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Members of the Thayer Street Tenant Association say their landlord has been warehousing empty apartments for years, raising rents, and neglecting repairs in the units that have tenants.  

Dorca Reynoso and David Sanchez see hazards everywhere in their Inwood building, including broken locks on the entry door and dozens of empty apartments they say are never locked. 

“Kids come up in here and smoke all the time,” Reynoso said.  

She said her apartment is the only occupied apartment on her floor at the Thayer Street building, where she fears more than mischief. 

“If I have to come up in this building and there’s no lock on the front door and two-thirds out of 63 units, over 40 of them are vacant. I can come up in here [and] anybody can come up behind me and push me in my apartment or one of the vacant units, and no one would ever even hear me,” Reynoso said. 

They believe it’s all part of a strategy to force them out.  

“I’m being kicked out without being told that,” Sanchez said. “It’s so nerve-wracking the way that they renovate these apartments all around me like I’m not even here.” 

“A lot of us, in order to get things done, we have to pay for it ourselves. Like, I had to pay to get my floor repaired,” Reynoso said. “There’s times when we don’t have water for almost 12 hours.” 

The Inwood building’s landlord Joseph Noormand acknowledged that at least 37 units are being gut renovated and prepared for sale.  

He said that while there are rentals and even some rent stabilized apartments, the building itself is actually classified as a co-op and that rents haven’t been raised beyond what the law allows.

Noormand added that he’s been working with tenants on their complaints.  

Reynoso and Sanchez remain frustrated. 

“I had to get an air purifier for, for my apartment because you feel like you don’t know that you’re breathing. I have a granddaughter that I can’t even bring into my apartment cause we don’t know what’s in this stuff. I don’t know if there’s asbestos,” Reynoso said.

Having raised these issues for years, they’re now on a rent strike and suing their landlord hoping in a city with a housing crisis, the courts will help.

“I would like to know that we’re secure here,” Sanchez said.