When you have experienced numerous incidents of bad treatment, it is but normal to walk away from another potential case of bad treatment. This is why it’s understandable how some tenants of several foreclosed East Harlem apartment buildings are staging a sort of protest against the new potential buyer of their apartment units. Having had to go through two landlords who neglected their properties, the tenants are now planning to thwart a non-profit organization’s plans of taking over.

Harlem-based affordable housing group Now Hope Community Inc. made known its intent of taking over the 47 East Harlem apartment buildings that were foreclosed in 2009. Bought in 2007 for $225 million by the now-defunct British firm Dawnay Day, the buildings have always been in rundown conditions even when it was still under their former landlord Stephen Kessner.

Having gone under two landlords and still experiencing shoddy plumbing, mice, bedbug infestations, and leaky ceilings, tenants are now wary of welcoming a new landlord who can still let their units go further downhill. An organized group named Movement for Justice in El Barrio, which represents tenant associations in the apartment buildings, claims that they know how Hope Community neglected its other properties.

Walter Roberts, the executive director for the non-profit – which also manages 1,300 more low-income apartments in Harlem – says that these criticisms are unfounded. He shares that Hope Community shares the Movement for Justice in El Barrio’s vision of bettering the living conditions for the tenants. He tried reaching out to the organized group but to no avail.

He further shares that the non-profit is now renovating one of its managed apartment buildings and ahs even helped out tenants relocate temporarily. Once renovations are done, the tenants can move in the improved buildings for the same rent. Mr. Roberts says Hope Community wishes to do the same for the Dawnay Day aprtments units.

Not all tenants are opposed to the sale, though; there are a few tenants who are actually hoping that Hope Community gets the sale. A tenant who has been in the East 117 Street in the last 39 years shares that she has seen how Hope Community turned around its current apartment buildings and that the non-profit has now earned a good reputation for itself.

The special servicer in charge of the properties, C III Capital Partners LLC, will still have to decide whether to sell off the 47 to buyers or to auction them off. At least one non-profit has also expressed interest in the said properties.