Catalina: One Family’s Fight Against Their Landlord by Colin Archdeacon
Catalina has an unusual landlord, even by New York City standards. After a winter without heat or a bathroom, Cat was less than surprised when the city shut down her entire building. Now she’s fighting to hold on to her home.
No one should have to live like this. To go through what I went through, it was horrendous really. Not being able to use the bathroom, the no heat, the roaches. The bottoms of my kids’ socks had mice droppings.
I just didn’t know what else to do. What else can I do? Going to court I felt was the only step but even so nothing was done so basically I was doomed.
VOICEOVER
ADAM MYERS
In gentrifying areas like North Brooklyn, this phenomenon of landlords either creating these conditions or allowing bad conditions to persist uncorrected in an effort to get the tenants out but even though there is this phenomenon happening all over the place I would say that the Israel’s behavior does stand out as a particularly dramatic example.
Voiceover
Catalina lived in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Greenpoint. All of the apartments in her building are rent-stabilized, so tenants pay less than market rate. If all of the tenants moved out, the Israels could renovate the building and make a lot more money.
FRANK RICCI
Forget about trying to get a market rent for your apartment you cant get the rent you need to cover your expenses that’s the problem with rent stabilization its basic algebra.
CAT
I honestly feel like the rent-stabilization apartments help out a lot of people in the community. I have two kids I have to take care of, my income is not that high. I can’t really afford a $2,500 apartment.
VOICEOVER
Living conditions at Catalina’s building kept getting worst. The city deemed the building unlivable and ordered all of the tenants to move out.
CAT
I feel like they’ve taken full advantage of me. I’m homeless I have no place to go. I have no place to go I have no place to live my kids don’t have a room. My kids don’t have a bed to sleep in. So I feel like they basically won they got what they wanted.
Now I’m starting to puzzle the pieces back of my life and get back on my feet but it’s been a bumpy road. The only way that I honestly feel like I got some type of justice is when I move back and who knows when that will happen? So when can I come back home?
Many middle-class renters have been priced out of Manhattan, and are moving to Brooklyn. Eager to capitalize on this migration, developers build luxury apartments in what were once working-class neighborhoods.
As gentrification takes hold, low-income families can’t keep up with rising rents. What keeps many of them in their homes is rent-stabilization, a government program that limits the amount rent can go up on certain apartments.
But what happens when a booming housing market pits landlords against their rent-stabilized tenants?
Catalina Hidalgo is homeless after the city placed a vacate order on her apartment building. Her landlord, Joel Israel, is accused by his tenants of neglecting his buildings in order to scare off low-income families and move in richer ones.
Cat and her children endured a winter without heat and moths without access to a bathroom. She says Joel Israel always had an excuse but never had a solution.
Cat’s story is a prime example of the hidden costs of gentrification. She is now navigating the complex labyrinth of housing court in a quest to bring Israel to justice. And despite all the obstacles in her way, Cat just wants to move back in to her old apartment. As far as Cat is concerned, home is something worth fighting for.
