Building Tenant Power and Holding Banks Accountable for Predatory Equity
with the Cooper Square Committee

11:15AM, Room 211

The Cooper Square Committee (CSC), the tenant rights and affordable housing advocacy organization in the Lower East Side, is fighting a multi-front war against aggressive real estate speculators and the institutions that enable them. These singularly profit-minded developers

systematically target rent-regulated apartment buildings, outbid competitors by leveraging equity from wealthy investors, and secure mortgages with terms that would be impossible to fulfill

with the building’s regulated rental income. They then proceed to force out the rent-regulated tenants through various illegal and semi-legal means, and frequently resell the building once the process is complete. They are not interesting in being landlords, much less good landlords; this entire “predatory equity” process treats residential properties as mere investments to be maximized and the people who call them home as annoyances to be removed. This strategy has eroded the number of rent-regulated apartments in the Lower East Side and threatens to displace long-time neighborhood residents.

CSC has been honing a model of building power that includes a few concrete organizing methods: good old fashioned tenant associations, multi-building coalitions organized around the same landlord, and campaign work targeting the banks and other financial institutions who lend to real estate predators. Organizers and tenant leaders will share how they approach this organizing at every scale, reflect on the challenges of fighting nose-to-nose with some of the worst embodiments of real estate greed, and share stories of victories.

Participants will take away practical tools for creating strong multi-building coalitions and bank accountability campaigns.

Building Tenant Power: Text

Panel organizers

Brandon Kielbasa

Director of Organizing, Cooper Square Committee

Brandon is a tenant organizer and housing counselor. He has worked for the Cooper Square Committee in New York City’s Lower East Side for the last twelve years and now serves as Director of Organizing and Policy. Brandon has a Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College and a Certificate of Completion in Advanced Community Organizing from the Center for Community Leadership. He sees himself as a social change practitioner and practices community organizing because he believes that it is essential for individuals and communities to be engaged in solving their own problems and for them to gain strength and knowledge by doing so.

Jim Markowich

Tenant Leader, Tenants Taking Control (TTC) Coalition

Jim moved to NYC in the mid-1970s to attend the Cooper Union School of Art and discovered that the city — the East Village particularly — felt like home. He has made his professional career programming microcomputers. He did projects for museums on Apple II+’s, and got teaching gigs with the New School, Parson’s, NYU and Fairleigh Dickinson. He has been working at Edelman since 1987. His involvement with housing issues was a fiery baptism courtesy of Raphael Toledano and Madison Realty Capital.

Yonatan Tadele

Housing Organizer, Cooper Square Committee

Yonatan is a Housing Organizer at the Cooper Square Committee, a role he has held for the past six years. Yonatan joined CSC in 2013 through Public Allies New York, an Americorps affiliate program. As a member of CSC’s organizing staff, he advises and advocates for local residents facing a host of issues, such as attempted eviction, adverse living conditions, and landlord harassment. He supplements CSC’s overall mission by helping organize tenants to form tenant associations, with the goal of brainstorming collective, grassroots action to drive social & policy change.

Abigail Ellman

Director of Planning & Development, Cooper Square Committee

Abigail is an urban planner with experience in affordable housing, equitable economic development, sustainable infrastructure, health equity, and community education. With the Cooper Square Committee, she supports the organization’s overall affordable housing development and preservation work, as well as leads CSC’s small business and commercial tenant advocacy. She graduated with a BA from Yale and a MSc in City and Regional Planning from the Pratt Institute Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment.