Evan Vucci/AP Photo
Jared Kushner’s firm Kushner Companies owns more than 30 buildings in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan alone.
No place in the United States has been harder hit by the coronavirus than New York City. It’s seen both more cases and more deaths than anywhere in the country, showing few signs of abating. The city stands as the global epicenter of the pandemic at this moment.
New York has locked down, operating under a shelter-in-place order for over a week. Numerous businesses and restaurants have shuttered, resulting in scores of layoffs. The Jacob Javits Convention Center has been transformed into a massive makeshift hospital. With untold thousands of people out of work, and the first of the month approaching, that sets up an impending crisis for a city of nearly ten million people where roughly two-thirds are renters: What happens if they can’t make rent?
That question is also on the minds of the city’s landlords, who are facing down the possibility of losing the monthly rent checks they’d otherwise expect to receive. Some landlords have offered rent forbearance to their tenants amid the escalating economic crisis. But others, like official White House son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose Kushner Companies owns over 30 buildings just in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, are not feeling so generous.
According to reporting from Mother Jones, verified by the Prospect, Westminster Management, a subsidiary of Kushner Companies that is responsible for more than 20,000 apartments across six states, has spent the past handful of days sending residents in New York City’s East Village neighborhood new notices about rent collection. The flyer, which featured no mention of the rapidly evolving coronavirus crisis, encourages them to use a new online platform to pay their impending rent check, rather than delivering payments in person. That new portal accepts e-check or money order, as well as credit or debit card payments, for a fee. “There has been no forbearance mentioned to them,” said Brandon Kielbasa, director of organizing and policy at the Cooper Square Committee, a local tenants’ rights group. “Many are concerned about how they will afford their rent.”
But the absence of an offer of forbearance goes beyond stinginess. Because of an executive order from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, all tenants, both residential and commercial, are protected under a state eviction moratorium that is in effect until at least June 20. Meanwhile, New York Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks announced a suspension on court eviction proceedings, which, despite some early confusion, means that no new eviction cases are being brought before the courts until at least late April.
That means that Kushner Companies has no grounds or recourse to evict its tenants, whether or not they pay rent on April 1. Instead, the company is using repeated notices (tenants were sent multiple alerts over the past few days) in an attempt to badger low-information renters, those unaware of the state’s ban on evictions, into paying them in full.
New York City has not passed a rent freeze, which means that, even with an eviction moratorium in place, renters are not free to forgo their rent payments for the time being. But if a renter is unable to pay because of a recent layoff or any other reason, even if a landlord did try to initiate an eviction by filing a new case in late April when courts re-open, tenants cannot be evicted with the moratorium in place until at least June 20.
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The situation for renters still may change. Cuomo declined to include renters in a recent announcement on mortgage payment relief. But Queens state Senator Michael Gianaris has proposed legislation that would suspend rent for 90 days for residential and commercial tenants impacted by the outbreak. Were that to be enacted, renters would be afforded much greater protections than they currently have.
While Kushner Companies treats its tenants in ungenerous fashion, pressuring them to pay up in a moment of extreme economic duress, the firm is also primed to enjoy the generosity of the federal government’s multitrillion-dollar bailout package. Despite provisions in the bill that prevent members of the Trump family from recouping bailout money directly, hotel owners, including those employing up to 500 people per location, will be eligible for low-interest small-business loans that could eventually be forgiven.
Kushner and his family’s priorities are clear: wring every dollar out of tenants, before cashing in on the bailout plan that Jared himself helped draw up.
Kushner Companies’ hotel division, which it started in 2017, after Donald Trump’s election, owns six hotels, including a Marriott in New Jersey (Marriott, of course, recently announced a plan to furlough “tens of thousands of workers” without pay in response to the coronavirus crisis). Meanwhile, Kushner Companies could also benefit from a $15 billion change to the tax code secured by retailers and restaurants. And because Jared maintains a personal but passive ownership stake in his family firm’s interests, he may be able to sidestep the bill’s ethics ban, which only kicks in when the affected party holds a more than 20 percent stake in a firm requesting federal funds.
So while the hospitality and commercial real-estate components of the Kushner business empire feel the squeeze, the company is in turn squeezing its New York renters as best it can. The priorities of Jared Kushner and his family’s real-estate empire are clear: wring every dollar out of their tenants, before cashing in on the bailout plan that Jared himself helped draw up.
