Learn More:
*Landlord Misrepresentations
*Case Background
*Economakis/Yatrakis Holdings
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Landlord Misrepresentations
Landlord Misrepresentations
Our landlord Alistair Economakis is making false and/or misleading claims on his website, to the media, and to the elected officials.
47 East Third Street Tenants' Association would like to address these "claims":
In fact, representatives of the Tenants' Association have met with the Economakises on two occasions. The first took place in the chambers of Justice Paul Feinman of NY State Supreme Court. The second meeting - at the request of Catherine Economakis - took place between Ms. Economakis and the President of the Tenants' Association. Both meetings are documented, one by Economakis's own lawyer!
Most importantly, tenants don't want the threat of eviction to force them into negotiating away their homes. Additionally, most of the "offers" Economakis claims he made were either informal, unsubstantiated, or designed to pit tenants against one another, one instance being his "offer" to eleven tenants of one single apartment in the neighborhood at an inflated rent. (This from the landlord who claims he doesn't own any other property!) Understandably no one took the bait.
Tenants have also refused a supposed "deal" the landlord offered them in which some of the tenants could have kept apartments if other families in the building agreed to forfeit their homes and vacate. Economakis claims that he offered the tenants who would have to leave "comparable apartments in the neighborhood at the same rent the tenants were paying with rent stabilized protections and/or financial compensation." and that the remaining tenants would be allowed to "maintain their rent stabilized tenancies."
In fact, no alternate apartments were ever offered to these families (nor any specific sum of money), to say nothing of rent-stabilized apartments in the same neighborhood with the same rent! The Villager verifies this in the concluding paragraphs of their April 18 cover story: Tenants are united under one roof to fight against eviction. Furthermore, there was nothing in the "offer" saying the remaining tenants would receive rent stabilized leases or any guarantee that they would be protected from future litigation and eviction.
No tenants ever accepted his "compensation." The two families who left the Tenants' Association were planning to relocate outside of New York and had their lawyers negotiate settlements.
When Economakis was pressed by the tenants' lawyer to provide guarantees that the senior citizen would be legally protected from future litigation, Economakis never responded.
In fact, it was Alistair Economakis and his wife Catherine Economakis (nee Yatrakis) who initiated the mass eviction proceedings in New York Housing Court against all tenants of 47 East 3rd Street. The Economakises have always had the option to end their mass eviction proceedings at any time, but have chosen not to do so. Indeed, Mr. Economakis is a familiar face in the courthouse: Economakis/Yatrakis and their LLC partners have taken at least 150 tenants to Housing Court, some several times, in the past 3 years - all this is public record!
The Economakises currently occupy six apartments at 47 East 3rd St; four spacious units are used as their home and two are used as guest bedrooms and laundry facilities. No tenant has ever claimed verbally or in print that they do not have the right to do so. The units that the family has moved into were available to them two to three years ago but they only moved in last year after deciding to appeal the case to the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court.
Alistair and Catherine Economakis are both full-time real estate operatives. The Yatrakis/Economakis family, headed by Catherine's father, Peter Yatrakis, owns or co-owns more than fifty NYC apartment buildings through various LLC's (limited liability companies). Their careers are devoted to managing these properties, where they regularly attempt to evict tenants through a myriad of methods. For a thorough investigative report on the Economakises' real estate holdings and treatment of tenants citywide, see The Villager cover story: Turning tenements into mansions: landlords try to mass-evict tenants.
It is far from just the tenants at 47 East 3rd Street who believe this mass eviction, if successful, would endanger tenants throughout New York City. 28 City and State elected officials wrote to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on April 7, stating that the Appellate decision against the tenants "if not overturned by the Court of Appeals, will dramatically impact the continued availability of rent-stabilized housing."
"This is a misuse of the law," U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler says of the mass eviction. "The owner-occupancy provision was never intended to enable landlords to pursue such ruthless mass evictions. I commend and support the tireless efforts of the residents of 47 East 3rd Street to save their homes. This is not just their fight: a victory for them will be victory for thousands of other rent regulated residents throughout the City who are also at risk of losing their homes through this loophole in the law."
Case Background
47 East 3rd Street is a rent-stabilized, six-story, 15-unit, 2 store-front tenement in the East Village. In August of 2003 Alistair and Catherine Economakis began an attempt to mass evict every resident of the building.
For almost five years this wealthy real-estate couple has relentlessly pursued these evictions, claiming they will turn the 105-year-old rent-stabilized tenement into their own lavish mansion. Their plan, outlined to tenants in Notices of Non Renewal, envisions demolishing all the tenants' homes to create for themselves, and their two babies, a mega-mansion with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a gym with shower, a library, a suite for their nanny, and a two-story living room with overhanging walkway. Recently, they filed plans with the Department of Buildings to include a private garage.
As previously mentioned, both Alistair and Catherine Economakis are full-time real estate operatives whose family owns or co-owns more than fifty NYC apartment buildings. Alistair is the son of a Greek shipping magnate and Catherine is the daughter of real estate operative Peter Yatrakis and the Director of Urban Studies at Columbia University, Kathryn Yatrakis.
The Yatrakis/Economakis family acquired 47 East 3rd Street at way below market rate, as it was headed towards foreclosure; the family operated the property under the name Third Street Development LLC. They would be able to reap maximum profits if they could take the building out of rent regulation. They needed a strategy. The Economakises decided to exploit the owner-use clause in the rent laws which allows a landlord to recover "one or more" apartments for his or her private use. But companies can't legally evict tenants for a landlord's personal use, only individual owners can. No problem! In August 2003, 47 East 3rd Street was "sold"--for zero dollars, with Catherine Economakis signing as the seller and Alistair Economakis as the buyer--from the family-owned Third Street Development LLC, to themselves as individual owners, enabling the mass eviction to begin. Their other properties remain controlled by LLCs.
Real Estate Holdings of the Yatrakis/Economakis family
The Yatrakis/Economakis family operates Granite International Management and various other real-estate holding companies. They own, co-own, or have recently "flipped" the following builidngs:
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