The city’s largest supportive housing provider that receives millions of dollars of taxpayer money to house homeless, mentally ill and low-income New Yorkers is suing tenants for unpaid rent and in some cases asking judges to evict them if they don’t pay, court records show.
In the last seven months, nonprofit provider Breaking Ground filed 82 petitions in Manhattan housing court for nonpayment of rent against tenants at its 652-unit facility in Times Square, a complex made up of studio apartments and the nation's largest permanent supportive housing residence, housing court records reviewed by Gothamist show.
Breaking Ground's 652-unit residence in Times Square.
The lawsuits against residents come as record-high numbers of homeless New Yorkers are living in city shelters and the Adams administration struggles to find emergency housing for thousands of migrants arriving in the city from southern states after crossing the U.S. Mexico border. The city is also facing an affordable housing shortage that has driven rents to historic highs.
Brenda Rosen, the nonprofit’s president and CEO, said Breaking Ground initiated legal action against residents after it had “exhausted” all interventions.
She said tenants in the 652-unit Times Square building owe a total of $1.1 million in back rent, more than 10% of the building’s operating budget.
Rosen said Breaking Ground is not looking to throw its tenants out of their homes but to recoup the overdue rent. Some of the cases have been resolved.
“Breaking Ground, even as a nonprofit, is still a building operator that must collect rent to pay debt service, to pay operating fees and to fundamentally pay for the crucial wraparound support services for tenants that result in a 98% stability rate,” she said in a phone interview.
Rosen said that the organization, which has 4,171 units across its portfolio, houses low-income New Yorkers and offers supportive housing for adults with a serious mental illness as well as those living with HIV/AIDS.
Rosen blamed the fact that some tenants had not paid their rent in months or years while a statewide moratorium on evictions – put in place during the pandemic – was in effect. That moratorium ended in January 2022.
Councilmember Erik Bottcher, whose district includes the Times Square residence, said he plans to investigate the situation.
“It's an outrage and we're going to be calling everyone together, with our fellow elected officials, to get to the bottom of this situation,” Bottcher said. “You can understand that an organization like Breaking Ground has big financial obligations, but it can't be met through taking these tenants to court.”
Housing advocates say the lawsuits against residents run contrary to Breaking Ground’s mission of housing and caring for a group of vulnerable New Yorkers. Instead of living up to its duty, they say Breaking Ground is acting like a private landlord.
“It's absurd and it's appalling. These are very resolvable issues,” said Meg Floss, an advocate with Supportive Housing Organized and United Tenants, a tenant-led group working to hold supportive housing providers accountable.
“There were plenty of opportunities for the developer … to have some sort of intervention for things to not get that bad,” Floss added.
Even if each lawsuit doesn’t always result in an eviction, suing residents to recoup unpaid rent can have a chilling effect and puts tenants at risk of losing their housing, said Edward Josephson, a supervising attorney with the Legal Aid Society.
“There's a huge potential for people falling through the cracks and losing their apartments,” Josephson said. “This is obviously not a way for handling rent payment problems in supportive housing.”
While Rosen contends that none of the 82 tenants in the Times Square building have been evicted, court records show that two residents have lost their apartments and a third was left on the brink of eviction as a result of Breaking Ground’s petitions.
Since 2014, only eight tenants at the Times Square residence have been evicted, Rosen said in an email.
'Just wanted to get me out'
Osiris Ruelas is among the Breaking Ground residents who says he lost his apartment.
Breaking Ground sued the 31-year old in housing court in October to recover $19,590 in back rent, according to court records. The nonprofit alleged that Ruelas didn’t pay his share of the rent from July 2020 through September 2022.
Ruelas, who used to work as a Starbucks barista, said he lost his job when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, shuttering businesses. He said he couldn’t afford to pay the roughly $750 a month rent during that time.
Ruelas said he was in his home state of Arizona caring for a loved one who was sick from COVID-19 when he called Breaking Ground asking why the nonprofit hadn't cashed a rent check he sent. That’s when he said he learned he had been sued and didn't return to New York City thinking he had been evicted.
“I tried working with them and they basically just wanted to get me out,” Ruelas said in a telephone interview from Arizona, where he lives permanently.
After Ruelas didn’t show up to court to respond to the lawsuit, Breaking Ground’s attorney asked a housing court judge to issue a judgment in default, court documents show. According to court records, the judge declined because Ruelas had a pending application for financial aid under the federally funded Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which triggers a stay on evictions while cases are investigated.
“It's not that I gave it up. It was just that I was dealing with a family matter and I think it was just hard to handle both,” Ruelas added.
Another tenant, who could not be reached for comment, agreed to move out in December, two months after Breaking Ground sued him for $6,255.48 unpaid rent, according to court records.
“Respondent has surrendered the apartment and this proceeding is discontinued without prejudice,” according to the agreement filed with the court.
Three septuagenarians are also among the tenants Breaking Ground sued: a 70-year-old man who allegedly owed $3,700; a 78-year-old woman who allegedly owed roughly $8,000; and a 72-year-old man with a history of mental illness, who the nonprofit said owed about $10,000, according to court documents.
Breaking Ground sued the 72-year-old tenant in November 2022, court filings show.
The nonprofit alleged the tenant — who Gothamist is not naming because a representative could not be reached to speak on his behalf — failed to pay his $241 a month rent starting in July 2019. In February, a judge issued a default judgment, giving Breaking Ground permission to evict, because the tenant did not come to court.
The nonprofit then hired a city marshal to remove the man from his apartment, but a city attorney representing the Department of Social Services stepped in before the eviction was carried out, according to court records.
Earlier this month, DSS attorney Veronica Reyes asked the judge to stop any warrant of eviction, vacate the judgment and assign a lawyer to represent the 72-year-old man because of his mental illness.
Reyes submitted a copy of the tenant’s psychiatric report to the court, urging the judge to intervene.
Rosen, Breaking Ground’s CEO, declined to comment on the man’s case and those of other specific tenants.
Neha Sharma, a spokesperson for the city’s social services agency, said tenants seeking emergency cash assistance from the city do not have to show that their landlord filed a petition for eviction against them.
Sharma said a rent demand from the landlord detailing the late payment is enough to grant someone a one-shot assistance.
Councilmember Diana Ayala, chair of the general welfare committee that oversees DSS and programs that fund nonprofit providers like Breaking Ground, did not respond to a request for comment.
