The new owner of more than 5,000 mostly rent-stabilized apartments in New York City has agreed to waive millions of dollars in unpaid rent owed by tenants in the years prior to a high-profile bankruptcy sale targeted by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The company, Summit Properties, bought the 93-building portfolio in March after its previous owner, Pinnacle Group, went bankrupt in a deal that drew intervention from Mamdani and top city officials.
Gothamist reported that Summit agreed to forgive tenants’ back rent during a recent meeting with leaders from the Union of Pinnacle Tenants, which represents residents across four boroughs where Summit bought Pinnacle buildings.
The website said that many tenants began withholding rent because they had been dealing with unsafe conditions for years. Others fell behind because they could not afford their monthly payments, according to the tenant union.
They may now get a blank slate, Gothamist said.
‘Won’t Pursue Arrears’
“If residents stay current on their rent, we won’t pursue arrears,” Summit spokesperson Jordan Barowitz told Gothamist. He said that Summit was still determining how many tenants owed back rent, but that the total was in the millions of dollars.
Gothamist noted that its review of court records shows at least 84 separate limited liability companies linked to Pinnacle filed at least 2,569 nonpayment eviction lawsuits in the five-year period between April 2021 and April 2026, when Summit took control.
“It is a big victory,” said Vivian Kuo, a tenant union representative who lives in a Summit building in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem. “This is real direct monetary redress of people’s issues.”
Tenants dealt with a variety of problems in their buildings, including caved-in ceilings, heat outages, and, at times, darkened hallways after Con Edison cut the common area electricity due to the landlord’s unpaid bills, Kuo said.
“Your home should be safe, and there are certain basic standards — heat, hot water, ceilings and walls that don’t have massive holes, doors that lock, a fire escape you can actually escape from,” Kuo said. “These are things that we should have.”
The buildings were central to one of Mamdani’s first official acts as mayor, when he directed city lawyers to intervene in the pending bankruptcy sale, citing the city’s role as a creditor.
Gothamist said that Pinnacle owed the city almost $13 million in back taxes and fines.
