“Adam Leitman Bailey and his team really came to the rescue of a small group of elderly  (average age close to 90) rent stabilized tenants in an otherwise non-stabilized luxury building in Manhattan who suddenly were confronted with a huge increase in rent.  Many were thrown into states of major anxiety.They couldn’t sleep.They worried that they would be thrown out of their long term homes. Since many were in walkers or with canes  and couldn’t get to him for a meeting, he came to us, not once, but several times, to explain that he would take care of them.  And, he painstakingly explained what would happen to those who had trouble understanding. I could never understand why the landlord would not just let them be, as many would be dead in not so long a time. And, that is exactly what did come to pass.

 Basically, the landlord decided to renovate the lobby and halls (because  of awful mold in the halls). There also was a flood, after some work was done, and they had to start over basically. To pay for all this, the landlord decided to increase the size of our apartments. The way that was done was that the landlord added up the total number of ROOMS in the building. Then, the total (allowed) cost of the improvements was divided by the ROOMS and further subjected to some arithmetic, to calculate how much each ROOM of the apartment went up in rent. He also snuck in, aside from the construction costs, certain consulting and design expenses which, according to Adam and his team, was not legal.

I myself had  lived in a three room apartment for thirty years, but because of a poorly drawn diagram, it suddenly became a FOUR room apartment—effectively increasing my  rent  by 33%. Adam fought with DHCR to lower the room count for my apartment back down to three which it always was, even in my initial lease. I tried to initially negotiate with the landlord and the landlord’s attorneys, based on a reasonable basis, but got nowhere. That was when I contacted Adam, fearing, with all his large matters, he wouldn’t accept us as a client.

The ALB team was very professional and effective.  I don’t know what we would have done without them.”

– CSM, Manhattan