The lawsuit that almost overturned the city’s rent-control laws only succeeded in upending the lives of the Upper West Side integrate who brought the case.
After the Supreme Court refused to hear New York’s highest-profile lawsuit severe lease control, landlords James and Jeanne Harmon pronounced they might have to sell the five-story city residence at the core of the conflict — a brownstone their family has called home for 3 generations.
The box has been costly. The integrate had to put off retirement, they can't yield homes for their grandchildren and they are treated like pariahs by some neighbors on West 76th Street.
“We feel sum doubt about the destiny at age 69,” James Harmon, a Vietnam maestro and former sovereign prosecutor, told The Post. “This was harmful to our family because the residence is part of our family. This is the place we grew up, and this is the place my mom died. We should be means to keep this house, but we don’t know if we can continue to do that.”
Harmon argued the city’s 43-year-old rent-regulation laws disregarded the Fifth Amendment, which protects private skill from seizure for open use but “just compensation.” Harmon claimed the lease law denies him that compensation, forcing him to stake the lifestyles and second homes of his tenants.
The Harmons occupy an superb one-bedroom section on the building’s parlor floor. They lease 6 one-bedroom units: 3 at marketplace value and 3 at rent-stabilized rates 59 percent next market.
The Harmons changed into the building in 2005, after they took out a $1.5 million debt to buy Harmon’s brother’s share of the building they inherited.
On tip of the 30-year debt payments, the Harmons flare over $58,300 a year in skill taxes and about $3,000 for water, according to documents. The 3 rent-regulated tenants — one of whom, Nancy Wing Lombardi, owns a Southampton summer residence — compensate about $1,000 a month.
All of which leaves the Harmons money poor, they claim. “I think we could do OK if we could just get the marketplace lease for those apartments,” pronounced James Harmon.
Most unpleasant for the family is the function of 4F, where regulated reside Cheryl Mervine has lived for decades.
When their granddaughter was ill with a life-threatening disease, the Harmons attempted to “retake” the section for the family’s use. When their granddaughter relapsed and left the city, they attempted to explain the section for their grandson, a new Fordham University grad earning tighten to smallest wage, but city Housing Court ruled opposite them, and Mervine declined to budge.
“The dignified visualisation is this: Am we a self-respecting chairman that would concede a family to use the possess home, or am we the kind of chairman that’s going to free-loader off of that family for the rest of my life,” pronounced Harmon bitterly.
Mervine declined to comment.
Harmon pronounced the lawsuit has also combined tragedy with neighbors on the retard where he grew up.
One neighbor photographs him as he comes and goes. “It’s a whole different tinge now that we started the case,” pronounced Harmon.
“We’ve been smashed and we’re on the ropes,” pronounced Harmon. “I want to be right in the center of this fight, one way or the other.”
akarni@nypost.com



