![]() ![]() Knapp and his services can be seen as indicative of the pressures a strong housing market puts on developers and landlords with affordable units in their portfolio. ![]() Knapp, who vigorously tracks tenants’ trail of public documents, according to a 1988 New York Times profile, is by no means unprecedented, with private investigators involved in similar work reporting seeing a surge in business over the past few years. Stuyvesant Town’s decision to bring in Mr. Housing advocacy groups said they see yesterday’s $1.3 billion sale of Brooklyn’s Starrett City affordable-housing complex as a case in point of this trend, as the buyers indicated they intend to leave the Mitchell-Lama affordable housing program - a move that housing advocates and elected officials have denounced. With a booming real estate market, mounting debt from high-priced purchases, and increasing property taxes, building owners have more incentive than ever to shed such units, which can bring in but a fraction of the market value. ![]() The hiring of the private detective, Fred Knapp, whom the New York Times once dubbed the “scourge of illegal tenants,” speaks to a broader pressure on landlords across the city to drop affordable units and extract market rate rents. Since purchasing the 11,000-plus-unit residential complex in October, owner Tishman Speyer has been ratcheting up pressure on such tenants in what is likely an effort to convert the units to market rate apartments and thereby bring in greater cash flow, residents say. The new owner of the Manhattan mega-complex Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, in a move that will be closely watched by apartment owners and renters alike, has hired a private detective to seek out violators of rent stabilization rules, sources said. ![]()
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