85 Bowery Tenants Return Home After Seven-Month Displacement

CHINATOWN, NY — The tenants at 85 Bowery are returning home Friday after they were forced to leave their apartments in January, prompting a series of protests, court hearings and hunger strikes.

The apartment building's owner announced Thursday that residents will be able to move back in now that structural repairs have been completed and the city's Department of Buildings has lifted the vacate order on some of the property's floors.

“Our team has replaced the staircase that initially caused the vacate order, replaced dozens of rotted floor joists on each floor of the building and rectified all issues regarding the unlawful partitions installed under previous ownership,” a spokesman for Bowery 8385 LLC said in a statement. “As has been our shared goal from the beginning of this process, 85 Bowery will now be a safe, affordable, quality building for generations to come.”

Severals residents are expected to move into the building Friday. The Collation to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side is celebrating the long-awaited move-in with a 3 p.m. rally in front of 85 Bowery, including a Chinese lion dance and tenant speakers.

The city initially evacuated the building after a January court-ordered inspection deemed the building uninhabitable. City engineers found that the building's main stairway was structurally unsound, but as repairs progressed additional issues arose including the discovery of unstable floor joists and asbestos that lengthened the timeline for repairs, according to the Department of Buildings.

Tenants at 85 Bowery were also in the middle of a lawsuit with Bowery 8385 LLC and the building’s landlord, Joseph Betesh, over whether the building's apartment are rent stabilized and repeatedly claimed the landlord was scheming to push tenants our of their homes to convert he apartment to market rate. Betsh has repeatedly denied those claims.

The ordeal reached a fever pitch when the tenants staged two hunger strikes this spring and residents accused Betesh of tossing their belongings into a dumpster.

In July, the landlord and the building's owner reached an agreement that tenants would be able to move into their apartments, which will officially be recognized as rent stabilized, by Aug. 31. The agreement also requires Betesh compensate tenants in the form of $25,000 per apartment in addition to a lump sum of $200,000 for personal property claims.

Tenant-organizers hope the ordeal is a symbol to other New Yorkers struggling with their landlords.

"Despite city agencies extending the deadline of their return numerous times and the enormous pressures to compromise and ultimately leave their homes and communities, the tenants remained steadfast and determined," said the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and Lower East Side in a statement. "They recognize that it is only through everyone’s effort that they were able to break through the city’s corruption and win such an agreement."

Photo courtesy of Caroline Spivack/Patch