City Council candidate Inez Dickens, whose family owns several rental buildings in Harlem, claimed Tuesday she hasn’t evicted anyone in over a decade — but a Us.Mistertruth review of court records reveals a company she controls recently kicked a tenant out of his home as part of a long history of bringing eviction cases.
The issue came up during a candidate debate on NY1 when Dickens, a state Assembly member who’s running in this month’s heated Democratic primary for Harlem’s 9th Council District, was asked by one of her opponents, Yusef Salaam, how many tenants she has evicted “in the past 20 years.”
In response, Dickens said she has carried out “no evictions” for “more than 12 years.”
But Dickens campaign spokeswoman Sofia Quintanar acknowledged Wednesday that Lloyd’s Funding Corp., a Dickens family management firm for which she’s listed as vice president and treasurer, evicted a tenant from a building it owns on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard near W. 128 St. as part of a case that started in 2017.
Another Dickens campaign rep, Lupe Todd-Medina, said the tenant in the 2017 case was evicted amid complaints from neighbors about violent behavior.
The 2017 case is part of a history of at least 17 evictions initiated over the past 20 years by Lloyd’s and 1389 Construction Corp., another Dickens family management company. Court and business records list Dickens as that company’s president.
Court records reviewed by The News confirm that 1389 Construction has filed five eviction cases over the past two decades against tenants at another building it owns on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard near W. 139th St. Those cases include one in 2013, two in 2014, one in 2015 and one this year against a man named Albert Anderson.
During Tuesday night’s debate, Dickens acknowledged the case against Anderson, saying he “asked me to take him to court because that was the only way that he was going to get assistance to get his rent paid.” Dickens said Anderson has since endorsed her and “is on my flyers right now campaigning for me,” as first reported by City & State.
Beyond the 2017 case, Lloyd’s has filed another 11 eviction cases in the past 20 years against tenants at the W. 128th St. address, records reveal. Among them are two eviction cases filed in 2019.
Quintanar said none of the other cases resulted in tenants actually being evicted.
However, she would not say whether any of those cases remain pending and also declined to provide documentation confirming the outcomes of the proceedings. The court records reviewed by The News do not divulge the outcomes of the cases.
“What the management companies carried out was standard procedure for tenants who do not pay their rent,” Quintanar said, arguing Dickens’ entities brought the eviction cases to help tenants obtain rental aid faster.
“Less than 2% of the property owners in Harlem are Black,” Quintanar said. “As one of the few remaining Black property owners in Harlem, it is never the intention to remove people from their homes. However the rent is already very low, at less than $1,000 per month for most tenants in the management company’s rent-stabilized buildings. Buildings need maintenance and bills still need to be paid.”
Asked Wednesday about Dickens’ eviction filing history, Salaam accused her of offering a misleading response to his question at the debate.
“Inez Dickens sat on the debate stage and lied about how many Harlemites she has evicted,” said Salaam, a criminal justice advocate who as a teenager was wrongfully convicted in the 1989 “Central Park Five” rape case. “New Yorkers deserve elected officials who will tell the truth all the time. Every time.”
Quintanar punched back by accusing Salaam of subjecting her tenants to “possible public embarrassment for cheap political points.”
“Instead of our opponent putting a clean glass on the table and offering solutions to the district’s housing crisis, he is choosing to bring residents into this discussion who are not involved,” Quintanar said.
Dickens, a longtime fixture of Harlem politics, has landed in hot water before over her landlord business. In 2013, while she was vying to become Council speaker, she was blasted by political opponents as a “slumlord” following revelations that she owed tens of thousands of dollars in fines to the city for violations at buildings she owned.
Besides Dickens and Salaam, State Assemblyman Al Taylor is in the running for the 9th District seat.
The district is currently represented by Councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan, a democratic socialist. However, Richardson Jordan abruptly announced last month that she won’t seek reelection.
Richardson Jordan’s withdrawal created a major opening for the three other candidates, and the contest is viewed as one of the most competitive in the June 27 primary.