Elderly NYC Tenant Goes To Florida For Extended Stay To Care For Dying Brother; Billionaire Landlord Responds By Trying To Give Her The Boot, Claiming Her Rent-Stabilized Apartment Is No Longer Her Primary Residence

In New York City, the New York Post reports:

• A billionaire landlord [...] is trying to evict a blind 82-year-old woman from her longtime rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper East Side — because she was out of the city caring for her dying brother, a lawsuit charges.
  
  “It makes no sense,” fumed Valerie Miké, who says she has lived at 500 E. 77th St. since 1973 but was in Florida tending to her brother, who died this past spring after a stroke.
  
  “When someone has a severe stroke, he may die any day because of the infection or he may wake up. A family member had to be here. I had no option,” said Miké, a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. “I tried over and over again to speak with management.”
  
  After hiring a lawyer for the first time in her life, Miké is suing her landlord to keep her $1,800-a-month one-bedroom.
  
  Glenwood Management’s Leonard Litwin owns the high-rise, where one-bedrooms go for $3,700 a month.
  
  ***
  [In May], Miké got a notice that her lease wouldn’t be renewed.
  
  The letter claimed the apartment wasn’t her primary residence because she was living with her “husband” John Miké in Florida, according to her Manhattan civil suit.
  
  John is Miké’s brother, her suit says. She went to care for him last year but still uses the 77th Street address on her voter, financial and health forms, court papers say.
  
  Even after Miké’s lawyer, Justin Bonanno, sent Litwin documentation — including a doctor’s note saying she was staying with her brother — he refused to void the eviction.
  
  “The law is clear. The code says you can do that as long as you keep a substantial ‘physical nexus’ with the apartment,” Bonanno said. “She has 2,000 volumes of books, all her furniture, her entire life is in that apartment.”
  
  Miké said, “Everyone in the building knew why I was in Florida.”
  
  Reps for Glenwood did not comment.

Source: Blind, elderly woman fights eviction by landlord.