A Queens landlady who tried everything to evict a tenant and his two teenage daughters - including filing fake child abuse claims and dumping their belongings onto a rainy street - will have to pay the family $500,000, a jury decided.Minako Wong, 56, made life a living hell for single dad Jose San Martin, 39, from the moment he moved into her Elmhurst apartment building in February 2006, the victims said.
Queens landlady forced to pay $500,000 for wrongful eviction
The fight began shortly after San Martin signed a lease with Wong for the $1,100-a-month, one-bedroom apartment.
Wong became infuriated when she learned San Martin's daughters - Leslie, now 18, and Ashley, 14 - were temporarily moving in with him, said San Martin's lawyer, Peter Kelley.
From then on, Wong routinely pounded on their door, screaming that she could hear noise in her apartment below. She burst into their apartment unannounced and posted flyers in the halls of the five-unit building that accused San Martin of neglecting the girls.
The feud came to a head on May 30, 2006, when Wong snuck into San Martin's vacant apartment, gathered their things and dumped them onto the sidewalk.
A steady rain soaked the items - including the girls' computer, their schoolbooks and their undergarments, which were strewn prominently around the mess.
8 comments:
WOW!
$1,100 a month to live in that boxy slum with an arrogant law breaking Asian landlord sticking her nose up your ass each time you fart too loud?
Bravo! That half a million dollar fine she just got should put her in arrears for quite some time!
Maybe that tenant could wind up buying that dragon lady's building!
So much for the Asians trying to colonize Latino Elmhurst like they got away with in Flushing.
Yup! immigrant building owners in Queens, NY think that they are outside and above the law.
Her actions are about average according to tenants in Queens Housing Court. The banging on the door, screaming and invasion of privacy are typical. Calling child welfare is just another slumlord tactic to get the tenants to move.
Too bad no one bothered to check if she was here in the US illegally and how she got the money in the first place to buy the building.
Send her back to China, today. Let's see how tenants in China put up with her. From what I understand they didn't treat landlords too good during their revolution.
Won't her insurance pay up on the claim? or will she have to sell the house? There goes the neighborhood.
There is no denying that the landlady is crazy but try to remember that tenants aren't always the good guys. Maybe when the tenant signed the lease he didn't tell her that he had two teenage children.
These are things some landlords like to know. I have lived next to a new tenant who I thought was just one person but it ended up being five noisy adults. I wished I had this crazy landlord back then because the police didn't seem to care about my noise complaints. The landlord didn't seem to care either that he had extra tenants in a place that couldn't fit more than three adults.
A burglary charge with criminal mischief icing might be just desserts for the landlord.
If she can get to sleep in jail, the teenagers might not seem so bad.
Now hold on just a minute... there are two sides to every story. I also own a legal 3 family in LIC and the top apt has 3 bedrooms - I rented it to a family of 6 - sounds reasonable. but 2 weeks later four more arrived. The woman said he son and his wife were chucked out of their apt so they have come to live with her. Now there is 10 in a five room apt. Way too many people - using gas electric and hot water.
Now I am in trouble with NYC law for having too many people in the apt - even though my lease said 6. Still cant get them out!!
If they guys choose to rent the apt for $1100.00 - thats his business he knew what the apt looked like before he rented it. And guess what... my familywhere immigrants also. When they came over - the only thing seperating them from the sea was the bottom of the boat.
Umm...there are 3 sides to every story....yours, theirs...and the truth.
hmmm, sounds like landlord ringers or real estate sales people are here. They are piqued that this landlord was finally held accountable. I bet this is not the first family or tenants she has done this too.The first twenty did nothing but move away. to another slumlord's building.
how do we know it's not the abusive Chinese building owner writing the anti tenant crap?
Whenever landlords want the general public to feel sorry for them, after they have abused and exploited many tenants , many times over something is very wrong.
send her back to China, let her own kind put up with her crap.
investigate where the money came from to buy the building. How many hard working American citizens can purchase commercial property like that?
There should be a ban on non American citizens owning property in the US. It would cut down on a lot of crap in Queens.
to the land lady; U.R. Wong.
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