When Victims Rule (pdf)

JEWISH INFLUENCE IN POPULAR CULTURE (PT. 2)
his role in the largest arson ring in the country – a scheme that burned
37 buildings in three boroughs, injured 44 firefighters, and netted the enterprise
more than half a million dollars in insurance money.” In 1998,
570 housing violations still remained on their slum holdings. “In at least
seven buildings across Brooklyn, tenants live for days without heat,
months with rotten plumbing, and years without locks on their front
doors.” [LOBBIA, J., p. 34]
• Alan Ross, of Berkeley, California. In 1999 the San Francisco Examiner
noted that “Alan Ross, owner of the Aldrich Hotel Tenderloin district,
was shocked to hear his building was on the list [of San Francisco’s Ten
Worst Residential Hotels]. Ross, a Berkeley professor, said he leased the
hotel to an operator.” [SULLIVAN, K., 1999, p. A1]
• Baruch Singer, of New York. Singer owns over 50 buildings in poor
neighborhoods in Manhattan, north of 96th Street. Five Harlem buildings
alone have garnered nearly 2,000 housing code violations. In 1995,
one of his slum buildings collapsed, killing three people. The technical
landlord of the building, Marcus Lehman, has never even seen the building.
He has also been known to use pit bulls “to expedite at least one illegal
eviction.” In 1999, City councilman Bill Perkins called Singer “the
worst slumlord I have ever seen in Harlem.” Singer’s former partner, Leslie
Westreich, is a disbarred lawyer. An official from HUD noted that the
loss of his license to practice law was “definitely related to his conduct in
real estate.” Singer has friends in high places. New York State Assemblyman
Sheldon Silver sponsored a bill “intended to benefit Singer only” in
his attempts to acquire a building. Under heavy media fire for his help of
the slumlord, Assemblyman Silver explained that “Baruch’s father
[Yitzhak Singer] is the rabbi of my synagogue. When your rabbi’s son
asks for assistance, you try to help.” [NEWFIELD, J., 11-9- 99, p. 4; NEW-
FIELD/O’MAHONY, p. 6]
• Gerald Schuster, of Boston/New York. In 1999 the Village Voice publicly
wondered why Hillary Clinton attended a $500,000 fund-raiser hosted
by Schuster’s wife, Elaine. “Real estate tycoon” Schuster inherited his
Wingate Construction Company from his father-in-law, Bert Siegel. As
early as 1977 a Boston newspaper has called Schuster one of that city’s
worst slumlords with 1,200 housing code violations in a two-year span.
Schuster’s company took over the management of the Beekman Housing
Project in the South Bronx in 1996, a complex that has been since subject
to “at Least” 1,600 housing violations. [VEST, J., 12-21-99, p. 31]
• Milton Avol, of Los Angeles. Avol (nicknamed “the Rat Lord”), a Beverly
Hills neurosurgeon, was sentenced in 1988 to serve 30 days “in one of his
own run-down, vermin-infested buildings.” [ASSOCIATED PRESS,
p. C6] Avol was once called “the most recalcitrant slumlord in Los Angeles”
by a city prosecutor. [AP, 8-31-88]
• Aaron Kempe, also of Beverly Hills. In 1989 a judge ordered Kempe to
spent 45 days in his own run-down hotel. Kempe was permitted, howev-
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