Our Landlord “Hates” Our Buildings
Which has to be why he bought 53 of them, right?
We think of the buildings we live in as our homes. Contrary to popular belief, even in New York City, we get to know our neighbors. We settle in for evenings of movies or sex — or both — and think we have achieved some level of security.
These buildings, however, are often merely chips in the high-stakes gambling game of Real Estate.
While we’re tackling clutter and considering a new couch, some white man in an expensive suit to the south of us is making decisions that could rob us of our security and even the livability of these places we pay to sleep in every night. Private equity firms buy and sell dozens of these buildings in a single deal. One such firm, Sugar Hill Capital Partners, probably congratulated itself on the sweetheart deal it made in 2018 when it picked up 53 buildings in Harlem and Washington Heights for a cool $250,000,000 (keep in mind that there’s one apartment in the city that fetched $238,000,000).
They really should have consulted their astrologer before signing on the dotted line.
The Housing Protection and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 blew the doors off any plans Sugar Hill and other private equity firms might have had to oust as many rent-stabilized tenants as possible in…
