Kushner Companies and Michael Cohen accused of falsifying documents to push out tenants

Developer Charles Kushner, whose son Jared Kushner is a senior adviser to Donald Trump, and Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, face scrutiny in New York for claims that they falsified construction permits.

It is believed that they were attempting to remove rent-regulated tenants from buildings scattered across the city.

Earlier this week, the city’s Department of Buildings fined Kushner Companies a total of $210,000 (£163,00) for 42 instances in which it says the company falsified construction permits at 17 residential buildings, where many of the tenants were protected by rent regulations from steep rent increases and eviction.

A spokeswoman for Kushner Companies said that the violations were “paperwork errors”. The company can contest the citations before an administrative judge.

“In no case did the company act in disregard of the safety of our tenants,” said Christine Taylor.

Tenant activists also issued a report based on city and state records that suggested that an investment group led by Mr Cohen had also falsified construction permits by claiming that three buildings in Manhattan were vacant or without rent-regulated tenants, when they were occupied and many tenants had rental protections.

Landlords are required in New York City to disclose whether tenants in their buildings are rent regulated to obtain a construction permit. This requirement is designed to safeguard rent-regulated tenants from harassment.

Unscrupulous landlords sometimes push out rent-protected tenants so they can sharply increase rents on those units.

Critics, however, complain that numerous violations slip through the cracks between the separate data systems used by city and state agencies.

At 172 Rivington Street, for example, the Cohen group indicated that there were no rent-regulated tenants in the 20-unit building, after the company purchased it in October 2011 for $2.1m (£1.6m).

But records indicated that there were 19 protected tenants there, but only 11 remained after the Cohen group sold the building three years later for $10m (£7.7m).

Tenants living in Mr Cohen’s buildings repeatedly filed complaints about noise and dust related to construction work, according to the report by Housing Rights Initiative, a nonprofit tenant advocacy group.

The Buildings Department said it had investigated six complaints at 172 Rivington Street and observed no violations of city construction rules there, or at a second building controlled by the Cohen group, according to a spokesman, Joseph Soldevere.

The Cohen group held the buildings for only a few years and then sold them for a combined $17m (£13m) profit.

Mr Cohen did not respond to a request for comment.

The tenant group issued a similar report about the Kushners in the spring after sifting through public records from the Department of Buildings, the Finance Department and the state’s Homes and Community Renewal agency, which oversees rent-regulated tenants.

Up until 2015, when the city and state agencies formed a Tenant Harassment Task Force, there had been little coordination among them.

This year, current and former tenants at 184 Kent Avenue, in Brooklyn, a Kushner-owned residential building at the edge of the East River, sued Kushner Companies in state Supreme Court claiming they had been forced out by “loud and obnoxious drilling” and a “constant cloud of toxic smoke and dust.”

The number of rent-regulated tenants in the building plummeted to 71 in June from 316 in May 2015; the Kushner Companies are now selling condominium apartments in the building.

Neither Mr Cohen nor the Kushner Companies have been cited for tenant harassment.

Aaron Carr, executive director of Housing Rights Initiative, said the group’s analysis “suggests that Mr Cohen had commenced a deliberate campaign to systematically harass tenants out of their apartments using destructive, hazardous and illegal construction practices, so he could dramatically raise rents.”

But the report also provides a “window into the dysfunction at city and state agencies,” he said.

“The Department of Buildings approved falsified permits,” he said, “despite receiving complaints from tenants in those very same buildings.”

Records indicate a steep decrease in the number of rent-regulated tenants in the buildings owned by Mr Cohen and the Kushners.

But the city would not know whether some number of tenants were paid cash by the landlord to leave, a common practice used by building owners to empty apartments.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has built or preserved tens of thousands of apartments for low- and moderate- and middle-income tenants.

Still, his administration has been unable to keep up with the loss of affordable housing as apartments leave the rent-regulation system.

Cohen purchased 237 Henry Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan for $3.35m (£2.6m) in August 2013.

Construction work in the building commenced almost immediately. The new owners claimed on permit applications that the building was vacant, although all 20 apartments in the building were occupied by rent-regulated tenants.

After the Cohen group sold the building for $9m (£6.9m), records indicate there were only five rent-regulated tenants left.

The New York Times