Sad realities of Gentrification right here.
DAILY INTELLIGENCER GENTRIFICATION
May 12, 201511:19 a.m.
‘I Put in White Tenants’: The Grim, Racist (and Likely Illegal) Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord
By DW Gibson
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Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
People that have small mortgages, they’re going to want a lot more for their deed, to give over ownership. A person that sells a deed with a big mortgage usually wants to get $5,000. They don’t care. They didn’t pay the mortgage for, like, two years — the property’s shyt. So we would give them $5,000, $10,000, and they give us the deed.
We started out with this, buying over one hundred deeds, all over the place, and we collected the rent. I used to love it. But the bad part was, come Monday, I used to go to the buildings in my car, and knock on every single door. This was like five years ago. And they didn’t give me payment. One out of 10, one out of 20, maybe. And they were yelling at me, “You fukking Jew! Leave me alone!”
I got used to it. And I understand it. Not all Jewish people are nice people. Every tree has a bad apple. Some of them are really nasty and can trick their tenants. But some of the tenants put up such a fight that you have to trick them. I used to do that — but I don’t do that anymore. I did that once four years ago. I told someone, “I’m going to give you twenty grand to move — just move out first, and then I’ll give you the money.” And then I screwed them. I gave him something but not the money I told him. And he couldn’t come back to me because he wasn’t even legally supposed to live there.
Some Jewish people, they’re going to come in and they’re going to try to rip off the black tenants — and the tenants know it, there’s word of mouth. So it’s like, “Oh, a Jewish guy again?” There’s a lot of Jewish guys moving around. Like a lot, a lot, a lot of investors who are either Hasidic Jews or a little bit less, but they’re Jewish. They’re holding Bed-Stuy like this — he squeezes at the air in front of him, strangling it. So sometimes it’s like, “Hello, this was our neighborhood. What are you doing here?”
We started in East New York, but we sold everything we had. We didn’t want to be there. Most of them are either Section 8, other government programs, and even the person that pays with cash is too much headaches. So we sold everything over there and we came out all the way to Park Slope. Then we started backing up, backing up, slowly, all the way to Bushwick. This is one of the houses we’re finishing now.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
We pull up in front of a three-story brick building. Having shed the deed-buying business, Ephraim’s now involved with acquisitions and development. And he prefers to hold and rent buildings as opposed to renovating and flipping them. Ephraim stops the car in the middle of a residential block to roll down his window and light a cigarette. The street is lined with brownstones, most of which are in various stages of destruction and recreation, rented dumpsters stuffed with shards of demolition and pallets of new Sheetrock passing by. Smoke shoots out of Ephraim’s nostrils. There is a young Hasidic man standing across the street. He and Ephraim make eye contact: Ephraim waves casually, if not reluctantly. The young man comes over to the car, his hands slouched on the window. A long silence follows then finally:
Ephraim: Everything okay? You haven’t gotten me anything.
Young Man: I’m still stretching — it’s early.
Ephraim: Bring me something. You have my number, right?
Young Man: Yeah. [Pause.] You don’t have anything for me?
Ephraim: No. What do you need?
Young Man: Multi-families.
Ephraim: Ay — you do multi-families? I thought you were selling multi-families.
Young Man: No, I’m buying also.
Ephraim: No. No, I don’t have anything. For now.
Young Man: You don’t have anything, huh?
Ephraim: No.
More silence while Ephraim makes a point of his disinterest, playing with his phone. Then:
Ephraim: If I have something, I have your number.
Young Man: Okay.
Ephraim tosses what’s left of his cigarette and moves his hand toward the button to roll up the window. The glass emerges from the door with an electric hum and the young man takes his hand away.
They’re like the new kids coming in.
He laughs. He breaks for a few more phone calls — many are carried out in Hebrew, though the profession-specific words seem to be stuck in English: brownstone, skim coating, Prospect Park. I ask him what the first thing is that he considers when deciding whether or not to buy any given building.
We’re small, so we look into places that haven’t caught on — we just did a place on Nostrand Avenue. People are not even there yet. We put in $600,000 and everyone was laughing at us. “It’s crazy, you’re over there. A building for yuppies, white people? It’s not going to work.” The building was full of tenants — $1,300, $1,400 tenants. We paid every tenant the average of twelve, thirteen thousand dollars to leave. I actually went to meet them — lawyers are not going to help you. And we got them out of the building and now we have tenants paying $2,700, $2,800, and they’re all white. So this is what we do.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
My saying is — again, I’m not racist — every black person has a price. The average price for a black person here in Bed-Stuy is $30,000 dollars. Up over there in East New York, it’s $10,000 dollars. Everyone wants them to leave, not because we don’t like them, it’s just they’re messing up — they bring everything down. Not all of them.
Most of them don’t believe you at first. "Oh, you Jewish people you’re a bunch of thieves, you’re never going to give me my money." But once you start actually having a base of people who know you, who you actually gave the money, it’s better. Sometimes it’s really tricky because you’ll have one person willing to leave for $2,000 and another wants $20,000. And the second this guy finds out that guy is getting 20 he says, “Hell no, I’m not leaving. I want 20, too.”
They don’t know — here he lowers his voice — that even if they get the money and they left, they could always come back. They don’t know that part. And it’s so scary sometimes because they could come up in the middle of construction and say, “It’s my property, I didn’t understand what I was signing, and I want to come back.”
Some blacks have an attorney and everything. So I try to make them happy, even if they’re going to go for $7,000 or $8,000, I’d rather give them an extra grand so they’re happy and they’re not going to think about it too much. Again, I don’t want to be a racist, but when I have a building—I can’t even say it because it’s not going to sound right.
He lowers his voice again:
If there’s a black tenant in the house—in every building we have, I put in white tenants. They want to know if black people are going to be living there. So sometimes we have ten apartments and everything is white, and then all of the sudden one tenant comes in with one black roommate, and they don’t like it. They see black people and get all riled up, they call me: “We’re not paying that much money to have black people live in the building.” If it’s white tenants only, it’s clean. I know it’s a little bit racist but it’s not. They’re the ones that are paying and I have to give them what they want. Or I’m not going to get the tenants and the money is not going to be what it is.
The scary part about doing this is, if the black guys start to realize how much the property will sell for. This is a new thing now, the past year. A million, two million dollars—it’s crazy, crazy numbers. None of them realize yet—some of them do—the amount of money you can get. The scary part is they’re going to realize they can get the same exact house in East New York for $400,000, $500,000 and they can get paid $1.5 million for their home in Bed-Stuy, they’re going to start dumping houses on the market and the market’s going to be flooded and it’s going to cool down. It’s already cooling down.
It’s so hard to get empty buildings. When you have an empty building it’s like gold. So we never flip buildings. One building we sold because in the Jewish religion there’s a weird thing where you don’t cut down a fruit tree. Some people really don’t give a shyt about fruit trees. But most of the Hasidic Jewish people will not cut down a fruit tree. There’s one house in Borough Park where they cut down a fruit tree and there was nine fires over there in the last two years. Sometimes weird stuff happens. So we had a building, and the only way it’s working for us is if the fruit tree comes down. We spent $50,000 doing the plans and then found out there’s a fruit tree. We didn’t know about it. So we had to sell the building. It’s the only way I’m going to sell a building. A building is not really a selling thing. Buildings are for keeping.
DAILY INTELLIGENCER GENTRIFICATION
May 12, 201511:19 a.m.
‘I Put in White Tenants’: The Grim, Racist (and Likely Illegal) Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord
By DW Gibson
4.4kShares
Share3.4kTweet903Share2Share10Email
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
People that have small mortgages, they’re going to want a lot more for their deed, to give over ownership. A person that sells a deed with a big mortgage usually wants to get $5,000. They don’t care. They didn’t pay the mortgage for, like, two years — the property’s shyt. So we would give them $5,000, $10,000, and they give us the deed.
We started out with this, buying over one hundred deeds, all over the place, and we collected the rent. I used to love it. But the bad part was, come Monday, I used to go to the buildings in my car, and knock on every single door. This was like five years ago. And they didn’t give me payment. One out of 10, one out of 20, maybe. And they were yelling at me, “You fukking Jew! Leave me alone!”
I got used to it. And I understand it. Not all Jewish people are nice people. Every tree has a bad apple. Some of them are really nasty and can trick their tenants. But some of the tenants put up such a fight that you have to trick them. I used to do that — but I don’t do that anymore. I did that once four years ago. I told someone, “I’m going to give you twenty grand to move — just move out first, and then I’ll give you the money.” And then I screwed them. I gave him something but not the money I told him. And he couldn’t come back to me because he wasn’t even legally supposed to live there.
Some Jewish people, they’re going to come in and they’re going to try to rip off the black tenants — and the tenants know it, there’s word of mouth. So it’s like, “Oh, a Jewish guy again?” There’s a lot of Jewish guys moving around. Like a lot, a lot, a lot of investors who are either Hasidic Jews or a little bit less, but they’re Jewish. They’re holding Bed-Stuy like this — he squeezes at the air in front of him, strangling it. So sometimes it’s like, “Hello, this was our neighborhood. What are you doing here?”
We started in East New York, but we sold everything we had. We didn’t want to be there. Most of them are either Section 8, other government programs, and even the person that pays with cash is too much headaches. So we sold everything over there and we came out all the way to Park Slope. Then we started backing up, backing up, slowly, all the way to Bushwick. This is one of the houses we’re finishing now.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
We pull up in front of a three-story brick building. Having shed the deed-buying business, Ephraim’s now involved with acquisitions and development. And he prefers to hold and rent buildings as opposed to renovating and flipping them. Ephraim stops the car in the middle of a residential block to roll down his window and light a cigarette. The street is lined with brownstones, most of which are in various stages of destruction and recreation, rented dumpsters stuffed with shards of demolition and pallets of new Sheetrock passing by. Smoke shoots out of Ephraim’s nostrils. There is a young Hasidic man standing across the street. He and Ephraim make eye contact: Ephraim waves casually, if not reluctantly. The young man comes over to the car, his hands slouched on the window. A long silence follows then finally:
Ephraim: Everything okay? You haven’t gotten me anything.
Young Man: I’m still stretching — it’s early.
Ephraim: Bring me something. You have my number, right?
Young Man: Yeah. [Pause.] You don’t have anything for me?
Ephraim: No. What do you need?
Young Man: Multi-families.
Ephraim: Ay — you do multi-families? I thought you were selling multi-families.
Young Man: No, I’m buying also.
Ephraim: No. No, I don’t have anything. For now.
Young Man: You don’t have anything, huh?
Ephraim: No.
More silence while Ephraim makes a point of his disinterest, playing with his phone. Then:
Ephraim: If I have something, I have your number.
Young Man: Okay.
Ephraim tosses what’s left of his cigarette and moves his hand toward the button to roll up the window. The glass emerges from the door with an electric hum and the young man takes his hand away.
They’re like the new kids coming in.
He laughs. He breaks for a few more phone calls — many are carried out in Hebrew, though the profession-specific words seem to be stuck in English: brownstone, skim coating, Prospect Park. I ask him what the first thing is that he considers when deciding whether or not to buy any given building.
We’re small, so we look into places that haven’t caught on — we just did a place on Nostrand Avenue. People are not even there yet. We put in $600,000 and everyone was laughing at us. “It’s crazy, you’re over there. A building for yuppies, white people? It’s not going to work.” The building was full of tenants — $1,300, $1,400 tenants. We paid every tenant the average of twelve, thirteen thousand dollars to leave. I actually went to meet them — lawyers are not going to help you. And we got them out of the building and now we have tenants paying $2,700, $2,800, and they’re all white. So this is what we do.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
My saying is — again, I’m not racist — every black person has a price. The average price for a black person here in Bed-Stuy is $30,000 dollars. Up over there in East New York, it’s $10,000 dollars. Everyone wants them to leave, not because we don’t like them, it’s just they’re messing up — they bring everything down. Not all of them.
Most of them don’t believe you at first. "Oh, you Jewish people you’re a bunch of thieves, you’re never going to give me my money." But once you start actually having a base of people who know you, who you actually gave the money, it’s better. Sometimes it’s really tricky because you’ll have one person willing to leave for $2,000 and another wants $20,000. And the second this guy finds out that guy is getting 20 he says, “Hell no, I’m not leaving. I want 20, too.”
They don’t know — here he lowers his voice — that even if they get the money and they left, they could always come back. They don’t know that part. And it’s so scary sometimes because they could come up in the middle of construction and say, “It’s my property, I didn’t understand what I was signing, and I want to come back.”
Some blacks have an attorney and everything. So I try to make them happy, even if they’re going to go for $7,000 or $8,000, I’d rather give them an extra grand so they’re happy and they’re not going to think about it too much. Again, I don’t want to be a racist, but when I have a building—I can’t even say it because it’s not going to sound right.
He lowers his voice again:
If there’s a black tenant in the house—in every building we have, I put in white tenants. They want to know if black people are going to be living there. So sometimes we have ten apartments and everything is white, and then all of the sudden one tenant comes in with one black roommate, and they don’t like it. They see black people and get all riled up, they call me: “We’re not paying that much money to have black people live in the building.” If it’s white tenants only, it’s clean. I know it’s a little bit racist but it’s not. They’re the ones that are paying and I have to give them what they want. Or I’m not going to get the tenants and the money is not going to be what it is.
The scary part about doing this is, if the black guys start to realize how much the property will sell for. This is a new thing now, the past year. A million, two million dollars—it’s crazy, crazy numbers. None of them realize yet—some of them do—the amount of money you can get. The scary part is they’re going to realize they can get the same exact house in East New York for $400,000, $500,000 and they can get paid $1.5 million for their home in Bed-Stuy, they’re going to start dumping houses on the market and the market’s going to be flooded and it’s going to cool down. It’s already cooling down.
It’s so hard to get empty buildings. When you have an empty building it’s like gold. So we never flip buildings. One building we sold because in the Jewish religion there’s a weird thing where you don’t cut down a fruit tree. Some people really don’t give a shyt about fruit trees. But most of the Hasidic Jewish people will not cut down a fruit tree. There’s one house in Borough Park where they cut down a fruit tree and there was nine fires over there in the last two years. Sometimes weird stuff happens. So we had a building, and the only way it’s working for us is if the fruit tree comes down. We spent $50,000 doing the plans and then found out there’s a fruit tree. We didn’t know about it. So we had to sell the building. It’s the only way I’m going to sell a building. A building is not really a selling thing. Buildings are for keeping.
