They Were Promised an End to Homelessness. Now Because of Jews, They Face Eviction.

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://news.yahoo.com/were-promised-end-homelessness-now-192504497.html

NEW YORK — Dwayne Seifforth spent years struggling with homelessness,
including four sleeping on New York City streets and one living in a Bronx
shelter with his young daughter. Then in spring 2020, a city caseworker
presented Seifforth with a solution: a vacant apartment he could afford
using a special city voucher.

The 11-story building on 133rd Street in Harlem, with its newly finished
rooms, balconies and Manhattan views, drew a stark contrast with the
shelter, where Seifforth, 41, and his daughter, D’Kota-Holidae Seifforth,
9, said they encountered the biggest rats and cockroaches they had ever
seen.

It was a chance for Seifforth, who had been living off food stamps and the
wages he earned working part time for the Parks Department, to give D’Kota
a real home.

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The family moved in. Soon, most of the building’s 46 units were filled
with families with similar stories. Children settled in to nearby schools.
Seifforth, 41, got a full-time job delivering packages for Amazon.

What the families did not know was that the building was already mired in
a conflict that would soon leave them on the brink of homelessness again.
Seifforth now lives every day worrying about whether a marshal will throw
him and his daughter out.

“Sometimes I think, ‘I should have just stayed in the shelter,’ ” he said.

The extraordinary saga of how a Harlem building beckoned a group of
families desperate for a home, only to serve them another cruel twist,
involves multiple lawsuits, accusations of fraud and a bankruptcy.

But it also represents how elusive stable, affordable housing can be in
New York City, where the population in shelters rose to record levels this
year. And it shows how the people living those struggles frequently have
little control over how they are resolved.

“Housing should not be a privilege,” Seifforth said.

The property he moved into with his daughter at 308 W. 133rd St. used to
be the site of a Harlem church that had fallen into disrepair. But in
2017, developer Levi Balkany submitted a plan to build a new condo
building there. Two years later, a limited liability company controlled by
Balkany, the son of a Brooklyn rabbi who had been convicted of extortion
and fraud, took out a $26 million loan to finish the building’s
construction.

Balkany quickly encountered difficulties with the loan he had taken from
Arena Investors, an asset management firm that has also done business in
the Caribbean and Spain. The firm said he defaulted on the loan at least
three times in 2019, including for failing to pay interest, according to
court records.

Balkany and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.

After the city issued a new, higher tax assessment on the building in
2019, a lawyer for Balkany said in court that the increased prices for the
condos would be too high for the “target market.” He looked to a new, more
stable source of revenue: renting the homes to those struggling with
homelessness.

Under the plan, Balkany would rent to families who could not afford the
apartments on their own but who were eligible for vouchers, which are rent
supplements funded by the city and the state.

Voucher programs are crucial tools in curbing homelessness. Including
coronavirus relief funds, the city spent about $350 million in the past
fiscal year to help thousands of families find or keep stable homes
through the programs.

In 2020, several of the Harlem apartments were added to the network of
buildings that accept vouchers. Seifforth’s caseworker at the Bronx
shelter asked if he would like to go see the “brand-new” apartment. After
a tour, fearing the opportunity would disappear, Seifforth took it.

“It was convenient, and it’s beautiful,” he said.

Tonia Vail, 50, had spent almost two years in a Brooklyn shelter with her
two children, while she worked at a car dealership nearby. The Harlem
apartment, she said, was the first housing opportunity that her caseworker
had pointed her to that was affordable and available to rent.

“It’s not that we weren’t looking,” she said. “It was very hard, very
hard. When she said she had this, I basically jumped on it. I didn’t
hesitate.”

Soon after the families moved in, it became clear something was wrong.

In early 2020, Arena accused Balkany of trying to rent out the units in
violation of the loan agreement, not properly registering the building
with the city and not keeping proper insurance on the building, court
records indicate. On June 5, 2020, as some families were still moving into
the building, a limited liability company associated with Arena sued to
block the leases.

“The tenants they have put in there without our consent are low-income
tenants they’re putting in because” of perceived “guarantees from the
city,” Casey Laffey, a lawyer representing the lender, said in court in
July 2020. “That ignores the very real risk of depriving this property of
its value,” he said.

A judge in July agreed to temporarily block Balkany from renting
apartments. Days later, Balkany declared bankruptcy.

In July 2021, after months of bankruptcy court proceedings, Arena bought
the property at a public auction.

“Within a year, I started to hear about the building, that it got sold or
something to that effect,” Seifforth said.

For a while, court records indicate the city and Arena were discussing
whether there was a way to keep the families there.

But in October 2021, a federal bankruptcy court rejected the existing
leases at the property, saying it was in the best interests of Balkany’s
creditors. In March, Arena sued more than 40 tenants still living in the
building in state court, saying their leases were invalid and that they
should be thrown out.

This fall, a judge agreed.

“We are not trying to be unreasonable,” Laffey said in court in September.
“My client just wants this process to move. As you know, we have been
dealing with this for two years as well.”

Tenants like Seifforth wonder how the city could have even placed them in
a troubled building to begin with.

Neha Sharma, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services, said
the preexisting problems at the building were not something that could
have been “anticipated or prevented.”

In a July 2021 filing in federal bankruptcy court, a city lawyer said the
social services department “reasonably relied” on Balkany’s assertions
that he was allowed to legally rent out the properties and said that it
was not “customary” for the department to “investigate property owners
before leasing units.”

In response to further questions on what kind of vetting the department
had conducted, it said that while it does check on landlords, having to
conduct extensive financial analyses would be counterproductive to getting
people housed.

In general, it said that its programs to house people — even as thousands
of migrants arrived in New York City this year seeking help, which put
more demands on several short-staffed city agencies — have been working.
This year, the rate of people who returned to shelters after being placed
in subsidized homes, the Department explained, had declined.

This is not the case for many of the residents of 308 W. 133rd St., who
have returned to shelters in the past month, including some who reportedly
received payments from the new owners, said Don Curtis, founder and
president of the Unified Black Caucus, a civil rights group that is
helping organize the tenants.

“What happened to these people is through no fault of their own,” he said.

The few dozen or so that remain in the building scramble daily to find new
homes, as they wait to see when they may be forced to leave.

A spokesperson for the new building owners said they have worked with
tenants to find new housing by “offering financial assistance and working
with case managers and qualified brokers.”

“This is certainly an unfortunate situation for all involved due to the
previous owner’s actions,” the spokesperson said.

He did not answer questions about how many tenants have found new homes,
how many had received payments, whether the new owners will now try to
sell the condos or when the marshals may proceed with the evictions.

Some tenants, like Georgette Hyman, 42, put up Christmas trees and
decorations for the holiday season, even though they remained uncertain
about how long they would be able to stay.

“My kids never went without, so I don’t want them to go without now,” she
said.

Others, like Madeline Burdier, 43, who lives in the building with four
children, have already begun packing up their belongings.

“The worst feeling in the world is not having a place for your kids to
stay,” she said.

Seifforth said he and his daughter know they have to leave soon. He said
D’Kota asks him if they will have to return to the place with the
cockroaches. He tells her no, although he does not know where they will
end up.

“I just want to go somewhere that’s comfortable for her,” he said.

© 2022 The New York Times Company


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