Landlord bills tenants $300 each for web removal
A new line on the rent statement in a Hell's Kitchen walk-up reads "exterior adhesive remediation." The tenants have a shorter name for it, and a lawyer.
Eighteen tenants of a six-storey walk-up on West 46th Street opened their October rent statements to find a new line item: "Exterior adhesive remediation, $300." The building's management company says the charge covers the cost of removing a web that had, for most of September, connected the fire escape to a lamppost across the street.
The tenants have a shorter name for the charge. They also have a lawyer.
"It's web," said Teresa Okafor, 41, who has lived on the fourth floor for nine years. "He put it there. We didn't. Bill him."
The charge
The management company told the Bugle the removal took a specialist crew four hours and cost $5,400, which it divided among the building's 18 units. The lease, it said, allows the landlord to pass on "extraordinary maintenance costs arising from tenant activity or external events."
The tenants' lawyer, who is representing them without charge, said the web was "an external event in the way that weather is an external event, and you cannot bill someone for rain."
“It's web. He put it there. We didn't. Bill him.”
Teresa Okafor, tenant
The web
The web appeared on the night of Sept. 3, after what police described as a "pursuit" along 46th Street. It was about 30 feet long and, according to tenants, "surprisingly strong." A child on the second floor hung a wind chime from it. The super used it to dry a tarp.
By mid-September it had sagged, and the management company received two complaints, one from a tenant and one from the city, which cited the building for "an unapproved exterior attachment."
The city
A spokesperson for the housing department said the city "does not take a position on who should pay for web removal" and that the matter was "between the landlord and the tenants." Asked whether the city had any guidance for landlords whose buildings are regularly used as anchor points, the spokesperson said that it did not, "but we are working on it."
What happens next
The tenants have withheld the $300 and paid the rest of their rent. The management company has said it will "pursue all remedies." The lawyer has said he looks forward to it.
Okafor said she would pay the $300 on one condition. "He comes to my door, in the costume, and says it was him," she said. "Then I'll pay. I'll pay double. I want to see it."