The perils of low income housing

On July 25, a crowd of about 25 people gathered outside 63 Tiffany Place, where residents are fighting to avoid being evicted from their homes.

The 70-unit building is one of the few in Cobble Hill that provides affordable housing, but the building’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) regulatory agreement expires on December 31, 2023. This means there is no guarantee that the building will continue to have affordable housing beyond that date. What happens afterward is up to landlord Irving Langer. Langer took over as the building’s landlord in 2010. Cases of deferred maintenance, displacement of tenants, and deregulation of affordable housing resulted in his name appearing on the Public Advocate’s Worst Landlord Watchlist.

In 2016, a story in the New York Post said of Langer, “A city landlord who lives in a $3 million Long Island mansion pays his building supers and porters as little as $3.45 an hour while housing them in rat-infested hovels, a new lawsuit charges.”

Folks chanted “Fight, Fight, Fight! Housing is a Human Right!,” and then residents at 63 Tiffany Place, and local politicians spoke to the crowd.

“This is an atrocity,” said John Leyva, who has lived in the building for 29 years. “This is a story about how low-income families are being evict-