{"id":1129,"date":"2006-06-06T10:39:14","date_gmt":"2006-06-06T18:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/06\/you_dont_think_i_can_wedge_a_reference_to_wooly_bully_in_a_story_about_rent_control_just_watch_me.html"},"modified":"2008-01-25T11:12:38","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T16:12:38","slug":"you_dont_think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/06\/you_dont_think.html","title":{"rendered":"You Don’t Think I Can Wedge A Reference To “Wooly Bully” In A Story About Rent Control? Just Watch Me!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A rent control story for the ages<\/a>:<\/p>\n

For three decades, Lisa Dittmer has been on a collision course with her landlords — one involving the peculiarities of real estate and rent control in New York City — that culminated yesterday in a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

For those unaccustomed to the range of comedy and heartbreak those factors can produce, it is worthwhile to begin with this: By law, Ms. Dittmer says, her monthly rent is $94.18, roughly the price of a pair of sneakers that will get you laughed off any basketball court in the city.<\/p>\n

Ms. Dittmer moved into her apartment on the top floor of a three-story building in Bay Ridge in 1965, about a month before Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs released “Wooly Bully.”<\/p>\n

“To date,” her lawyer wrote with lawyerly reserve, “plaintiff continues to occupy said apartment.”<\/p>\n

The best reason, and perhaps the only reason, to occupy the same apartment for 41 years is rent control, a program established to address a housing crisis in postwar time, post-World War II time in particular. Under those rules, Ms. Dittmer’s rent for the apartment at 319 82nd Street was set at $80.72 a month in June 1970 and raised to $94.18 in March 1983, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

But since 1976, the lawsuit says, she has often been charged more than that. A lawyer for Ms. Dittmer, Colleen Buckley, said the amount she paid ranged from the maximum legal rent to as much as $570 monthly.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The suit contends that the landlords willfully ignored the fact that the apartment was rent controlled. The plaintiff is asking for $350,000:<\/p>\n

Since 1976, the lawsuit says, Ms. Dittmer has been overcharged, in total, $84,465.80, which works out to $237.93 a month.<\/p>\n

In the lawsuit, Ms. Dittmer, who did not return calls seeking comment, is seeking $253,397.40, or three times the total overpayment, plus lawyers’ fees and interest, for a round total of $350,000.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rent control story for the ages: For three decades, Lisa Dittmer has been on a collision course with her landlords — one involving the peculiarities of real estate and rent control in New York City — that culminated yesterday in a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. For those unaccustomed to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brooklyn","category-real_estate","category-the_new_york_times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}