Terrified tenants

Sue landlords over dangerous conditions

Ten tenants in three rentregulated Brooklyn apartment buildings are suing their landlords over allegations they’ve been harassed, denied heat and hot water and forced to live in dangerous, degrading conditions.

The tenants, who live in the gentrifying Prospect-Lefferts Gardens area, also claim their landlords and their related companies offered them unwanted buyout deals and converted newly vacant units into Airbnb listings — equipped with heat and air-conditioning, coffee machines and flat screen TVs.

“In the wintertime, I freeze in my own apartment because there’s no heat,” said Digna Doesserie-Mitchel, a tenant at 611 Flatbush Ave. since 2006. “How is the landlord going to fix up these other apartments for Airbnb and not maintain the rest of the building? We actually live here. We pay our rent just like everyone else.”

The lawsuit from Doesserie-Mitchel and her nine co-plaintiffs was filed Tuesday in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

In it, the tenants claim that landlords Miriam, William, Richard and Michelle Shasho, along with the companies 611 Flatbush Realty Corp. and First Kings Management LLC, illegally converted rentstabilized apartments to short-term Airbnbs and failed to provide fire and safety features required under law.

The landlord has engaged in “ever-escalating” harassment against the rent-stabilized tenants included giving one resident a refurbished refrigerator when she asked for a new one — and it included a “live rat,” the lawsuit said.

“These buildings are unsanitary fire traps,” said Catherine Frizell, an attorney with Brooklyn Legal Services NYC’s Tenant Rights Coalition. “Not only is the landlord terrorizing these tenants to drive them out of their rentstabilized homes, but they are actively putting the tenants’ lives at risk.”

Brooklyn Legal Services is representing the 10 clients. The landlords have also brought “frivolous” suits against the residents’, their lawsuit claims, “refused to accept the plaintiffs rent, falsely accused plaintiffs of failing to pay rent and charged … erroneous late fees.”

It adds up to a “history of relentlessly harassing tenants,” the complaint alleged.

The three buildings — 599, 607 and 611 Flatbush Ave. — combined have 18 outstanding violations in the city’s Buildings Department database. According to Legal Services NYC, 220 housing violations have piled up on the three addresses, which are controlled by the Shasho family.

The tenants also say they’ve suffered chronic heat and water outages and in some cases live with moldy walls, damaged floors and leaking ceilings.

“I fear for my life,” said tenant Elizabeth Hayes, who has lived in her building on Flatbush Ave. since 1981.

“This building is unsafe. Any time I smell something burning I think the building is on fire because it’s very possible. I lay awake at night hearing all kinds of noises from people in the building who I don’t know,” she said.

The Shashos did not respond to requests for comment.