Tenant Activist Challenges Gut Renovation Loophole

When I read the Voice article about Peckham on October 3, I was so outraged that I knew I had to do something. The result can be found in this week’s Chelsea Now.
     Going into the job, I figured that Peckham would be kind of a crank and a nut job—because how else to explain the Voice’s scurrilous attack.  I was prepared to argue that, hey, what matters are his rights, not whether you like him personally.  So I was pleasantly surprised when I found that Peckham was actually a nice guy—albeit one under an immense amount of stress and strain due to the fact of his building being torn down around him.  He has chosen to fight, rather than to knuckle under like most of us would, and for that he deserves the greatest respect.  His case is important because it challenges the use of the gut renovation loophole in the demolition provision.  The so called “phony demolition” allows landlords to toss rent-stablized tenants out of their apartments. 
     Which makes the Voice hatchet job all the more puzzling.  That the paper has been going downhill for several years now is no secret, but until that article it had always maintained some pretense of being an objective newspaper.  The author of the piece in question, Kristen Lombardi, blames it on her editor, David Blum, saying he was tired of “poor tenant” stories and so directed her to write a “poor landlord” story instead.  Well, Blum got what he deserved, ignominiously canned from the Voice. 
For the sake of affordable housing in New York let’s all hope Peckham wins his case. — Ed Hamilton