Thread: Kushner Companies routinely filed false paperwork with New York officials

New York’s Next Attorney General Vows to Investigate Trump’s Dealings

What was false about them?

Originally Posted by Judy

What was false about them?

This is what it says in the article:

The AP reported that the company often filed paperwork with New York City saying it didn't have any rent-regulated tenants in the buildings it owned.

But, according to the AP, it had hundreds of rent-regulated tenants across the city.

"It's bare-faced greed," said Aaron Carr, founder of Housing Rights Initiative, a tenants' rights watchdog that compiled the work permit documents and gave them to The Associated Press.

"The fact that the company was falsifying all these applications with the government shows a sordid attempt to avert accountability and get a rapid return on its investment."

That isn't how it works. What applications are they talking about? You have to match up the application with the actual property with the actual tenant at the time that would actually apply to whatever it is you're applying for. You would also have to pry into the individual life and incomes and so forth of the actual tenant in the actual property you're talking about. Then you have to verify it because tenants lie like dogs when they think it's in their interest to do so. They probably lied to get their lease to begin with.

I'm not saying they didn't file false or erroneous "applications" for something, but to determine whether something is or is not false requires much more investigation and knowledge than AP possesses.

Something else the AP needs to keep in mind that is becoming increasingly obvious about its reporting. The City of New York is running with the Muslims against the Jews, as are most of these "rights" orgies. The City of New York is also controlled by the DemoQuack Party which is running anything at all they can against anything or anyone Trump. When you have an AP coupled with the City of New York running against a Trump relative who is a Jew in the City of New York, day after day, year after year, then it's pretty obvious, you're running a Witch Hunt profiling targets of wealthy Jewish business people because of their political and religious affiliations.

That's supposed to be illegal in the United States.

Kushner Companies fined by city for falsified construction permits

The Department of Buildings cited 42 violations across 17 buildings

By Amy Plitt@plitter Aug 28, 2018, 10:16am EDT


Kushner Companies

The Department of Buildings has hit Kushner Companies with a $210,000 fine for falsifying information on construction permits, according to the New York Times. The move comes after multiple reports of the firm misrepresenting the status of rent-regulated units in several of its apartment buildings, in order to illegally perform construction work. The DOB cited 42 different violations across 17 buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Those buildings include five—89 Hicks Street, 18 Sidney Place (both in Brooklyn Heights), 331 East Ninth Street, and 170 and 174 East 2nd Street—where tenants have either highly publicized alleged tenant harassment, or brought legal action against Kushner Companies. The violations cited by the DOB are related to permits spanning a period of 2013 to 2016.

Multiple investigations (by the Housing Rights Initiative, among others) have found that Kushner Companies skirted New York’s rent-stabilization rules at these buildings (either by falsifying permits or not registering regulated apartments with the state), thereby making it easier to make renovations and take units out of rent regulation.

RELATED
Kushner Companies and tenant lawsuits: A brief history


In a statement provided to Curbed, a spokesperson for the DOB said that “Protecting tenants is a key part of our mission to make construction safe for all New Yorkers, and we are determined to hold landlords accountable for the accuracy of their applications—no matter who they are.”

Kushner Companies told the Times that “paperwork errors” are to blame for the false permits, and that “[i]n no case did the company act in disregard of the safety of our tenants.”

Just yesterday, HRI unveiled its latest investigation, which found that President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, engaged in similar practices—falsifying construction permits and de-regulating rent-stabilized apartments—at three Manhattan buildings that he had previously owned.

https://ny.curbed.com/2018/8/28/1778...dob-violations

• Kushner Companies and Michael Cohen Accused of Falsifying Building Permits to Push Out Tenants [NYT]
• Trump lawyer Michael Cohen skirted rent-stabilization laws as a NYC landlord

A $10 million civil lawsuit. Okay, then a court and jury will figure it out.

Kushner Companies and Michael Cohen Accused of Falsifying Building Permits to Push Out Tenants


Tenant activists issued a report on Monday that suggested that an investment group led by Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, had falsified construction permits by claiming that three buildings in Manhattan — one being 237 Henry Street — were vacant or without rent-regulated tenants, when they did have rent-protected residents.
CreditCreditJeenah Moon for The New York Times

By Charles V. Bagli

• Aug. 27, 2018

Charles Kushner, the developer whose son Jared Kushner is a senior adviser to President Trump, and Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, face scrutiny in New York for claims that they falsified construction permits in an attempt to remove rent-regulated tenants from buildings scattered across the city.

On Monday, the city’s Department of Buildings cited Kushner Companies for 42 violations in which it submitted false permit information at 17 buildings, where many of the tenants were protected from steep rent increases and eviction.

The fines total $210,000.
A spokeswoman for Kushner Companies said Monday that the violations were “paperwork errors.” The company can contest the citations before an administrative judge. “In no case did the company act in disregard of the safety of our tenants,” said the spokeswoman, Christine Taylor.

Tenant activists also issued a report on Monday based on city and state records that suggested that an investment group led by Mr. Cohen had also falsified construction permits by claiming that three buildings in Manhattan were vacant or without rent-regulated tenants, when they were occupied and many tenants had rental protections.

Landlords are required in New York City to disclose whether tenants in their buildings are rent regulated to obtain a construction permit.

This requirement is designed to safeguard rent-regulated tenants from harassment. Unscrupulous landlords sometimes push out rent-protected tenants so they can sharply increase rents on those units.

Critics, however, complain that numerous violations slip through the cracks between the separate data systems used by city and state agencies.

At 172 Rivington Street, for example, the Cohen group indicated that there were no rent-regulated tenants in the 20-unit building, after the company purchased it in October 2011 for $2.1 million. But records indicated that there were 19 protected tenants there, but only 11 remained after the Cohen group sold the building three years later for $10 million.
Tenants living in Mr. Cohen’s buildings repeatedly filed complaints about noise and dust related to construction work, according to the report by Housing Rights Initiative, a nonprofit tenant advocacy group.

The Buildings Department said it had investigated 6 complaints at 172 Rivington Street and observed no violations of city construction rules there, or at a second building controlled by the Cohen group, according to a spokesman, Joseph Soldevere.

The Cohen group held the buildings for only a few years and then sold them for a combined $17 million profit.

Mr. Cohen did not respond to a request for comment.

The tenant group issued a similar report about the Kushners in the spring after sifting through public records from the Department of Buildings, the Finance Department and the state’s Homes and Community Renewal agency, which oversees rent-regulated tenants. Up until 2015, when the city and state agencies formed a Tenant Harassment Task Force, there had been little coordination among them.

Earlier this year, current and former tenants at 184 Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, a Kushner-owned residential building at the edge of the East River, sued the Kushner Companies in State Supreme Court claiming that they had been forced out by “loud and obnoxious drilling” and a “constant cloud of toxic smoke and dust.”

The number of rent-regulated tenants in the building plummeted to 71 in June from 316 in May 2015; the Kushner Companies are now selling condominium apartments in the building.

Neither Mr. Cohen nor the Kushner Companies have been cited for tenant harassment.

Aaron Carr, executive director of Housing Rights Initiative, said that the group’s analysis “suggests that Mr. Cohen had commenced a deliberate campaign to systematically harass tenants out of their apartments using destructive, hazardous and illegal construction practices, so he could dramatically raise rents.”

But the report also provides a “window into the dysfunction at city and state agencies,” he said.

“The Department of Buildings approved falsified permits,” he said, “despite receiving complaints from tenants in those very same buildings.”

Records indicate a steep decrease in the number of rent-regulated tenants in the buildings owned by Mr. Cohen and the Kushners.

But the city would not know whether some number of tenants were paid cash by the landlord to leave, a common practice used by building owners to empty apartments.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has built or preserved tens of thousands of apartments for low- and moderate- and middle-income tenants. Still, his administration has been unable to keep up with the loss of affordable housing as apartments leave the rent-regulation system.

Mr. Cohen purchased 237 Henry Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan for $3.35 million in August 2013. Construction work in the building commenced almost immediately. The new owners claimed on permit applications that the building was vacant, although all 20 apartments in the building were occupied by rent-regulated tenants.

After the Cohen group sold the building for $9 million, records indicate there were five rent-regulated tenants left.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/n...d-tenants.html