‘Greedy Jewish Landlords’ Are Problem: New York Council Candidate

By Daniel J. Solomon April 24, 2017

Image by Twitter

Blasting “greedy Jewish landlords” for their “ethnic cleansing” of black and Hispanic renters, Thomas Lopez-Pierre is mounting a bid for New York City Council.

The district he’s running in takes in parts of the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and Washington Heights – areas that contain large Jewish populations.

“Jewish Landlords … are at the forefront of ethnic cleansing/pushing Black/Hispanic tenants out of their apartments,” Lopez-Pierre writes on his Web site.

He will face district incumbent Mark Levine in this fall’s Democratic primary, which is decisive in choosing who will occupy the seat. Lopez-Pierre is currently angling to raise enough money to secure $100,000 in matching funds from New York City, and he claims to have raised more than half the necessary amount.

This isn’t Lopez-Pierre’s first brush with notoriety. Back in 2013, when he initially faced Levine, he said his rival wanted “to sneak into office like a thief in the night.” Previously, he attempted to found a social club in Harlem that would only admit rich black and Latino men and attractive women of color.

He said at the time: “I want it all, and I got it all. There are men who want the same.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO