The new luxury building at 564-570 Saint John’s Place

On the afternoon of September 28th, a pipe ruptured inside the walls of the Olmstead, a sprawling new luxury building just off Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights. The sound was loud and ominous, like the start of an avalanche, recalled tenant Basia Stefanowicz. Almost immediately, she noticed the rush of water along the wall of the one bedroom apartment she shares with her 9-year-old son. She felt moisture coming up through the floors, which would soon buckle.

The fire department stopped the leak after about an hour. By then, the flooding had spread through three units and into the lobby, where the doorman and workers scrambled to sweep the puddles away from the wood and marble floors.

Later that night, the superintendent gave Stefanowicz the keys to a vacant unit a few floors above her own. She lugged a mattress into the corner of the bare apartment, which did not have heat, gas, or a working bathroom sink. Stefanowicz told her son the relocation would be a fun adventure. “I thought it would be three or four days at the most,” she said.

Instead, the family has languished in the temporary, increasingly cold apartment for more than six weeks, locked in a stalemate with a landlord seemingly unwilling to properly remediate their apartment for mold. She suspects the owner’s apparent indifference may have something to do with her status as tenant who pays below-market rent in a luxury building filled with tenants paying full price.

“It feels like they don’t care about us,” Stefanowicz told Gothamist. “It’s like you were given this thing that’s so great, you should just accept whatever’s coming to you.”

Stefanowicz, a 48-year-old single mother from Poland, moved into the building in July after winning an affordable housing lottery. In exchange for a generous 421-a tax break, the building’s developer is required to rent 20 percent of the 193 units as affordable. Stefanowicz, who works as a nanny in Williamsburg, secured one of the units reserved for people with incomes between $37,029 and $50,100. Her rent would be $1,080 per month.

Though the apartment was a bit out of her price range, she loved the neighborhood and the fact that the building was pet-friendly. Plus, her landlord in Ridgewood, where she’d lived for half a dozen years, was threatening to raise the rent by hundreds of dollars.

The same week Stefanowicz moved in, Toby Moskovitz sold the Olmstead for $117 million to Harbor Group International, a Virginia-based real estate investment firm boasting a $9.7 billion portfolio. Harbor Group delegated management of the building to Coney Realty Group, a landlord and management company owned by Peter Rebenwurzel. The company was previously identified as one the ten worst “predatory equity landlords” in New York City.

Stefanowicz says Coney Realty Group acted shady about her situation from the beginning. When she raised concerns about the likelihood of mold in the apartment, “the response was that they were not going to do any inspection,” she says. “There was no explanation of what happened and how the building was responding to the accident.”

The building’s manager initially sent workers to paint the walls, according Stefanowicz. But when she suggested that water had collected under the floors and inside the walls, she says she was told: “Be realistic, the landlord is not going to do more repairs on this apartment.”

Housing experts say dismissiveness toward below-market rate tenants is not uncommon at mixed-income buildings like the Olmstead. “The affordable tenants are only an afterthought in a building designed for wealthy people,” Cea Weaver, the campaign coordinator at Housing Justice for All, told Gothamist.

“The poor door is an example of landlords treating tenants illegally, but there are other ways of harassment where they can make life hell for the affordable tenants,” Weaver added. “A lot of time the building is just not designed for them and the landlords make that clear.”

Stefanowicz did eventually convince the property manager to test for mold, as is legally required by the city. But the company declined to share the results with her, she said. The inspector then returned a second time, saying he wanted to purify the apartment for 48 hours before conducting a new test, according Stefanowicz.

Fearful that the landlord was trying to obtain a result downplaying the presence of mold, Stefanowicz didn’t let the inspector conduct the second test, and instead spent $400 to hire her own independent inspector. That analysis found dangerously elevated levels of Aspergillus and Penicillium spores—two types of indoor mold—in both the living room and bedroom of the apartment.

Some of the water that came through the wall after the pipe burst (COURTESY OF STEFANOWICZ)

Stefanowicz, whose son suffers from respiratory problems, was not surprised by the result. “It’s common sense that you should take care of something like this right away,” she said. “But nothing was done.”

Between the inspection costs and other surprise expenses—like paying for a storage locker for certain belongings, or purchasing a hot plate for the gas-less temporary unit—Stefanowicz says she’s had to dip into her meager rent savings. Employees with Coney have dodged her questions about what she’ll owe in rent for the six weeks she’s spent inside the temporary unit, she said.

The arrival of winter weather has made the situation all the more urgent. As temperatures plunged into the 20s this week, Stefanowicz and her son slept bundled up in wool comforters and sleeping bags. A tiny space heater faces them, but she’s afraid to leave it on overnight. They recently moved the mattress into the living from the bedroom, because the large bay windows were letting in more cold air.

“I don’t expect a lot, but it’s getting colder, and I’m worried that my son is going to get sick,” she told Gothamist.

A spokesperson for Harbor Group International initially declined to comment, referring questions to the property manager. A message left with Coney Realty Group was not returned.

In response to a follow-up email, the Harbor Group International spokesperson wrote back: “We are carefully investigating the situation. As an owner, the well-being of our residents most important to us. We will provide any information we are able to as soon as it’s available.”

Frustrated with the lack of response from both the property manager and landlord, some residents have formed a tenants group. Roy Germano, the group’s founder, said he reached out to Harbor Group International last month about Stefanowicz’s living conditions, but has not heard back. He says the owner has repeatedly failed to fulfill its commitment to tenants, particularly those in affordable units.

“It’s a shame that big real estate investors like Harbor Group International get massive tax breaks and aren’t held accountable when they fail to provide safe living conditions and treat members of our community with dignity and respect,” Germano told Gothamist.

Since Germano threatened to go to the press last week, Stefanowicz says she’s noticed a bit of a change in the property group’s attitude. After weeks of receiving curt responses to emails—or no responses at all—the building’s manager wrote her on Sunday promising the company would “start doing all the necessary repairs in your apartment so that you live there comfortably.”

A work crew showed up Wednesday and has begun the process of removing the flooring. Stefanowicz still doesn’t have any idea when she’ll be able to move back, nor does she have much trust in the landlord to properly address the problem.

After she returned from work on Thursday night, Stefanowicz and her son took the elevator from their temporary unit to their former home to check on the progress. “Be careful!” her son warned. “There’s mold in there!”