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Landlords Sue to Prevent Tenant Organizing

By JORDON MOSS

Two landlords of six buildings linked to Frank Palazzolo have sued two Bronx community organizations and secured a temporary restraining order to keep their tenant organizers away from the properties.

Leonard Froio, owner of 1030 Woodycrest Ave, and Steven Tobia, owner of five buildings on Walton and Washington avenues and the Grand Concourse, filed suit in November and December in state Supreme Court in Westchester. In both cases, judges ordered the groups --  the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and the Highbridge Community Life Center --  to stay away from the buildings, at least until a hearing is held in February.

While Froio and Tobia consider themselves the landlords, the buildings are among about 60 whose mortgage documents with Washington Mutual Bank are signed by Frank Palazzolo.  In an interview with the Norwood News in August, Palazzolo said he is only a "lender." 

In the legal documents, Froio states that "Frank Palazzolo does not have an ownership interest in the Premises, but holds a pledge of stock of the corporation based upon a loan advanced."

Lawrence Gottlieb, a lawyer for both Froio and Tobia, did not return a call requesting comment. 

Though not named in the suit, the Norwood building where a boy died in an electrical fire in 2002, 3569 DeKalb Ave., is also a building Palazzolo has financial connections to. 

The Coalition has been organizing tenants since 1974, when the organization was formed to stanch the tide of arson and abandonment creeping up from neighborhoods south of the Cross Bronx Expressway. It now has staff organizers in 10 community associations in the northwest Bronx, including Norwood, Bedford Park, North Fordham and University Heights. 

Though the group organizes on many issues, such as crime, education and public safety, many of the group's relationships with its members begin with a knock on the door of a problem building. 

Mary Dailey, executive director of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, said the purpose of the lawsuit is to chill tenant organizing efforts.

"The whole spirit of the lawsuit is to try to get people not to exercise their own civil rights," she said. "It's an attempt to intimidate tenants and scare our organizers to not assist the tenants of these buildings."

The Highbridge Community Life Center, a nonprofit that provides a variety of social services in the hilly neighborhood overlooking Yankee Stadium, has done very little tenant organizing prior to this. 

"It's really sort of a fluke," said Brother Ed Phelan, the Center's executive director, 
explaining that tenants of 1030 Woodycrest Ave. sought the organization's help. "This is really our first time doing this." 

Despite its minimal tenant organizing, Phelan says the suit hobbles his organization's broader mission. 

"This just prevents us from doing our business, of being of service to residents of our community and people we've already established a relationship with," Phelan said. "It's taken [away] our rights to do our work and the rights of tenants to organize themselves."

The Woodycrest building, which has 337 violations on record, drew the attention of Borough President Adolfo Carrion in August. Carrion wrote a letter to Palazzolo demanding that he address the conditions in the building. 

Two of the five buildings named in the second suit have more than 150 housing code violations each, many of them C violations, the most serious.

Despite the apparent need for tenant organization in the buildings named in the suit, the landlords' legal papers charge both groups with "masquerading as representatives of tenants at the Premises," and for "interfer[ing] in the relationship between the Plaintiff and its mortgagee, Washington Mutual Bank." 

One of the suits claims that the Coalition is motivated by the desire to own and run the buildings themselves. But the organization, which has been organizing tenants for three decades, does not own or manage any residential buildings. 

Council Member Oliver Koppell, a former state attorney general, said a state law he helped to enact as an assemblyman 20 years ago was designed to prevent such legal action, known as SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suits. 

Legal experts in the housing field doubt the suit will succeed because tenant organizing is protected in state and federal law, they say. 

"I think it's totally illegal," said Judith Goldiner, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society. "I'm shocked that a judge did this, given the obvious Constitutional problems with it." 

Goldiner says that the right to organize is a basic right under the First Amendment and pointed to a state statute, Sec. 230 of the Real Property Law, which addresses the "right of tenants to form, join or participate in tenants groups." The statute states: "No landlord shall interfere with the right of a tenant to form, join or participate in the lawful activities of any group, committee or other organization formed to protect the rights of tenants; nor shall any landlord harass, punish, penalize, diminish, or withhold any right, benefit or privilege of a tenant under his tenancy for exercising such right."

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