Slumlord Millionaire (2024)

[bunniefuu]

[hustle and bustle of the city and traffic]

[truck rumbles past]

[energetic conversations and squealing around the park]

[fans cheer]

[music over speakers with lyrics in Chinese]

Sunset Park is different from the rest of the New York.

The streets are filled with music.

[upbeat Latin music]

You go into a store, they're either

speaking Cantonese, Mandarin, or Spanish.

It's home to me.

[quiet conversation in Spanish]

Everyone knows everyone.

Most of my neighbors have seen me grow up since I was little.

Every time they see me they're like,

“Oh, you've grown so big!”

["Las Mañanitas" plays]

[family sings along in Spanish]

I've lived in this building my whole life.

[tender music]

My mom, she's a housekeeper.

She is a very hard worker.

My dad, he's very smart, maybe

a little bit serious, but when he's not serious,

he's like very funny. [chuckles]

-Look. Look!

Ay! [laughter]

SAMANTHA: We're very close with each other.

But our landlord does not want us in the building.

[loud whistling hiss, tense music builds]

[speaking Spanish]

SAMANTHA: Above the toilet collapsed.

[crashing]

You go into the bathroom, where's the roof?!

[speaking Spanish]

It would like be days in row sometimes.

Mostly during winter.

[speaking Spanish]

I guess for her it was like, you know, maybe this

will make you move.

[spirited music]

REPORTER : If you thought New York City rents

couldn't go any higher, it has.

REPORTER : Rents are going way, way up.

-The average monthly rent in Manhattan has

hit a record $, a month.

REPORTER : The New York City rental market's extremely dire.

ORGANIZER: My rent burden is %.

My rent is higher than my income.

[music grows energetic]

REPORTER : Appalling and squalid conditions for tenants.

REPORTER : Their landlord is using construction in an effort

to drive them from their rent-stabilized apartments.

REPORTER : Replacing low-income and middle-class

tenants with wealthier ones.

[music drives, crescendos, then fades]

-They wanna build developments.

They want to push out the community.

Their interest is prime real estate.

[pulsing music]

-We've seen housing prices reach a level they've

never reached before in American history.

-This is especially acute in places like Manhattan,

where to my left, you have public housing and right,

to my right, $ million apartments for sale.

[music rises with intensity]

-We've seen New York go from a working-class city to where

it's almost a playground for the elite now.

All across the water, there are these

luxury towers going up

that billionaires are sitting on in order to grow their wealth.

-Rent's going up, property value's going up.

This is a big money maker.

They don't care if they're taking families' homes away.

This is a business to them.

[intense music continues]

[music fades]

[subdued music]

[children playing and birdsong in the distance]

[subway rushes down tracks]

[solemn music]

SAMANTHA: My little brother Nathan has asthma.

When he started having trouble breathing, it was when

we pulled out the machine.

I think we did it every night.

NATHAN: , , .

[speaking Spanish]

SAMANTHA: It was because of a leak.

When someone doesn't fix it, it does start building up mold.

It's disgusting to see.

The landlord, her solution was to paint over it.

You're covering it, but it's still there.

Like, you're not fixing it.

My dad, he was very impacted by it.

That's when he decided to fight back against the landlord.

[speaking Spanish]

[applause, cheers, hopeful music]

SAMANTHA: Good afternoon....

[speaking Spanish]

New Yorkers are calling on the City

to help asthma sufferers breathe easier.

Community leaders and residents gathered in Gramercy to rally

support for the Asthma Free Housing Act.

It would require landlords to fix or remove common problems

that trigger asthma attacks, such as

water leaks, mold, and bug infestations.

[speaking Spanish]

[gavel strikes]

[somber music]

SAMANTHA: Now, when you go to

the hospital, and your doctor

is like, “You have asthma,” they would write a note,

and that note would

require the landlord

to make repairs in your building.

The landlord, she didn't like the fact that my parents,

instead of staying quiet and enduring

the conditions that she put us in,

she didn't like that they spoke up about it.

SAMANTHA: She kinda makes me nervous.

And I don't think she's ever gonna stop.

[music pulses]

[music fades]

MOUMITA: So, this is my neighborhood.

There's so many

different stores, like Bangladeshi stores,

Colombian bakeries, and

mosques across the street from Hindu temples.

[solemn music pulses]

When we first came to this country, we lived in a

two-bedroom apartment with two other families.

My bed was in a corner of a living room, and my brother

had to sleep with my parents or on the floor.

That was our reality for years.

[music fades]

I didn't originally intend to become an activist

because of housing.

But once I started doing more research into how

the real estate industry is literally robbing people,

I just started to see how everything else that

I've gone through in life was impacted by

growing up housing insecure.

Hello! [delighted laugh]

So I decided to run for City Council.

We have a housing crisis in Queens.

Our rents keep going up, but our pay stays the same.

I'm Moumita Ahmed, and tenant harassment has to stop.

It's time we stood up to greedy real estate developers.

It's time for housing justice.

It's your City Council member who has discretionary

funding and the money to

help the community.

I was doing all these projects in tandem with various nonprofit

organizations helping renters, which should've been

done by the City Council, and it wasn't being done at all.

If elected, we could give tenants power to stand up to

their landlords and organize.

[solemn music]

-For a lot of people, it was the first time they saw

someone who was just like them

running for office.

And they know that she'll fight for tenants.

She has that experience.

She's the only person in the race running who

actually is a renter.

-Moumita's drive and

passion for all of this is what a lot of people need.

MOUMITA: I knew if anyone could go up against these landlords,

it was gonna be me.

[music fades]

[subway rumbles down tracks]

Gorgeous, yeah, gorgeous, right.

It did not look like this.

This was my building.

Wow, same gate! This is the same gate.

They have not changed this gate.

Definitely looks like new windows.

I lived on the ground and the first floor.

I rented out the second, third, and... fourth floor.

I wanted my tenants to feel at home

and have affordable housing.

I don't care if the market rate jumped up, you know,

the next year where I could charge $ more.

I'm not doing that.

I wouldn't want that done to me,

so why would I do that to somebody else?

[pensive music]

A lot of my friends and my family just say, you know,

“Look at what you did in your s.

You were able to purchase this building on your own.”

Here I am, that owned

a five-story, four-family building,

now to be renting again.

You know, with no equity.

I was in my senior year at Howard as an economics major.

But yeah, my life kinda changed directions quickly.

[camera shutter clicks, upbeat, funky synth music]

Modeling started out as a hobby, but then the agency

picked me up and just started to work for

Neiman Marcus, Giorgio Armani, Givenchy.

REPORTER : Janina Davis has been heralded by her agents

as the supermodel to beat all supermodels.

REPORTER : She's the hottest new talent to arrive

on the modeling scene.

REPORTER : Janina is being called the face of ‘.

REPORTER : Janina's biggest break so far was landing

the lead in Fanta's new ad campaign, fighting off

supermodel Naomi Campbell for the role.

JANINA: You get to one place.

You're there two weeks, and then

you're headed somewhere else.

And the traveling was amazing and great,

but sometimes you're just like,

oh, I just wanna be settled.

Two years after living out of a suitcase, I landed in New York.

♪ Where Brooklyn at? Yeah, tell ‘em somewhere.... ♪

JANINA: Brooklyn was kind of a young crowd, hip hop,

entertainment, young professionals.

Everybody was just very excited about being in Brooklyn

and living out your dreams and your goals.

Yeah, it was great.

[Hip-hop fades to tender music]

I bought this building in ‘

for about half-a-million dollars.

When I first saw the building, the backyard is so large.

I knew this property is definitely worth

investing in because another building can go back here.

I knew in the future I'd be interested in developing it.

I started just planting flowers, having a little garden.

My mother, she would

love to come and just sit out

in the backyard and have her coffee and breakfast.

There were some renovations.

I had to fix up the bathrooms.

This is becoming my home. I'm making it my own.

So yeah, it was, it was wonderful.

[music softens, then darkens]

But then with the property values going up

in so many areas,

the sharks come out.

You know, the vultures come out.

Unfortunately, my home was taken away

because of deed fraud.

[subway rushes]

[tender music]

-In this moment, every inch of Manhattan real estate

is considered valuable not

because of what it can provide

for people, but because

of the wealth that it can hold for billionaires

that most likely do not even live in New York City.

[tender music continues]

CAAAV is a membership organization who organizes

working-class Asian immigrants in New York City, and we are

trying to make an intervention in the way that

the real estate industry displaces and systematically

gentrifies our neighborhoods.

-Manhattan's Chinatown specifically has

a very long history.

Generations have lived here.

ALINA: It has its own kind of culture and rhythm.

You see it in the way that you order food at the counter.

You speak in a certain way to get attention.

[pensive music continues]

[speaking Mandarin]

[music fades to the bustling city sounds]

[speaking Mandarin]

-In this building, they've been fighting with

the landlord for many years.

[speaking Cantonese]

[speaking Mandarin]

[speaking Cantonese]

Okay. Come in, come in.

[speaking Cantonese]

[door creaks]

[speaking Mandarin]

[rat skitters over packages]

JULIE: A lot of the buildings in Chinatown are

more than years old.

A way that landlords have found to save costs is

by not doing repairs.

[speaking Mandarin]

JULIE: These are definitely tactics that landlords use

to push long-term tenants out.

They can do some easy renovations,

make it look a lot more modern

and fancy, and then rent it out for three times,

four times, five times the amount in the same building.

They are more likely to take advantage

of tenants who only speak Chinese,

who can't speak English.

Chinatown being one of the last working-class neighborhoods

in Manhattan, it's right

in the crosshairs of real estate.

[music darkens, protestors chant]

ALINA: In this developer, Extell, proposed

this enormous luxury tower.

There was a huge community outcry.

They still built it.

[speaking Mandarin]

ALINA: Now the billionaire developers want to build

four more of these luxury towers.

Chetrit and Extell are developing these towers.

-Chetrit's a big player in the real estate industry

and has money from all around the world.

ALINA: Chetrit is the kind of developer that wants to

move like real quick.

Infamously, he started demolishing Hotel Chelsea

before all the residents were moved out.

PROTESTORS: Blood on your hands, Chet-rit!

Blood on your hands, Chet-rit!

Blood on your hands!

-When I say "stop the," you say "towers!"

Stop the! -Towers!

-Stop the! -Towers!

-Stop the! -Towers!

JULIE: There's been a lot of new buildings

in the neighborhood.

These moments are being taken advantage of.

So, landlords are raising the rent like $, $,,

$, all of a sudden, and that's legal here.

-When I first got into real estate, they ‘re like,

“I'll live anywhere downtown except for Chinatown.”

And now it's, “I wanna live in Chinatown.”

[sprightly music]

My name's Evan Rugen.

I guess you could say I live in the moment, but I sleep

in the East Village.

And I'm a real estate agent turned real estate developer.

Typical client we're seeing, I call them HENRYS.

It stands for High Earner Not Rich Yet.

A lot of finance, a lot of management consulting.

There's the Long Island princesses.

There's the Chads and the Brads, you know, right out of,

fresh out of college in an apartment two years max.

The New York Timescalled me the “frat whisperer,” so.

The current state of the New York City rental market's

extremely fierce and extremely competitive.

TIKTOK: Over people showed up for one apartment.

EVAN: If you wanna get an apartment in Manhattan

right now, you gotta come prepared.

People are filling out applications beforehand.

People are coming with certified checks.

You wanna make yourself look as marketable as possible.

I've never seen this sheer feral look on people's face,

like, please help me.

And I'm like, I can only do so much.

I'm not building the apartments.

I'm just the guy with the keys.

And if you're a New Yorker, you've lived here for ,

years, you understand things are gonna be a little bit weird.

There's gonna be a shower in the kitchen.

There's gonna be flex walls.

TIKTOK: Reality of NYC apartment hunting.

[door bangs stove]

MAN: You also get a closet.

WOMAN: Welcome to my -square-foot apartment.

-I can almost lay down the entire apartment.

MAN: Stove, microwave.

I guess you're using the sink in the bathroom.

Everything's luxury when market rate is $,, you know?

Anything you're gonna build is gonna be deemed luxury.

[placid music]

-New York City has had an affordable housing crisis

since after World w*r II.

And we're seeing the effects of that with

the rise in homelessness

here in New York City,

and quite honestly, across the country.

So the a program was originally created in the ‘s

and ‘s when people were actually leaving the city,

and it was a way to try to attract

new development to happen by

providing the tax break.

[building rumbles to life]

Developers can get up to % of their property taxes erased

for a set number of years if % of their

development is classified as affordable housing.

The level of affordability, though, is really the issue.

The units are available through a lottery process.

The demand far, far,

far outstrips supply in New York City.

In terms of how people qualify,

the current program really targets middle-income housing.

[music grows dramatic]

That is not where the need is in New York City.

The a tax abatement has cost the City of New York

$. billion in the last fiscal year.

That money could've been put towards building

deeply affordable housing.

Instead, it supports luxury housing.

[tender music]

[music fades to rushing traffic]

SAMANTHA: The landlord started to get really aggressive.

[rapid banging on a door]

[speaking Spanish]

[yelling on the video continues]

SAMANTHA: It was chaos: screaming, yelling.

-[ON VIDEO] The police are coming now.

-Okay.

-Go ahead. Nobody's going from here, okay?

[speaking Spanish]

-This is my right. This is my right.

SAMANTHA: When someone says they're gonna call the cops

on your parents, it's scary

‘cause it's like, well, what if they don't come back?

There was this one time where I was eating

with my brother and with my dad.

And the landlord came in, and she started screaming,

and she started cursing out my dad.

She was like, “f*ck you. You're stupid.”

She just started saying all this random stuff.

I remember my brother got scared.

He went under the bed.

That incident built into my brother's brain that

when someone knocks it means trouble.

It means that someone's gonna scream.

You made my brother

be scared of being in his own home,

and I don't like that.

[speaking Spanish]

SAMANTHA: That's when tenants started coming together,

and they started holding meetings.

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

-The landlord in this case specifically was way more

aggressive than we've seen.

The request to produce their birth certificate, Social

Security number, and then say things like, “The Mexican has

too many people in the apartment.”

-Oof. Yeah.

-The actions that the landlord took were absolutely ill*gal.

The way that she was yelling at them.

The things that she was threatening...

was beyond what you see

in any kind of normal circumstance.

ILANA: She would call them dirty.

She would scream, “You guys are dirty.”

This exacerbated Samantha's fear of losing her home,

and her grades started to drop.

There were tenants in the building who were

not Hispanic and Latino. They were not being harassed.

So, we were really seeing a pattern of harassment

based upon race and ethnicity.

[speaking Spanish]

Harassment on the basis of

race and ethnicity, it's ill*gal

under the New York City Human Rights Law.

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

SAMANTHA: Fifth place!

[speaking Spanish]

RINI: Housing court is a nightmare, and it's

a very stressful experience.

Even as an attorney, it's very stressful.

It's complete chaos.

-It's crowded, there are people yelling.

Housing court is not known as a place where tenants

can achieve justice.

The housing court has become an eviction mill.

Often, the court case is decided in a matter of minutes.

-Say it again?

-No, I....

MAN: The hallway negotiation has always been part of

the culture of the housing court.

The volume of cases that we have is so large that there is

no way that we can do every case before the judge.

The power dynamic is not one that is favorable to tenants.

MICHAEL: Why do we have such a busy court system?

It's because New York City is driven by

the real estate business.

Large law firms that represent landlords,

they commence hundreds of cases per week.

They flood the court system with eviction cases.

And why is this happening in certain neighborhoods

rather than others?

It's because real estate is lucrative.

Bringing eviction cases is the way that

you get people out of their homes.

It's the way that you change neighborhoods at the behest

of large-scale development projects.

And that has accelerated G*ntrification and displacement,

and they've used the courts to do it.

[bright, bubbly music]

WOMAN: Do you wanna see what $,, gets you

at One Manhattan Square?

MAN: Call this place a home for $. million.

MAN : Let's go see what , gets you

in One Manhattan Square.

MAN : , square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities.

WOMAN: It has over , square feet of indoor

and outdoor amenities.

I gotta show you the ,.

[voices echo] , square feet of amazing amenities.

MAN: I'm talking about the pool, the basketball court,

the golf simulator, the squash court, the theater.

WOMAN: The bowling alley.

[echoes] We have an adult tree house.

There's so much happening in this neighborhood,

and we're the first building here.

[echoing] We're the first building here.

[music fades out to traffic and distant sirens]

-Thank you, ma'am.

ALINA: The reason why we're all here today is because we don't

think it's right that billionaires can rearrange our

neighborhoods, and in doing so, destroy our whole community.

-First, we wanna talk about the park.

Developers wanted to start on Monday.

They wanted to destroy the basketball courts,

they wanted to destroy the playground,

and they wanted to replace it with parking.

But what did we do? We came together.

And we delayed them from starting on Monday because

they were afraid of the publicity.

We wanna identify what threats happen if they

try and take down and tear down the playground.

-Where are the kids gonna go on?

They're gonna get stuck in the apartment all day.

You know, and having a playground we get to

know each other of different race and get to

have fun, and you know.

-And then you complain:

“Oh, these kids are not doing nothing.

They just hanging on the corner.”

Yeah, but you just took the basketball court away.

You just did this.

You just said, what is it to put another building?

What for?

ALINA: Most people don't even know that

the towers are going up!

Our elected officials are not on it.

They're not supporting us the way that they need to.

-I just don't understand that, how the hell they approved that.

They're taking the view of the waterfront.

Stop it.

-And who does the waterfront belong to?

-Stop it.

-I mean, I don't really wouldn't wanna go by race.

It is also some white people that are poor as well.

[many overlapping voices]

-It creates damage to the nearby buildings, especially.

-Yes! Exactly.

-I've experienced with the Extell building,

our windows do not shut.

It shifted. Everything shifted.

Pollution, you deal with that for years.

-More congestion, more people in the street.

And how do we know that the people here will get along

with those people that live in those buildings?

That can cause a problem.

-What's gonna happen is, once they start building all these

buildings one at a time, eventually they're gonna start

tearing all these projects down.

And then where the heck are we gonna go?

-Where are we gonna go?

-They just pushing us out slowly

and getting rid of us slowly.

-Pushing.

But yet, the people that you're pushing are the ones

that you come up to when you need a babysitter.

The ones that, when you want your laundry.

Who the hell do you come to?

To us! Okay?

[speaking Spanish]

-They think we haven't been through this before.

This neighborhood is organized.

We can stop the towers.

[slow, rhythmic banging]

[machines grumbling]

[distant traffic]

JANINA: So my whole property had a backyard,

this here, this L shape.

I was looking to build another building.

Enough space for definitely another building,

a nice sized building at that.

A person close to me let me know that he knew these developer

brothers and told me if I was serious about wanting to

develop the space, I should really speak with them.

He was very close with them.

And they had a lot of experience under their belt.

So, I said, “Yeah, sure. I'd like to meet them.”

At the initial meeting, I was shown their portfolio of other

projects they had done all over the country.

We talked about my ideas.

They said, this definitely can happen.

You have the property. We have the know-how.

We will show you the ropes.

[uplifting music]

All of these things, I felt... comfortable.

And they had a daughter the same age as Altria, my daughter.

We would let them play together.

We would go out for lunch,

all this amazing treatment in the beginning.

At least once they said to me,

“You sure you don't wanna sell the building?”

And I said, “No, I don't wanna sell the building.

I wanna develop my property.”

[inspiring music continues]

The agreement was we're gonna form a joint venture,

we're gonna become / partners.

They asked what did I wanna name the LLC?

And I said, “Well,

I'm doing this because I believe that in

generational wealth, I should be able to pass something

on to my daughter, family members.

And I'd like to name it after her:

Altria Development, LLC.

I signed the agreement in April of .

In order to get the construction loan, I was told

that we have to move out of the building,

which was never part of the agreement.

Yeah, something's definitely not going right.

We could see the shift, and they just did a full .

Now I'm like enemy #.

This is their building now.

[tense music]

So, the two developers, they bought attack dogs,

German Shepherds, and they're letting them

loose in the hallway.

And then they come back again. And this time,

they came back with a fake marshal,

who was actually one of their attorneys.

And they took me to landlord-tenant court

to have me evicted.

I'm just, I don't know what's going on.

But when my attorney

in starts to pull paperwork,

he found out and told me when creating the LLC,

the developers, they did not put me down as a member.

So, I was never actually a member of the LLC.

And then one of the developers takes the property, which is now

in Altria Development, LLC, and puts it in his own name.

My name is not down there as a partner.

As Altria Development, LLC, it is only his name.

Okay.

And finally, they just file for bankruptcy.

And the bankruptcy court just went right ahead.

They listened to that, and that wasn't investigated at all.

My building was put up for auction.

It sold for market rate.

The building sold for . million.

My daughter and I had days to leave my home.

I just couldn't believe it.

Someone else had stolen my building, my property.

The whole time, I'm thinking

we're working together as a team.

For them to be so deceptive, you know, to make up this whole

story to get possession of my home, yeah,

I did not see that coming. I really didn't.

[solemn, pulsing music]

And then I found out about all these other stories of people

losing their homes and being displaced.

This is deed theft. This is deed fraud.

[solemn music continues]

To see so many other people going through the same thing,

this is crazy.

This is what's happening all over the place.

The Attorney General needs to investigate this.

This is organized crime, and then they're stealing

the wealth of Black families.

This anti-Blackness.

This is against Black ownership and displacing us.

-That's right.

-This is an injustice, and we have to do something.

[applause, cheers]

[subway rumbles on tracks]

MOUMITA: Okay, ready? Ready for his quote?

-Yes.

-“I'm endorsing Moumita because she understands that

working-class New Yorkers from diverse backgrounds

built this city and that we need leaders on the

City Council who will always put them before the interests of

the wealthy and the powerful.”

‘Cause he's officially endorsing us!!!

[laugh] Oh, my God!

My name is Moumita.

It's common sense to work for working-class people.

My top priority as a renter, like most people

in this district, is housing justice for all.

[speaks Bangla]

housing justice.

[Moumita's interview continues]

DAVE: With all of that attention coming in, all of a sudden,

they blanket the whole district with this ad.

[uneasy music]

MONISHEE: The first one I got was

the one of her hugging the doll.

And I thought it was so odd.

They took this photo from my Facebook page.

It was very sexist, infantilizing me because

I was holding this doll.

If you're gonna put out a mailer against me,

at least mention my policies.

It didn't mention what they were.

So it was just a straight-up personal attack.

This one showed a picture of me kissing my Bernie tattoo.

In Islam, if you have tattoos,

people look down on that.

The second I saw it, my heart dropped because

I knew how a lot of the more

religious people in our community would take it.

MOUMITA: You know, a lot of it is misunderstanding sometimes

because of where I'm coming from and....

-Your background is totally different.

MOUMITA: It was really disgusting.

It was really, really sexist to focus on someone's body part.

DAVE: Just seeing how far they sent it.

The fact that they sent these mailers to every single voter,

we knew oh, there's big money coming into this race.

[brooding music]

Luckily, in New York,

they have these rules where on mailers,

you actually have to show who the treasurer is.

So it says, "Paid for by Common Sense NYC."

And it says, "Top three donors, Stephen Ross,

Jack Cayre, Isaac Ash."

So we immediately Googled who Common Sense was.

-The real funding came from Stephen Ross, who is a

very wealthy billionaire real estate developer.

He's developed Hudson Yards. He also owns

the Miami Dolphins, and

he'd been a major donor for Donald Trump.

MOUMITA: He's a slumlord known for harassing

street vendors, renters.

STEPHEN ROSS: In that area, which was a real wasteland,

today we get the highest rents in New York.

We'll have million square feet when we're done with it,

if we don't buy any additional land, which we're trying.

DAVE: Stephen Ross donated a million dollars to this PAC.

Why would Stephen Ross, someone

who doesn't even live in New York City,

why is he getting involved in a City Council race

in central Queens?

And I mean, the answer's clearly housing justice

was the center of our platform.

So him, all of his real estate buddies, they came together

made this PAC, and it's literally

just to stop candidates like Moumita.

We were very explicit about how we were gonna organize tenants.

We were going to help them

form tenants' associations.

DAVE: This really scared the real estate developers.

They are trying to build new luxury buildings in all these

neighborhoods, but now they have a challenge.

These are terrible ads, and to an extent, it made me cringe.

But at the same time, I felt powerful.

I felt like I was doing something right.

[music fades]

[paper cutter slicing]

JULIE: This is Chetrit.

He's the head of the Chetrit Group.

Basically, it says, “luxury towers, breaking grounds,

protect our homes.”

And these are the two towers he has his eyes on.

[many quiet voices]

[speaking Mandarin]

[pulsing music]

EM: Hi, we're coming around with a petition to oppose

the luxury towers that are gonna be built here.

[speaking Mandarin]

EM: They want to build four more like just all here.

-What, like this? -Yeah, or even taller.

PROTESTORS: Fight, fight, fight!

Housing is a human right!

Fight, fight, fight!

[speaking Mandarin]

[triumphant music, spirited chanting continues]

CAAAV REP: These four mega-towers are the largest

development in the city.

The waterfront will become a neighborhood for the rich,

and tenants will be forced to move out.

We don't need luxury towers.

We need community control.

-Yes!

[demonstrators cheer]

[referee's whistle blows, students chanting]

[tender music]

SAMANTHA: It's my last year of high school.

I just wanna rest with my family and not think about

whether or not they're gonna get another eviction notice.

[tender music continues with a heart beat]

We deserve to live in a dignified home.

[food sizzling on the stove]

[speaking Spanish]

RINI: The Human Rights Commission was investigating.

We wanted a remedy that was more complex than

just making the repairs.

We wanted the landlord to have to understand

you cannot enter their home without permission.

You cannot scream and yell at them.

You cannot threaten them.

ILIANA: We presented affidavits, voicemails, videos,

the frivolous cases that were filed.

RINI: We were able to get some attention from the press.

[tender music continues]

ILIANA: After a long back and forth

with opposing counsel for around three years...

[speaking Spanish]

[music brightens]

ILIANA: She had to agree to serve notices in Spanish,

post who the superintendent was in the building.

[speaking Spanish]

[music gently fades]

-The concept of deed theft seems pretty simple.

You took my property, you took my equity,

and you did so under false pretenses.

But the execution is often incredibly complicated,

labyrinth of paperwork and LLCs, etc.

-Typically, we've been hearing about loan modification scams or

bait and switch scams where people are looking to refinance

their house and take some equity out.

And all of a sudden, the fraudster puts a pile of papers

in front of the victim and has them sign.

-Scammers, when it comes to particularly repair scams,

oftentimes, they will target those homeowners because

they know you're not able to do repairs on the home.

Let me pretend that I'm gonna help you with this repair,

and they can further swindle that homeowner.

I'm not giving up.

I'm not giving up my property.

I'll fight to the end, whatever it takes.

I retained an attorney, which is draining me at this point,

but I'm still gon' fight.

-Some random person one day unannouncedly just

came to our doorstep, knocked on our home.

And he gave us a envelope that was ripped and written on it,

“Oh, this is my home.

We purchased this home, and y'all have to leave this home

soon ‘cause I have my inspectors coming.”

-Oh, please.

-It seemed so unprofessional.

It seemed scand-, he seemed very scandalous.

And like my grandfather, he's years old.

-Yes, sweetheart. Don't cry.

[woman sobs quietly]

-[voice shaking] My grandfather took care of the house

for so many years by hisself.

And for some people just to say they up and bought a house,

when I see him grind and make $,

to back pay taxes by hisself.

And he still works.

SENATOR MYRIE: How is it that the court system can know

of a problem, know that there are lawyers

behaving badly and still look the other way?

-Would you like me to answer that?

-Yes, please, Ms. Nicholson.

-Would you like me to be honest?

-Yes, please.

-They're biased.

They believe that Black families, Black homeowners,

they've made it clear that defrauding someone who looks

like me or Senator Myrie is not actionable in the court.

-We need to have much more aggressive government

enforcement of the laws that exist, in addition to

additional legislation.

SENATOR MYRIE: Not only have these thieves stolen our homes,

not only have they stolen our equity,

they have stolen our lives.

[music fades]

JANINA: This is like... [folder thuds]

seven years of documents.

Just, you know....

It's madness, right?

I did feel stuck in a sense.

I felt like this was my job

just trying to get my home back.

-Deed theft,

it's an absolute epidemic in Brooklyn and Queens.

Every time we think we've seen every major type of fraud,

something new comes in.

Maybe he works for them. That's possible.

I encountered a victim who had been at a closing with six other

professionals—lawyers, an appraiser, somebody

from the bank— and not one of them was

the person who they said they were.

It was all fake.

All of it was fake.

Then there are just fraudsters who hit every single house

on a block.

There's a limited amount of housing in New York City.

And if you have a real estate industry trying to make money

buying and flipping single-family or

two or three-family homes,

the system has to get those homes from somewhere.

I'm not sure the market can really continue to be

the hot market that it is without some level

of fraud being used to strip equity from families.

JANINA: Here, these checks, right?

So, for instance, in my case, the developers

told the bankruptcy judge that they bought

the property from me on that day I transferred it

into Altria, LLC.

BILL: And you say, I never, you never received

this $,? That's not your signature.

No, well, it even says it was put back into the account.

-Oh, put back into it.

-That's not my signature. -[scoffs]

-They're show checks. -Right, they're show checks.

ADAM: So this is a check for $, made out

to Janina Davis.

This was introduced at trial to prove that she had been paid

a legitimate amount of money for this property.

But then when you look at the back...

you can see that it says

“not used for purpose intended.”

So, it was redeposited into the original account

and not cashed by Janina.

This was their backup plan in case their story about

she signed this agreement with Altria

fell through, they were just gonna say,

“Well, she just sold it to Altria, and we paid her for it”"

They just wanted to sell the property.

I don't have my home.

I don't have any equity.

Oh, here's the transcript!

This is the entire transcript for a week, for a week trial

in landlord-tenant court, which I won!

Why was this not used in the bankruptcy court?

This is also what I submitted to the DA.

And it's not just me, it's other people too, who have gone

to the DA saying the same thing, the same scam,

the same, you know, pattern.

ADAM: We've run across many people who said they've

gone to the DA, and the DA has not been helpful.

I mean, there are things going on.

The criminals in this case tend to be wealthier, so they have

more money, and they have better lawyers.

And the DA doesn't like to go up against lawyers

who are being paid well.

I imagine you're not surprised by hearing me say this.

But the justice system, as it currently exists, does not

seem to work very well in these situations.

And does not take seriously the claims of the people who are

really being ripped off.

[tense music pulses]

There were , complaints in a nine-year period.

The Brooklyn DA's office,

they've prosecuted cases, right?

So, just the odds of getting caught,

the odds of getting convicted are so low.

If they're allowed to keep these properties and make

millions of dollars off of these properties,

and no one's doing anything about it,

what incentive do they have to stop?

We're talking hundreds of millions, if not

billions, of dollars in vanished equity.

White-collar criminals are the likeliest to be deterred by

lengthy sentences and the risk of prosecution.

Put these people away for years,

and you'll see people stop doing it quickly.

When it comes down to all of this evidence that I have,

for them not to look into it, it's a slap in my face.

It's like they don't even care.

Everybody wants to put the blame on the victim.

Like, “oh, that's your fault. You didn't protect yourself.”

No! Go after the people that

they know what they're getting ready to do to you.

BILL: And you did protect yourself.

You filed three lawsuits.

You went through, you did a trial in bankruptcy court.

There's nothing more that you could've done in terms of

the legal system to try to protect yourself

and defend your rights here.

You did everything that one could be expected to do to

try to right this situation,

including going to the district attorney.

ADAM: If she'd never met these people, if this had never

happened, she would be $- million richer today.

Yeah, my life, definitely, [laughs softly] my life

would be way different than it is...

way different than it is now.

-Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

BILL: Our whole country was based on theft of land from

Native Americans and theft of labor from African Americans.

So, what we're seeing with real estate fraud is just...

a continuation of that.

JANINA: In the ‘s and 's with redlining,

something similar is happening now.

Black and brown people not owning land, like,

you're not supposed to own property.

So all of this can be excused.

People can turn a blind eye to all of this because it's like,

well, you're not supposed to have that anyway.

Sometimes I will ride down Clinton.

This building sat empty for a while.

And then we're now seeing this a lot of activity

as of last year.

In and ‘

when I wanted to do this,

this is what this should've looked like.

Finally, it's happening.

You know, and it's not me that's doing it

even though I wanted this. This is what I wanted.

This is my dream, but now someone else is doing it.

So, it's a surreal moment for me, looking at it.

It's really taking me kind of many

places mentally, emotionally... yeah.

-Today is election day in District !

Vote for Moumita Ahmed!

Vote for Moumita Ahmed for City Council!

Today is election day!

REPORTER : Voters in Queens headed to the polls to cap off

a special City Council election for the th district.

REPORTER : Eight candidates are vying to fill

the City Council seat. The polls close at :.

[music builds anticipation]

SEBASTIAN: Common Sense New York spent $,

in attack ads against Moumita.

DAVE: They put out positive ads about our biggest competition,

James Gennaro.

And they also spent money on ads supporting other candidates

to also just try to

sow division in the community.

[many quiet conversations]

[music grows tense]

This is the resistance against the billionaires who wanna

bully us, who wanna displace our communities.

What we're starting is a movement,

and you all should be proud.

[cheers, applause]

[news theme music]

REPORTER : Now to breaking news in Queens.

REPORTER : James Gennaro is headed back to City Hall.

REPORTER : James Gennaro will reclaim his City Council seat.

REPORTER : Most of your opponents in the race ran to

the left of you, one of them in particular, Moumita Ahmed.

MOUMITA: It sucks to fight so hard and still come short.

But I know this is a long game, and I'm so grateful.

[voice cracking] And hopefully it'll inspire more people

to just go and f*cking do it.

[pensive music]

I would never...

over my dead body, I would never accept a dime

from billionaires and real estate developers.

And Gennaro was happy to accept that money.

And that's why they picked him.

REPORTER: There was an outside group, funded largely by

the billionaire developer Stephen Ross that was

primarily supporting you.

-I did not ask for it.

I didn't know it was going to happen, but it did happen.

And I had nothing to do with it.

MOUMITA: Our City Council race was the most expensive

race in New York City Council history.

[pensive music]

We need to get money out of politics so that

people can have a fair shot.

And by people, I mean like, everyday people.

After the election,

we saw the tactics being used on other candidates.

SEBASTIAN: I think the election was a testing ground for a lot

of those attack ads sponsored by Common Sense New York,

which now we see all over the country.

Like these!

Here's me... with a megaphone.

Here's Jaslin with a megaphone.

Here's Adolfo with a megaphone!

I mean, they literally just scoured our social media

and found pictures of us holding megaphones.

They just made up some statistics

that weren't even true and...

created a bunch of mailers that look exactly the same.

This one exactly the same as the one

they used against Jaslin.

These were all candidates who supported tenants' associations.

DAVE: There was this candidate in California who was like,

“Hey, these same mailers were used against me.”

So it's like a coordinated attack on progressives

by the real estate industry.

[pensive music fades]

[percussive, racing music]

[percussive, racing music continues]

[speaking Mandarin]

[speaking English]

[demonstrators cheer]

ALINA: These three towers,

they were all trying to apply for

a, which would mean that they not only get to build these

luxury towers, but they also get a multi-decade tax break.

a is set to expire.

-Chetrit is trying to push through in

the last few days of the a program.

[demonstrators boo]

They're scared because they know the program is ending.

And they know that their luxury megatowers that no one can

actually afford to live in aren't economically sustainable

without a massive handout.

It's unconscionable that the government is paying

these developers to destroy our communities.

We're tired of scraps, and we're tired of being bullied by

multimillion-dollar mega-corporations.

[speaking Mandarin]

ALINA: Do you think that the people who live and work here

should be heard?

-Yes!

[speaking Mandarin]

[group cheers]

Can a few of us come in?

What about just some of the residents, just four of us?

[indistinct voices]

MAN: What's your name? ALINA: Alina.

-Police officers have it at Community Affairs

at the th precinct.

-Okay.

-Let's have everybody exit the building right now.

You just come in, and then we'll talk, all right?

But for now, let's clear the hallway for now, all right?

[quiet conversations, tense music pulses quietly]

[woman speaking in Mandarin]

ALINA: Can we ask the commissioner

to come out to see us? WOMAN: Yeah, okay.

MAN : I have no control. MAN : Let's be realistic here.

The commissioner's not gonna come out and talk to everybody,

so we need everybody to go outside.

CAAAV MEMBER: The commissioner is in a meeting

with our executive director.

[tense music pulses]

[heavy machinery whirs and grumbles]

[hammering, banging]

[construction fades]

ALINA: Right now, three out of the four megatowers

have broken ground.

The Department of Buildings really put up

a wall of their bureaucratic code.

[wistful music]

You can see that it's gonna be up

against a residential building.

It's gonna be blocking the windows of the people

living in here.

[wistful music swells with emotion]

[speaking Mandarin]

[music softens]

ALINA: We wanna live in a neighborhood where

you don't need to make six figures just to rent

an apartment and live with dignity.

SAMANTHA: Now the city wants to raise the rent.

[soft, wistful music continues]

[music begins to darken]

REPORTER: The city's Rent Guidelines Board is hosting

a public meeting today as it considers significant hikes

for rent-stabilized apartments.

If the board approves these rates, tenants could see

increases as much as %.

SAMANTHA: The Rent Guidelines Board is made of nine people

who the mayor appoints.

REPORTER : Last year the Board approved the highest

rent increase in nearly a decade.

REPORTER : Landlords say their costs are skyrocketing as well.

[music fades]

[many quiet conversations]

CHAIR: This is the last

of four public hearings to consider

comments on proposed rent adjustments.

They go throughout the city, and they hear

tenants and landlords and their opinions on

why they should or should not raise the rent

or freeze it or decrease it.

I work two jobs full time.

Between childcare and these rents, this increase is well

outside of my budget and may force

my daughter and I out of our own home.

That you all have the audacity....

SAMANTHA: People pour their hearts out.

People cry.

And... they don't seem to care.

WOMAN: , families are being evicted every single day.

We have no space in our shelters.

[speaking Spanish]

[cheers, applause]

[enthusiastic applause, cheers]

WOMAN: You are destroying the New York that we all love.

-Yes!!!

-You are creating a New York that is only for the wealthy.

And so, I ask you all, “Why are you on this board?”

-Yes! -Good question!

WOMAN: It's not rhetorical.

[speaking English]

MAN: Answer the question!

WOMAN: Right, right. You don't have an answer.

You don't need to be here.

Roll the rent back!

An increase in rent isn't needed at all.

I have been speaking in RGB since I was .

CHILD SAMANTHA: Every time I see the landlord, I get scared

and panic, but I manage to remain calm.

Please think about your family and how would you feel

being in this situation?

We fight for the end of discrimination.

We fight for the end of landlord harassment.

There's a difference between hearing someone

and listening to someone.

I started to call them out because why am I here?

If you're not gonna listen to me, why bother?

CHILD SAMANTHA: If our testimonies fail to change

your mind, I promise you I will come back here,

even if it takes years

for you guys to get a rent decrease.

How can students like myself learn about independence

and responsibility if this city implements the rent increases

that make it nearly impossible to afford rent?

Raise your hand if you want a rent rollback!

Make some noise! RENTERS: [boisterous cheers]

-[chanting] Rent rollback! Rent rollback!

-Rent rollback!

Rent rollback!

[cheers]

REPORTER: The Rent Stabilization Association, which

advocates for landlords, advised its members

to not testify in person out of fear

of hostility and interruptions from tenants.

The rent stabilized housing stock is old, it's aging.

We need reasonable increases because owner expenses

continue to go up.

Over the past years, my taxes have gone up %

It's impossible to survive as a building owner.

It's impossible to keep a building alive.

Whether a tenant can or cannot afford an increase is really

not the job of the RGB.

That should be borne by the public as a whole.

[renters' chants fill the auditorium]

Fired up, can't take it no more! Fired up, can't take it no more!

CHAIR: We're gonna begin.

[a hush falls]

For apartments, a one-year lease will be %.

[loud boos]

For two-year lease, for the first year of the lease, .%.

For the second year of the lease, .%.

[boos and whistles rise]

[speaking English]

[speaking Spanish]

REPORTER: Breaking right now: The rent is going up

for about million tenants.

-For somebody on a fixed income in this city,

the most expensive city in the world, it's just not doable.

The system is flawed. The system is problematic.

It's r*cist. It's classist.

REPORTER: Neither side left here happy.

Renters vowing to continue fighting

to lower rent increases.

PROTESTORS: Fight, fight, fight!

Housing is a human right! Fight, fight, fight!

[chanting echoes and fades]

SAMANTHA: I got into Adelphi, Hofstra, Siena, SUNY Cortland

Muhlenberg, University at Albany,

Baruch, Hunter....

Um... I'm missing a few.

Thought about it, and I decided to go to Baruch.

You know, the college process is really hard.

And especially since my parents didn't go to college, I really

didn't know what to do, how, like what the process was.

So when I got in, I got really happy.

It was like it was fine. It was worth it.

[applause, cheers]

ANNOUNCER: I'd like to introduce to the stage....

[cheers]

SAMANTHA: I'm feeling kind of nervous because I don't know

what college is like.

I'm going in blind, basically.

But I wanna see what college has in store for me.

I'm planning on majoring in psychology.

-Samantha Bravo-Heurtero.

[boisterous cheers]

[cheers continue]

SAMANTHA: I really am interested in learning

why people think the way that they do ‘cause

people aren't the way they are just because they are.

Experiences have led them to that.

Traumatic experiences, painful experiences,

and people need to understand that.

I wanna understand that.

[cheers, applause as tender music plays]

[tender music continues]

[speaking Mandarin]

[music turns uplifting]

[speaking Bangla]

Hi!

MOUMITA: There's always gonna be people who are gonna stand up

to corporate power, corruption,

and they're gonna be attacked for it.

Stephen Ross can bury me, but others will come.

We can't be scared. We have to keep going.

JANINA: I feel that justice still could happen.

I haven't given up.

I really wish my daughter and I could still be here.

This was something I wanted to be able to pass on to her

through what I had done, what I had learned and worked hard for.

[uplifting music continues]

[water splashes]

Healing for myself, I had to just start moving again.

I learned a lot with the property.

And I went ahead and got my real estate license

to be able to create housing for others and really

feel like I'm a part of the solution.

Housing is a human right.

Everyone should have a healthy, sustainable place to live.

[music fades]

[pensive music]

REPORTER: Rents all across the country, they're going up:

% in Cincinnati and Seattle, by % in Austin.

[group yells in unison]

MAN: None of us cannot afford to pay those price increases.

That's why we started fighting back.

REPORTER: Native Americans protest against

new developments in Miami.

Protesters arguing that the new construction would desecrate

a sacred and historic piece of land.

REPORTER: Locals say Aquadilla Pier Corp, the developer behind

the construction site, has been building illegally, saying

they've cut down a protected forest and let sediment

from their site pollute the water below.

[speaking Spanish]

PROTESTOR: It's very important for the communities and for

the people of Puerto Rico to keep this fight

because we've seen that with pressure,

the government starts listening.

REPORTER: Between and people marched to push back

on the possibility of an arena in Chinatown.

WOMAN: It is a melting pot.

I think Chinatown should be preserved.

Our voice needs to be heard loud and clear.

WOMAN: The only power for tenants to find is the power

that comes with organizing with one's neighbors.

PROTESTORS: The rent, the rent,

the rent is too damn high!

[voices echo eerily and fade]

[haunting music]