The Pinnacle Group: Owner Joel Weiner is a Wiener.

The Pinnacle Group is very similar to the (Oheb)Shalom family, except that this post doesn’t start out with a song. It’s a family-owned business, currently owned by 3rd generation Joel Weiner, who’s very obviously a wiener. The Pinnacle Group owns over 20,000 rent-stabilized units that cost around $500 a month, but they evict the tenants, do a quick remodel, and then rent it out for $1500-$1700 a pop. In the last few years, they have tried to evict ¼ of their tenants for no real reason and have had 5,000 eviction proceedings in various housing courts.

From The New York Times:

“When you are trying to evict one out of four tenants, that is what lawyers call prima facie evidence,” Congressman Rangel said. “It is something that screams out for a criminal or civil or legal remedy.”
They rarely win in court, and that’s partially because they “accidentally” charge their tenants for a lot of extra things that they obviously didn’t use in that apartment (unless it was a really, really […really, really, really…] big apartment):

When they examined Pinnacle’s invoices for the work done on [one] apartment… they found that the company had included charges for 160 light bulbs, 75 pounds of grout, 130 gallons of paint, a $198 nail gun and a $424 drain cleaning device. They also found that some items listed as installed were not there, including oak flooring and a pedestal sink.
Unless Pinnacle was giving this tenant their own building all to themselves, then they screwed up big time. They have also charged other tenants $1000 for 100 gallons of paint, 5 toilets for a 2 bathroom apartment, and other outrageous amounts of supplies, which basically means that they’re building all of their evicted tenants large castles. At least I hope. Residents have also said that they have been charged for new front doors that were installed years before they moved in.

You would hope that Pinnacle wouldn’t overcharge people and spend most of their money in housing courts so that they could fix building violations, like a building that went on fire one Father’s Day several years ago and was never fixed. But no. Instead:
Statements from tenants at properties owned by Pinnacle… detail what they call constant harassment: allegedly discriminating against Latino tenants; invasion of privacy; alleged mail theft to facilitate bogus court proceeding; and sustaining second-degree burns from a radiator explosion – the alleged result of long-standing need for repair.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with this shitty management company. Read the articles at The New York Times, The Real Deal, and Indy Press NY, and also check out BRUSH’s website. When apartment hunting, make sure that these guys are not the management, and always look at your bill for what you’re being charged for.