The Edge Becomes the Center

by DW Gibson

  So when I went to court yesterday, we wrote the stipulation that they’ll take the money now. Today I’m going to make out a check to pay the rent.

  He beams with pride. I ask him about the door at the entrance to his apartment, which is plastered with flyers: invites to events, lists of phone numbers, lists of tenant rights.

  I’m always putting up flyers for the Crown Heights tenants protests. And the landlord’s attorney brought that up yesterday. She said, “My client says that you’re putting up flyers, you’re harassing the tenants.”

  I said, “Look, if trying to start a tenant association is illegal, let me know now and I’ll stop doing it.”

  She said, “No.”

  And I said, “I’m trying to start a tenant association.”

  Then she implied that I’m harassing the tenants and no tenant gave her any information that I’m harassing them. No tenant would have done that. I’m simply talking in the hallway when I’m passing by, I’ll inform them about certain things that I know, especially newly renovated apartment tenants. They really have no idea that they’re being overcharged. A lot of them don’t understand the formula. They don’t understand that Department of Homes and Community Renewal has rent regulations. And a landlord cannot just arbitrarily say, “Three thousand dollars for that.” He has a standard that he has to go by.

  So I’m trying to inform them. But you know, a lot of tenants in the newly renovated apartments, they don’t really communicate with the old tenants. For whatever reason. I don’t know. I really don’t want to put a theory out because I don’t know what they’re thinking.

  Across the hall, apartment 21, there are three girls in there, I think they’re roommates. When they first moved in, they gave me an invitation to go to their housewarming, which I did and I bought them that mat you see outside their door. I had them gift wrap the bag and stuff because I didn’t want them to think that I’m some, you know. So that was cool but after that we don’t even—I guess if we see each other, passing in the hall we’ll say hi, and that’s it.

  They’re probably saying we’re not going to be here very long. And I noticed that. There’s a lot of turnover. It’s not their fight I guess.

  I mean, I try to put myself in their shoes and maybe they’re saying, “We don’t have no problems, we don’t want trouble with the management. We’re okay with what we’re paying—we have it.” It’s not like it’s a family that moved in. Most of the people that got these apartments are roommates. They’re obviously dividing it up. So it’s not significant on them. It’s not like they’re a mother and father with kids.

  When I had two tenant association meetings only the old tenants came. None of the new tenants. And I guess the new tenants are saying that doesn’t involve us. But it does, in reality. They could probably get their rent reduced—plus get money back. They just don’t care. I don’t know what their reality is. Do you have money you can just blow like that? You could be on Park Avenue, guy. You don’t have to be in this neighborhood. What are you doing here?

  He laughs.

  After the meeting, management had the super put No Trespassing signs where we enter the courtyard. But trespassing is something for people who don’t live in the building. How are we trespassing? We all live in the building.

  I did two meetings back to back. I had one Saturday and one Sunday. On the first day, only two people came. Those two days were kind of cold and I told everyone from four to five and I didn’t want to keep them out there, talking their heads off. I had a table, some chairs, and some waters. These are the remnants of the waters I had.

  These are more than remnants, and now I understand: the refrigerator filled with bottles indicates the low turnout for the meetings; it indicates that Toussaint’s hospitality at the meetings—never mind the information he wanted to share—went unreceived by his neighbors.

  Many people identify displacement as the central characteristic of gentrification. And the idea of displacement is often tethered to physical space—someone must vacate a storefront or apartment or park because the forces of capital drive her away: she could not renew the lease, she could not resist a buyout, she did not have the money to purchase the lot. But Toussaint understands that there’s another kind of displacement—one unrelated to physical space. His displacement is figurative, more subtle, escaping the statistician’s graph. Toussaint still clings to his apartment but he is disconnected from the neighbors across the hall despite the gift-wrapping for the doormat. Little by little, he has become more disconnected from the community that exists in the building where he grew up. He has been drinking bottled water alone for weeks. “No Trespassing.”

  I have a little knowledge about what’s going on. Knowledge is power and a lot of people don’t have that. That’s why I wanted to share it. I should have had one thousand people here in total in two days.

  The ones that did come, they were there but they wasn’t really there. I kind of pressured them to come. You know: “Come on, come, please!” It’s a good cause but I don’t think the fight’s going to build the momentum that the people really want. It’s like the 99 percent crew, when they did all of that, at the time they caused a lot of ruckus, got a lot of media coverage. But it was defused. Everybody went back to their respective places. All they have are memories. “Oh man, I was a part of that crew, I was at city hall—I was!” But overall we lost. Bloomberg, he’s a strategist, he says let them stay out there. He said the weather will soon get to them. People don’t have the spirit that’s really necessary to fight the powers that be and the system knows that. They’re well aware of your spirit.

  One girl at the meeting really stood out and she had the same situation I got. And so I’m telling her now, don’t go into the courtroom without an attorney. Even as knowledgeable as I am about the situation, I don’t go into court by myself because it’s my personal issue and I could go in there and get choked up. You need someone there with you who can be objective and can speak for you and convey what you want to say. It’s not to my advantage to go in there by myself. And I told my neighbor the same thing.

  Toussaint brings to my attention a white piece of paper on the front of his refrigerator. Printed on the paper is a rudimentary table, off-centered and thrown together, and it looks to provide pricing for various items: $1,100 for bathroom tiles, $3,100 for kitchen appliances, $55,000 for a general contractor. The total at the bottom of the table is $69,400.

  The landlord gave me that paper a few years ago. He told me that’s what it would cost to renovate my whole apartment. The contractor is charging him $55,000? I’ve seen the contractors he’s got.

  And if you’ll notice, it’s just a piece of paper. It has no name or nothing on there. ’Cause he don’t want to stand behind that. He don’t have his name on that piece of paper. He was smart. He knows what he’s doing—$69,400, bro?

  You times that by 2.5 percent, you get a rent increase number: $1,735. So I would be paying that amount in addition to the $800 I’m paying now. I’ll be paying approximately $2500. Tripled.

  A while back they offered me $30,000 to move out. Originally they offered me $20,000 to leave and I said to the property manager, “Get me thirty and then call me.” So he went and came back and said, “I got thirty for you. I’m in Manhattan now. I’m coming back to Brooklyn and I’ll have a certified check in my hand.”

  And when I hung up there was a lot of emotions going through me. Thirty thousand dollars is a lot of money but at the same time this is significant life change. This is a life metamorphosis. And this guy is saying I’ll be in Brooklyn tomorrow, I’ll bring you the check. He’s telling me March 15, I want you out of there, broom swept. And mind you this is a week before March 15. And I’m thinking a week from now? Where am I going to go? I’m homeless. So I’m kind of having an anxiety attack. Ultimately I decided I don’t want to. And I never signed anything.

  This happened in the midst of all this with the cabinets. All at the same time. They probably think we’ve got him
in court, maybe he’ll take the $30,000 just so he don’t have to go to court. So they’re really blatant about their purpose, they’re willing to give me $30,000 for something that doesn’t even belong to me. That speaks volumes. That $30,000 is on the table right now. I can call the lawyer and she’ll get it done. That’s what’s really unbelievable. Because in reality they know that these cabinets are not really going to ultimately be my eviction. If they really thought that they wouldn’t be willing to give me $30,000.

  Yesterday at the court building, when we were going down in the elevator, the landlord’s attorney was still talking money. So I said, “Look, tell your client to give me one hundred grand and I’ll be gone in two days.” I told them my bottom line would be $80,000.

  She said, “He’s not going to do it.”

  And I said, “There’s no sweat off my back and I’ll stay.”

  It is imminent that I may take this money, but it’s a matter of how much.

  If we let history be our guide we know that, ultimately, the landowners are going to win. I don’t want to fool myself. You know they’re winning this fight. In San Francisco, in Harlem. In cities all around the country. They’re winning. They have the money. They have the tenacity. And you know, us being impoverished, what do we have? We have a voice. And I’m willing to fight that fight, but I can’t even get a tenant association together.

  I was even going as far as saying, we’ll do a rent strike. I was reading online, people hold on to their money, as long as you don’t spend it, or if you are concerned that you will spend it, then we’ll put it in escrow until these landlords act. We’ll go to court and he’ll say you owe such and such amount of money, and you have it, and you’ll pay it—it’s not that you’re not paying, you’re withholding. And that will probably spur them into doing something for the tenants, like repairs. And my last and most extreme idea: I was going to do a hunger strike. I was going to stay in that lobby with a cardboard box and not eat anything and just have a box of water nearby.

  This is a drastic situation. It requires revolutionary action. These landlords are not playing. They’re taking extreme measures, as you can see, and we’re not on our end. We have to fight fire with fire and we don’t have money. All we have is our livelihoods and we have to put them on the line if we’re going to make a significant impact. Other than that I don’t see much changing for tenants in these gentrified neighborhoods. I don’t think I can win. But if they offer more money I can say at least I got something out of it.

  This might be a far-fetched idea but maybe some of us tenants, we need to become landlords ourselves. The last couple of weeks I’ve been looking at some properties, mainly in East New York and in the East Flatbush section. They have some really cheap properties. Banks got a bunch of houses in foreclosure and they want to dump them. They’ll short sell all of them. So we should take advantage of these opportunities and start buying up some of these houses.

  If the rent-stabilized tenants become landlords then maybe enough of us in the future can balance it. You know, me going through this situation, I can be more sympathetic towards tenants. I’d stick to my guns.

  Now, it might be unrealistic because once tenants become landlords—he laughs—they might be as harsh as their landlords. But I’m not a money-hungry person. I’m not like that. If I have a property and the mortgage is being paid and the property taxes are being paid, I’m happy. I wouldn’t charge you the market value of this apartment. Even if this apartment could go for $1,500 in Brooklyn. I’d say, “Yo, give me eleven hundred.” I’d be willing to accept government programs, work with you. Maybe I’ll be living in the basement but the tenants are paying my mortgage, I’m living rent-free. If I’m working I’ll save my little money. I’m not trying to get rich. I know you’re a struggling family, you don’t have much, and maybe that can lead to a tenant thinking they can take advantage. So worst-case scenario I’ll go through the eviction process. But I think more of us need to become property owners. I think that’s really the solution as opposed to trying to fight the landlords.

  So I’ll be standing right next to my current landlord. How gratifying is that to be standing next to the guy who is trying to gentrify your home? I’ll probably become his rival in the real estate market in New York.

  He laughs.

  I think that should be the ultimate goal. Instead of trying to bicker with somebody. Instead of fighting them, we’ll become them. How do you say it? If you can’t beat them, join them. And if we get in there, side by side with them, then we’ll have a much more significant impact, like at rent guidelines meetings. You’ll have landlord opposition to the injustices against tenants. How significant is that? That’ll speak volumes.

  That’s really how I look at it.

  I did tell someone recently that if I sell this place I would avoid coming through this block. I’d feel something. All my life I been here. I would feel some type of connection. I wouldn’t look up because I’d be knowing that I sold out.

  But that $100,000, that would even it out.

  16.

  Ephraim sends a text message suggesting we meet at “17 Irving.” I look up the address on Google Maps to get the cross streets and I see that there is actually a coffee shop bearing the name of the address just east of Union Square Park in Manhattan. I arrive ten minutes early and order a coffee, so that I can stake claim to one of the tables, for which there is fierce competition. Ten minutes goes by, then half an hour, and I try calling Ephraim. He doesn’t answer but texts back that he’s outside the building. I tell him I’ve got a table inside. This confuses him, which leads to a frantic series of texts over the next ninety seconds, at which point I realize that the 17 Irving Ephraim has in mind is an address in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Of course. Google has yet to learn that Manhattan is not the default—and I didn’t question its assumption.

  I bolt out the door, and as I go over the Manhattan Bridge on the subway, Ephraim texts me again saying he had to leave that building. Now he’s at another building and he sends along that address. This happens a couple of times as I explore various subway connections, until I’m finally in the right place at the right time—and at a familiar address: I see Ephraim sitting in his car, which is parked in the long driveway of one mTkalla Keaton, also known as Martin, also known as TK. I walk around to the driver’s side window, which is down. Ephraim is on the phone but interrupts his call briefly and asks me:

  You don’t care about the smoking, do you?

  I note that he is not, in fact, smoking and tell him I don’t have a problem with it.

  Good, get in.

  I hop over to the passenger seat and Ephraim turns the car on. As we pull into the street, the phone conversation plays out over the speaker system so I can hear mTkalla’s voice on the other end. Ephraim is getting mTkalla—he calls him Martin—prices from his floor guy. The connection is inconsistent and they keep talking over each other in fragmented sentences. They give up and a few moments pass while Ephraim looks to be contemplating his next call, his finger hovering just over his dash-mounted smartphone. Suddenly he asks:

  So what do you need from me?

  Caught off guard, I stammer through a request to hear what it’s like to be a landlord in so many evolving Brooklyn neighborhoods. Ephraim nods and stares out the window, as if he lacks the will or energy to answer such a broad question. So I keep talking. I ask about his family. His father fled Iran during the Islamic Revolution and moved to Israel where he met Ephraim’s mother, who had arrived around the same time from Russia. The two married and moved their young family to the United States when Ephraim was four or five—he doesn’t remember, exactly, or maybe he doesn’t want to remember. Ephraim, a Hasid, is reluctant to get specific about his age.

  That’s classified.

  He makes me guess. I throw out thirty-eight—admitting that I always get these things wrong, knowing privately I always guess low for fear of offending the aged—and he tells me I’m close. Still he won’t tell me a number, and no
w he’s got a mischievous grin. He wants me to keep guessing. So I start listing numbers until, finally, he nods at twenty-six, which is not at all close to thirty-eight. I was way off—I think most people would be, and I think he likes it that way. Perhaps it is the thick beard or his heavyset frame but something about the man makes him seem much older than he is. Most of all, it must be his demeanor—he is cool and reserved and circumspect, which automatically earns him authority beyond his age and his experience. He only started buying buildings a few years ago.

  After the mortgage crisis we went into investing in property. We started out small, me and my business partner. There is a certain—he pauses, awkwardly—I can explain to you a little of how it works on the insides but—

  And here he short-circuits and stops talking altogether. He sighs and asks me if I’ll be revealing his name when I write about him. I say yes and he sighs again, tilting his head to one side. If he’s going to talk frankly, he says, he doesn’t want his name to be used. We settle on a pseudonym and he continues, reluctantly:

  Do you know anything about property? There’s a deed and there’s a note.

  Like with a car, if you have a lease, the title is in your name but you don’t actually own the car. The deed to the house is the same thing. If you have a mortgage, the actual thing, the house, is the bank’s. So they have a note, and they can transfer it to other banks, they can sell it to big companies, they can make packages of notes. You still own the deed—that’s yours. And if the bank wants to take it from you, they have to go through the process of foreclosure. If the house has a small mortgage, that’s fine—you can sell the deed—but if the house is underwater you can’t really do anything with the deed.