NEW YORK, NY January 08, 2003 — A state supreme court justice has temporarily ordered a Brooklyn landlord to stop eviction proceedings against his tenants. The residents of the low-income housing complex say their landlord was unfairly evicting them in order to make more money by offering the apartments to the city for emergency housing for the homeless. The lawsuit illustrates the tensions created by the city's homeless plan. WNYC's Amy Eddings reports.

The Noble Drew Ali Plaza houses that are at the heart of the lawsuit have a nearly thirty-year history of neglect. Elevators were broken. Tenants lacked hot AND cold water for long periods. Conditions got so bad that the city temporarily halted the flow of federal housing subsidies in the fall of 2001. So, when the landlord hired a new manager, Eshel Management, last February, residents thought they'd see a change. Tenant Earl Price hoped that, after three years of waiting, he'd get the large hole in his bathroom ceiling fixed.

Earl Price, measuring the hole: I'd say six feet by two and a half.

But instead, Price says the manager asked him to move to another apartment in the complex. Price refused -- he says he likes his place -- and now, he says, Eshel Management has upped the ante.

Price: I have money orders here, and he's not taking the rent. Because he wants to get me out of here to put me to another building, so he's not taking the rent.

Price pays $659 a month in rent, but the apartment would fetch far more if it were used to house a homeless family. Under its emergency shelter plan, the city pays about $95 a night -- or about $3,000 a month -- to landlords to house homeless families. At Noble Drew, renovations are finally underway .but mostly in the vacant apartments that are now being offered to the homeless. Tenant leader Paulette Forbes says this adds insult to injury.

Forbes: But can you see now, look at that beautiful bathroom right there, And this is what the apartments all around look like. So, could you imagine that? Don't you know how nice it would feel to take a bath in here?

Mimi Rosenberg, an attorney for the tenants, says that since Eshel Management took over, at least 125 families, representing about 32 percent of Noble Drew's apartments, have been evicted and that many tenants who remain are being harrassed and threatened.

Rosenberg: Our concern is not with the fact that there are homeless families. Our concern is that we're removing rent-regulated apartments from the housing market. Our concern is that we're creating new homelessness by evicting the most impoverished sector of the rental population.

How many homeless are currently at the site is not clear. A spokesman for the city's Department of Homeless Services says at least 30 homeless families are there, and that the site could hold up to 157 more. But Eschel Management says they haven't evicted or pressured anybody to make room for the homeless; the company says there were already 200 vacant apartments when it came on board. Eshel Management's attorney, Harvey Lustig says his client has forgiven thousands of dollars of back rent, and that he's only seeking legal action against twenty people who are still in default.

Lustig: My clients have put four million dollars into this property. They are endeavoring to improve it. And the ultimate goal here is to provide housing for those people who can pay the rent. Because without the rent, we can't move forward in terms of caring for the property.

Housing advocates say the lure of lucrative homeless housing contracts is causing other landlords to pressure tenants to leave. Terry Poe, with the West Side SRO Law Project, says long-time tenants of several single room occupancy hotels have been cleared out since the city's emergency homeless housing program began in 2000.

Poe: The city should have started thinking about this and doing something about this years ago. And to play the same old game of throwing money at temporary solutions is just prolonging the crisis.

Officials at the Department of Homeless Services say they don't like the program, and are trying to curtail it by moving more people into permanent housing.

At State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, Noble Drew Ali Plaza tenants are relieved by the court order, which prevents new homeless families from moving in and current tenants from being moved out. But the bitterness from decades of mismanagement could not be contained. Outside the courtroom, tenant Tamara Brown confronted the Noble Drew houses' landlord, Abdur Farrakhan.

Brown: We can't not pay the fuel bill, to the point where they gotta come lock the furnaces and you all gotta buy fuel for heat. We didn't do that, we don't have anything to do with that, or where they can't clean up 'cuz there's only one maintenance man for five buildings .

Farrakhan says he inherited most of the building's problems.

Farrakhan: See these people talking about no hot water, no heat? Many of them broke into their apartments. Many of them are illegal tenants . (Tenants start to object.)

The buildings have about 1,300 building code violations against them, ranging from serious infractions, like broken fire doors, to lesser ones, like roaches, mice and broken plaster. Farrakhan says he can't afford to fix them. He wants to sell the complex to a member of the Eshel Management team. The state supreme court justice's order yesterday temporarily halted that sale. Farrakhan's lawyer, Richard Wagner, thinks that move was bad for tenants.

Wagner: What is ironic when one's ideology trumps one's common sense, is that now the tenants, through their counsel, are in this sort of bizarre position of trying to enjoin a sale of property to a purchaser that has the means to invest and maintain the property.

Wagner says he'll appeal. Lawyers for the tenants say that, while they don't like Farrakhan's stewardship, they don't want to see anybody associated with Eshel Management owning the buildings, either. They want the homeless families currently at the buildings to be offered leases, they want evicted families to be put on a waiting list for new vacancies, and they want all apartments renovated as quickly as possible. The court proceedings resume January 28th. For WNYC, I'm Amy Eddings.