Before the beginning of each month, Anh-Thu Nguyen and her two roommates send rent checks to their landlord. A few days later, the checks are returned.
The bizarre ritual began shortly after the March 2021 purchase of Nguyen’s Brooklyn building by a shadowy real estate firm called Greenbrook Partners, who told residents to move out by June 30.
Some neighbors moved, but Nguyen and tenants of four other units sued the financially affiliated Greenbrook, one of several investor-backed rental companies under scrutiny in Washington.
“We have to fight back,” said Nguyen, who has helped organize tenants in other buildings belonging to Greenbrook, which has more than 150 properties in Brooklyn and Queens, most bought during the pandemic.
“This has been my home for over 13 years. It’s a great community and I want to stay here…it’s also the right thing to do,” said Nguyen, 39, a trained lawyer who works on labor organization for an NGO.
Nguyen and other activists support a tenant protection bill in the New York state legislature. The battle comes as rising rents add to today’s historic inflation spike, with horror stories of landlords in the unregulated portion of New York’s rental market seeking increases of 30 percent or more.
“The market has recovered, leading to rent increases and renewals that are very taxing on tenants,” said Charles McNally, director of external affairs at the Furman Center, an urban policy research organization at New York University.
“It’s a really tough market for renters, and inflationary pressures for owners are real too.”
– ‘Sub-optimal tenant’ –
Greenbrook was one of the actors who came forward at a February event hosted by Senate Democrats, where Nguyen described himself as a “sub-optimal tenant” for such companies.
“Their goal is to maximize profits, not the stability that comes with a long-term tenant,” she told the panel.
Housing experts told senators that an often-changing cast of vacant companies and subsidiaries that appear on official property documents hinders accountability for tenants.
They also said some companies are targeting traditionally non-white areas where house prices have risen sharply.
Defenders of rental companies say restrictions on landlords can discourage the investment needed and make the sector a scapegoat for the problem of housing affordability, a complex issue involving many factors.
They also point to estimates that Wall Street-backed companies make up a small proportion of the U.S. rental housing stock — figures that housing experts say are based on outdated pre-pandemic data.
Recent news reports abound about the shift in cities like Atlanta and Jacksonville, where Wall Street-backed rental companies are stockpiling available stock and pricing out some first-time homeowners.
– ‘Charity eviction’ –
Greenbrook’s tenants have also received support from leading New York politicians, including Senate leader Chuck Schumer and state senator Jabari Brisport, who led a meeting last month booing Greenbrook.
“Fight, fight, fight! Housing is a human right,” the group chanted in support of “charity eviction laws,” which would limit evictions to cases where tenants fail to pay rent or behave blatantly. The bill would also limit rent increases for apartments with market-based leases.
Many in real estate are against the legislation, including Bryan Liff, who is selling two condo units rather than risking renting them under one such bill, which would come on top of rising costs amid the pandemic he says she’s mommy. and daddy evict landlords.
“I’m not willing to risk the state basically giving away our property,” said Liff, a 50-year-old software engineer who also owns an eight-unit Harlem building in which he rents units.
The meeting was held outside the home of Aneta Molenda in Brooklyn, who is also in limbo with no active lease after fighting Greenbrook’s 50 percent rent increase.
“I feel incredibly insecure in my living situation,” Molenda told AFP.
Greenbrook Partners has generally avoided comment and has not responded to multiple inquiries from AFP.
The company’s website says it targets “poorly maintained, undermanaged and undercapitalized assets in growth-oriented and temporary submarkets of New York City.”
Greenbrook and its subsidiaries own 153 properties, according to a New York City real estate database.
The properties are currently listed under “Freestone Property Group”, having previously appeared under the name Greg Fournier, a director of Greenbrook. Nguyen believes Freestone is a subsidiary of Greenbrook.
As a private company, Greenbrook does not publish its financial statements. The real estate trade press describes collaborations with private equity giant Carlyle Group and British investment firm NW1 Partners.
Neither Carlyle nor NW1 responded to AFP’s request for comment.
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