Jared Kushner outside Trump Tower. Image by Getty

By Lilly Maier January 16, 2017

Tenants of almost forty buildings that Jared Kushner owns in the East Village are shocked about the appointment of their landlord as special advisor to the president, the Village Voice reported.

Kushner has been repeatedly accused of tenant harassment and lack of providing essential services, in one building tenants didn’t have cooking gas for five months.

“Kushner has brought nothing but unaffordable, luxury housing to this community and to NYC at large,” the Cooper Square Committee and Fourth Arts Block , who help organize tenants, said in a joint statement. “While we are in the grips of an intense housing crisis, and homeless rates are at an all-time high … Kushner has converted scores of affordable rent regulated apartments into luxury housing that rent for $3,000-$5,000 per month.”

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The two organizations also criticized New York mayor de Blasio who greeted Kushner’s appointment to his father-in-law’s White House and called him a “reasonable man.”

Tenants complain that Kushner is using aggressive and loud renovation tactics to push them out of their apartment buildings, so that he can then raise the rent. One tenant, Edward Osborne, told the Village Voice he is “horrified” by Kushner going to the White House. “I don’t think he’s demonstrated very good management principles.”

Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @lillymmaier

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