Press Immediate Release: May 10, 2016

Contact:

Steve Herrick steveh@coopersquare.org, 212-228-8210

Brandon Kielbasa, bkielbasa@coopersquare.org, 212-228-8210
COOPER SQUARE COMMITTEE APPLAUDS INDICTMENT
OF PREDATORY LANDLORD STEVE CROMAN

The Cooper Square Committee applauds NYS Attorney General Eric Schniederman for bringing
a 20 count criminal indictment and civil charges against notorious landlord, Steve Croman, who
has a long track record of harassing and intimidating his rent regulated tenants. Our
Organizing Director, Brandon Kielbasa, brought many of these allegations to the attention of
Attorney General Schneidermans office over 2 years ago. We are deeply gratified that he and
his staff did a thorough investigation of the many tenant claims of harassment and intimidation
that we documented, and moved forward with an indictment, said Steve Herrick, Executive
Director.
For more than a decade, Cooper Square Committees organizing department has worked with
Croman tenants grappling with a pattern of frivolous litigation, failure to deposit tenants rent
checks followed by dispossess notices, a lack of essential services, the use of Anthony
Falconites services to stalk tenants and make repeated buyout offers, and reckless renovation
often done without permits or in disregard for stop work orders. Buildings acquired by Croman
followed a familiar pattern, with most of the tenants moving out within a year of his acquiring
them.
We want to acknowledge the tenant associations that fought back despite the fear of retaliation.
Tenants at 309 East 8th Street brought an HP Action in Housing Court when Cromans
renovation work disbursed dust on a constant basis and caused health problems for a number
of tenants. The building also had a DOB partial vacate order for the basement due to damage
caused to a load bearing wall that housed all the gas meters. The reckless demolition also
caused gas leaks that lead to a four week gas shut off; 159 Stanton Street got organized last
year in response to harassment and unpermitted and dangerous renovation work. More
recently; 529 East 6th Street organized and drafted letters to New York Community Bank about
the over-leveraging of their building, and advocated for themselves after being left without
cooking gas for months. 60 Avenue B organized after experienced disruptive renovation work,
and wrote Croman and his management company to resolve the issues. After getting some
modest improvements, they held off on taking legal action. These and many other tenant
associations contributed valuable documentation to the AGs Office.
A lot of other community based housing groups in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens have
helped tenants organize to defend themselves against Cromans tactics, including GOLES,
UHAB, Movement for Justice in El Barrio, Crown Heights Tenant Union, and others. The strong
support of elected officials such as Councilmembers Rosie Mendez, Margaret Chin, Melissa
Mark Viverito, Jumaane Williams and Senators Brad Hoylman and Daniel Squadron, Assembly
member Brian Kavanagh and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer enabled Croman
tenants to bring attention to Cromans attacks on tenants and encouraged tenants to keep
fighting back. Still many tenants feared that Croman appeared to be untouchable. The news on
Monday that Croman and his mortgage broker, Barry Schwartz, have been indicted is
vindication for the tenants in dozens of buildings in the Lower East Side and the East Village as
well as the tenants in scores of other buildings in New York City.

The scope of this extraordinary indictment reveals not only Mr. Cromans greed, but his lack of
compunction and the sadistic pleasure he and his minions took in their illegal efforts to increase
his profits said Robert Pinter, tenant association representative at 309 East 8thStreet. We hope
it sends a strong message to the other arrogant predatory landlords in the city that no one is
above the law. To every tenant who has had the courage to speak up and organize while living
through the intimidation and hell of a Croman renovation, New York City owes you a debt of
gratitude, he added.
We hope
this
indictment
will
send
a strong message
to other
predatory
equity landlords, said Brandon Kielbasa, Cooper Square Committees Director of Organizing.
He added that tenants should Keep fighting! Dont ever stop working to shine a light on the
wrongful acts of these bad-acting landlords. Your tenacity makes these big wins possible. Your
actions will help alert elected officials and government agencies.
The Cooper Square Committee is one of the lead organizations involved in the city-wide
coalition called Stand for Tenant Safety that is working with the City Council to win passage of a
dozen bills that aim to make the NYC Dept. of Buildings more responsive to tenant complaints
during renovation. They include:

disallowing self-certification of DOB filings by landlords who are found guilty of tenant
harassment;

making DOB issue orders to correct when they issue vacate orders in order to take away
the incentive to deliberately create unsafe conditions;

creating a Real Time Enforcement Unit at DOB in order to respond within 2 hours when
work is done without a permit and within 5 days when a permit involves more than 10%
of the floor area of the building or creating an addition to the building;

requiring landlords to make their Tenant Protection Plan publicly available to tenants and
to maintain essential services during renovation;

increasing fines for work without permits and for work done in violation of stop work
orders; and enforcing payment of administrative fines such as DOB and ECB fines
through lien sales.

Steve Croman has regularly engaged in many of the practices above. For example, he
frequently did work without a permit and in violation of stop work orders, and at one point last
year he had over $1 million in unpaid ECB fines. For landlords like him, getting caught
disregarding DOB rules was a small cost of doing business. With yesterdays indictment, the
Attorney General is sending the message that the cost of engaging in a criminally reckless real
estate enterprise has gone up significantly, said Steve Herrick.