A double ripoff
Queens landlord cheats tenants, city: suit
A QUEENS landlord has been ripping off tenants for more than three decades while also pocketing $100 million in tax benefits because of lax city oversight, a lawsuit charges.
Residents of the Trafalgar Apartments (photo) on Union St., Flushing, have been overcharged “to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars” by Kaled Management, the suit the Legal Aid Society is filing Tuesday alleges.
“For decades, Kaled Management Corp. has skirted New York’s rent-regulation laws and abused subsidy programs to stiff tenants and line their pockets,” Legal Aid attorney Amee Master said.
“The city is complicit for doling out taxpayer subsidies with zero oversight while low-income New Yorkers suffer from higher rents.”
The suit being filed in Manhattan Supreme Court says Kaled reaped at least $100 million in tax benefits while failing to register the rents of the building, misleading tenants about rent-stabilized apartments and overcharging on rent since at least 1984.
Records show that as of November, only 14 of 113 units in the building were rent-stabilized — though the landlord accepted tax benefits for all units being stabilized, the suit says.
A spokesman for Kaled Management declined to comment because the company has not yet seen the suit.
Legal Aid seeks class-action status for the case, which could include about 120 tenants.
One resident, Stella Quinatoa, saw the rent for her two-bedroom apartment go up from $1,700 a month in 2014 to $1,850 in 2016. She then learned her apartment was supposed to be rent-stabilized. “I’ve been here 28 years. They never told us it was a rentcontrolled building. They raised the rent however they wanted from one year to the next. One year $100, the next year, another raise,” said Quinatoa, 73, who is one of two tenants who sued.
Legal Aid says she could be eligible for as much as $48,000 in retroactive payments.
Last year, tenants at Trafalgar were reimbursed for overcharges, calling it “the right thing to do.” But Legal Aid says those reimbursements were inadequate.
The city is named as a defendant because it failed to enforce rules regarding the building’s tax benefits through the J-51 and 421-a programs, Legal Aid charges. Both programs are meant to be affordable-housing incentives.
A Law Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The questionable bookkeeping at the building was discovered by the Housing Rights Initiative, which has coordinated more than 30 lawsuits against landlords over similar allegations.
Group founder Aaron Carr has also been an outspoken critic of the state for not enforcing the rent laws on the books.
“These landlords are making a mockery of our rent-stabilization laws,” he said. “They’re giving tax breaks to tax cheats.”