Tenant has found an apartment in Harlem, on Manhattan Avenue, near the train station at 125th Street that offers 2 local and 2 express lines traveling downtown. It cuts travel time to most auditions by forty minutes.
The neighborhood is in a state of transition, its majority of inhabitants are working class blacks, but whites are moving in. They buy the brownstones and refurbish them to their former elegance. Some buildings on the street look great while others are in the hands of slumlords. She knows immediately, without looking at street numbers, which is the correct building. The apartment is in similar condition, its backyard a jungle.
The garden apartment, which encompasses the whole of the ground floor brownstone, has a serious bedroom, a small open kitchen/pantry, a large living area with one brick wall and more than enough room to accommodate a dining area, a living room and office; there are 5 mirrored double door closets, and a terrace out front with a gate on which, with landlord’s permission, she hangs her business sign and card holder.
While waiting for the agent to arrive, she stops at the McDonald’s joint to get a coffee. Everyone turns to look . . . a white person. At the gate outside the apartment drinking coffee, the next door neighbor comes out from his garden apartment to put trash bags on the sidewalk, a very white man, blond. After he deposits the trash, he goes up the stoop to the other level -- he owns the building. There’s another white man down the street, same situation. The neighborhood is a mix.
The agent, who is the landlord’s niece, demands $1650 in cash, for herself or she will not let her have the apartment. Tenant pays it. The rental is not without its problems, the last tenant left in a hurry leaving all his furnishings and clothing behind. But for the price, she decides to fix it herself.
After the deal is settled, she stops at the neighborhood bar taking no heed on entering that she’s the only white woman there. Her mind is spinning with the implications of her decision, both major and minor. Where will I shop? The music is loud rock, but good. And my address, she didn’t give me the zip code.
“Excuse me, bartender, do you know the zip code for this area?”
He doesn’t know, but asks the guy sitting next to her. That man won’t tell her.
Gee, that doesn’t feel good.
After the bartender walks away, Kirk turns around and gives her the zip code and introduces himself. -- He just wanted to be macho. It had nothing to do with my race.
When settling her tab, the bartender discovers she is French. André is Haitian. He introduces her to other Haitians and word travels down the bar, everyone shakes her hand, Enchanté de faire votre connaissance.
She has stumbled unto a French world, Enchantée!
Had she more money, she would be tempted to keep looking for another rent, but that many moves in such a short period of time is psychologically unhealthy. One might say her lack of funds prevents her from running away from the situation. This lack is a little more complicated than meets the eye. Although the country is in a serious recession, she finds that the ad she generally runs in the yellow pages this year has the wrong telephone number, and when she looks at her notes on the matter, she sees that even though she spoke to the salesman about the matter, she failed to correct the number on the ad proofs for endorsement. And then there’s the dream: Is making money your goal in life?
It had been her focus for the past few years in her Upper East Side life. Tenant had bought The American Dream, New York version. It consists of spending money, acquiring goods, being fashionable, sophisticated, in its most superficial meaning, designer clothes, drinks at the Plaza, dinner at chic downtown bistros, spending $50 on a glass of Bordeaux at Morrell’s.
I”m not denying that these things give me pleasure, and if I could afford them I would undoubtedly be acquiring these little bon-bons again. But, she got lost in that world; making money became a priority rather than recompense for accomplishment. Having coffee at the neighborhood East Side Starbucks one morning she wrote these notes as she watched the morning crowd walking by her window:
Drones are working their ass off to hold on to the dream.
True Believers are not awake yet.
Some Drones have never tasted the dream;
they are the Inbreds.
Dysfunctionals may be found among the ranks of True Believers and Drones.
What she didn’t realize at the time was that she was losing her True Believer status and becoming a Drone herself. It had become her goal to make money and the creative part of her rebelled. She carelessly drew back from her most profitable clients, and lost others through the economic downfall.
Without the middle class, the underpinning of society, the country collapses. They work all their lives to achieve a dream so precarious that the smallest ill wind can easily topple it. Millions lost their jobs, their homes, were bankrupted in the recent subprime mortgage crisis. True Believers say the unfortunates were taking loans they knew they couldn’t afford, i.e., the dream is real, it’s just those people who were too careless.
The African American middle class in Harlem, having been left out of the dream for so long, is not so easily fooled. One doesn’t see many True Believers. Those who “work for a living,” know full well they are doing something they would rather not be doing in order to buy the Air Jordans, the Sean John Urban Sportswear.
There is no dream, just life lived every day. I’m not going anywhere, I’m not going to achieve anything, except my life, everyday. . . tick . . . tick . . . tick.
The window in her bedroom, at age 6, opened to a small balcony that connected to the building’s two garages. After a towering 5-foot snowstorm filled the small, enclosed yard halfway up the garage doors, her brothers and their friends climbed through the window and got on the garage’s peaked roof to jump into the snow filled yard. She stood on the garage’s edge looking down at the jump when someone came from behind and pushed her. The edge of the precipice has been her Holy Grail since. She physically panics when up close to an unguarded edge, especially if someone is behind her. This irrational fear also fascinates; she wants to conquer it.
Is it better to jump, or hold on for dear life? Where to draw the line? Should she jump like her brothers who seem to be having a good time? The choice was forced on her. She has no memory of the fall itself, just the push by unknown hands, that moment when she lost control of her body and was hurled into the air.
One’s life is a metaphor. The primary impetus is in making one’s life a statement about an existential dilemma experienced. Perhaps it is formed when a little girl gets pushed over the garage roof to the snow-filled yard below. This is the mystery, the koan, the existential given that she must come to grips with. Safety, the edge, aloft, abyss.
Sitting on a hallway bench at 2:30 pm waiting for civil court to open after lunch recess. She’s been in housing court since 9:30. When getting home from grocery shopping, the previous week landlord and her attorney were waiting at the gate. He handed Tenant a document. His motion was an attempt to get her case to fix violations dismissed because she hasn't addressed her order to show cause for reparation to landlord’s out of state address as is stipulated in Tenant lease.
Both of them were gloating like two fat slugs. After a moment's reflection, Tenant remembered that when she filed the order to show cause she wanted to send it to landlord’s out of state address, but the clerk would not hear of it. The corporation with listed Brooklyn offices owned the building and that was where she had to send the summons for repairs. Tenant’s suit to bring repairs for violations has nothing to do with her lease. The city's laws concerning habitable dwellings supersedes any agreement landlord and Tenant have. It can and does set laws that supersede any agreement landlords try to foist on tenants. Property owners in the city are mandated to register their buildings every year with HPD, listing the local address where they may be contacted. Landlord may live out of state, but she is still required to have a local address.
Once in Housing Court, Tenant is handed a document, an affirmation in opposition response to Bronxman’s motion seeking to have the case dismissed. In his response the young HPD attorney, Mark Roeder states, eloquently, that landlord’s lease does not override the court’s personal jurisdiction over respondent, and the motion doesn’t refute the allegations that Petitioner presents to the court. It’s a nugatory argument, of little consequence.
Bronxman withdraws his motion.
HPD attorneys are an integral part of housing court, and often serve as tenant’s ally because both seek maintenance of the city’s housing stock, hence Mr. Roeder’s document on her behalf.
A former tenant, evicted because he made complaints, has come as witness to what they’ve endured. They do not get to speak to the judge, but rather to an HPD lawyer who arranges further dates to get the work completed. Landlord becomes hysterical saying that no one is letting her speak. And she is right, only her lawyer gets to engage the court and its officers.Bronxman doesn't know what repairs have been accomplished. He tries to finesse it by denying what the inspectors have reported to the court. Another postponement till May is granted when landlord will hopefully have completed the rest of the repairs. This can go on for a while, and it's a fight every inch of the way.
Once the session is over, Tenant moves over to another part of civil court to hear landlord's petition for nonpayment of rent. Now in its fourth month, Tenant owes landlord $6600, plus $100 late fees, and if she loses, she will have to pay Bronxman’s fees.
Her defense? She stopped paying when landlord wouldn't provide heat or make necessary repairs. She is seeking a 65 percent abatement of owed rent, leaving her owing $2310. Then there's the business of landlord’s manager and niece asking for money, $1650 cash, in order to rent her the apartment -- illegal. "Key money" is the term given for a fee demanded by someone who controls showing the vacant apartment. Often it’s collected in collusion with the owner. That leaves her owing $660, if she wins.
Her witness has to leave at 1 o'clock. She could ask for an adjournment to reschedule his appearance, it would be the second adjournment. A second adjournment allows the judge to order that all the money due from the date of service of petition be deposited with the Court. Two postponements by a tenant are seen as stringing the process along to avoid paying. The problem with giving money is that she doesn’t have it. She can either take her chances in civil court without the witness, or seek an adjournment.
Landlord and her lawyer figuring her witness dilemma run back to the other court thinking she will ask for a postponement; she stalls, and then its over because she’s too late to ask for an adjournment. The court breaks for lunch and she heads over to a deli for coffee and a sandwich. Sitting at the counter, she lets go of the situation and decides whatever fate has in store for her is the right outcome. If she has to move and owe a lot of money, so be it. She will find her way.
The trial starts with a traverse hearing in which Tenant claims that landlord's lawyer did not properly serve her court papers per requirement. Prevailing in this matter would oblige him to start over and serve her properly. The judge, Ms. Hahn, a dour, middle-aged blonde, gives the appearance of having been on the job 10 years longer than advisable, does not appreciate pro se litigants in her courtroom, knocks down everything Tenant brings up, and jeers at one of her arguments, which she then realizes is cogent. Landlord is not spared judge’s severe attitude. On the stand, she mumbles incoherently, and when prodded, tells the judge she is frightened. Tenant is not feeling too great herself. She loses the traverse hearing, which should have been an easy win since she doesn't have a working mailbox as testified to by HPD inspectors. This matter of the mailbox becomes a bone of contention with Judge Hahn even though she has HPD evidence that the receptacle where Bronxman placed his nonpayment petition is not a mailbox. But as in all disputes one needs to allow for face saving measures, especially when opponent is being trumped by an amateur.
Judge Hahn schedules the trial for the end of April as it is too late to proceed.
Tenant has won first round. She didn't have to produce any money, or have the trial without her witness, and at this point, she wants to get the trial over with and not go through the business of being served again.
Tenant’s refrigerator dies. The situation is becoming strained; she suspects the Curse of Maltreated Tenants permeates the building. Steak, ground sirloin, sausage, hot dogs, frozen vegetables, will start thawing. Landlord no longer cares to be civil and does not respond to calls about fixing it.
Unless one has been through the process, the research, expense and work one has to put in to present a reasonable defense on a non-payment petition is considerable. Tenant works for days, gathering records, applying correct sections of the law to each violation. She has folders on the lack of heat, on neglect of the building outside (irrelevant in a non-payment hearing, but she doesn’t know that), and inside the apartment, the lack of service, janitorial, trash and snow removal, then the notes on questions to ask witnesses, and points of law on what she can object to in the landlord's presentation, Tenant’s own record of what happened, and what she’s asking for. Altogether, she is invoking 14 sections of the law covering the Warranty of Habitability.
The life of a litigator is not a barefoot walk at seashore. Landlord is becoming physically aggressive. Since she was court ordered to make repairs, she assumes she can play the bully. Her day and a half inT’s apartment is pure hell. Tenant has a phone call and steps out into the vestibule to accept it. Seeing this, Landlord starts pulling at the door to get out. Tenant lets her out and steps in closing the door behind her. Landlord then tries to force her way in. When she can't do so, she leans on the doorbell.
A few minutes later, Landlord calls the police to complain and is told to stay away and let the repairman do his work. She pulls him off the job – no more work. The next time a repairman comes to fix the fridge and stove, she again tries to enter.
No,you can't come in. Landlord physically pushes and tries to force her way in the apartment shouting, THIS IS MY HOUSE!
Jurisprudence is denuding forests of the world with the amount of paper that they process. One descends into a state of madness in litigation; Tenant has a coffee table reserved especially for all the paperwork involved in this matter. She saves every scrap, and one has to because there is no telling that it might be needed. Judge Hahn, the Antonin Scalia of Housing Court, does not allow 90 percent of what Tenant tries to present.
Tenant had 2 witnesses, tenants of the building she lives in, prepared to testify about the lack of heat. Judge Hahn will allow only one man to testify because he has been to her home. Only matters that occurred in the apartment are allowed into testimony, even though the same boiler serves all the building’s units. Tenant cannot bring up landlord’s use of the building as a tenant mill, with most tenants staying less than two years, thus alleviating her of having to make repairs. Irrelevant. The rejected tenant witness would have been a gamble. Although he could testify that Landlord has reduced his rent by a $100 for the lack of heat in the past month, he is reluctant to testify because he does not want to be evicted. Tenant witnessed Landlord winking at him in the hall before proceedings.
Bronxman’s presentation consists of accusing Tenant of making complaints because she doesn't have the money to pay rent. Both he and Judge Hahn gasp when Tenant points to the flaw in his argument. It doesn't matter whether I pay rent or not, Landlord is obligated to maintain services and heat. She has delivered a mortal blow to his case. Opposing attorney had mentioned one thing in his exposition that piques her curiosity -- Since there are only 5 units in the building, it isn’t rent stabilized, hence Landlord is free to evict her.
What’s that about? I need to look into it.
Tenant wins a concession from judge when she starts quoting the law to her. Hahn allows both sides to hand in a post trial memo allowing Tenant to sum up and quote the section of law and the precedent cases that apply to the situation. Tenant leaves court feeling crushed, I will get something from the trial because landlord's violations are so flagrant, but nothing close to what I'm asking for.
Meanwhile HPD, having gathered enough evidence to warrant a lawsuit, is taking Landlord to court for the lack of heat in the building. She will be fined and will have to make repairs if she loses.
Although the suit is brought to court by HPD, Tenant will be a witness and will still have to prepare and present documents indicating temperatures in the apartment.
On The Docket
LANDLORD:
Petition – Nonpayment, index no. 60050/09,(ongoing.)
HPD:
Order to Show Cause, seeking civil penalties for heat and hot water violations, index no. 688/09, (ongoing.)
TENANT:
Order to Show Cause, Directing the Correction of Violations, index no. 463/09, (ongoing.)
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