Tenant, 77, Sues Landlord Over Alleged Harassment To Leave $450-A-Month Unit

New York resident Francis Roberts is upset after he claims the home he has resided in for over two decades has turned into an environment of harassment by the building’s landlord.

Roberts, 77, told the New York Times that his Crown Heights building in Brooklyn has become a place where you will find squatters and trash across his lawn or in front of his door. And he asserts it’s a set-up to get him out of the dirt-cheap unit.

“It has been hell,” Roberts told the outlet.

He added that his living experience only worsened after portable clogged toilets were allegedly placed by his bedroom windows.

But Roberts believes his landlord hasn’t addressed any of the alleged circumstances due to the desire to raise his apartment’s rental rate above $450 per month. According to the listing website StreetEasy, the median Crown Heights apartment rental asking rate was $3,000 a month in October, becoming one of the fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in the city.

The New York Times reported that Roberts claimed the landlord went to great lengths to push him out of the apartment and even offered to move him to a new rent-regulated apartment, rent-free.

But Roberts, who is retired from a clerical job at a Manhattan law firm, refused the landlord’s offer and suggested the proposition is a trap to convert his apartment to market-rate rent, which would essentially price out the retired 77-year-old.

The four-story building was purchased by 972 Park Place L.L.C for $1.3 million at a discounted price under a city program for buildings in dire condition, The New York Times reported.

Roberts and his legal team aim to resolve reportedly 240 violations in addition to civil penalties against the landlord.

“They took the harassment to another level,” member Liam McSweeney of Brooklyn Legal Services told Brownstoner, who first reported the lawsuit.

In a court statement, one neighbor reportedly claimed that neighbor Aaron Akaberi threatened residents who had tried removing a tent encampment. The neighbor, Brian Villaroel, allegedly stated that Akaberi was there to harass Roberts and called him a racial epithet, according to one of Akaberi’s associates who reportedly told him.

Maria Florez, another neighbor who lives next to the building, reportedly said in a statement that Akaberi blasts music “24/7,” and it feels like a “torture method” directed toward the senior citizen.

“I just want to make my apartment habitable and to live in peace,” Roberts told The New York Times. “That’s all I want.”