NYC Tenants Protest Credit Suisse's Support of Abusive Landlord

Vantage has been doing things like refusing to accept rent checks because a tenant's spouse's name was included on the check, then initiating non-payment proceedings in housing court against the tenant.  Vantage will claim that a tenant has 20 people living in his apartment.  Or that a tenant actually lives somewhere else most of the year.  All these allegations being completely baseless.  The tenant then ends up missing work to go to housing court to try to resolve the situation, often pro se (without legal counsel), losing sleep out of worry that this huge company will evict the tenant and his or her family.  The judge quickly sees there is no merit to the case and dismisses it.    

Then the same tenant will get sued again.  And again.  Each time the lawsuit gets thrown out of court.  But each time, the tenant is a little more inclined to pick up and move somewhere else.  It would just be easier ...  Many have probably done so already.   

Vantage has decided that harassing low-income tenants--often Spanish-speaking, often first or second-generation immigrants--out of their homes is the way to boost returns to its financiers during a down market. 

There's just one problem with this plan: they didn't expect the tenants to fight back. 

The Catholic Migration Office's Immigrant Tenant Advocacy Project (ITAP), Queens Legal Services Corporation, and The Legal Aid Society filed a lawsuit last week in New York state court on behalf of several tenants in western Queens who have been the subject of frivolous lawsuits constituting deceptive practices under New York's Consumer Protection Law. 

A few hundred of the tenants mobilized for a rally and protest this past Saturday against Vantage and its backer, Credit Suisse.  State Senator John Sabini and City Council Member Eric Gioia also came to lend their support.

I don't know what this sign in Korean says or why a middle-aged Latino man is holding it, but that is the sort of thing that happens in Queens, one of the most diverse communities in the world.

"Let's defend our rights."

"It's raining evictions!"

At the end of the protest, one outspoken tenant who had experienced harassment by Vantage delivered a symbolic eviction notice to Credit Suisse.  He pushed it through the 20 foot high ornate brass gates that the Credit Suisse building's security had erected to keep out the plebs (Not that the plebs were trying to get in ... and the gates were kind of bizarre ... "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!")  Sadly, my camera battery died before I could capture the gates or the eviction notice. 

This protest and lawsuit show that New York's immigrant communities will not sit idly by while big corporations try to displace and disempower them for financial gain.