Jared Kushner. Gentrification mongering punk.
Astoria, Queens, New York
Looks like the demoted advisor to the imbecilic Figurehead Trump and husband of his reminded like a pornstar daughter, Jared Kushner is gonna get it. With the same approach and dubiously absent-minded attempt Jar-Jar took to file his applications for security clearances to access top secret documents so he can oversee foreign policies that would benefit him and his trust fund baby peers financially and influentially, was also exploited by his real estate company who outsourced agents to falsify documents for 3 apartment buildings in Astoria they owned and ran regarding the presence of rent-stabilized tenants so they can do disruptive internal construction to force them out. 2 years later and a bulk of affordable renting systematically driven out, the buildings sold for a $40 million dollar profit.
This was perpetrated with the simple checking of a box on Department of Buildings applications that the Kushner Cos. signatory filled hired by Kushner Cos. claiming that there were no rent regulated apartments, giving them permission to do internal construction in these buildings along with 80 other apartment buildings in the agency’s portfolio that they rented out during the years 2013 to 2016, causing hazardous environments and rodent infestations inducing tenants to move out of their apartments, dwindling the amount of rent-stabilized units by 75% with just a few hold-outs remaining in buildings in other trendy neighborhoods with low income tenant presence in the East Village, Williamsburg, and Brooklyn Heights.
Let this be abundantly clear. Jared Kushner and his company, before he divested from it taking his current gig in the White House and with a majority of presumed progressive democrat lawmakers in city hall and city council, engaged and perpetrated in forced gentrification by blatant and brazen predatory means for personal ill-gained profit. Resulting in the current overvalued market rates affecting citizens in this city who can barely make the rent and buy groceries, and having a deleterious effect on the current crop of affordable housing units on new structures being built under Mayor de Faustio’s affordable housing plan and transformation of neighborhoods into investment opportunities and high end brands.
For some reason though, Kushner Cos. mischievous signatory check the box for rent-reg tenant on their Department Of Finance applications, which can only be so they can get the required tax abatements. So not only is Kushner Co’s perpetuating forced gentrification, they are technically embezzling the city of tax dollars during the process of inducing rent-regulated tenants to leave.
Reaction was swift of this half-decade criminal gentrification spree. Councilman Ritchie Torres aptly labeled Kushner Cos. tactics as weaponized construction and has called for belated punitive action. And the Mayor for predatory developers Bill de Blasio muttered that Jared “might have problems on his hands” and chided him for his lying to the government in another display of blissfully ignorant hypocrisy pertaining to his obstinate advocacy for NYCHA commissioner Shoya Olatoye and her similar insouciant lying to the government.
So this sudden awareness and acknowledgement and the recent filing of a probe of Kushner Cos. predatory business model and perjuring by D.A. Schneiderman is quite late. And the recent rezoning proposals by the Mayor and current approvals by City Council has already had an effect on towns borough wide, as opportunistic bush league landlords have already and are currently employing the same tactics despite the few recent busts of some who have got by with ineffective fines and the conviction of scumlord pioneer Steve Croman.
Like in Baychester in the Bronx, where a middle age couple with a son suffering from asthma had their heat and electricity cut off because their landlord wants to begin renovating the apartments. And in a Foxhurst apartment building where an LLC is using the same disruptive gut renovation, service refusals and intimidation to drive out tenants to raise rents in total imitation of Kushner Co’s brand of tenant terrorism.
And like in trendy Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where tenants had to vacate their lofts because the landlord told them he had to make repairs to keep the building in code, instead kept delaying their return until they were able to access their apartments after 3 years to retrieve their belongings to find their doors jimmied and windows broken, all their property damaged and covered in bird shit.
Even though it’s now being taken seriously with the acknowledgement of the fine reporting of the Housing Rights Initiative, Kushner and Kushner Cos. tactics have been an established business model for quite a while now. Especially with the omnipresence of Airbnb. And the city and the D.O.B. did nothing but let that model and unaffordability metastasize.
And not helping at all is the recent comment vomited by city planner Winston Von Engel at a community meeting in Bushwick on the subject of rezoning and gentrification of the city’s intention “is to preserve the character and the buildings, not the people in them”.
Supposedly all that new money the City Council added to their office budget will go straight to hiring people to investigate the diabolical deeds of predatory landlords and developers instead of hiring glorified interns, marketers and sycophants which probably made up the majority of de Blasio’s 300 staffers in his first term. It’s a wonder how the mayor could have missed the chicanery by the son-in-law of his alleged politically ideological rival. Not to worry…
“We have to do a better job of cross-checking our information too, and that’s something that we want to do,” the mayor said.
De Blasio said he realized that agencies don’t often share information when he first took office four years ago.
“We tried to break down some of that, some of those silos, some of that separation, but we’ve got a lot more to do. So I think it’s a valid concern and I want to see how we can get those two agencies to be coordinating. Because if someone violated the rules, we want to get them. It’s as clear as that,” he said.
Got it. Well it’s a good thing the co-mayor, the city council and the A.G. are focused now after the quasi-complicit honest graft sanctioning in not acknowledging Kushner Cos dishonest certification, weaponized construction and terrorizing tenants for over 5 years (and counting). It shouldn’t be that hard to draw up subpoenas or even a warrant to get that scrawny weasel Kushner to face the music in light of just recent allegations of his loan hookups totaling 500 mil with Citibank and Apollo Equity this month, the latter promising to get the CEO a job in the White House.
We, specifically all those under the daily passively menacing threat of displacement and disenfranchisement by Kushner Co’s and their yearly overlooked predatory peers and bush league amateurs engaging in the same nefarious acts, shall see.
And I didn’t even get to NYCHA’s current derelict bullshit yet.
Impunity City 