Last month, the Mayor’s office launched the Talk to Tenants program to canvas buildings across New York City with chronic housing violations and galvanize civic participation for improved living conditions.
On Thursday, city volunteers brought the program to a Flatbush building whose tenants are already organized with the Union of Pinnacle Tenants. UPT gained support from the city after the building's owner, real-estate conglomerate Pinnacle Realty, went bankrupt in 2024.
Flatbush, Brooklyn, a flash point for tenant rights and gentrification, has been central to the city's outreach after Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited an embattled UPT building on his first day in office.
In the late 1990s, Pinnacle CEO Joel Wiener began purchasing rent-regulated apartments across the city, with the goal to eventually circumvent rent stabilization provisions and bring apartments up to market rate. As the landlords, Pinnacle Group began reducing maintenance, attempting to raise the rent and evicting tenants. The strategy backfired when Pinnacle went into bankruptcy on a set of 5,000 apartments in 2024.
Summit Properties, which emerged as the successful bidder at the 2026 bankruptcy auction, acquired 93 buildings from Pinnacle’s portfolio. While housing violations were citywide, apartments included in Summit’s Brooklyn portfolio contained 53 buildings and 4,202 Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) violations across 252 units at the time of the bankruptcy proceedings, according to court filings.
Under the Mamdani administration, the city challenged the bankruptcy sale, seeking stronger guarantees that thousands of housing violations would be repaired.
One of the largest benefits from a tenant-led union is the community, said Josie Wells, the cofounder of UPT Flatbush. “It’s a big deal,” Wells said. “In my building, we weren’t talking to each other before. A lot of us were experiencing, I call it, tenant trauma. We were experiencing tenant trauma silently, and it makes a world of a difference when you can come together and figure out, how do we address this?”
The Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement said the campaign specifically targets buildings with a history of chronic housing violations and aims to inform tenants of their right to organize and connect them with organizing resources.
“The ‘Talk to Tenants’ campaign is one part of this administration’s work to strengthen tenant protections, ensuring tenants know their rights and have the tools and resources they need to advocate for safe, livable homes,” Mass Engagement Commissioner Tascha Van Auken said in a statement to BK Reader.
Tenants in the UPT building canvassed on Thursday night in Flatbush, citing persistent electrical issues in the hallway and an elevator that breaks down around every other month. For smaller issues, renter Carolyn Riddick opts for paying out of pocket instead of dealing with building management. She spends around $125 a year for repairs.
While the city is dedicated to informing tenants on their right to organize, union members say building repairs remain slow. A city spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether complaints identified through canvassing can lead to HPD violations or whether the program tracks tenant complaints through their resolution.
Vivienne Knouse-Frenzer began canvassing for the city after graduating from SUNY New Paltz in May. On her 11th canvas, Knouse-Frenzer said neighbors don’t communicate like they used to. Canvassing, for the recent graduate, is an opportunity to help share information that can lead people to useful resources, Knouse-Frenzer explained.
“People are neglectful to talk to each other, and canvassing, we are normalizing communication. Every single time they open the door they’re taking a chance,” the 22-year-old said.
