A Brooklyn Hospital Is Trying to Evict Workers from Staff Housing

A five-minute walk to work and around $600 a month in rent was hard to pass up in 1990.

Rodolfo Calica worked as a parking attendant at Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, Brooklyn. His wife, Queenie Calica, also began working there in the 2000s as a housekeeper.

It made sense to them to move into one of the nearby buildings that Maimonides bought in the 1980s to serve as housing for its employees. They both continued to live there after they retired in 2021, and over the years they made the two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment their own, filling it with family photos, Lunar New Year decorations and a flag of the Philippines, where they’re from.

Now, after spending more than 30 years in the home, the Calicas are facing eviction. “We worked through the pandemic. And now they want us out,” said Mr. Calica, 66. “There are so many nurses here, too. They are heroes, but they’re going to be homeless now.”

Maimonides sold the property six years ago, along with seven other buildings it owned in the area, for over $65 million to Iris Holdings. Following the sale, many tenants left, but some longtime tenants who are hospital employees or retirees continued to pay rent to the hospital, which paid that money forward to the new owner, essentially subletting.

For many of the tenants — who have lived in these buildings for decades and are older people with low to modest incomes — finding another apartment in the current rental market is a grueling and sometimes impossible task. In September 2021, the last time that Maimonides accepted a payment from the Calicas, according to the couple, the rent was $1,100 a month. The median rent in New York was nearly $3,500 last month, over $1,450 higher than the national median, according to Zillow.

Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn’s largest independent hospital, has also been struggling financially. In 2022, the hospital had over $65 million in losses and over $165 million the year before.

In an emailed response, Sam Miller, the vice president of marketing and communications for Maimonides, wrote that the hospital did not plan to sell the buildings “when we purchased them, but our financial situation changed.”

Across the properties the hospital sold, and in four other buildings it still owns, encompassing over 500 units, Maimonides has started eviction cases against more than 50 tenants. Many of the residents formed a union and are working with the Fifth Avenue Committee, a community development nonprofit, and the Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit legal services organization, to fight the eviction cases. In March, more than a dozen tenants traveled to Albany to urge legislators to intervene and to pass a bill prohibiting eviction without good cause.

So far, they have had some relief. After a judge decided that 21 tenants, including the Calicas, would have until March 31 “to vacate with dignity,” the New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, called for a temporary stay on all evictions. Ms. James held a meeting with Iris Holdings and Maimonides to discuss a way for the tenants “to remain in their homes or obtain other affordable, stable housing.” Last week, Maimonides decided to pause evictions until June. On Friday, tenants, State Assembly members Marcela Mitaynes and Phara Souffrant Forrest and State Senator Julia Salazar held a news conference to call on Maimonides to drop the eviction cases.

‘Safety Net’

It’s not uncommon for employers to provide or subsidize housing for their employees, especially in regions where home prices and rental rates can be out of reach for their workers. But what happens to the tenants when the employer finds that it’s no longer financially viable to be a landlord?

Mr. Miller said that Maimonides first purchased the buildings “as strategic investments. Housing was always intended to assist employees.”

As a “safety net hospital,” Maimonides serves more Medicaid recipients than some other New York hospitals. “We get paid far less to provide care than hospitals that serve fewer Medicaid recipients and more patients with private insurance,” Mr. Miller said.

The multimillion-dollar 2018 sale was intended “to raise revenue to support our core mission, which is to provide high-quality care to the most diverse population in Brooklyn, regardless of people’s insurance status or ability to pay,” Mr. Miller said.

Following the building’s sale, the Calicas said their rent went up to $1,100 from $750. But conditions went down, the couple said, a common complaint among other tenants who say their apartments began to fall into disrepair.

At the Calicas’ these days, a space heater sits in the living room — the heat hasn’t been functioning properly since 2021, they said. There’s also a leak in their kitchen, destroying the ceiling. “I always stumble near the bucket — I don’t want to fall down. I’m old, you know?” said Ms. Calica, 66. A super has come to help with issues in the past, but lately has been unresponsive, the Calicas said.

Conrad Ramkissoon, who has lived in Maimonides housing since 2003, said he hasn’t been able to reach anyone to address the many issues with his one-bedroom apartment since the 2018 sale. Mr. Ramkissoon, 51, is one of many tenants allowed to stay in their units long after the end of their employment. In 2010, when he was a nurse working in the psychiatric unit, a patient attacked him, resulting in severe injuries that left him unable to work; the following year, the hospital terminated his employment while he was on leave.

“The shower has been leaking for more than a year,” he said. “The kitchen sink — hot water and cold water are not working.” Last year, Maimonides filed an eviction case against Mr. Ramkissoon.

The Master Lease

Under a master lease reviewed by The Times, Maimonides is a tenant of Iris, the new owners. The document outlined the terms of how Maimonides would be responsible for repairs for the interiors of tenants’ units.

Mr. Miller said Maimonides has been responsive to tenants’ requests for repairs and has been “spending close to another $1 million per year on maintenance and other costs associated with being a landlord.”

Some tenants believe the poor maintenance was part of a tactic to push them out devised long before the efforts to evict them began in the past few years.

Mr. Miller said that since 2018, the new owner raised rents, but the Maimonides-associated tenants didn’t have to pay the increases. “Maimonides paid these increases, even in cases where the tenant failed to pay any rent. These rent subsidies amount to more than $1 million annually,” Mr. Miller said. But several tenants said they paid higher rents following the sale.

Legal Aid lawyers say they are wary of the hospital’s statements of its benevolence.

The tenants never had leases; they had housing agreements. The agreements, reviewed by The Times, granted employees permission to live in a specified unit and outlined a monthly rent and security deposit amount. The documents stated that tenants would have to vacate the apartment “upon 30 days notice” or at any time their “employment at Maimonides Medical Center terminates, no matter for what cause.” The agreements also said that tenants are “permitted to live in the apartment on a temporary basis with the condition that the Medical Center has every right to withdraw such permission at any time.”

Until as recently as this January, Maimonides collected rent from hospital-connected tenants, according to Meghan Walsh, a lawyer at Legal Aid. As the eviction cases against tenants began, it stopped collecting rent payments.

But many tenants are ready and willing to pay rent, said Ms. Walsh. “Some have gone directly to the hospital and offered to pay increases if they could stay. Maimonides has refused.”

Ms. Walsh believes the circuitous subletting agreement was put in place to bypass rent regulation.

The buildings are rent-stabilized, but because Maimonides is a nonprofit organization, it was exempt from giving its tenants rent-stabilized leases. “There’s an exemption in the rent stabilization code that allows for nonprofits to mark units as exempt, even if they’re rent stabilized, as long as the nonprofit is using the units to further their nonprofit interests,” said Ms. Walsh.

So Maimonides collecting rent from tenants and paying that forward to Iris — rather than the tenants paying rent to Iris directly — Ms. Walsh believes, is a “way for the current owner to be able to skirt the rent stabilization code and charge more for these units.”

In 2021, five of the buildings Iris had purchased were transferred to Park Affordable, an affordable housing subsidiary of Iris Holdings. On its website, Park Affordable advertises renovated units in the buildings as “modern luxury” and “classic elegance” and states that it’s offering rent-stabilized leases. Listed rents range from $2,286 for a one-bedroom and $3,510 for a three-bedroom apartment.

A regulatory agreement between Park Affordable and the city outlined that a part of these units would serve as affordable housing and would house people coming from the city’s shelter system; in turn, Park Affordable would receive tax benefits.

In an email statement, William Miller, a spokesperson for Iris, said that the developer is hoping to find a solution “that provides long-term affordable housing” for the Maimonides tenants. “We have been working diligently with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Legal Aid, along with other city and state officials to broker a resolution between Maimonides and the remaining employee households,” he said.

The Fight for Good Cause

Tenants and advocates have been calling on lawmakers to pass the Good Cause Eviction bill, which was first introduced in New York’s state legislature in 2019 and is currently in committee.

The Good Cause bill would require landlords to have a “good reason” to evict a tenant — which can include nonpayment of rent, breach of lease, creating a nuisance, property damage and if the landlord wants to move into the apartment and use it as their own primary residence, said Ellen Davidson, a staff attorney with Legal Aid’s Civil Law Reform Unit. It also includes a mechanism to ensure that rent increases are reasonable and a way for landlords to demonstrate financial necessity for higher rent increases.

If the bill passed, it could help some of the Maimonides tenants, Ms. Davidson said.

‘We Are All Afraid’

For the tenants involved in proceedings now, the desperation to find housing is colliding with processing the intense emotions that come with having to leave a home.

Carmen Ramos-Perez, 68, was an administrative assistant for Maimonides from 2000 to 2021, when she retired. In 2003, she moved into an apartment in a building owned by Maimonides, and in 2022, a representative from the hospital first asked her to move out, she said. Ms. Ramos-Perez lives in one of the four buildings that are still under Maimonides ownership. Legal Aid said that Maimonides is hoping to turn two of these buildings into parking.

“​​I’m from Puerto Rico. I was born and raised there, and my dream has always been to go back home,” she said. So after being asked to vacate, Ms. Ramos-Perez visited Puerto Rico to see if she could live there comfortably. But medical complications from a past stroke arose, and she wasn’t able to get the proper medical care she needed there.

When she returned to Brooklyn, Ms. Ramos-Perez toured several apartments in search of a new home, but she couldn’t afford them. “I can’t sleep at night, because I’ve been so anxious looking for an apartment,” Ms. Ramos-Perez said.

In June, she finally found a one-bedroom that she could afford. Before she could move in, the landlord asked for a letter of reference from Ms. Ramos-Perez’s current landlord. Ms. Ramos-Perez said that a Maimonides representative told her that they couldn’t provide a letter for her because her case was already in court, and as a result, Ms. Ramos-Perez wasn’t able to secure the new apartment.

“We are all afraid because of the situation,” said Ms. Ramos-Perez, in tears. “Most of us — we’re retirees, we’re sick.”

Alain Delaquérière contributed research.