It’s a Housing Court triumph: a low-income tenant was forced out of her long-time apartment by a landlord who “renovated” the Williamsburg building into such dangerous conditions, the Department of Buildings and other NYC agencies evacuated her. But now a Housing Court judge found for this lady who has been given the judicial right to move back into her old apartment.
It’s a good story in one sense, but a complicated story in another, because the landlord has rented this renovated apartment − at a premium − to a high-rent tenant who, not knowing that the apartment was in litigation, will now, it seems, have to vacate in favor of the previous tenant.
Here’s one key paragraph in the New York Times article:
As the luxury real estate market has surged, landlords with buildings in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant have worked at a frenzied pace to transform their properties into expensive rentals. In some cases, unscrupulous landlords have taken hammers to their own buildings to make them so unsafe the city must vacate what are often rent-stabilized tenants. The empty buildings can then be gut-renovated and the apartments rented at much higher prices.
Clearly unfair, clearly fair and sort of unfair again. It’s an intriguing story: In Twist, Tenant Who Was Forced Out Will Displace One Who Moved In – NYTimes.com.