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PINNACLE: Stop the Harrasment!
West Harlem and
its vicinity has a renting stock or more
than 94% which make this area extremely
vulnerable to unscrupulous landlords like
Pinnacle Group who seeks to evict tenants at
any cost. Since 2004, there are 17,000
eviction orders in West Harlem and its
vicinity area. This is an alarming number of
evictions of long time residents.
Pinnacle Group
and its owner, Mr. Joel Wiener, keep a
practice of abuses and discrimination
against tenants who live in their more of
600 buildings around the city. In West
Harlem, they have maintained a pattern of
harassment against tenants under rent
stabilization. Pinnacle engages in dubious
management practices, such as making
unlawful and exorbitant rent increases, with
a view to force the low income residents
out.
Pinnacle is
targeting to harass long time residents, as
the 82 year old lady, Ms. Esther Martin, who
has resided for 56 years at 610 Riverside
Drive, apartment 42. She was attending the
housing court for three years because
Pinnacle provided false and deliberate
information by saying that she owned a house
and resided in Miami. They tried to say that
somebody else was living in her apartment.
The truth is that she has never visited her
Miami for more than two weeks. She visits
her children who live there. Pinnacle kept
this elderly person, who is a very
responsible tenant, in stress for three
years.
Pinnacle common
practice is to overcharge the legal limit
for increases to vacated rent controlled
apartment as denounced in Norwood News in
the Bronx after Pinnacle purchased three
Olinville Avenue properties in 2003. They
are currently measuring all of the rooms and
windows of many of their building with the
intention of requesting for Major Capital
Improvement –MCI- rent increases. When
renewing a lease, Pinnacle uses to add more
rooms in the new lease that those rooms
established in the original lease. Pinnacle
keeps its apartment in disrepairs; when
acquiring a new building the just put a
flag, change the front face by using the
same kind of doors for all of their building
and only repairs the vacated rooms. At
times, the increases are based on cosmetic
improvement.
The Mirabal
Sisters Cultural and Community Center is
committed to defend and preserve the
community. For this reason, we are demanding
that Pinnacle Group stop the abuses and
discrimination and we have asked the General
Attorney Eliot Spitzer to conduct an
investigation about the business practices
of Pinnacle. |
