Chinatown tenants today began a hunger strike in an ongoing fight for their homes. It’s the latest development in a two-year battle between the tenants of 85 Bowery and their landlord, Joseph Betesh.

Two weeks ago, the Department of Housing and Preservation issued a vacate order for the 75 people living at 85 Bowery. City officials deemed the building uninhabitable because of an unsafe central staircase. They required Betesh to make repairs before the tenants would be allowed back in.

Meanwhile, tenants have been living in nearby hotels and shelters because Betesh missed the city’s deadline to complete the repairs.

Tenants say that Betesh is using the lack of repairs as a tactic to force them out and raise the rent with new tenants.

E-Joo Young was at home with her grandchildren, a four-year-old and a newborn baby, when she was forced out of her apartment.

“I’ve lived in the building for twenty-some years, but they kicked us out in two hours,” she said.

Joe Betesh, the owner of 85 Bowery, said in a statement, “Our team is working diligently each day to repair and replace the severely damaged infrastructure of 85 Bowery and make the building safe for habitation.”

The strike began on the eve of the Chinese New Year, which starts on February 16.

Sarah Ahn, an organizer with the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side, said the holiday focuses on the importance of family and people’s homes.

“The new year for the tenants is very symbolic,” she said. “It has a lot to do with home.”

Without access to their apartments, the tenants can’t use their ancestral shrines to properly celebrate the new year.

“We are supposed to be celebrating the lunar new year,” said E-Joo Young. “Instead we are out on the street.”

Six tenants say they will continue the hunger strike until the city pressures Betesh to make the required repairs and allows the tenants back in their homes.

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It seems fitting that a teenage political activist in Ecuador would one day work with a social justice organization in the largest Hispanic city in the US. Gladys Puglla has been a representative for Make The Road New York, a non-profit whose goal is to empower Latino and working class communities in New York City, for the past seven years.

On the eve of President Obama’s executive action speech on immigration reform, Puglla and members of Make the Road New York are galvanized by the fact that many of the issues they fight for as Latino immigrants are slowly becoming part of a national dialogue. Chief among the group’s concerns is the difficulty they experience holding down safe and economical housing in a city in the throes of an affordable housing crisis. With language barriers, and bereft of an understanding of their rights as renters, thousands of Latino immigrants experience harassment and unsafe living conditions in the city.

Puglla downplays her stint as a political organizer for an Ecuadorian presidential candidate in the 80s. “I was helping in the marching and passing the word about him a little bit, but my school and my grandmother didn’t let me go out so much,” she said with a laugh. But her work on the housing committee at Make The Road New York cannot be underestimated. Last year alone, Make The Road New York helped prevent the eviction of more than 60 families and worked to repair unsafe living conditions for thousands in New York City.

Funded through private donations and a $120 membership fee (which members have three years to pay off), Make The Road New York provides members with legal representation in Housing Court and informs members of their rights as renters. They meet every Thursday. Zoraida Conde, of Bedstuy, Brooklyn, attends because she wants to learn her rights. “They put me in jail if I don’t comply with the law. But if the landlord does the same thing — they break the law — they get away. And it’s not fair,” said Conde, who claims her landlord steals and reroutes gas in her building, resulting in exorbitantly high bills which are beginning to jeopardize her credit.

Tenant harassment and the threat of eviction can be most devastating to the elderly.

Maria Khochaiche, who has called 1351 Hancock St. in Bushwick, Brooklyn, home for the last 40 years, now faces eviction after her refusal to pay rent after it was raised by an additional $2,100. In her 70s, Khochaiche says her health has declined on account of the situation.

“I don’t know what I going to do. I couldn’t sleep and I’m getting sick. I had a heart attack. I have a lot of problems,” she said.

Lawyers working for Make The Road New York are currently representing her in Housing Court. With the transformation of Latino communities like this one in Bushwick, Puglla said the group will continue to fight for its members.

“We are trying to get more housing lawyers so that no one who comes in here goes empty handed,” she said.

The post Bushwick’s Dispossessed Latino Community appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

It’s not quite an art gallery, not quite a language school, and not quite a music venue.

But El Taller Latino-Americano is a little bit of all those things, and most of all it has become a cultural institution on the Upper West Side over the last two decades. With rising rents, it’s about to be driven out of the area.

“Despite the fact that we are a not-for-profit educational organization, the rent which we engage in with the landlord is commercial,” said Bernardo Palombo, a founder of El Taller.

It’s expected to rise from $8000to $22,000 per month next year.

“What for us is human space is for others mathematics and numbers,” said Palombo.

This is not the first time Manhattan’s property market has forced them to move.

El Taller: language, culture and community on 104th Street from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

They started out on 19th Street and 7th Avenue almost 35 years ago, before moving a little further uptown, then across to the basement of a Russian cathedral in the Lower East Side. They’ve been in their current space on 104th Street and Broadway for the last 22 years.

“Now we are here, and probably next year we will be in Canada, because the whole history of gentrification pushes people to el norte, so we are going to el norte again,” said Palombo.

He has a plan for El Taller – to develop an urban garden, community kitchen, centre for immigrants’ rights and a three-penny university – if he can find a way to stay in the building.

The three-penny university would include workshops from current and former Columbia University professors and community members.

“Dona Maria, a Puerto Rican woman who lives next to my house, will teach handy 22 point crochet,” said Palombo, “And the younger characters that are selling drugs in the avenue will teach texting to the old farts like me.”

El Taller has submitted the proposal to two different arts foundations, suggesting they buy the building and help expand the organization.

But if the rent rises as expected, it is likely Palombo and El Taller will have to find a new home for these big ideas to unfold.

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A pedestrian walks in front of Mei Rong Song's Chinatown flower shop. Song just won a two-year court battle with her landlords to keep from getting evicted. Photo by Chelsia Marcius

For more than 20 years, Mei Rong Song has owned and operated a 260-square-foot flower shop at East Broadway Mall in the commercial heart of Chinatown. When business was booming, she prepared floral arrangements for banquets and weddings, and sold $5,000 worth of merchandise each month.

Today the store, at 88 E. Broadway, looks more like a storage space. The fridge is packed with cardboard boxes rather than flower pots. Baskets and plastic bags filled with ribbon and tinsel hang from hooks on the walls, and tangled wire cables drape from a water-damaged ceiling that has only one light fixture.

Song, 41, who lives two blocks south of the store, pays just under $3,000 a month to rent this space. But that fee seems like a bargain after mall landlords, Min Yan Chan and son Terry Chan, tried to hike the rent to $12,000 a month in November 2008.

When she refused to pay the additional $9,000, the Chans sent her an eviction notice, giving Song 30 days to pack up and get out.

“Only by robbing a bank could I make that much money in a month,” she said through a translator at a press conference yesterday near her shop.

Now, nearly two years later, the New York State Court of Appeals dismissed the landlord’s case on grounds that “the lease between landlord and tenant was subject to and subordinate to all the terms of the lease between (East Broadway Mall) and the City of New York.”

According to Wing Lam, coalition director of Chinese Staff and Workers, this is the first time a store owner went up against a landlord’s threat to evict and won.

“The system is stacked against them.  It is a group easily intimidated by an eviction threat,” said Candace Carponter, Song’s attorney.

Many of the small business owners in Chinatown cannot  speak English.

“For them, the court process is overwhelming,” Carponter said.

The property is owned by the city, but has been leased out to mall operators since 1985, according to Mark Daly, a spokesman for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

That means, he said, that it is the landlord—not the city—who is responsible to the more than 100 subtenants in East Broadway Mall.

“The city relationship is with the mall operator, and the mall management company deals with the tenants. The city is not a party to that dispute,” Daly said.

Daly said that DCAS met with subtenants last year and was  aware of the allegations against the company. The subtenants were advised to contact law enforcement authorities. Daly would not say if DCAS followed up.

Carponter claims responsibility lies squarely with city officials who continue to look the other way.

“Because the mall operator has breached the lease by failing to disclose rent amounts, the city has the authority to terminate the lease or add in additional protections for subtenants,” she said. “This is telling people that don’t even speak English to negotiate the map of the city government. That’s nonsense.”

While Carponter said that Song has not sued for damages, she estimates the total amount would be about $150,000.

That includes money Song has lost over the last six years from closing the shop in the winter, when the landlords, who are legally obligated to pay for utilities, shut off her water and heat.

After receiving the eviction notice in 2008, Song formed the Chinatown Small Business Association that represents more than 200 subtenants in the area, many of whom rent in the East Broadway Mall.

As she walked through the vicinity, Song pointed to various shops—a trendy hair salon, a make-up counter, a small basement eatery serving white rice and fried dumplings—and rattled off how much each paid in rent: $4,000, $8,000 and $10,000, respectively.

The Chans did not immediately return multiple phone calls seeking comment.

Many of the shop owners embraced Song as she walked past their shops. But still, getting other subtenants to do the same has seen little success, Song said. Many fear losing their businesses entirely, so they simply put up with the problem.

“People are grateful for what I’m doing,” she said. “But I still stand alone.”

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