Wash Heights, Inwood Tenants Form Coalition Against Uptown Landlord

UPPER MANHATTAN, NY — Inwood, Washington Heights, and Harlem residents recently formed together to create a tenants coalition to share stories about a "harmful and negligent landlord."

The TriHill Tenants Coalition looks to represent thousands of tenants across the three uptown neighborhoods, who have been impacted by TriHill Management LLC, which is a subsidiary of the real estate developer Sugar Hill Capital Partners.

"TriHill has continuously failed to maintain its buildings, leaving its predominantly working-class, Black and Brown tenants struggling with a lack of heat, nonfunctional elevators, flooding, vermin infestations, insufficient repairs, and much more," reads an email to Patch from one of the coalition members.

TriHill Management did not immediately return Patch's request for comment.

In 2021, the Public Advocate's Office named David Schorr, who at the time was a director at Sugar Hill Capital Partners, as the worst landlord in the five boroughs. He owned multiple buildings in the three uptown neighborhoods, and the 17 properties citywide where Schorr was listed as the manager had an average of 1,442 violations combined.

At the time, Sugar Hill Capital Partners said that "We respect the work of the Public Advocate but our inclusion on this watchlist is misleading."

None of Schorr's buildings had more Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) violations than his properties at 655 West 160th Street and 638 West 160th Street in Washington Heights.

The two Washington Heights buildings, which both have 43 apartments, had 205 and 185 violations, respectively from 2020 to 2021.

The idea to form the TriHill Tenants Coalition began in October 2022, when around 25 TriHill tenants from five different uptown buildings organized a town hall in collaboration with State Senator Robert Jackson.

From there, a petition was circulated to reach other tenants in Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood.

"Some of our goals have been to continue to develop understanding of our shared conditions, to support pre-existing tenant associations in these buildings, and support tenants in other buildings to organize tenant associations of their own," TriHill Tenants Coalition member Adam Blazej told Patch.

This will also be a goal at the coalition's next town hall at the Jewish Community Center in Harlem at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 23.