UPPER EAST SIDE — An Upper East Side real estate broker and cancer
survivor was harassed by her landlord and evicted from her apartment
because her management company was afraid she wouldn't be able to pay
the rent if the illness came back, she claims in a federal lawsuit.
Heatheran Kristopher, 43, said she was forced out of her $2,250 per
month apartment on East 81st Street by a landlord who began hounding her
within a month of taking over the building in 2011, according to the
lawsuit filed Jan. 25 in Manhattan Federal Court.
"I feel completely alone, I feel completely lost right now,"
Kristopher told DNAinfo.com New York Monday, as she stood inside her
empty first-floor apartment at 336 E. 81st St.
"I know it's only an apartment, but it's just what I went through
here. I healed myself here. I came home from chemo and laid in this
backyard. I feel safe here."
"There's nowhere else I can turn at this point," she added, saying
she's crashing on friends' couches while she tries to find a place to
live.
Kristopher said the high-pressure bid to force her out of the
building began in September 2011, less than a month after Stone Street
Properties LLC bought her building from the previous landlord Icon
Management.
She said she had signed a new two-year lease with Icon in August
2011, but had not received a printed version of the lease by the time
Stone Street Properties took over.
According to the court papers, Stone Street co-founder Robert
Morgenstern showed up at her door unannounced in September 2011, and
began shouting at her that she owed him $5,000.
When she told him she had cancer, he allegedly snapped.
"How do I know you're not going to get cancer again?" Morgenstern yelled, according to the court documents.
Kristopher, who recently founded her own real estate firm, had lived
in the apartment since 2008, just before she was diagnosed with ovarian
and colon cancer and began chemotherapy and radiation treatment at
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, according to the lawsuit.
She had fallen behind in rent by more than $10,000 during her cancer
treatments, but had caught up by the time Stone Street took over. She
wanted to stay in the building in part because of its proximity to Sloan
Kettering and because the first floor home made it easy for her to move
around.
"They were doing anything and everything to get rid of me," she said.
Stone Street staffers began to insist that her new lease was invalid
and refusing to honor its terms, the documents said. Instead, they urged
her to sign a six-month lease.
"This way you're not locked in if you do get sick again," Stone
Street leasing agent Cody Moore allegedly said. "I strongly suggest you
sign this or you will be put on the black list."
Stone Street also tried to increase the rent by $700 per month and get her to pay six months rent up front, the lawsuit says.
On Nov. 22, 2011, the landlord filed a petition to evict Kristopher
and a week later she filed a disability discrimination claim with the
New York Division of Housing and Urban Development and the New York
State Division of Human Rights.
After a nearly seven-month investigation, the New York State Division
of Human Rights found that there was "probable cause for discrimination
on the basis of [Kristopher's] disability," according to a report dated
May 25, 2012.
However, the agency did not find evidence that Morgenstern moved to
evict her because she filed the complaint with HUD. Kristopher later
withdrew the human rights complaint in order to file the federal
lawsuit.
Kristopher won a number of delays in the eviction proceedings, but
she was forced to clear out Monday after the state Supreme Court upheld
the removal.
"She's a sour-grapes tenant who was evicted because she had no lease," said Morgenstern, who denied making the cancer comment.
"I categorically deny any wrongdoing."
Kristopher, a spokeswoman for Ihadcancer.com, said she went to war
with the building to protect herself — and to help others who might find
themselves in the same boat.
"I'm an advocate for cancer patients. I work with cancer patients. I
volunteer, I go to chemo with them," she said. "I'm not going to allow
this to happen."
As part of the investigation, HUD asked Stone Street for a list of
other tenants in the building who had fallen behind on their lease and
were also then offered a six-month agreement, according to the
investigation report. The company failed to provide the information.
While she does not hold any illusions about getting her apartment
back, Kristopher said she hopes the suit will dissuade other building
owners from discriminating against people in similar situations.
And she is committed to staying in the city, in part to honor her
mother, who lived in Manhattan until she died of cancer when Kristopher
was 10 years old.
"I feel close to my mom here. Every day everything reminds me of her," she said.
"I'm just going to fight this until the end. I have to. It makes me feel not like the victim."
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