Brian Gallagher, a tenant at 360 Jefferson St., shows part of the concrete block wall that had temporarily sealed off a back entrance. The landlord moved to oust the tenants from the building after they applied for Loft Law protections. — Photo by Aaron Short

Loft dwellers throughout the neighborhood are closely monitoring the outcome of a contentious landlord-tenant dispute in a two-story Jefferson Street factory that could become the test case of the state’s newly revised Loft Law. The law requires landlords to improve certain eligible industrial-zoned buildings to residential standards when tenants request it, and imposes rent stabilization.

Seven tenants living in the first and second floors of a former belt factory on 360 Jefferson Street claim their landlord threatened to evict them when they applied with the city for Loft Law protections — and that she burglarized their units and sealed off their showers after the city cleared the entire building in a vacate order earlier this month.

In response, the landlord argued it was her tenants who broke the law by choosing to live in spaces with commercial leases and have "acted maliciously" towards her and her family.

 
360 Jefferson’s front doors, chained closed and plastered with vacate orders. (Fabienne Lasserre)

The tenants’ plight and the building’s condition has attracted the interest of the NYPD, the city’s Department of Buildings, artists, tenant organizers, and Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who ushered the law’s passage in June and has adopted the tenants rights’ campaign as his personal cause.

Lopez hosted a loft tenant meeting in Williamsburg last week, rushing back from his cancer treatments at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he gave the floor to the tenants of 360 Jefferson to tell their story and appealed to the other tenants in attendance for solidarity.

"When I heard that their bathrooms were filled with cement, that is criminal and outrageous," said Lopez, who chided the 83rd Precinct’s commanding officer on his detectives’ failure to file a criminal report on the matter. "They were locked out and the person who locked them out is their landlord. I promise you we will stay with the loft tenants."

The tenants, most of whom were artists or freelancers and some of whom had lived in the building for eight years, filed for Loft Law coverage with the city on Aug. 11. They attended prior loft law meetings and chose to submit an application after experiencing several months of harassment from their landlord, who was moving to obtain a liquor license for an unlicensed cabaret called "La Cascada" or "Cascade Lounge" in the building’s basement. The club’s Facebook page was deleted soon after the case began, but BushwickBK has saved a screen shot showing a venue full of people and DJs.

"We live here as our primary residence: drivers licenses, taxes, voter registrations, bank accounts, car insurances and registrations," said Fabienne Lasserre, a sculptor who lives on the second floor. "Our landlord removed our trash, submetered our electric, and cashed our rent checks.  We took care of everything else. We have sacrificed, through a combination of necessities, our tenant rights and comforts for building our professional careers."

On Sept. 17, the landlord, Maritza Villacis, received the notice of the application and, according to the tenants, began threatening them by serving eviction notices to three of the four units and refusing to cash rent checks.

Villacis also began construction on two unused units in the first floor with the aim of restarting the family’s former belt factory, which closed in 2006, and was issued two complaints by the city on Sept. 28 and Oct. 1.

 
A shower pan at 360 Jefferson, sealed with concrete. (Fabienne Lasserre)

The Loft Law allows existing businesses to make claims of hardship against law-invoking residents, pointed out Brian Gallagher, another tenant. "Part of the hardship application is you have to open the records of your business. An illegal club won’t have tax records so they went to a business that they do have."

The implication is that Villacis restarted her belt business in the building simply to show that manufacturing continues on the premises and more easily block application of the Loft Law.

On Oct. 2, Villacis called the police when she saw a guest of a tenant enter the building, and attempted to get a restraining order against him.

But it wasn’t until Friday, Oct. 8, when Villacis called the FDNY to report an "illegal conversion," prompting the city to issue a "partial vacate order" that the tenants realized they were in for a protracted struggle.

But the worst had not yet happened.

Department of Buildings inspectors visited the building several times over the course of the next two weeks, allowing the tenants to reoccupy the building with a 24-hour FDNY-certified fireguard on duty, and then vacating them again when different requirements were not met.

After extensive negotiations among the tenants, the city, and Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council attorney Sally Robinson, tenant organizer Rachel Fuentes (also with RBSCC), and Lopez’s counsel Debbie Feinberg, the city finally lifted the vacate order on Oct. 20.

The order was lifted on the condition that the tenants agreed to a serve as voluntary fireguards — which meant someone had to carry a flashlight and a fire extinguisher at all times until the building received its certificate of occupancy.

But when the tenants reentered their units, they discovered that someone entered their apartments while the vacate order was in effect and poured cement in the showers in each of the units’ bathrooms — an act of vandalism that a Dept. of Buildings spokeswoman said she had never heard reported before in New York City.

"We’re not worried about heat yet," said Gallagher. "We’re worried about electricity and water. My shower’s full of cement. I called 311 with a complaint and they said, ‘I don’t have a box to check for that.’"

The tenants also discovered that the building’s rear staircase, which leads to a secondary egress to an alley that is usually chained up, was recently painted blue, and fake plastic brick paneling that matched the stairway wall was plastered onto the wall over the fire exit. A large pile of cement, plywood and debris leaned against the exit door from the outside, along with a cement block wall.

The tenants immediately called police and reported a burglary but officers from the 83rd Precinct did not file a report at that time because there were no witnesses.

Villacis confirmed to BushwickBK that she had entered the apartments with contractors who poured cement into the shower drains — but disputed the tenants’ accounts that she and her husband built showers in the units, claiming that tenants added fixtures to make the units habitable.

"No one broke into no one’s apartments," said Villacis. "If they’re saying that, they’re lying. I as the owner have the keys to the spaces. We didn’t rent commercial spaces with showers. Those locations are commercial space. It’s not for living in there. They converted it. They did it. It is an imminent danger for them to be living there."

The tenants are back in the building for now but expect to be in court soon — with Villacis — in a test of how strong the Loft Law really is.

Back in July, attorney David Frazer, who has represented loft tenants for years, told tenants at a Loft Law meeting that the law’s standards were expensive and invoking the law would likely destroy their relationship with their landlords. "Landlords are not going to want to spend that money," said Frazer. "The easiest way to do that is to get rid of tenants, and you’re going to have to start looking for ways to protect yourself."

Frazer’s advice has already proven valuable.

"The Loft Law is lacking support and failing implementation," said tenant Gallagher. "If we don’t count for the new Loft Law then basically who’s going to be able to qualify for it? Once we were given these rights, once state law was passed, all of a sudden we’re out on the streets, kicked out."

Villacis, who called the entire ordeal "horrible" and her "worst nightmare," acknowledged that the Loft Law would be effective in instances where landlords wanted to fully legalize converted industrial buildings that were vacant or occupied with residential use.

"This is a manufacturing building," said Villacis. "I make belts. I’m going to continue to make belts. And continue to do other business in my spaces. What the Loft Board is going to do, I don’t know."

One thing Villacis has ruled out is converting her building to residential apartments — or keeping her current tenants in the building when the court resolves the case.

"I consider them enemies," said Villacis. "I do not want them as neighbors. It will never work."

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