Next City: How NYC Tenants are Harassed Out of Their Apartments
By Rachel Dovey | January 17, 2018 Read the full article
By Rachel Dovey | January 17, 2018 Read the full article
"The message is that the rule of law applies to people who want to spend a lot of money building big buildings in New York, In 2019, that is a change."
Paula Segal said the recent ruling is “certainly a word of caution for anyone who’s looking to add buildings to any of the dozens of ‘large scale’ development plans in the city.”
“Once those changes are put into effect any new construction in this area will have to conform to the residents vision as it was developed,” says Paula Segal, an attorney with TakeRoot Justice who is working with the community groups
“It’s great to know that the court takes its oversight authority seriously,” said Paula Segal, an attorney who argued one of the lawsuits for community groups. “Usually there’s so much deference to the city.”
“The decision is very clear that none of the agencies can take any action. They cannot send confronting letters, they cannot accept applications, nothing can happen towards the development of the towers until they are properly approved.”
A lawyer for the groups, Paula Segal of TakeRoot Justice, said the goal is to rezone the neighborhood before developers re-apply to build the towers — forcing them to follow the community rezoning plans.
Tenants at Linden Plaza, with the support of Legal Services Corporation A and the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, have now filed a class-action federal lawsuit against the owner as well as the federal and city agencies.
Tenants of a Bedford-Stuyvesant building went to court on Thursday to delay action on the eviction of a longtime resident, renewing a two-year battle in which they’ve accused their landlord of harassment and deception.
Palantir Technologies, co-founded by a Trump advisor in Silicon Valley, has created a smart-phone app that helps ICE round up undocumented workers. The number of arrests has shot up.