Why Jared Kushner is the landlord from hell
For starters, Kushner is a luxury slumlord who refuses upkeep after property damage occurs.
An Italian restaurant that leases space in a luxury apartment building owned by President Trump’s son-in-law has refused to fork over rent — the owners claiming they’re fed up with shoddy conditions and construction noise.
The food fight erupted in February, when La Nonna, the eatery at 184 Kent Ave. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, stopped paying its monthly tab to the landlord, a holding company owned by Jared Kushner.
Three months later, the landlord filed a nonpayment petition in Brooklyn housing court against La Nonna, saying the restaurant owed $72,783 in back rent and that the owners were facing eviction.
Then, earlier this month, the restaurant that’s tucked into in a former Wild Turkey distillery known as the Austin Nichols House turned up the heat with claims that the building’s unappetizing appearance is ruining business.
La Nonna owners argue in the July 10 counterfiling that scaffolding around the building prevents the eatery from offering outdoor seating, cutting off potential revenue. The filing asks a judge to dismiss the housing court proceeding. … The restaurant’s owners said the walls and ceiling also show water damage dating to when a sprinkler system was activated to douse a fire that broke out in the floor above. The damage was never fixed and the restaurant hasn’t been compensated, according to the filing.
Building construction has also apparently made for deafening dining.
“The construction has caused excessive and unreasonable noise within the premises,” the filing states.
Kushner has a reputation for bullying tenants:
Amy Wilentz, a contributor at The Nation…, explains: “One of the sort of amusing stories about the Kushner Companies, when you think of them in light of Jared’s role in the administration, is that they’ve been a kind of mom-and-pop operation themselves in Jersey and Baltimore. They own something like 20,000 units of housing in the Baltimore area. And they’re very aggressive landlords. And they have instigated something like 550 suits against tenants. And I often think that this sort of makes Jared a good envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian situation, since his company behaves, in a sense, like the Israelis in the Occupied Territories—pushing people out of their housing, pushing people out of the places they thought were home. So, that kind of gives him some experience.”
Kushner is a rent stabilization scofflaw:
Jared Kushner’s habit of not properly filling out paperwork began years before his tenure at the White House.
In exchange for receiving a lucrative tax break on a rental building in Williamsburg, Kushner’s real estate firm was legally required to register the apartments as rent stabilized with a state agency. It did the first year. But the next year, it registered just five apartments. Then it failed to register any of the units.
That caught the attention of the state’s Homes and Community Renewal agency, which sent a warning letter to Kushner Companies last month. You haven’t complied with the legal requirements of the 421a tax exemption, it said, and you must register all rent-stabilized apartments at 50 North 1st Street.
The 421a program, which was recently reborn as “Affordable New York,” is supposed to incentivize residential construction by dramatically reducing a building’s property taxes. In exchange for receiving the tax break, owners are required to register all units as rent stabilized. But landlords across New York City have failed to register thousands of apartments in 421a buildings, creating a potential for abuse and illegal rent increases for tenants who may be unaware of the protections offered by stabilization laws.
There’s more about what it’s like to have Kushner as a landlord here.
Keep in mind that these are the values he brings to the Trump White House.
