This tenant support campaign was close to many of our hearts, as Yosandri has been a friend to SeaSol for over a decade. When Yosandri’s family friend N (a longtime SeaSol member) let us know during a meeting that Yosandri’s landlord had been horribly abusing his family, we offered tenant support. 

The landlord, Vincenzo Pepe (“Nino el Asqueroso”), was doing nightmarishly terrible things to his tenants. He thought he could get away with his misdeeds because his tenants are Spanish speakers, immigrants, and/or because some tenants are deaf. This evil landlord:

• threateningly toted hunting guns around the property
• entered their home and stole their food repeatedly
• used a young child as an interpreter to threaten illegal eviction to the deaf adults in the house, using foul language and swearing
• used the tenants’ water to wash his boat, then substantially overcharged them for utilities 
• shut off the washing machine and dryer
• shut off the family’s hot water out of cruelty in winter, and eventually shut off all the water and power to their home 
• moved himself into their house to try to make a case to evict them more easily
• stood outside their windows and took pictures of them
• poured gasoline around their home one night
• placed an unidentified white powder and various smelly items around the inside of their house to scare them

SeaSol came alongside Yosandri’s family and got them in touch with pro bono lawyers, who helped them address Nino’s abuse (shout-out to P, who went above and beyond to help!). SeaSol provided the family with mutual aid when Nino escalated his abuse, and did an in-person demand delivery to get Nino to turn the hot water back on in their home for a time.

With many members’ great effort and persistence, SeaSol won this fight! We celebrated victory because Yosandri and his family have moved into a new apartment, and are out of Nino’s abusive reach. Nino was forced to: 

1. pay the family back the security deposit he had illegally collected, 
2. acknowledge that the family did not owe the bogus utility bills he had been trying to collect, and 
3. pay the family a “cash for keys” agreement of $4,000. 

Although these wins didn’t undo Nino’s many crimes against their family, we consider the fact that Yosandri and his family walked away from this situation with a cashier’s check for $4,000 from Nino and are now safely living in a new apartment: a HUGE victory.