A group of business owners gathered in front of Capitol Diner on Kingsbridge Road and Jerome Avenue, to discuss an ongoing heat issues involving six businesses on West Kingsbridge Road. The conversation soon went around the corner, to Com Tam Ninh Kiev, a local Vietnamese eatery also dealing with a landlord issue.

The meeting was organized by the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition, where organizers brought Brooklyn Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr., into the conversation. It made sense. Though from Brooklyn, Cornegy is chair of the Small Business Committee. For more than an hour, organizers heard from business owners’ continued fight for equity from their landlords. Carlos Nieves, the longtime owner of Flowers by Carlos on Kingsbridge Road and Morris Avenue, sat in the Vietnamese restaurant waiting for the Commercial Tenant Help Event. As a business owner he had faced injustice when a new landlord bought the property five years ago, and doubled his rent. Additionally, he kept Nieves without a lease since then. Recently, the landlord increased his rent again by 34 percent of his already doubled rent. “I’m ready to go out, my landlord just hiked up my rent so that’s it,” said Nieves. Unfortunately, he is not the only business who has rent issues with his landlord.

Councilman Robert E. Cornegy, Council Member of District 36 in Brooklyn and Chair of the Small Business Committee, led the discussion where many of the present tenants told him the issues they have had with their landlords. “It is against the law for a landlord to withhold essential services,” said the Councilman. “Before [laws] would only protect housing tenants. Now it goes for small business owners as well.”

Many business owners have faced harassment, and neglect from the landlords. “There are holes in the ceiling that have been there for a very long time,” Lucila Savedraa, owner of Lucy Flower Shop, told the Councilman when sharing her problems. “There has been no hot water since I first began there 26 years ago,” she said.

“When we try to negotiate the lease, they try to manipulate a sense of getting extra money from us if we want to stay,” said Christian Ramos, owner of a shoe repair shop. ”We want to stay and every time we are going to renew the lease we have to prepare some money on the side.” The Councilman quickly informed Ramos that it was what he was facing was extortion.

“I have my little box of savings for when the time comes to renew my lease,” Ramos said.

Most of the business owners that had come to the meeting have not had their lease renewed for years while some have a month-to-month lease, scared that at any moment they could be kicked out.

“What I’m seeing that it is less about individual stores and more about this being a pattern,” said Cornegy Jr. “There is a pattern of neglect and to some degree of harassment.”