawyer, argues that the Greenburger plan amounts to, at most, a "substantial rehabilitation," not demolition. The Buildings Department says that demolition entails taking down more than half the facade.

"I don't see how the [D.H.C.R.] can define demolition as something less than or equal to that," Boop said. "The Buildings Department has a definition of demolition and I would pick that definition."

Greenburger's lawyer, Mitchell Kossoff, said that state rulings are what matter. "The fact that people who are not proponents of that section [of the state code] point to other city regulations is irrelevant," he said. "It is not how the city defines demolition, it's how the state defines it."

Kossoff said that while state statute provides no "exact reading" of what is meant by demolition, the definition has been determined in decisions by the courts and D.H.C.R. Those rulings, he said, construe demolition as removing the building's interior "so much so that you can stand in the basement and see the sky."

That interpretation, tenant advocates say, goes back to a time when the state wanted to encourage owners to replace decrepit, unsafe buildings with livable housing stock. Today, they say, D.H.C.R. subverts the intent of the law when it approves evictions based on the destruction of structurally sound buildings.

"When you said you could see sky it meant floors had fallen though and there were holes in the ceiling," said Arthur Rhine, the lawyer for Barbara Mayfield.

Before filing his demolition plans, Greenburger tried to remove Harumi Ando by saying that he wanted Ando's top-floor apartment for his own use. A "personal use" provision in the law allows a building owner to evict rent-stabilized tenants if they are younger than 62. At the time, Ando was 59, and was the only tenant in the building young enough to qualify for eviction.

"Two days before Christmas [Greenburger] called and asked if I was thinking of moving," Ando recalled. "He said, 'I'm going to be taking over your place.'"

"You know how you feel when those things happen," continued Ando, who cares for his 94-year-old mother in his apartment. "Everything just caves in on you. You can't breathe, you can't eat, you can't think. You're just numb."

Ando said he ran out of money fighting the eviction, and declared bankruptcy. It was only after he pointed out that he had diabetes, a disability that would shield him from eviction, that Greenburger withdrew his application, according to Ando.

With no money to pay for a lawyer, Ando said his only legal help in this latest battle with Greenburger comes from an agency that helps seniors fill out forms. But all the tenants at 7 Dutch Street said the uncertainty over their future is taking a toll.

"I've been depressed," said Mary Hasen. "I've been losing papers. I can't concentrate on what I'm doing, I can't make any artwork on my own, and it's affected my husband's artwork."

So far, the tenants, who pay about $850 a month, have rejected buyout offers from Greenburger. Those offers—which Arthur Rhine, Mayfield's lawyer, put at between $200,000 and $225,000 for his client—far exceed the formula mandated by the state to relocate tenants, but, the tenants say, are still inadequate in the city's housing market.

"To go where, to Bushwick, to Nairobi?" asked Rhine. "I don't know where you go with that money these days, but it ain't downtown Manhattan."

"By the time I pay my lawyer and taxes it's not a lot of money to start moving," said Mary Hasen. "And where would we go?"

In an e-mail response to questions from the Trib, Greenburger said he was surprised by the rejection of his offer. "I thought tenants would welcome a 6 figure++ buyout, with the opportunity to relocate and upgrade to another apartment within Manhattan," he wrote. He said he assumed that Burt Hasen, who is severely handicapped, "would be anxious to relocate to a handicap accessible apartment. I thought their existing living situation was inadequate and they would benefit from the process."

The Hasens said they rejected an offer from Greenburger of a one-bedroom uptown. Burt Hasen said he needs to keep many of his paintings with him and a one-bedroom is too small. He said he fears that the only place he will be able to move to is outside the city.

"I don't want to leave New York," said the artist, a recipient of a prestigious Fulbright grant and Pollock-Krasner Fellowship. "My friends can't come visit me and I'll be all alone and isolated. So I'm in this big dilemma."

Seated for an interview in the Hasens' apartment, the tenants spoke glumly of their situation. But Harumi Ando and Barbara Mayfield, who had attended the City Hall tenant rally a few days earlier, seemed at least pleased to have found allies.

"I just want you to know," Ando said, turning to Burt Hasen and throwing an arm around his neighbor of 32 years, "there are people out there fighting this thing."