'We Didn't Receive This Kind of Betrayal From Republicans': Loft Tenants Protest Salazar's Amendment To Loft Law 'Clean-Up' Bill

Loft tenants protest state Senator Julia Salazar's office after learning that she amended a bill that has been three years in the making.

A long-awaited bill to protect the tenants of illegal lofts in New York City is running up against a sudden change from state senator Julia Salazar, who originally supported the proposal but now says it would hurt manufacturers in her North Brooklyn district.

Like the original loft law passed by the state legislature in 1982, the latest bill provides a path toward legal residence and rent stabilization for tenants living in manufacturing spaces. Known as the Loft Law “Clean-Up” Bill, the legislation seeks to expand the years of eligibility to residents of buildings with three or more families who lived in illegal lofts for 12 consecutive months during 2015 or 2016; the current law only applies to tenants who were housed in lofts in 2009 and earlier.

After seeing the bill blocked two years in a row by Republican opposition in the state senate, loft tenants were hopeful that it would finally pass this year under a Democratic-controlled legislature. The group has already secured the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council. Just last week, Assemblymember Deborah Glick, who had previously sponsored the legislation, reintroduced the bill into the state assembly.

But in an unexpected reversal, Salazar, a first-year senator whose district includes Bushwick and Williamsburg, went from sponsoring the loft law bill in the Senate to adding an amendment that would exclude the North Brooklyn Industrial Zone, which was carved out of parts of Greenpoint, East Williamsburg, and Bushwick to support manufacturing businesses.

In her tweet, Salazar cited roughly 20,000 manufacturing jobs. Her office said the statistic was taken from a city Planning report called "The North Brooklyn Industry and Innovation Plan". However, the report refers to 19,500 as the total number of jobs in the area, of which 77 percent or roughly 15,000 are in industrial sectors. Of that 15,000, only about 3,000 are manufacturing jobs.

“We’ve been negotiating the bill for three years and she went behind our backs to put in amendments,” Zefrey Throwell, an organizer with the New York Loft Tenants, told Gothamist. "At the 11th hour, she has buckled to manufacturing pressure and is essentially evicting tenants."

Loft tenant activists estimate that Salazar's amendment would affect several hundred loft residents in North Brooklyn, though no solid data exists on how many illegal renters live in the area. They have warned that time is of the essence because loft tenants face ongoing evictions.

Salazar could not be reached for comment by publication time. But in an interview published on Monday at Politico Pro, she said, “My understanding of the potential impact of the legislation has changed really recently.”

She went on to say that she realized that the interests of tenants and manufacturing workers “are actually at odds.”

On Monday, Throwell and other loft tenant advocates showed up at Salazar’s district office in Brooklyn to protest her amendment of the loft law bill. Seeking a meeting with the senator, the group got into a heated exchange with Salazar’s chief of staff, Boris Santos. A former community organizer, Santos appeared to question the financial plight of loft tenants. In one moment, captured by one of the protesters on video, Santos says, “I know a loft tenant who pays $2,000. He could afford to live in many places.” The group then boos. The asking median monthly rent in Bushwick was $2,500 in January, according to Streeteasy’s latest report.

Later on in the video, Santos waves his hands dismissively at the protesters and says "Vito Lopez machine," a reference to the late former assemblymember and Brooklyn Democratic party boss who resigned in 2013 after sexual harassment accusations. In 2010, Lopez had sponsored a successful bill to protect loft tenants in his district over the objections of manufacturers and then-mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In another exchange captured on tape, Santos says, “I want to be able to work with people who are willing to work with each other, as opposed to people that … are sleazeballs, to be honest.”

Afterward, Throwell accused Santos of being disrespectful to constituents. He demanded an apology from Salazar.

Reached for comment, Santos noted that the video had been edited, but he also acknowledged getting angry and calling Throwell a sleazeball. "Part of the tension was that there was a lot of misinformation about who we are," he said. "We were called the 'new machine,' the equivalent of Vito Lopez. That’s completely misguided because we ran a campaign that was grass roots and based on small donors."

He added, "Our intention was never to escalate the situation, but rather to think in a way that we can move forward. And it was hard to do at the time."

Santos said that prior to trying to amend the bill, he had asked Throwell to provide Salazar's office with data on loft tenants living in North Brooklyn, in hopes of carving out specific buildings for residential protections, rather than including the entire industrial business zone. He argued that over the years, no one has surveyed how many loft tenants there are and what their demographics are.

Salazar’s change of heart comes as North Brooklyn manufacturing interests have ramped up their lobbying against the loft bill, claiming it threatens 15,000 industrial jobs currently in the area.

“An expanded loft law imperils our ability to keep high-quality working-class jobs in our community,” Leah Archibald, executive director of Evergreen, a local development corporation representing North Brooklyn businesses, told Gothamist.

Archibald added that when permitted to inhabit the same spaces, residential and industrial users inevitably collide, and that it's the latter that wind up being pushed out.

On Tuesday, City Councilmember Antonio Reynoso, who represents North Brooklyn, also made that argument in a press release opposing the legalization of residential lofts. “When residential and industrial uses are placed in such close proximity, clashes inevitably erupt and we have seen that industry almost always loses—businesses are displaced and their workers are left without stable employment to support the ever increasing cost of living in New York City," he said.

Reynoso added: “Furthermore, since four out of five workers in the industrial sector are people of color, the loss of these jobs means the loss of our community’s diversity and the displacement of our long-term residents, a phenomenon we have become all too familiar with in North Brooklyn in recent years.”

Throwell accused Reynoso and manufacturers of using race to divide the community over loft tenants, with the underlying assumption that loft tenants are predominately white. He pointed out that the loft bill does not directly displace manufacturers, but simply protects existing residential tenants. Moreover, he asserted that loft tenants are a diverse community, with many of them live/work inhabitants who work in manufacturing themselves.

Joe Fattorusso, 33, a loft tenant in Bushwick, said that the roughly 80 residents in his building represent a "mixed community."

"I’m part Indian," he said. "My neighbor is African American. We are women, we are children, we are immigrants."

He said he had invited Salazar to visit his building but she has yet to come. "There is a complete lack of interest to seek out the true and real information of who are the real occupants, and more interest in supporting those in the real estate industry," he said.

Fattorusso and his neighbors, some of whom say they have lived in the building for 20 years, are collectively fighting to gain legal status under the current loft law, as they were residents there in the 2008-09 period. Their application is currently pending before the city's Loft Board. The passage of the current bill would significantly help their case, he said.

In the wake of Salazar's opposition and her effort to amend the bill, loft tenants are now urging senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to instead pass the original bill, which is still working its way through the Assembly in unamended form.

Fattorusso, who was among the protesters on Monday, said he and others in his building had supported Salazar based on her platform of expanding affordable housing and installing rent protections. “We didn’t’ receive this kind of betrayal from Republicans, “ he said. “All that would require would be a closer look and understanding of the bill and its effects.”