As someone unfortunately familiar with the antics of Ben Shaoul I was bemused by this interview. Why the emphasis on condos? Shaoul himself admits that their core business is rentals: "Rentals is the bread and butter of this business; it pays for everything" he avers. One wonders what "this business" means.

The incontestable fact is that the Shaouls and their backers purposely seek out and target rent regulated housing. That's odd. Why would anyone want to buy a rent regulated building with a low rent roll in today's hyper-inflated market, especially since New York has the strongest tenant protection laws in the country? Spending ca. 3 million dollars for a 20 unit building with a rent roll of about $150,000 per year just wouldn't make sense. You are hardly going to be able to pay your property taxes, no less make a profit.

The trick, you see, is getting rid of the tenants as quickly as possible and replacing them with people willing to pay astronomical rents just to live in a closet sized apartment in a “cool” neighborhood that hasn't been "cool" for years (because of them). As Ben Shaoul says: "We buy buildings; we increase the value..." That seems simple but how exactly does one accomplish that? This is where the website of one of the Shaoul's private equity backers -- Normandy Real Estate Partners becomes instructive. They write: “The investment strategy is to capitalize on the strength of the local economy and New York City rental market as well as the increased institutional appetite for New York City rent stabilized housing transactions. There is a near-term opportunity to increase cash flow by converting rent stabilized apartments to market rate as tenants vacate units.” They continue: “There is an opportunity to increase rental income at the properties by renovating units and releasing at market rate.” That's pretty straightforward. So, the goal is to increase the rental income by helping the poor befuddled tenants who have lived there for decades and “are” the community to vacate so they can pay three or four times more elsewhere or just leave the City altogether since there is nothing affordable within a 100 mile radius. Then, the brilliant young entrepreneur, using those innate intellectual powers that could not be contained by the likes of [Dade Commuity College?] renovates the units and “releases” them, i.e. de-controls them, thereby increasing his rental income, or “bread and butter.” The problem is: how do you get the tenants to vacate if they don’t want to move and are protected by the rent regulation laws fearlessly administered by the brave bureaucratic hacks at the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR)?

How about knocking down doors with crowbars? That might work. In fact, it was very effective on St. Mark's Place. Shaoul laughably denies that his goon squad was armed with these “demolition tools” in order to strong-arm the residents into vacating the building. He avowed that crowbars are integral to demolition work. Well, I can think of far better tools for tearing down asbestos laden walls and ceilings. But yes, crowbars are very useful when your plan is to crawl in the windows of a squatter building from the fire escape to "intimidate" the residents, legal or not. That was what the neighborhood residents heard anyway. Shaoul, who word has it, was not even the owner of that property when this incident occurred, has not shied away from such heavy-handed tactics, especially when dealing with "illegitimate" tenants, i.e. squatters or, god forbid, immigrants. Just have a look at the 2001 Village Voice piece on him, when he was still new to the game. If I remember correctly, at 166 Elizabeth Street he banged on resident’s doors in the middle of the night demanding that they get out of “his” building. Calling Immigration authorities or Children’s Services is apparently another favored method of helping tenants vacate, it has been said. Is it any wonder that he was honored in 2007 as one of the city’s ten worst landlords?

Unfortunately, though these tactics are often quite effective and can be fast, they may not work in buildings occupied by tenants with leases, especially if those tenants are not new immigrants afraid of legal entanglements. For these stalwarts other more profound, legalistic challenges are in store including an arsenal of legal loopholes identified and exploited by a cadre of lawyers, architects and engineers. After all, a dead-beat rent regulated tenant is still just a dead-beat tenant in the eyes of the “boy wonder” and the longer one of these tenants remains in his/her legal apartment the more money is lost by this messianic agent of gentrification.

In fact, getting rid of these tenants and hiking the rent to the bearable market limit is not enough. To realize a decent profit it is also necessary to increase the square footage of the building, to create more units unhampered by rent regulation. Who cares about issues like density? What difference does it make that fire and safely issues, or light and air protections are ignored? That’s where the Department of Building (DOB) comes in since enlarging the building and “renovating” vacated units are part of the nexus of intimidation and harassment.

The Observer interviewer, Max Abelson, asked Shaoul to name his favorite architect. Shaoul shied away from answering, brilliantly deflecting this important question. This might be because his favorite, or at least most oft-used architect, Ramy Isaac, of Isaac and Stern, recently lost his right to participate in the DOB’s Professional Certification Program (a.k.a. self-certification) having been found to have dissembled repeatedly. What is Isaac’s specialization you may wonder? Like a zealot on a crusade this architect divined that the DOB was willing to issue self-certified permits as a form of blanket plausible denial in order to allow for work from basement to roof (and higher) in occupied housing. Warranty of Habitability be damned, they probably say. We must help these tenants vacate so that these apartments may be hastily renovated and leased to young investment bankers, NYU business students and others who will not be around for more than a year or two and could care less what happens when they return to the housing tract wasteland from which they emerged or the cradle to coffin social nets if they represent the international bourgeois comprador classes who have recently descended upon New York City in droves.

Another important aspect of DOB facilitation is that agency’s willingness to, let’s say, disregard many of the laws that prevent developers from overbuilding. Recently, they sent a letter to a City Council Member declaring that the Multiple Dwelling Law of 1929 (State law) is too burdensome and can not possibly be enforced, at least in those cases where the lack of enforcement has been noticed and challenged. Earlier, they insisted that Zoning Resolution (ZR) 23-692 (the Sliver Law) was also to be ignored but motivated tenants who still prize their first amendment rights successfully (for the time being) opposed this insidious effort to illegally legislate by a City agency. Have you ever wondered why so few tenements have been vertically elevated? You can thank these laws. But not anymore if the DOB and trailblazers like the Shaouls have their way. Look around your neighborhoods. You will see one “vertical enlargement” after another. In most cases, you will also notice that all of the apartments have been “released” and renovated making room for new tenants who know nothing of tenant’s rights and could care less. It is these permits and the work they allow that are Isaac and Stern’s calling card, it would seem.

Add into the equation other DOB scams like the Community Facilities and Quality Housing programs (square footage bonuses) and you have the elements that make rent regulated (“undervalued”) buildings so enticing to wide-eyed young developers like Ben Shaoul, along with Normandy, Westbrook Partners, Extell Corp., Dawnay, Day and other billion dollar private equity firms. Now is the time for the haves to take even more particularly if they happen to live is countries with stronger currencies and can take advantage of a US dollar in free fall.

What better scenario could be imagined? The DHCR is not protecting tenants against harassment. The Housing Court is just an arena for frivolous litigation brought by landlords against tenants (most of whom cannot even afford legal representation) making the judicial system no more than another vehicle of harassment. Every NYC resident should visit this zoo at least once in order to see how justice is bought and sold on a daily basis. With the DOB providing for and sanctioning the very physical conditions in occupied buildings that make it nearly impossible for tenants to withstand the onslaught (loss of heat and hot water, interruptions of gas and electricity, lack of security, intimidation by workers, dust and debris, ceiling leaks and damage to walls, etc.) is it any wonder that the number of rent regulated dwelling units in the City is disappearing at an alarming rate? But fear not! Our proud Mayor, a man of the people who rides the subway to work every day (and earns more than everyone on my entire block would in a lifetime during that short commute, just in interest) is demanding an increase in what he calls affordable housing (tax incentives for the speculators). The problem is that you and I could never afford to live there should they ever be built.

Now here’s the rub y’all. Many of us don’t even want to live in these “hip” areas anymore because they aren’t even “hip”. As a matter of fact, they couldn’t possibly be more “unhip.” Some of us were never “hip” to begin with. We just happen to live in areas that became so for a short while. We are not slackers taking advantage of unfairly low rents. We are working people, taxpayers, some more marginal than others, but all deeply woven into the fabric of what were once vibrant communities in what was once a diverse and interesting city. Many of us are exiles from other areas previously colonized by post-hip hipsters. Others are just regular people who are trying to live out their lives in the only homes they have ever known. We don’t want to have to dodge and weave our way through crowds of young Ipod people walking their little dogs (conspicuous consumption), while talking on their cell phones, while trying to balance on their four inch heels, all while hailing a cab. I, for one, don’t even want to be around people with those sensibilities or lack of them. But, this is where I live. The world has narrowed my options so much that even if I wanted to move someplace more civilized I can’t afford it. So there you go. I, like hundreds or thousands of others are fighting each day to keep a roof over our heads, to remain financially independent. We are no longer surrounded by people reading Walter Benjamin or Deleuze. Now, they read monstrously narcissistic garbage like “2020 Vision: New Business Models for the 21st Century, or something of that ilk. It’s no longer Sartre or Camus. Now it’s Ayn Rand, the philosopher of greed. We don’t congregate in the Orlin, the Kiev, Dojo or others places that used to define the Lower East Side because if these businesses still exist they are not the same. Simply put, we are not fighting to hold onto something that is already gone. We are fighting to hold on to what is legally ours, something precious. That’s right, affordable housing, the most important thing there is besides affordable health care to any person not born to privilege. If people like Ben Shaoul, pining for another Starbucks or Duane Reade, people who long for the mallish comforts of the suburbs, who see housing not as a right but as an investment, think they are going to just trample our rights like the Gilded Age barons they are sorely mistaken. They have a fight on their hands, even if it’s just a few stubborn individuals who have nothing more to lose.