Tenants versus a landlord: what brought them together

Jon Benson

Jon Benson of Los Angeles, California, spoke with the Sentinel recently about his efforts some years ago to resolve an apparently hopeless dispute between the tenants of the building in which he lived and their landlord.

When I was living in New York City, the apartment building where I resided changed hands, and the man who bought the building let the quality go down. In the middle of a very frigid New York winter, we spent a number of days without heat or hot water. Other issues had come up with the building as well.

Things got to such an impasse that I helped organize the tenants to go on a rent strike. So we withheld our money, put it in escrow, got legal counsel, and made sure that we did things according to the New York State law. Then we began to try to resolve things with this landlord, saying, "OK, if certain things get done that according to law are your responsibility, we would very much like to cooperate with you, return to you a percentage of the money, and deduct some for the inconvenience of being without heat and hot water."

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