100 Central Park South: Tenant Harassment Campaign and Federal RICO Dismissal
Tier 1Resolved1981-01-01 to 1998-01-01
Factual Summary
In 1981, Donald Trump purchased 100 Central Park South, a 14-story residential building, alongside the adjacent 38-story Barbizon Plaza Hotel for approximately $65 million. His stated goal was to demolish both structures and construct a luxury condominium tower. The building housed roughly 60 occupied units, with approximately half under rent control and half under rent stabilization.
Tenants filed complaints with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) and in state court alleging a pattern of harassment intended to force them out. The allegations included shutoffs of heat and hot water during winter months, cessation of all building repairs, rodent infestation, boarded-up windows in vacant apartments to make the building appear abandoned, and false nonpayment-of-rent notices. In one case, tenant James Galef was ordered to rebuild a wall that had been removed in 1955. Tenant Suzanne Blackmer received repeated baseless eviction notices claiming her apartment was not her primary residence. Tenants also alleged that Trump's management allowed homeless individuals to occupy vacant units as a means of intimidating remaining residents.
In 1984, tenants obtained a court injunction blocking Trump's compliance-order-based evictions. In 1985, the DHCR filed charges against Trump alleging harassment, "wrongful acts and omissions," false nonpayment notices, and shutoffs of essential utilities.
Trump responded by filing a $205 million federal RICO countersuit against the tenants' law firm, alleging the attorneys had engaged in racketeering and extortion by filing DHCR complaints. In 1986, Federal Judge Whitman Knapp dismissed the case with prejudice, describing Trump's claims as "rather incredible." Trump subsequently dropped all eviction proceedings and paid tenant legal fees exceeding $500,000.
A settlement framework was established in 1988 allowing conversion of vacant units to condominiums while permitting 51 rent-regulated tenants to remain. A final appellate settlement confirmed in 1998 allowed the remaining tenants to stay with no major-capital-improvement rent increases for eight years or to purchase at a one-third discount. Only 8 of 51 tenants exercised the purchase option.
Primary Sources
1. Park South Associates v. Fischbein, 626 F. Supp. 1108 (S.D.N.Y. 1986), dismissing Trump's RICO countersuit with prejudice
2. New York State DHCR complaint records (1985), available via FOIL request to the New York State DHCR
Corroborating Sources
1. CNN Money: "Trump was a nightmare landlord in the 1980s," March 28, 2016: https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/28/news/trump-apartment-tenants/
2. The Tenant: "How Rent-Stabilized Tenants Foiled Donald Trump": https://thetenant.org/how-rent-stabilized-tenants-foiled-donald-trump/
3. New York Times, 1985: Columnist Sydney Schanberg published an editorial calling Trump a "slumlord"
Counterarguments and Context
Trump argued that the tenants were holdouts exploiting rent regulations to occupy prime Manhattan real estate at below-market rates and that the building was deteriorating. He contended that his attorneys' RICO suit was warranted because the tenants' lawyers had engaged in an organized scheme to extort him through regulatory filings. Federal Judge Knapp rejected those claims entirely. Trump also proposed housing homeless individuals in vacant units as a public gesture, framing it as charitable. Tenants and advocates characterized this as deliberate intimidation. Trump ultimately abandoned his development plans, dropped all eviction proceedings, and paid over $500,000 in tenant legal fees.
Author's Note
The harassment allegations were formally investigated by the DHCR but resolved through settlement before the agency issued a final determination. The federal court's dismissal of Trump's RICO countersuit with prejudice, combined with his payment of tenant legal fees and abandonment of eviction efforts, constitutes the adjudicated outcome supporting the Tier 1 classification. The underlying tenant harassment claims were never the subject of a standalone civil judgment finding Trump liable.