Jared Kushner’s Family Business Blames Slumlord Tactics on Paperwork Error

Throughout Jared Kushner’s time in Washington, one issue that has consistently plagued him is his complete and total inability to fill out a form correctly the first time. Instances in which the First Son-in-Law has fucked up in this regard include, but are not limited to: failing to mention more than 100 foreign officials he met with before joining the the White House, including some Russian ones; the omission of key pieces of information that forced him to amend his financial-disclosure forms at least 39 times; and registering to vote as a woman. And apparently, this sort of thing was a problem well before his White House tenure.

The Associated Press reports that during a three-year period in which Boy Wonder was C.E.O., his family business, Kushner Cos., filed false paperwork that resulted in millions in profit for the firm. In 2015, when the company bought three apartment buildings in Astoria, Queens, where most of the tenants were protected by regulations designed to prevent developers like the Kushners from pushing them out, jacking up the rent, and turning a nice profit, the company conveniently filed paperwork claiming there were no such tenants in residence. By checking a box on a construction permit that indicated the buildings had no rent-regulated tenants, Kushner Cos. was able to get around strict oversight that may have included unscheduled “sweeps” by inspectors to ensure the company wasn’t harassing tenants and attempting to force them out. Instead, current and former residents told the A.P. that they were “subjected to extensive construction, with banging, drilling, dust, and leaking water that they believe were part of targeted harassment to get them to leave and clear the way for higher-paying renters.” “It was noisy, there were complaints, I got mice,” said mailman Rudolph Romano. “They cleaned the place out. I watched the whole building leave.”

Kushner Cos. apparently did the same thing in the East Village in 2013, claiming that a six-story walk-up had zero rent-regulated tenants when, in fact, there were seven of them. All in all, the company is said to have filed at least 80 false applications in 34 buildings in New York City from 2013 to 2016, according to the Housing Rights Initiative. “It’s barefaced greed,“ Aaron Carr, founder of the tenants’-rights watchdog, told the A.P. “The fact that the company was falsifying all these applications with the government shows a sordid attempt to avert accountability and get a rapid return on its investment.” (Kushner Cos. is said to have sold the Queens properties for $60 million, almost 50 percent more than what the company paid to acquire them.)

In a statement, Kushner Cos. said that it uses third parties to prepare such documents, and “if mistakes or violations are identified, corrective action is taken immediately.” The company added that it would “never deny any tenant their due-process rights,” and noted that it “has renovated thousands of apartments and developments with minimal complaints over the past 30 years.” Others would probably beg to differ. “All of a sudden, there was drilling, drilling . . . You heard the drilling in the middle of [the] night,” __Mary Ann Siwek__told the A.P. “There were rats coming in from the abandoned building next door. The hallways were always filled with lumber and sawdust and plaster.”

For his part, Jared sold off a chunk of of his real-estate holdings when he took a job working for his father-in-law. But he retained stakes in a number of properties, including Westminster Management, a subsidiary that oversees Kushner Cos.’ residential holdings, from which he reportedly earned a tidy $1.6 million last year.