(JTA) — A $5 million lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court charges that a New York City landlord ignored decades of requests for repairs by a tenant because she was a gentile living in a “Jewish building.”
Tenant Sharon Kibbee de Lobo claims in the lawsuit that she has suffered for decades from leaks from a terrace above her Upper West Side apartment, which has caused damage including holes in the ceiling, damaged kitchen cabinets, rotted wood moldings and beams, ruined silk wall paper and sponge-painted walls, and a carpet-beetle infestation, the New York Post reported, citing the lawsuit.
Her complaints “were of no import to management because she lived in a ‘Jewish building’ and she had no rights as a non-Jewish tenant,” a property manager allegedly told her, according to the lawsuit.
A lawyer for the landlord, identified as Ennismore Apartments, disputed the claim, calling it “hard to believe,” according to the Post.
The tenant won a dispute in housing court on Friday, after the landlord refused to let an appliance retailer install a dish washer and stove, but still charged Kibbee de Lobo for the appliances.
A store salesman told her the store has installed other appliances in the building “without getting the runaround from the landlord as they have in her case,” she told the newspaper.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
