Brooklyn Tenants Sue Landlord, Claiming He Ignored Rent Freeze for Almost 20 Years
The tenants claimed that Dukler and Rikud Realty have spent years scrambling paperwork to deceive the state's Homes and Community Renewal agency, which froze the rent, according to the complaint.
January 10, 2020 at 05:48 PM
3 minute read
A group of tenants in a Crown Heights building filed a lawsuit against the owners of their building Wednesday, demanding $2 million in excess rent and damages.
In the complaint, which was filed in Kings County Supreme Court, three staff attorneys for Brooklyn Legal Services argued that the tenants' longtime landlord, Rubin Dukler, continued to raise the rent despite a 2002 government-ordered rent freeze and serious problems in the building.
Dukler, who according to the complaint runs the real estate firm Rikud Realty, was ranked 86th on Public Advocate Jumaane Williams' 2019 list of the city's worst landlords. The tenants' building, 1074 Eastern Parkway, also appeared on Williams' list of worst buildings in Brooklyn, which is assembled based on the number of housing violations per building.
Attempts to reach counsel for Dukler were not immediately successful Friday.
The Brooklyn Eagle reported that, in response to questions about this lawsuit, Dukler said he had sold the building. No records showing a recent sale were visible on the city register's website Friday.
According to the tenants' complaint, Dukler has said he sold the building to Iris Holdings NY in 2018. Iris and its managing officers are listed as defendants in the suit, but in a statement Friday, Iris denied owning any Rikud Realty buildings and said it was wrongfully named in the lawsuit.
"IHG was hired in 2018 as an agent of Rikud to assist with the management of the buildings, and especially to correct and clear violations," the statement said.
The tenants claimed that Dukler and Rikud Realty have spent years scrambling paperwork to deceive the state's Homes and Community Renewal agency, which froze the rent, according to the complaint.
"The pervasive and brazen nature of these irregularities across the rent registration histories of each unit in the building demonstrate an extremely detailed scheme to unlawfully inflate the rent roll of the building and defraud Plaintiffs and HCR," the tenants' lawyers wrote.
When Iris became involved, its employees should have recognized the issues but instead continued to conceal them, the lawyers wrote.
In a press release from Brooklyn Legal Services, attorney Thomas Chew called for HCR to perform more oversight.
"The burden of enforcing the rent-stabilization law shouldn't fall solely on tenants, but too often it does," he said.
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