The storylines in Slumlord Millionaire, the documentary about the struggle of New York City tenants and homeowners confronting predatory real estate interests’ fast-gentrifying neighborhoods that is opening in theaters in New York today, are disturbing.
The youngest son of the Bravo family in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, struggles with asthma, like over 300,000 other New York children, his condition deeply connected to the mold and rodent droppings that the landlord has refused to remedy. The residents of Chinatown, one of the last working-class neighborhoods in Manhattan, fight both neglectful landlords and the takeover of their community by developers of luxury real estate. Janina Davis’s experience as a black woman scammed out of her home that was supposed to provide her with security is so common that Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor coined the term “predatory inclusion” to describe the phenomenon.
At its most optimistic, Slumlord Millionaire highlights the power of tenant organizing. The Bravo family and other tenants play core roles in the passage of the Asthma Free Housing Act, which requires landlords to address mold and rodent infestation. And they ultimately win a ruling that required their landlord to make repairs and stop harassing them. Chinatown residents come together to resist developers’ plans for hundred-story glass skyscrapers in their neighborhood.
But the film’s core theme is the enormous social cost that comes with the United States’ commitment to treating housing as a wealth-building commodity, rather than as an essential need and human right.
The brazen toxicity of billionaire developers is demonstrated by the experience of Moumita Ahmed, who lives with her parents in a rent-stabilized apartment in Jamaica, Queens. When Ahmed runs for city council on a pro-tenant platform, she faces hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in shameless attack ads. The ads were funded in significant part by Stephen Ross, one of the two…
Auteur: Fran Quigley
