NYU Sues UN Ambassador Over Owed Rent For Greenwich Village Unit

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — New York University recently filed a lawsuit with the NY State Supreme Court alleging that Franklin Makanga — the Gabon ambassador to the United Nations — owes the school more than $32,000 in rent for a Greenwich Village apartment unit.

The apartment is within NYU's Washington Square Village, a complex of studios and other apartments of varying sizes for graduate students and faculty in most cases. The complex is located on a "superblock" at 4 Washington Square Village.

The suit alleges that Gabon has leased an apartment within the massive apartment complex since 1968, but didn't renew at the end of 2018. Under the lease terms, Gabon is expected to renew every one to two years in accordance with the Rent Stabilization Law and Code and did so for the 50 years between 1968 and 2018, according to the suit.

Mankanga has continued to live in the apartment since 2018 and now owes $32,152.18 in unpaid rent on the property, according to the suit. The unit has a monthly rent of $2,296.57.

The lawsuit from NYU also names Gabon Permanent Delegations to the United Nations as a co-defendant.

Washington Square Village was built by the famed Robert Moses in the late 1950s and is also where Ross from the hit show "Friends" lived for the first several seasons.

You can read more about the story on the Real Deal, which was the first publication to cover the story.