The making of a NYC real estate legend

A leak in the ceiling in one of the apartments at the former SRO at 246 West 21st., the Tauber-owned building next door to Peckham’s.Daniel Peckham stands in the hallway of his building at 244 West 21st St.

By Ed Hamilton

Daniel Peckham uses yoga to keep his chronic arthritis in check. He also uses meditation to combat the pain and deal with the stress of living in New York City, where housing fortunes can change overnight.

“It helps you to be happy while bad things are happening to you,” he said. “It gives you the tools to work on it. You don’t say, ‘Well, I’ll be happy when all these bad things are over.’”

That is a good thing, given Peckham’s other chronic condition: Since 2004, his landlord, Larry Tauber of Chelsea Partners, has been tearing his building down around him in what has become a saga of epic proportions. In the process, Peckham’s Sisyphean struggle to resist eviction from his modest one-bedroom apartment in a non-distinct Chelsea townhouse at 244 West 21st St. has made him somewhat of a local celebrity, morphing him into a poster-child for preserving rent-stabilization in a city bent on eroding the last remnants of that social experiment in favor of market-driven affordable housing.

It all started in 2002, when Peckham and his neighbors got a mild surprise as construction began next door in a former SRO at 242 West 21st St., a building that Tauber had bought in 2001—along with Peckham’s building and two others in Chelsea—with plans to convert it to luxury rentals. Then on July 4, 2002, without warning, the tenants were in for an even bigger surprise when Tauber’s workers broke through into Peckham’s building, leaving three gaping one-foot-by-two-foot holes in the hallway, and 10 more in various people’s apartments.

Tauber, whose family owns 41 buildings in Manhattan, received a Department of Buildings stop-work order as a result, then took a month to repair the damage after initially covering the holes with plywood, according to Peckham. Knowing at that point that his building would be next for gutting, Peckham and the other tenants coalesced to protest Tauber’s actions. In early 2004, Tauber offered a buyout to the tenants. Though initially they stood firm, gradually the tenants dropped out of the coalition and took the buyout (which typically included $75,000 and a comparable apartment at the same rent for seven years), until finally Peckham was the only one left in the building.

In December 2004, Tauber began construction on Peckham’s building, having obtained a demolition permit for a gut renovation of the building on what later turned out to be false pretenses. (Tauber claimed the building had already been emptied and was fined $250 by Buildings for making this claim.) Construction has proceeded around Peckham off and on ever since, with Peckham battling Tauber in housing court for reduction of services and harassment, and alleging that Tauber has failed to provide heat, left the building open and caused the pipes to freeze, and failed to fix a leaking roof, which has caused periodic collapses of Peckham’s ceiling.

Legend in the making

Not surprisingly, Peckham has been at the center of a fierce debate about the lengths residents should go to preserve rent-stabilization in New York City. Needless to say, he hardly expected to be there.

A trim man of 55 with close-cropped hair and alert, smiling eyes behind oval, wire-framed glasses, the Milwaukee native first arrived in New York in 1976 to work as a singer with Robert Simpson Productions. Like so many would-be artists in New York City, he took a side job as a waiter to make ends meet. When arthritis struck and he could no longer stay on his feet for extended periods of time, he worked as a cab driver and an office temp. But sitting all day proved increasingly difficult as his illness progressed. (Halfway through our interview, he had to lie down in bed for a brief period.) Things were made worse by hip-replacement surgery in 1994. Now receiving disability payments and supplementing this modest income by teaching Yoga classes at the McBurney YMCA and Integral Yoga, he struggles to pay his monthly rent of $1,007 per month.

Nevertheless, the otherwise modest Peckham has been singled out for his exploits by many in New York’s new and traditional media. One noted writer on the Curbed real estate blog called him an “instant New York City real-estate legend” back in October, the same month the Village Voice published an article critical of Peckham, characterizing him as greedy, a squatter and a gambler playing a high-stakes poker game.

In response, some Curbed readers wrote in to question Peckham’s intelligence and sanity for not simply taking Tauber’s buyout offer—$75,000 plus a choice of several comparable apartments governed by “rent-stabilized guidelines”—which seems, on the face of it, extraordinarily generous. Indeed, most commenters on the site seemed to come down against Peckham, at least initially.

But as the debate raged on, other readers came to Peckham’s defense, arguing that whatever Tauber’s offer, Peckham, as a rent-stabilized tenant, has a right to refuse it and stay in his apartment if he likes.

These rights are at the core of the ongoing tenant-landlord saga between Peckham and Tauber. According to Peckham’s lawyer, Harvey Epstein, of Housing Conservation Coordinators, rent-stabilized tenants have the right to have their lease renewed at the end of its term—for as long as they remain in their apartment—unless they violate the terms of the lease. Landlords, on the other hand, may annul these terms by choosing to demolish the building and rebuild.

“The theory is that landlords will turn ‘bad’ buildings into better ones, but in practice, demolition is a loophole to allow landlords to remove rent-stabilized tenants from their apartments,” said Epstein. “That there is a legal basis for landlords to do this doesn’t mean it’s not problematic.”

In Peckham’s case, however, Tauber is not seeking to fully demolish the building but merely to perform a gut renovation—what many housing activists call a “phony demolition,” also used by landlords to turn over rent-stabilized apartments. Although DHCR has ruled that this constitutes a demolition, Peckham went to New York State Supreme court on Jan. 31, asking the judge to overturn that decision under Article 78 of the New York state administrative code, which permits appeals of any administrative decision handed down by any state or city agency.

“The standard we have to meet is a tough one,” admitted Epstein. “We have to show that the DHCR policy statement allowing this is ‘arbitrary and capricious,’ that it doesn’t comply with the statute under the state’s rent-stabilization law. But we are hopeful.”

Questionable journalism

It’s an old story heard time and again in discussions of New York real estate: A tenant holds out against a landlord who pulls out all the stops so he can empty a rent-regulated building and, presumably, make a fortune by renting the apartments at market rate. But what gave Peckham an instant notoriety was the vehemence with which a previously liberal New York City paper attacked him.

The article in question, written by Village Voice reporter Kristen Lombardi and titled, “The Squatter,” portrays Peckham as sitting alone in his apartment chanting a mantra—“Top floor, rear, facing south”—to anyone who will listen.

When asked for his reaction to the article, Peckham’s response was measured: “It seems libelous to call me a squatter, and I really don’t see how they can get away with it. After all, I’m here legally. I have a lease. I pay my rent every month. On time.”

Lombardi, meanwhile, maintained she had nothing to do with the article’s headline, saying it was the work of then-Editor-in-Chief David Blum. “Obviously, Peckham is not a squatter. Blum was the one who chose to use that word,” she said.

Even Larry Tauber admitted: “Peckham is not a squatter. He’s there legally.”

Asked to explain his “mantra,” which, Peckham agrees, seems like a none-too-subtle dig at his yogic beliefs, he said: “It took me 17 years to get a top floor, rear, facing south. The reason I need a top floor, rear, is because it’s quiet. I can sleep. Because of my disability, I spend a lot of time in bed. The reason I want it facing south is because I need light to combat depression, and because I like to have plants.”

While Tauber believes Peckham is attempting to shake him down, Peckham said he is certainly willing to compromise and would accept an apartment that doesn’t conform to his standards. But he argues that $75,000 is not really that much once you figure in the cost of relocating and paying rent on a market-rate one-bedroom apartment (at the present time $2,500 a month and due to increase in the years ahead). If Peckham has a mantra, it is “rent-stabilized.” That is really what he’s holding out for—the only thing he won’t compromise on—since it is the only way he can afford to stay in Manhattan.

“I was ready to sign a lease on one place, but my lawyers, Billy Gribbon and Jack Newton of Housing Conservation Coordinators, told me not to,” Peckham said, “because I would lose my rent-stabilized rights,” a phrase Lombardi has Peckham repeating in her article to portray him as a self-centered rebel with a questionable cause.

But such rights figure heavily in the case, especially since Tauber has offered Peckham several apartments under “rent-stabilized guidelines,” a phrase the Voice article mentions a few times but fails to explain. (This led to confusion among readers on the Curbed Website as well.)

Peckham himself had no problem clarifying the issue: “He gives you a lease promising to follow certain rent-stabilized guidelines, such as not to raise your rent for seven years. But these ‘parallel agreements’ that give ‘rent-stabilized rights’ are not the same as true rent-stabilization,” Pekham said. “Rental contracts are not like regular contracts. There are all sorts of loopholes for landlords. What they do is, they give you one of these parallel agreements, which they later take to court to break down—these agreements don’t hold up in court. I told Lombardi this, and my lawyer told her as well.”

Tauber contradicts Peckham’s contention, saying, “I offered Peckham rent-stabilized apartments, quite a few actually. He just saw something wrong with all of them, like for instance they weren’t in his neighborhood or they didn’t have enough light. The ones that he liked were decontrolled. I can’t just automatically make them rent-stabilized. I’ve offered to return him to his apartment after I finish construction with full rent-stabilized protection.”

But Peckham knows that leaving his apartment hardly guarantees his “return.” Meanwhile, he has morphed into something of an activist during his prolonged saga, emphasizing the need to preserve rent-stabilization while helping his neighbors at 212 West 10th St. and 246 West 21st St. resist similar takeovers by Tauber.

“I go to community board meetings and I tell them, ‘This is what’s happening in your neighborhood,’” Peckham said. “I’ve organized the other Tauber Buildings in the area so we can help each other. I go to court all the time so I can keep up-to-date on their cases. A lot of the people next door [at 246 West 21st St.] are elderly and disabled. I’m helping them in their efforts to get Tauber’s Certificate of Non-harassment [necessary for any work to proceed on their building] rescinded.”

Meanwhile, Tauber hopes the state court judge rules that his gut renovation is permissible under the housing code so that he can proceed. If this happens, he could evict Peckham and give him nothing. For his part, Peckham says that he will settle for nothing less than a rent-stabilized apartment comparable to his present one—and stands to loose any chance of a buyout or apartment swap if the court rules against him.

Whatever happens to him, he does regret that the rent-stabilized units in his present building will almost certainly be lost, as “that’s eight units we can’t get back.” As for the tenants in 246 West 21st St., next door to Peckham’s building, they still have a chance of preserving their building and retaining their rent-stabilized apartments. They would like for Tauber to maintain the building and make repairs in a timely fashion. Asked about his plans for 246, Tauber refused to comment.

Meanwhile, Peckham’s supporters stand by his devotion to the cause.

“I admire Dan for fighting so hard in what seems like an impossible battle,” said Susi Schropp, who has helped Peckham with his case for two years and is a board member of the Cooper Square Committee, an organization that works with residents to preserve and develop affordable housing. “If every tenant scrapped as hard, landlords would be much less inclined to harass them. Dan is battling health issues and housing issues at the same time—two very basic human concerns—and to many people, that would be overwhelming.”

According to Peckham, Yoga has helped him in this respect as well.

“The use of a mantra promotes non-attachment,” he said, “so it’s ironic that Lombardi is using it to make me out to be a greedy pig. But I’ll admit, I am attached to my home here in Chelsea. I’m just a yoga teacher, I’m not a guru. I’m just trying to help people as best I can. Yoga isn’t about letting people walk all over you. The Baghavad Gita teaches that you have to stand up for what is right. If you know about wrongdoing and you don’t do anything about it, you are as guilty as those doing it.”