Pinnacle Tenants Demand City Intervene to Save Their Homes, And What Else Happened This Week in Housing

After the Pinnacle Group sent 93 of its buildings into a bankruptcy auction, tenants are calling on the city to responsibly steward their properties to a new owner.

Across 5,000 households, 93 buildings, 50 tenant unions, and four boroughs, tenants of Pinnacle are fed up.

Pinnacle Group’s portfolio of rent stabilized housing has been troubled for years, with rapidly accumulating housing code violations, no electricity, and deteriorating buildings.

Earlier this year the struggling real estate company put the properties up for bankruptcy auction. Starting Friday, Nov. 21, investors can bid on the portfolio.

Tenants, gathered outside Brooklyn’s Federal Courthouse Thursday, called on Judge David S. Jones to slow down the auction process and give them a chance to work with the city and make sure that a responsible owner—or tenants themselves—can take over.

“We are here because of gross neglect, harassment, and abuse of tenants,” said Charlie Dulik, a Pinnacle tenant on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush at the Thursday night rally. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen to our buildings. We don’t know if they’re gonna be bought by another slumlord. We don’t know if we’re gonna have electricity in our common areas tomorrow.”

Organizers with the Union of Pinnacle Tenants want to put the buildings in a community land trust, where tenants would control their homes through a cooperative board, or seek a deal with the city to make the buildings affordable in the long term.

When Signature Bank collapsed in 2023, New York City and the federal government helped funnel the 70,000 unit portfolio to a partnership led by the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), a group that specializes in preserving affordable housing.

“We do not deserve this willful neglect of our buildings. We deserve a say in what happens to our homes,” said Vivian Kuo, a Pinnacle tenant in Manhattan for the last five years. She said her building had broken elevators, pests, and leaks.

The auction of the portfolio comes amid intense deliberations over the future of rent stabilized housing in New York City. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has promised a four-year rent freeze for all rent stabilized units.

But critics have warned that a rent freeze could cut funding for the operations of some rent stabilized buildings—forcing owners to defer maintenance and causing tenants to live in substandard conditions.

Even some nonprofit developers, like CPC Chief Executive Rafael Cestero, have raised the alarm over how rent-stabilized affordable housing is struggling.

State rent laws passed in 2019 made it more difficult for owners to remove units from stabilization. That left some large rent stabilized portfolios, like Pinnacle’s, with fewer avenues to hike rents—a practice the company was known for before the law change. 

“They recklessly gambled and want tenants to pay for it,” said Dulik.

A spokesperson for the Pinnacle Group declined to comment on this story.

Here’s what else happened in housing this week—

ICYMI, from City Limits:

• Two weeks ago, New Yorkers passed three housing ballot measures that change how the city approves affordable housing projects. See how voters in each Council district weighed in on the proposals, which divided both lawmakers and housing advocates.
• As outgoing Mayor Eric Adams weighs appointing new members to the city’s Rent Guidelines Board during his final weeks in office, tenant groups have a message for any potential candidates: don’t take the gig. 
• The City Council last week passed the OneLIC plan, which will update zoning rules for 54 blocks near the East River waterfront in Hunters Point North. It’s expected to create more housing than any neighborhood-specific rezoning in the last 25 years.
  
  ICYMI, from other local newsrooms:
• A group representing local plumbers is calling for NYCHA to conduct comprehensive emergency boiler inspections after a partial building collapse in The Bronx last month, The City reports.
• The developers behind the senior housing project planned for the Elizabeth Street Garden site are suing the Adams Administration, which sought to squash the development by making the garden an official city park, according to Gothamist.
• Debate over the city’s rules for short-term rentals like Airbnb rages on, the New York Post reports.
• Outside the city, New York State is increasingly turning to hotels to house homeless families, according to NY1.