They start by trying to intimidate you as soon as they buy the building. They come to your door and tell you none of your leases are valid, that they have taken over the building and that all the leases were invalid if they were issued before they bought it out of foreclosure. They get a lot of their buildings this way.
Then if you are educated to the law and the state and you know your lease is valid, they offer a cheap buyout right away. One of their employees will come to the door and offer a 10K buyout, cash. They did this to numerous tenants in the many buildings I know of.
Then if you have kids and a family, like I do, they corner your wife and children and say that they aren’t supposed to live there and that their lease is not valid. This tactic completely instills fear and trepidation. In my case it put a huge strain on my relationship with my son’s mother. This is exactly what they intended by this kind of harassment. They also start and engage in verbal fights and seem to relish doing this around the wife and kids to instill more fear. They have investigators come around and bang on your door. The investigator says he is from the fire department or police department and is “investigating you and if you can live here.” He is really pushy and insists he has the right to come into your apartment at any time—day or night. Then when you push back, he threatens to have you evicted.
Then when they start renovating they start to cave-in every rent stabilized tenant ceiling if possible. They will leave water running in the above apartment and throw trash down the walls from the above apartment. In our case, all the existing rent stabilized tenants’ ceilings collapsed. At one point or another in a seven month period my ceiling actually was purposely caved in three times—while my son, seven years old at the time, was below. Five other tenants had their ceilings caved-in at least once. They never fix anything until the Department of Housing is involved and it takes some time to get the Department involved. The construction that they do is extremely loud and dusty, taking minimal precautions needed to protect the common areas, stairwells, etc. And they will work into the evening, way past working hours. They would leave music blaring in unoccupied apartments to bother tenants and then use that information to try and turn the tenants against each other
They are really just horrible people. It goes on and on, as I’m sure you have read. They go so far as to hire “private investigators” who would lurk around the building waiting for us to come outside to harass us again and ask if we were ready yet to take a buy out—basically anything to intimidate and threaten.
I am lucky enough to have been able to afford an attorney to fight them, but even with an attorney protecting me they seemed to not care—as if nothing could touch them in any way. They don’t seem to care about the rule of law at all. I managed to fight them as best as I could over the last four years. I can’t imagine that they have been allowed to act this way for so long with out any real consequences. Also, they refuse to renew leases or file with the DHCR unless court ordered. Actually, they don’t do anything that they are required to do unless forced by the courts. At that point most of the rent stabilized tenants have already given in, given up and left the building in fear.
It sounds really bleak but this is the way they operate. It is amazing that they have such a systematic way of harassing tenants until they finally just cave-in and leave.
There is so much more that happened, but I can’t remember it all. I guess the biggest thing I learned though my ordeal with the Cromans is that they really don’t care about laws or fines or anything like that. It appears as if they can take the hit of a 10K fine. I mean what’s a 10K fine going to do to them if they turn an apartment from rent stabilized to free market and make much more than that in profit? I know at least three quarters of the apartments in our building were bought out and converted from stabilized to free market apartments. A couple fines here and there really don’t matter to a guy who owns one hundred buildings. The economics seem to be that the enforcement and fines are tiny compared to the actual bank loan profit. Hopefully this will change one day, but this is just my opinion about the problem of enforcement for bottom feeder landlords.
Thank you.
James Marion Peterson
For the subject of keep approaching you with buyout and eviction. You can file dhcr harassment and get dhcr to produce a stulation to ban it. It will probably don’t work but at least you have a document for protection.
For the subject of employee and the pi attacking. Google nys licensing dept and contact them. Send the date and date of attack and get a confirmation from nys dept of license certify they are not allow to serve as Tenant Relocator.
Refusing recognize dhcr instruction is another tatic and use court to collect false claim rent. Is another Tatic.
Croman victim are rent stabilized apt, rent control tenants, disabled , non English speaking, tenant of other building owner false they are renting apt illegálly to a croman tenant and pushes pressure for them to start a new court case.
I am not a croman tenant, I reside in a government subsidy building. Both me and my landlord have been a croman victim taking my apt to use as someelse 2nd apt to play court. This is awful as my landlord is being accused of conducting illegal business activity and apply fraud to get rent subsidy to help their tenant needs.
This is not fair for us. We did nothing wrong and illegal If I move the problem will follow.
I had a caretaker authorize to handle my business needs. My landlord have no problem with that. Croman put this person as victim too. His lawyer and employee is doing all the dirty tricks for him.
the subject of approaching tennats, their family members, friends and other whatever and whoever they see is not new….croman has been doing this since the 1990s when he bought his 1st building. If you have weakness he will hire translator to approach the non English speaking.
His victim are his tenant of rent stabilized, rent control, nycha / hud subsidy if he has any of those buildings, senior, non English speaking, disabled ,caretaker etc….any age any race any nationality. He even goes to other landlord buildings meaning building he do not own or manage picks tenants there and use those apt to accuse their tenant having 2 apts and files eviction on his tenant . all you need is to have a family member, friend, caretaker, employer etc…living in a non Croman building you, they and their landlord are easy target as return comeback with eviction and threat to push you out of your apt.
If you do court research you can see croman has victim accusing city wide other building owner being accused of renting apt illegally, etc… When this happens even though croman lawyer may think it can harass you the tenant he is also harassing building owner going around illegally renting apt to croman which is not true. Those who apply for government subsidy landlord better be aware croman attack those too….just pull the filie and look
James.
Where have you been?
Croman going around pushing buyout and eviction on every chance he see his tenant or their family and friends since he started croman real estate in the early 90s. It’s been in the newspaper in various language.
High % of the subject you commented dates back to the 90s that means NYC tenant was being harass for over 20 years. Many cannot afford lawyers.
Many private home owner and landlord were being accused with court order being accuse renting illegally to his tenant to
Push pressure in court.
http://curbed.com/archives/2015/09/02/hans-haacke-photography-slumlord.php?utm_campaign=issue-39648&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Curbed
More on croman here.
http://curbed.com/archives/2015/09/02/hans-haacke-photography-slumlord.php?utm_campaign=issue-39648&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Curbed
More on croman here.
http://www.nypress.com/fighting-the-landlord/
Another croman related article to support this one.
Thank you James Peterson for writing an excellent article about ” Living in a Croman building.” I too was once a Croman tenant with high market rate rent, but I couldn’t leave fast enough. One would think that when you are paying over $5,500 a month in rent we would be receiving heat and hot water, having appliances that work, not living with mice and insects crawling around, or being tortured by having to listening to hammering and construction sounds on a daily basis when Croman/9300 Realty renovates the apartments all around you because you are now living in what sounds like a combat zone with water leaks pouring through your ceiling light fixtures and chunks of your ceiling crash down. The Croman Real Estate /9300 Realty property managers are the sleasiest women you can imagine especially that Santiago thing and if you try to get a repair they don’t even answer their phones. Forget about getting any help if there is an emergency because no one comes and there are no supers living on the premises. To top it off these creeps tried to keep my security deposit and I had to fight and threaten legal action to get my own security deposit money back. Thank you James for bringing attention to this horrible, criminal company.