The unlikely organizers: Even NYC luxury renters are starting tenant associations

The 51-story Brooklyner apartment complex on Lawrence Street in Downtown Brooklyn boasts stunning views of New York Harbor, 9-foot-high ceilings, and a fitness center with yoga studios and Peloton bikes. It was the tallest building in the borough when it opened in 2010, and a symbol of the neighborhood’s striking residential boom.

But for several days this past winter, tenants say, the high-rise lacked several key amenities: water, heat and functioning elevators.

MacKenzie Chambers, a 73-year-old physical therapist who moved into the building when it opened 16 years ago, said she camped out in her living room bundled in blankets because the heat stopped working in her bedroom in January. She said management downplayed the problems and assured her they had fixed a boiler despite the heat outage.

”That was when I started getting really irritated,” Chambers said. “And so I made up some flyers.”

She said she went door-to-door through the 500-foot-tall building, distributing leaflets asking neighbors to join her at a meeting to discuss the problems they were facing and had been complaining about on a message board moderated by management.

Within weeks, she and several other residents formed the first tenant association in their upscale building.

Chambers and her neighbors say they never imagined getting involved in tenant activism when they first moved into their luxury-branded apartments, but their experience points to a growing trend in a city where over two-thirds of residents rent their homes. New Yorkers in high-rent high-rises, brand new luxury complexes and stately prewar buildings have been forming organizations to demand repairs to key systems, more responsiveness from management or, simply, their money’s worth.

A Gothamist analysis from March found that many of the city’s newest and often most desirable apartment buildings are plagued by major problems — with 10% of buildings constructed in the past decade subject to at least one housing code violation per unit, well above the city average. Problems like water outages and flooding have spurred tenant organizing, including at a Greenpoint waterfront high-rise where rents reach $12,400 a month, and a South Bronx building that opened two years ago, before it was fully connected to the electrical grid.

City officials and leading renter groups say there’s no official count of tenant associations in the five boroughs, but that their numbers appear to be rising along with rents and housing code violations. Listings sites like StreetEasy and brokerages like Corcoran report that median asking rents top $5,000 in Manhattan, $3,800 in Brooklyn and $3,200 in Queens.

Brooklyner residents held their first meeting on Feb. 4, birthing a new tenant association in a building where rents for available apartments range from about $3,200 for a studio to $6,340 for a two-bedroom. Chambers said about 90 residents from the building’s 490 apartments have joined so far. She and four other neighbors serve as association administrators.

“ Enough people were pretty irritated,” Chambers said. “We got a lot of people wanting to join.”

Julia Bergman, a spokesperson for the building management firm Equity Apartments, said the company has repaired problems that led to water outages during extreme cold temperatures and has issued rent credits to some tenants. She said Equity is also fixing the broken elevators and communicating regularly about repairs with tenants.

The Rental Ripoff effect?

Renters forming tenant groups now have a key ally: City Hall. Mayor Zohran Mamdani centered tenants in his successful campaign last year. He and other top officials have not only prioritized renters during his first five months in office, they’ve also actively encouraged tenants to organize.

“The most effective way for people to get repairs from their landlord is to come together as a group and raise those concerns collectively,” said Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and a former leader of the statewide tenant group Housing Justice For All.

She said she isn’t surprised by stories of professionals and other upper-middle-class New Yorkers paying record-high rents and who are adopting some of the tactics that many lower-income residents have used to pressure negligent building owners to make repairs. She pointed to the example of longtime organizing at StuyTown-Peter Cooper Village, an 11,000-unit Manhattan complex. In 2023, tenants won a landmark court ruling to secure rent stabilization protections across the sprawling development.

“It’s a way to develop community roots,” Weaver said. “People move into their high-rent building and they want it to be their home. Why wouldn't they form a tenant association with their neighbors?”

Many renters who spoke with Gothamist say they’re still getting used to the role.

“It’s beyond my wildest dreams that I have to spend time on organizing something like this,” said Randi Song, a merchandising consultant who moved into her 18th floor apartment at the Brooklyner in 2021. Song, 61, said she pays about $5,000 for her two-bedroom unit.

She was one of the first renters to respond to Chambers’ request to organize, and said that their early efforts coincided with Mamdani’s “rental ripoff” series, where city officials advised tenants to work together to fight for repairs in their apartments.

“The first thing that I got out of that was, you have to have a strong tenant association,” Song said of her visit to the first hearing in Downtown Brooklyn, a few blocks from her building. “So I came back reconfirming what [Chambers] had started.”

Song said her main complaint was the Brooklyner’s periodic water outages. Equity confirmed that the building has experienced at least six water outages since November, some planned and some due to plumbing problems, including a frozen valve in February.

“I’ve become a  water hoarder,” Song said. “Every big jug I have is full of water right now just in case because you never know when the water's going to go out.”

Tenants have made 313 complaints to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development over the past two years, including dozens for heat and hot water outages since January, data shows. The agency has issued four violations, including one for a lack of heat and two for hot water outages.

Bergman, the Equity spokesperson, said the company’s “top priority is to provide our residents with a high-quality living experience” and blamed some of the problems on extreme cold during the winter.

“When issues arise, we resolve them as quickly as possible to ensure minimal disruption to our residents,” Bergman said. “Over the winter, we responded to heat and hot water outages by making immediate repairs, upgrading our heating system, and updating our annual maintenance plan.”

Equity has also issued rent credits to some tenants, including Chambers, who pays about $3,000 a month for her one-bedroom. Bergman said the company is replacing its broken elevator cars and should be finished with the work this month. She said the company has also repaired a water valve that froze in February.

“We value our longstanding relationships with residents, and our goal is to be transparent and responsive so people remain happy and comfortable in their homes for years to come,” Bergman said.

'We're not asking for a sauna to be put in'

The 37-story Hunter’s Point South Commons advertises “moderately priced rent-stabilized apartments” in a building that towers over Gantry Plaza State Park and the East River.

Matt Aaron, 37, said he felt like he won the lottery when a business school classmate asked him to move into an empty bedroom in his two-bedroom apartment eight years ago. The building is just 13 years old. But in recent years, problems have mounted.

In August 2024, he formed a tenant association after building management failed to fix chronically broken elevators. It was a move that Aaron, who works in tech and pays about $4,000 for the apartment he now shares with his wife after his former roommate moved out, said he never imagined “in a million years.”

He notified local news organizations and began meeting with management to demand status updates. He said the tenant association now meets by video every few weeks and communicates regularly through email.

Nearly two years later, the building’s four elevators still regularly break down — sometimes for days or weeks.

“ We're not asking for a sauna to be put in,” Aaron said. “We're asking for elevators to work safely and reliably.”

When Gothamist visited the building last month, about two dozen tenants stood on line at about 5:30 p.m. waiting for the lone functioning lift. Aaron said residents feel they have no choice but to stay in the building because of its location and moderate rents, which range from about $2,100 for a studio to about $3,000 for a one-bedroom, according to recent StreetEasy listings.

“That's why so many people have put up with this,” he said. “We don't have a ton of options, especially right now as rents have really increased [citywide].”

The building is owned by the influential real estate firm Related. Company spokesperson Kathleen Corless said Related recently began a “multimillion-dollar, complete modernization of all elevators at Hunter’s Point South Commons to ensure residents have reliable service for years to come” in the building completed little more than a decade ago

The spokesperson said the renovation will take place in stages and that one refurbished elevator is already in service, with another scheduled for completion next week.

Chris Szeles, a 56-year-old retiree who lives on the 29th floor, said she hopes the fixes are permanent this time. Szeles said her husband and daughter sometimes spend more time waiting for the elevator down to the lobby than they do riding the subway to work in Manhattan.

“ You plan, and you don't go out as much and you get up earlier,” Szeles said. “I plan in the morning that I walk my dog, so I'm back in time to take the elevator up.”

But on Thursday, Aaron said the advocacy has started to pay off.

He said he met up for coffee with a new building manager who pledged to resolve the elevator problems and keep an open line of communication.

“We’ll see if the action follows the words,” he said. “But it’s a step in the right direction.”