Brooklyn BS
Want to see some New York nonsense? Some good old fashioned Brooklyn BS? Watch Dolcefino investigators confront freeloaders who simply refuse to pay rent and are getting away with it.
Brooklyn BS
“They know the law. They refused to move. They refused to pay the rent,” said landlord Avi Ron.
“I don’t know why you think this is funny. You’re not paying rent,” Wayne Dolcefino told the tenant.
Try and imagine if you were this woman’s landlord.
“You think this is funny? She’s laughing,” Dolcefino said to another tenant.
For almost a year and a half, Teodora Garcia’s family has lived on one floor of this three-story multifamily house on Chestnut Street absolutely free. She hasn’t paid a dime in rent.
None of the tenants in this building have paid a dime to the owner. Ever.
“I get fined by the city. I have no rights,” Ron said.
We travel to Brooklyn, New York, and we found yet another reason why investing in the Big Apple may be a big mistake. Of course, we get the cops called on us.
“Hi, my name is Wayne Dolcefino. Hey Officer Lee, how are you doing, man? I’m from Texas. The lovely state of Texas,” Dolcefino told the police officer.
The headlines this spring made Texas landlords seem kind of mean compared to their landlord buddies in the Big Apple.
“New York City’s population is more than three times Houston’s. Houston landlords filed three times more evictions than filed in New York City,” said a news anchor.
6,500 evictions in Houston in a single month.
“We all see the stories of hardship on the local news, and we can sympathize with folks who got down on their luck, especially during Covid times,” Dolcefino told the camera.
Brian Cweren represents landlords, and he sees the games played by tenants who simply don’t want to pay up the rent.
Freeloaders. Texas courts don’t play games with freeloaders.
“It’s more along the lines of, they’re gaming the system. You’re looking at being in front of a judge in roughly two weeks after you file an eviction and begin the eviction process, roughly two weeks,” said attorney Brian Cweren.
It takes a few months to get the tenant out, because the time and money it takes to get rid of bad tenants who simply refuse to pay the rent in New York is simply ridiculous.
“If not a year at times, it’s very close to a year. And sometimes it can be over that,” said attorney Jackee Missick.
“No, there’s no excuse for someone to sit for a year on in a landlord tenant situation that isn’t over the top unnecessary due process. Not needed,” added Cweren.
“They are calling it housing court. Hell, delays and back ups in New York City are turning into nightmares for some families who say they are on the brink of bankruptcy,” an ABC news anchor said.
ABC Seven in New York told you about the nurse trying to make ends meet by renting her upstairs apartment. The tenant hadn’t paid rent for two years.
“She had to wait for more than a year after winning her case for a judge to sign off on the eviction warrant,” a news reporter said.
And now we bring you to Chestnut Street in Brooklyn, the latest symbol of what’s very wrong here.
“Never in my life. This is insane,” Avi Ron said.
Houston investor Avi Ron bought this property out of foreclosure in September of 2023, but he hasn’t been able to collect a single penny in rent.
The tenants have ignored his efforts to even identify their names. Notices of eviction were sent May of last year.
An eviction lawsuit was filed 11 months ago.
Since then, Ron’s contractors have been repeatedly scared off by the tenants when they tried to gain access to inspect the property.
“And I have no access for the property. And these people are freeloaders or living for free. Something has to change,” Ron said.
So Ron asked Dolcefino Media to travel to New York to pay our own visit, to investigate this housing nightmare.
And when we finally found the tenants, it looked like it was about to get physical.
“We don’t come here to fight. If you want to fight, we can fight,” said Santiago Coste.
This guy claims he’s lived on the first floor here of this house for eight years. His name is Julian Arroyo.
He says his rent is $1,500 a month. At least it’s supposed to be.
He’s never paid it.
His only proof of identification is a New York I.D., often used by illegal immigrants to get bank accounts in this city to pay their bills—like rent.
We figured out who lives on the third floor. Melquiades Garcia says his rent is $1,250, but he doesn’t pay it. His only I.D. comes from the Mexican consulate.
“Has that guy paid you a dime?” Dolcefino asked Ron.
“Not one penny,” Ron answered.
Our visit to make repairs and inspect the property triggered a confrontation in the street. The cops were called, not by us, but by the squatters who deserved to be evicted, but haven’t been.
The cops came, but they soon left.
“And that’s all it is. They’re here to fix it. Change the locks and provide your guys a key. Other than that, everything else has to go to court,” the officer told the tenants.
But it doesn’t end there. Then the freeloaders call someone else who tells us he’s some kind of expert in renters rights.
But, you don’t have to be a real estate specialist to know how to write a check for rent. We had been authorized to collect the money.
“When the landlord requests us for rent, we will pay the rent,” Mangua told Dolcefino.
“I’m representing the landlord. Do you not understand me?” Dolcefino asked Mangua.
“Do you have a letter saying you represent the landlord?” Mangua asked.
“Yes, yes.” Dolcefino replied.
“Well, let me ask you a question.” Mangua said.
“No. No. It’s not question and answer time,” replied Dolcefino.
The renter who found this all so amusing told us she didn’t even know who the landlord was before our visit. But we know that’s simply not true.
The night before, we had knocked on the door. Her daughter answered, and she knew who the landlord was.
“It’s a guy named Ron, I believe,” Leslie Garcia said.
We really had three missions during our visit to Brooklyn. Find out who was actually living here rent free. And after a bunch of silliness, we finally got that.
And I was there to watch contractors change the locks on the building so Avi Ron could keep more illegal residents from just moving in rent free.
I learned something else that day that sounds like it’s just unfair to the people who own the property. Officer Lee was on the phone with them.
“You can’t change the locks and not give them a key. So, you do have to provide a key to the tenants that are currently living here, unless the landlord tenant court has been official. You can’t just kick them out,” Officer Lee said.
“That’s me doing basically an illegal eviction. And that’s really me taking matters into my own hands when the court says, and when the law says, you know, if you want to evict someone, you have to go through the judicial process,” Missick said.
“You’re giving them another access, a legal access to your unit, to the apartment that they don’t have rights for. What’s the purpose of changing the lock then? What are we doing? Wasting more money on locksmiths?” said Ron.
The City of New York is taking action in this case. But do you know who they’re suing?
Not the tenants. The landlord, Avi Ron.
The guy who’s been stiffed to the tune of $100,000 in rent. Last year, the tenants had complained about a lack of heat and hot water in the building.
A city inspector came and issued violations, and since November, Ron has been fined hundreds of dollars a day.
He’s still being fined, even though we were told by the tenants that the heating issue had been fixed.
But how can Avi Ron have fixed something broken when the tenants have refused to even let him come in?
“If they give you the okay to fix whatever that you guys have to fix, that’s fine,” Officer Lee said.
It happened again after the cops left. This time, we were refused entry, and in the weeks since we identified the folks illegally living here, Ron’s company hasn’t gotten a penny in rent.
But he did get a water bill because none of the tenants paid it. It’s over $34,000.
“I don’t want to spend any more money. I need the cops to go remove the people that are illegally occupying the place, rather than me changing the locks,” Ron said.
We asked the New York Housing Department what they expect Avi Ron to do, why they’re punishing him.
The Housing Department first told us they would review the case, then pointed us to their website and what they call the ABCs of housing. Look at one of them.
“Tenants must permit the owner to enter the tenant’s apartments to inspect, make repairs, or make improvements.”
So why aren’t New York cops enforcing that law? That’s a real estate injustice that must end.
“The system beats you. You cannot evict anybody in New York. You have to go to court after court after court. Every hearing takes three to 6 to 9 months waiting. You just never get to justice,” Ron said.
“It’s going against them. Meaning I’ve had clients that had to pay their mortgage using a credit card. I have had a client that was in retirement that had to come out of retirement to pay her mortgage because the tenant wasn’t paying her rent,” Missick said.
“No business person is going to keep writing a check for $100 million, $50 million to buy themselves long term, expensive litigation that has people sitting in an apartment, not paying rent, and potentially causing problems to the good people around them,” Cweren said.
“So the only justice is for squatters or the people who don’t pay,” Ron said.
“Hey Mayor Adams, cracking down on absentee landlords and slumlords. That’s fair game. But allowing tenants to cheat the system for years shouldn’t be a New York state of mind,” Dolcefino told the camera.
It’s a state of dysfunction.
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