The Brooklyn Housing Court’s disrepair gives “special privileges” to landlord attorneys and fosters “a culture of disrespect towards tenants,” according to a report from the New York Daily News. The News cited a recent report by nonprofit group Make the Road to New York, which is one of several agencies pushing to change the facility.

The groups met with Judge Fern Fisher, who is in charge of housing courts citywide. Fisher said she is working to engineer some of the changes recommended by the group, including easier-to-read signs and better accommodations for tenants, but admitted budget restraints make change difficult. [more]

David Bistricer, a Brooklyn landlord highly ranked on Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s slumlord watchlist, has been slapped with a lawsuit by the Flatbush Gardens Tenant Association, according to Crain’s. The suit alleges that Bistricer failed to live up to his part of an agreement with the association that the tenant organization would provide a letter of support for him in his attempt to buy Brooklyn’s huge affordable housing complex Starrett City in 2007 in return for his efforts to improve conditions at 1402-04 Brooklyn Avenue, a Flatbush Gardens building. The letter of support was delivered, the improvements were not, the tenants say. [more]

City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio will announce the removal today of 13 of the city’s worst landlords from the slumlord watch list, thanks to improvements which cleared 22 buildings from the list, according to the Daily News. These will be the first landlords to “graduate” from the online registry, which launched in August. David Bistricer’s 59-building Flatbush Gardens complex is on the list. “These are buildings that were falling apart, with holes in the ceilings and floors, with unsafe fixtures and dangerous molds,” de Blasio said. “But now real, solid improvements have been made.” [more]

Federal labor investigators are considering charging accused Brooklyn slumlord David Bistricer for illegally locking out 70 workers from his Flatbush Gardens complex, at 1403 New York Avenue in East Flatbush. Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 70 handymen and porters stopped from working, filed the allegations with the National Labor Relations Board yesterday. “We’re determined to defend these workers in the face of a brutal employer lockout,” union spokesperson Kwame Patterson told the Daily News. Bistricer locked the workers out Nov. 29 after they refused to take a 30 percent pay cut, the union said. Comments

Flatbush Gardens (source: PropertyShark)

In the wake of scathing video footage that has circulated the internet in recent days of alleged hazardous conditions at the Flatbush Gardens housing complex (see the video after the jump), a housing official has informed The Real Deal that the sprawling, 2,500-unit residential development has garnered 400 new violations in the last month-and-a-half, or roughly 10 violations per day.

The added violations bring the 59-building complex’s total to 8,100 current, open violations, according to Eric Bederman, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The violations “run the gamut,” Bederman said, noting “this is bad — and we’re probably not getting the full extent of it.” HPD violations generally are for unsuitable or dangerous building conditions.

Landlord David Bistricer has filed a dismissal request for reinspection at the rental property, located at 1402 New York Avenue, but Bederman said HPD has yet to hear from him regarding a schedule for the reinspection. [more]

Landlord David Bistricer wasn’t throwing out empty threats last week when he said he would lock workers out of Brooklyn’s 59-building Flatbush Gardens housing complex until they accepted his proposed pay cuts. According to the Wall Street Journal, around 70 porters and handymen were barred from coming to work there yesterday as union SEIU Local 32 BJ continued to spar with Bistricer’s Renaissance Equity Holdings over their contracts. [more]

Just in time for the holidays, landlord David Bistricer is planning to lock workers out of Flatbush Gardens next week after they refused to accept his proposed pay cuts, according to the Daily News. Bistricer, who has been under fire in recent months after landing on Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s slumlords watch list for code violations at the 59-building complex, wants to slash wages and benefits by roughly a third. [more]

A group of elderly tenants at the 59-building Flatbush Gardens complex in Brooklyn have received eviction notices from landlord David Bistricer on the grounds that they’ve been holding raucous parties at their apartments, the Daily News reported. “You… or guests of yours, have been observed smoking, drinking alcohol, loitering and gambling in the common areas of the building,” Bistricer, principal of Clipper Equity, wrote to tenant Victoria Davis, 69. Davis, a survivor of two strokes who has no children and who says she hasn’t had a drink in decades, pays $680 per month for her one-bedroom home.
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Flatbush Gardens — an East Flatbush housing complex where developer David Bistricer is on Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s watchlist of slumlords — has been the victim of deadly violence and residents are concerned about their safety. Two men have been murdered in the last two weeks at the 30-acre, 57-building complex, the Daily News reported. In total, three people have been killed, and six have been shot there in 2010, according to statistics from the New York police department. “There’s so much drug selling, it’s crazy, and a lot of shootings all the time,” said disabled veteran Leroy Marks, 57, a longtime resident. The mostly rent-stabilized complex, formerly known as Vanderveer Estates, was sold in 2005 for $140 million to a group led by Bistricer, who promised to make improvements. But, residents say doors are broken, surveillance cameras and streetlights don’t work and private security patrols are understaffed. [NYDN]

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Brooklyn real estate developer David Bistricer of Clipper Equity has been added to Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s watch list of slumlords. Bistricer’s Flatbush Gardens, a 30-acre, 59-building complex in East Flatbush has 6,475 open code violations, with 827 of them for serious threats to health or safety. “The landlord is clearly trying to change the nature of the development and make it more appealing to upper-income tenants,” de Blasio told the Daily News. “This may be a landlord who purposely wants to reduce the level of service to encourage… tenants to leave.” During a tour, the Daily News spotted raw sewage collecting in a graffiti-covered basement, broken locks, shattered windows and exposed wiring. Several tenants complained of mice and roach infestations as well ceilings collapsing from water damage.

Richard Rubenstein, a spokesperson for Bistricer, who led the group of investors that bought the complex in 2005 for $138.5 million, said the owners have addressed and removed over 5,000 violations and that they intend to meet with de Blasio to do what it takes to get off the slumlord list. The conditions at Flatbush Gardens — formerly known as Vanderveer Estates — were one factor federal officials cited when they rejected Clipper Equity’s $1.3 million bid for the 46-building Starrett City complex in 2007. They also cited a 1998 court order banning Bistricer from selling condos in New York because of financial irregularities. [NYDN]

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