Hours after being sworn in as New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani showed up at a Flatbush apartment building where a chunk of ceiling had recently fallen onto a teenager lying in her bunk bed—and announced the city would go to war with her landlord.
WHAT’S GOING ON: The Pinnacle Group, a notorious landlord with more than 5,000 violations and 14,000 complaints across 83 buildings, declared bankruptcy in May. Now more than 5,000 rent-stabilized units are heading to auction, leaving tenants terrified about who will buy their homes and whether anyone will ever fix the rusting pipes, cracked floors, and collapsing ceilings they’ve been living with for years. Mamdani announced the city will intervene in the bankruptcy case to protect tenants’ interests.
THE DETAILS: Nadege Romulus has lived in her $965/month rent-stabilized studio at 85 Clarkson Avenue for 21 years—with two adult sons, a teenage daughter, and their father. She says she cries every day about the conditions. “They’re always calling me for rent money, and I say, ‘Y’all have a ceiling about to fall on my daughter’s head,'” she told the New York Times. “I feel like this place is not a home anymore.”
OF COURSE, Pinnacle blames rent-stabilization laws for their financial troubles, claiming the 2019 tenant protections squeezed them dry. They reported having “no cash on hand” when filing for bankruptcy.
BUT BUT BUT: Court documents tell a different story. A federal judge noted that Pinnacle hasn’t been transparent about its finances and may have prioritized administrative and legal fees over actually fixing their properties. “Debtors’ reported payroll expenses are unusually high,” outside experts observed. Cea Weaver, who Mamdani appointed to run the revived Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, pointed out that Pinnacle has a “long track record—far before 2019—of egregiously treating renters.”
This isn’t new. Back in 2011, Pinnacle settled a lawsuit over tenant harassment, unlawful rent increases, and aggressive eviction attempts. Their business model, Weaver said, “relied on pushing people out of their homes.”
WHY IT MATTERS: The auction is set for Thursday, with a $400 million bid already on the table from Summit Properties USA. What happens next will determine whether 5,000+ rent-stabilized families get a landlord who actually maintains their homes—or another decade of ceiling plaster falling on children.
Mamdani’s nominee for chief lawyer, Steven Banks, will lead the intervention to ensure the people in these buildings are taken care of.