By Ana Borruto
Lauren Koenig speaks to the crowd. Credit: Ana Borruto
It has been 171 days since a five-alarm fire on December 20, 2023 destroyed the homes of nearly 450 tenants living at 43-09 47th Ave. in Sunnyside, Queens and many who opted for temporary relocation now face termination of those agreements — putting them at risk of losing their homes for a second time.
Dozens of 43-09 apartment residents, community advocates and elected officials rallied outside the scaffold-covered complex on Saturday morning to urge the building’s landlord, A&E Real Estate Holdings, to reconsider its plan to terminate the six-month temporary relocation agreements on July 2, which were signed by families from nearly 28 units.
In the days following the blaze that was ignited by an unauthorized blow torch, the building was placed under a strict vacate order. The property owner offered tenants a short-term option to rent apartments in other A&E properties at the same monthly rent they had paid at 43-09 47th Avenue.
Councilmember Julie Won said A&E promised tenants that if they still found themselves without a home, they would work with each tenant to ensure they had temporary ones at the same rental price.
“We are all united in representing our neighbors and our residents, to say: No, you cannot evict our tenants,” Won said. She added that the tenants are owed more than $8 million in damages.
Lauren Koenig, a displaced tenant and Sunnyside resident for 14 years, said she and her neighbors have received “zero updates” from A&E on when they can get back into their homes. Won said Douglas Eisenberg, the company’s CEO, has not responded to any calls or a letter sent to him back in March.
“We have people sleeping on trains, living in other states and countries, sleeping on couches, still in hotels, living out of their suitcase, changing in storage lockers and spending thousands of dollars on transportation to get their kids to school,” Koenig said. “This is the reality of our lives, while A&E remains silent.”
She said out of the 107 units in the apartment building, roughly 103 were occupied at the time of the fire. Over 50 percent of the units are rent stabilized and an estimated 53 percent were not insured. Around 44 percent of residents have lived in the apartment complex for more than a decade.
This includes Jennifer Rosero Arias whose mother moved to 43-09 in 1993. She and her brother opted for the temporary housing provided by A&E, which they will now lose come next month.
With housing prices in New York City skyrocketing, real estate scams prevalent and many of the tenants financially devastated since the fire, Rosario Arias said the road to finding a new home has been a “very stressful” one.
“We’re basically just floating around, seeing where we’re gonna go in the next three weeks,” Rosario Arias said. “I would like for A&E to really help people that have lived in this building for so many years and extend our lease.”
Koenig further spoke about the current living situations of her fellow tenants, such as Ali Kappel, who is wheelchair-bound and was placed in a nursing home because A&E did not find her an ADA compliant temporary apartment. She talked about Preeti Bhulla, who lived at 43-09 with her father and, after the fire, had to handle his passing in a “cramped hotel room.”
Apartment fires have become an unfortunate trend in the Sunnyside community, Koenig said, as there have been at least four blazes from 46th to 50th Street since 2018.
To ensure another devastating incident never happens again, Koenig said she is working alongside Senator Michael Gianaris to get legislation passed that would make landlords of rent-stabilized buildings responsible for providing comparable housing where tenants can live until their actual homes are fixed.
“To my neighbors, my heart is gutted for you and with you,” Koenig said. “We will go big or go home, but when you don’t have a home, there is nothing left — so what are we supposed to do: fight.”
Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez said as a congressional representative of the Sunnyside community she would use any federal leverage to put pressure on A&E to take responsibility.
Brett Callaway, an attorney with McLaughlin & Stern, is representing approximately 172 tenants impacted by the fire. He said after six months of attempting to engage in “good faith negotiations” with A&E and their legal counsel, he and the tenants plan to file a complaint in the next two weeks alleging negligence, gross negligence, breach of contract and breach of warranty of habitability.
“We will seek every penny from them, inclusive of punitive damages, attorneys fees and nine percent statutory interest, to which all of these tenants are entitled to legally,” Callaway said. “[A&E] still can do the right thing, they can pay these individuals and they can expedite the remediations — they have the power to do so.”
A representative from A&E in attendance at the rally declined to comment.
A spokesperson of A&E emailed the following statement: “We have made steady progress stabilizing the building, but the damage was severe and there are no quick fixes here. We have been transparent with tenants about those challenges, and that the emergency hotel stays and discounted apartments we provided after the fire were a temporary solution to give everyone breathing room as they made longer-term plans. Ultimately, the insurance process will determine how to compensate all parties from the losses in the fire.”
