Rent-stabilized tenants of 3149 Broadway told DNAinfo New York that their landlord, BCB Property Management — which is run by Charatan — was attempting to force them out by turning their homes into an active construction zone, with dust, noise, and shaking walls as a constant backdrop to daily life.
Residents also accused BCB of gut-renovating empty apartments in order to hike rents, while making extravagant additions to the building's common areas and ignoring basic repairs needed in rent-stabilized apartments that remained occupied.
"They want us out." — David Hanzal, President, Manhattanville Tenant Association — DNAinfo New York, December 2015
The HPD's Proactive Preservation Initiative (PPI) designation was a significant development — it gave the city agency direct authority to pursue legal remedies against landlords who failed to address open violations, rather than waiting for tenants to file individual complaints.
The designation came after 3149 Broadway accumulated a staggering number of unresolved violations. By January 2016, HPD had recognized 70 open violations in the building — 36 classified as Class B (hazardous) and 15 as Class C (immediately hazardous).
BCB Property Management's tactics were not new. In 2013, the firm bought three buildings in Crown Heights for $11 million that were home to over 100 units of rent-regulated tenants. Those who refused buyout offers experienced a similar pattern of heavy construction and overdue repairs — until BCB sold the buildings to two separate buyers for more than triple the purchase price just three years later.
The combination of HPD violations, construction harassment, and lack of basic services was widely understood by tenant advocates as a deliberate business strategy — not neglect. As BCB renovated vacant units for market-rate tenants paying double or more the stabilized rent, the financial incentive to push out long-term residents was clear.
David Hanzal had been organizing tenants at 3143, 3147, and 3149 Broadway since early 2015, after realizing at a chance conversation at the Abbey Pub on West 105th Street that his neighbors in other buildings shared the same landlord — and the same problems.
Working with tenant advocacy organization P.A.L.A.N.T.E. (People Against Landlord Abuse and Tenant Exploitation) and attorney John Gorman, the Manhattanville Tenant Association pursued legal action against BCB, organized press conferences, and ultimately secured the resolution of all outstanding maintenance violations — though not without cost. By the time the buildings were renovated, most of the original rent-stabilized tenants had been displaced.
BCB Property Management did not respond to repeated requests for comment from DNAinfo New York.