Former Dryden tenants petitioners in lawsuit

A local nonprofit civil legal aid organization is challenging the New York secretary of state “to vindicate the right of tenants to receive meaningful assistance from Code Enforcement” after these tenants “lived in substandard housing,” according to a release.

 

Legal Assistance of Western New York (LawNY), representing five former tenants who lived in an apartment building owned by Linda Bruno in the village of Dryden, filed a petition against the secretary of state to “challenge the secretary’s refusal to implement standards governing inspections and code enforcement in rental properties,” according to the petition.

The lawsuit, filed under Article No. 78, was filed to the Albany County Supreme Court in March, but with little progress since then, LawNY and other petitioners are increasing their efforts to get the secretary of state to respond.

“The lawsuit alleges that code enforcement practices as they currently stand are deficient, dangerous and unconstitutional across the state because of the secretary’s failure to comply with the legal obligation to implement and enforce regulations governing code enforcement,” the release notes.

Alissa Hull, a staff attorney at LawNY, said the lawsuit is essentially against “the secretary of state and not anyone local.”

“The suit isn’t for money damages; it’s just to change how the state does code enforcement,” she said.

Keionzie Clements, Troy Washington, Eric Allen, Larry Stanton and Julia Preston, the former tenants who used to live on the top level of an apartment building at 12-14 W. Main St. in the village, are the primary subjects of the lawsuit, which claims responsibility of the secretary of state to set “minimum guidelines” for code enforcement.

“We see this sort of thing happening across the state in rural communities,” Hull said, noting the village of Dryden is one of the many small municipalities across the state with a similar issue.

Clements, who Hull said is the lead for the group of former residents out of the village, noted that in the spring of last year, she made a call to the local code enforcement office for maintenance issues.

“We asked for maintenance from the landlord soon after we moved into our apartment because our stove wasn’t working and there were water leaks coming from the ceiling,” Clements said. “Things got really bad in April of 2021 when our toilet stopped working and the landlord refused to fix it. We had to use the bathroom at the library and gas station. That’s when I called code enforcement, but all they did was send letters to the landlord, and then the village condemned our whole building without making the landlord fix anything.”

Hull added that local code enforcement did an inspection in June 2021. The code office proceeded to send a notice of needed repairs to the property owner.

The property owner, however, did not respond to the notice, which led to conditions worsening in the building.

Hull noted the issues with some of the tenants included a lack of carbon monoxide detectors and front doors that didn’t close properly. Other tenants, however, faced a plethora of issues in their respective apartments, including a bathroom sink on the floor, a backed-up toilet, bathroom exhaust discharging into the kitchen, windows that couldn’t lock, entry doors in poor condition, an inaccessible electrical panel due to placement, holes in the walls and a leaking ceiling.

A handful of calls to code enforcement, and no action from the property owner, led to the village ordering the tenants “to leave their homes within 72 hours,” the release notes.

The release states that the Ithaca Tenants Union and LawNY fought to give the tenants additional time, and a hearing was scheduled. Despite the hearing potentially giving opportunity to “[explore] the necessity of condemning the building and the legal means to secure a court order that the landlord make repairs,” the tenants were given five days to pack up and leave their homes.

The tenants, who eventually turned into petitioners, either went to live with family members or sought shelter through the Department of Social Services’ emergency housing.

The building, which includes eight units and commercial tenants, was officially condemned in November of last year. As of now, the building is “still boarded up,” Hull said.

“We didn’t owe anything in back rent but still got kicked out by the village because the landlord never made repairs,” Stanton said. “We didn’t get any help from the landlord or village, who were responsible for making us homeless.”

Hull said the tenants were “at no fault” for the conditions of the apartments.

“These were repairs that were long-standing that the landlord was within its power to correct,” she added. “Code enforcement’s response was just to displace the tenants.”

Hull noted that code enforcement “didn’t realize what was in their tool bag.”

“Code enforcement didn’t know what options they had to do anything different,” she said. “We think if there were clear guidelines and regulations issued by the state, then they would have some steps they would know are expected of them to take before they condemn the building.”

According to the release, the petitioners are seeking order through five steps that would require the secretary of state to comply with executive law by “issuing minimum standards governing inspections and enforcement” of the code, including prompt inspections, a timeline for specific enforcement steps, a requirement that jurisdictions pursue judicial enforcement of the code, clear guidelines for conditions and constitutionally adequate hearings that would ensure landlords are held accountable for maintaining rental property.

According to Hull, the secretary of state is looking to dismiss the lawsuit.

“They’re essentially saying the secretary of state has set rules and regulations, and those rules and regulations leave code decisions to the local government,” Hull said, reiterating that the secretary of state needs to set minimum standards for code enforcement. “That’s their stance. We’ve countered that it’s not sufficient.”

Hull is hoping to argue LawNY’s side of the lawsuit soon in court. Representatives from the secretary of state could not be reached for comment.

Dryden Dispatch appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.

In brief:

Mills, Railroads and More

On July 23 at 11 a.m., join Freeville residents for The Village of Freeville: Mills, Railroads and More. Freeville Village Historian Kristen Olson will lead a 1-mile walking tour exploring Freeville’s development from an early 19th-century milling hamlet to a bustling turn-of-the-century railroad village and finally to a small but vibrant community in the 21st century.

The tour will conclude at the newly completed Station Park (just across the street from Toad’s Too; Ice Cream Oasis). Please meet in front of Freeville Elementary School on Main Street. Register at tinyurl.com/256r64gu.