In Scott Stiffler’s Chelsea Now article about Andrew Tilley’s recent posting of eviction notices, Tilley is given the pull-quote to chastise us clueless Bohemians thusly: “It’s really quite simple: you live somewhere, you have to pay rent.”
Wow, I'm so glad he cleared that up. When I wrote about the matter a couple of weeks however, my point was that it was really low down of Tilley to spring these notices on tenants without warning the day after the bottom fell out of the stock market (no doubt resulting in huge losses to some of the very tenants who received the notices.) Macho Darwinian platitudes aside, from a social standpoint, the eve of a depression is hardly the time to be throwing people out in the street.
Furthermore, it’s not to recover the small amount of money owed that Tilley put up these notices. That wouldn’t make any sense, because the hotel would have to spend a huge sum in legal fees chasing after a few thousand dollars. In fact Tilley would much rather the tenants in question didn’t pay. That’s why he sprung these notices on people at a vulnerable time, when they may not have had ready cash at hand. Tilley wants these residents out so he can convert their rent stabilized rooms to high priced hotel rooms that he can rent out by the night.
Let’s not miss the forest for the trees (or pretend to): while we are certainly concerned with the plight of individual tenants, the larger issue here is the preservation of affordable permanent housing in the Chelsea Hotel and in New York as a whole. Our way of life is under assault by outsiders who are motivated purely by greed.
As Scott Griffin correctly points out in the article, Tilley has a bad habit of saying one thing and doing another. He told tenants they would get a friendly reminder if they fell behind in the rent, and then, without warning, he goes and slaps legal notices on their doors. He subsequently denies knowing anything about these notices until it's pointed out to him that he has signed each one. Similarly, when Tilley says he only wants us out if we can't pay the rent, can we be blamed for thinking that he would like to kick us out whether we pay or not? (Scott Stiffler incorrectly states that the amounts are not in dispute. There are numerous over-charge claims pending and some of the folks who received notices may be among those who have over-charge claims pending.)
At least Tilley seems to be coming to terms with the fact that his vaunted "renovation" will not be forthcoming anytime soon. — Ed Hamilton
Living with Legends 
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