The apartment from which Graeber was evicted is neither rent-controlled nor rent-stabilized; it’s a limited-equity cooperative in the Penn South development in the West 20s between 8th and 9th Avenues. This complex of apartment buildings was created as an urban renewal project in the 1960s with funding from the ILGWU, with special tax exempt status through an agreement with NYC under the Redevelopment Companies Law (NY Private Housing Finance Law article 5). Occupants were required to qualify on income at admission and to submit income certification affidavits and documentation annually. Non-primary residence in the apartment is a no-no and is grounds for eviction, and family members seeking to succeed to the ownership of co-op shares and the proprietary lease must prove they were on income affidavits and co-resided with the named cooperator/tenant during the two years prior to the cooperator/tenant’s death or permanent vacating of the apartment.
Families must plan ahead and make difficult choices, weighing the benefits of relocating for something uncertain (e.g., a tenure-track job in a distant city) against the security of an affordable rent in Manhattan.
For a family member hoping to succeed to one of these subsidized (through tax exemption) apartments, leaving an electronic or paper trail evidencing residence somewhere other than in the apartment is often a fatal mistake. Someone with visibility on the web, on social networks, or on any kind of database of public or semi-public records with a different address is particularly likely to find himself to be a target of efforts to evict non-primary residents from rent-regulated or subsidized housing.
The courts are not particularly sympathetic even in marginal cases where the subsidized landlord (here, a non-profit cooperative) can point to a years-long waiting list for such units.
I have had many, many family members of deceased/departed tenants of public/subsidized/regulated housing tell me that they thought of their parent’s apartment, where they’d lived for years although not recently, as their family home and rightfully theirs to succeed to, and feel unjustly treated as a result of an eviction proceeding that followed their own personal loss. Unfortunately for them, I had to advise them that the law was not on their side. I am not assuming that this was DG’s situation but it is hardly unusual to hear reactions like “they’re throwing me out of my family home” when there’s really no case to be made for succession.
