Landlord $lapped With $80K Fine In Attempt To Force Rent Controlled Tenant From Home By Refusing To Allow Disability-Related Modification To Bathroom

In Brooklyn, New York, the New York Post reports:

• A Brooklyn landlord faces $80,000 in penalties, all because he refused to say two words: "I approve." For nearly two years, according to the city's Human Rights Commission, Kong Chae Choi wouldn't give permission for a walk-in shower to be installed in the apartment of an elderly, disabled tenant in hopes she'd move from her home of 40 years, a $250-a-month rent-controlled railroad flat at 192 Nassau Ave. in Greenpoint. The installation would have cost the landlord nothing.(1)

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• "He wants me out," Russell, who walks with a cane, told a reporter who visited her cramped third-floor walk-up. "But he's not getting me out until my legs give out." For months, Russell bathed only every other day. Sometimes, she walked several blocks to bathe at a daughter's house. Other times, she'd call one of her children before and after bathing so they could rush to her aid in case of an accident. "What happened here was a nightmare," she recalled. Choi ignored every letter sent to him from Russell and the city.

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• On Sept. 25, administrative law Judge Julio Rodriguez slapped Choi with a $50,000 fine, citing his "wanton failure to participate" in any proceeding. He also ordered that he pay Russell $30,000 for mental suffering. Finally, the judge ordered that the shower be installed at Choi's own expense. "Respondent [Choi] is unhappy with the low rent Ms. Russell currently pays and hoping that by not allowing her to properly modify her bathtub, she would vacate her unit," Rodriguez concluded.

For the story, see Horror landlord $oaked.(2)

(1) Since the 77-year-old tenant, Ruth Russell, was suffering from emphysema, heart disease, sciatica and rheumatoid arthritis, United Cerebral Palsy agreed to put it in for free to replace a bathtub she was afraid to use, the story states.

(2) For other "Brooklyn-landlord" horror stories from the New York Post, see:

• Landlord Duped Old Lady Out Of Apt.: Son (A Brooklyn landlord sneaked into an 84-year-old tenant's nursing-home room and got the ailing widow to give up her rent-stabilized apartment, her outraged relatives are charging in court),
• Dead Cats In Housing Feud (A Brooklyn landlord who had been harassing his tenants left a bag of dead cats in a vacant first-floor unit in an ongoing effort to force lessees out of the building, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn charged),
• Deadbeat Slumlord $lapped (A Brooklyn landlord was slapped with a staggering 1,300 violations against his empire of decrepit, rat-infested buildings during a multi-agency sweep that also found his housing group owed more than $8 million in taxes. At one property, tenants were terrorized by a rat so large that they named it "Big Ben").