The City’s Worst Landlord

Columbia University is the largest territory in NYC, and the Columbia University Tenants Union is fighting to keep it in check. 

By Jeremiah Barron

Illustration by Nini Vilac

In 1987, journalists Ted Robbins and Jack Newfield published a ranking of the city’s most abusive landlords in The Village Voice; Columbia University won the title of the single worst landlord in the entire city. The largest private property owner in the city was, in their words, “a wolf in sheepskin clothing, a tax-exempt evictor.” Taking every measure to remove residents from the periphery of its territory, the University exhausted its legal playbook to evict some 15,000 tenants between 1960 and 1983. The article called out the University for its “assault” on Morningside Heights conducted with weaponry “wrapped in the garb of academic enlightenment.” Tenants would arrive home to signs that read, “MOVE. The building is coming down,” following its acquisition by the University. The Columbia of the ’80s was brutal. It expanded without regard for the local population to make room for its own. 

Tenants and students formed a tenant union to resist Columbia’s housing practices. The Morningside Tenants Federation was a coalition of smaller organizations that emerged within Columbia’s residential buildings in the ’70s and ’80s. The Federation also sought to include residents of non-University buildings, “because they could wake up one morning and find out that the University had bought their building,” in the words of then-state assemblyman Edward Sullivan, who hosted the Federation’s meetings. Staging several demonstrations around campus, organizing rent strikes, and battling in court, the Federation became a real political force a thousand members strong. With the assemblyman’s support, the Federation successfully pressured the University to repair its units and respect rent control laws. It also warded off several of the University’s eviction attempts, one court battle taking forty years to resolve in the tenants’ favor. Largely, the tenant union of the ’80s is the reason Columbia no longer holds the title Robbins and Newfield gave it. That is not to say the University has repented for its past, though. The University has now set its sights on its affiliates. It has tightened its yoke on the students that occupy its halls, all while continuing to expand into broader Harlem. 

In the summer of 2025, a group of law school students organized to create the Columbia University Tenants Union to fight the University’s housing monopoly. Michael Gross LAW ’27 is a member of Community Board 9, a consultatory body to the City Council that represents Morningside Heights. Alongside other law students, Gross formed the Tenants Union as an organization not affiliated with the University. The Union aims at addressing the concerns of tenants in buildings managed by Barnard Housing, Columbia Housing, and Columbia Residential, which are distinct from one-another. Barnard Housing and Columbia Housing concern undergraduates at their respective schools, and Columbia Residential manages graduate and non-affiliate housing. Catalyzed by a now nine-month-long cooking gas outage in Barnard’s 620 W 116th dorm, the Union, representing students and non-affiliates, has 150-200 members in its ranks, according to Gross. Since its founding, the Union has sent several letters to the University about the conditions in 620 W 116th and other Columbia-owned residential buildings, voicing the complaints of tenants it collected; it has received no substantive response. The Union meets weekly to compile complaints and streamline demands. It does not collect dues, and, so far, has relied on direct communication with the University as its primary action. They do not take the militant actions that defined the Morningside Tenants Federation. 

Under New York state law, tenant unions are protected entities that landlords cannot dissolve. Unlike labor unions, they do not have to undergo a formal legal process to be recognized. In January, CB9 voted to send a lengthy letter to the Columbia administration in support of the Union’s demands. CB9’s endorsement does not give the Union power it previously lacked, but it serves as a useful source of external pressure on the University, Gross says. Both the letters sent by the Union and CB9 were shrugged off by the University. According to Gross, the University has tried to stifle the collective power of the Union, responding to the letters by saying, “we continue to honor existing channels for students and tenants to raise concerns directly with Columbia Residential.” The University is trying to get tenants to work around the Union and file complaints directly, rather than through a collective intermediary. Beyond communications like those, “we’ve been sending emails and not getting responses,” he says.

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The gas in 620 W 116th went out last summer after a gas leak on May 5, 2025. Barnard Housing communications suggest that the school thought cooking gas would be restored within the day. That was until Barnard’s gas provider, Con Edison, informed the school that an entire restructuring of other systems in the building would have to accompany any repairs to the gas piping. This is the cause of the delay; Barnard’s contractors have yet to treat the ails of the aging building. The school provided residents with complimentary meal swipes and hot plates to use for that semester. 

Barnard Housing failed to inform incoming residents that they would be without working kitchens until July 29, just a month before students were set to move in. When students entered their suites, they found barren kitchens, stripped of appliances and counters. “We showed up to the suite, and there’s nothing. There was no counter space, and there was an empty space where the oven used to be and the stove,” said Gabi Vintro, BC ’28, a resident of 620 W 116th who later moved to a different Barnard dorm. Unlike the semester prior, the school did not provide new residents with any financial assistance. To cook, her suite purchased a hot plate and a table to serve as a counter on their own dime. The other option was to purchase Barnard’s most expensive meal plan, again without financial assistance from the school. 

In November, Barnard Housing announced a modernization plan for the building, including the installation of electric stoves and AC units in each residence. Barnard Housing said the gas “outage provided the college an opportunity to improve the infrastructure over all.” This announcement came some six months after the outage began and created further problems for the residents of 620 W 116th. Maintenance workers occupied Vintro’s suite during the day, and “there were days at the end of last semester when the water would just be off from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.” When their bathroom flooded, her suitemates were not compensated for their damaged belongings, in line with Barnard policy. All of these things influenced her suite’s move to 600 W 116th, a Barnard building down the street where life is significantly less stressful, Vintro says.

If the missing kitchens and financial burdens were not enough, then Barnard’s communications with its residents are the sign of an indifferent landlord. In a statement to The Blue and White, Barnard Housing said they have been in “regular communication with residents and their families” throughout the outage. Ingrid Lu, BC ’28, who remained in the building to keep her single, feels differently: That for two months, Barnard Housing did not tell incoming residents they would have no gas, is more than negligence. She told The Blue and White it felt like Barnard Housing “just purposefully didn’t tell us, probably to avoid conflict.” But conflict was unavoidable. Over the summer, Vintro and her suitemates made several attempts to secure compensation. These efforts included a total of 23 phone calls from members of her suite to Barnard Housing, the creation of a Facebook group by residents’ parents, direct communications to the University by parents, and in-person meetings with administrators. The school rejected all of their requests. 

The outage has coincided with a particularly turbulent time in Barnard’s administrative history. Over the summer, Barnard laid off 77 employees amid a series of spending rollbacks. A member of Vintro’s suite, who wished to remain anonymous, said they had scheduled a meeting with Barnard Housing about securing compensation. The morning of, the administrator was laid off. When they reached out to reschedule with a different housing administrator, they were told the relevant administrator was on sabbatical and that “there was no one I could take [it] to.” Their questions remained unanswered. 

The Union makes a fairly simple demand regarding 620 W 116th: provide students with a rebate to cover the cost of appliances or meal plans. “We’ve made [the demand] a couple times now,” Gross told The Blue and White. “We have not heard back from Barnard directly regarding the situation at 620 W 116th.” There are a number of other landlords in the city, he said, that offer rent rebates for gas outages. The University, for now, is not one of them. It is instead doing what it can to save its $16 billion worth of pennies. 

The typical extreme action a tenant union can take against a noncompliant landlord is a renters’ strike, as the Morningside Tenants Federation once did. With student housing, that is not an option. Housing is paid at the beginning of each semester, and there is no formal lease that a typical tenant is able to leverage. If Columbia/Barnard fails to come to the bargaining table, Gross said the next escalation is to file a Group Housing Part action, which would bring Columbia into court, where a judge could compel Columbia to meet the Union’s demands. Gross made it clear, however, “that is not something we would necessarily want [for 620 W 116th] ... we’re just asking Columbia to come to the table.” 

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Just down Broadway is 542 W 112th. It is a graduate-student building housing over 100 students and their families—all of whom will be forced to move out by May 31. The announcement came on Jan. 20, shortly after the University began talks to expand its undergraduate class size by 20 percent. The University has since scaled back its plans to expand class-size, but are going through with their vacating of 542 W 112th. Many graduate students in the building, according to Gross, have families and had planned to remain in the building for the duration of their degrees. “It’s pretty ridiculous,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of tenants in that building reach out to us, basically asking us to find some way to help them.” 

In a letter sent to Acting President Claire Shipman on February 13, the Tenants Union recommended that the school consider a partial transition to undergraduate housing for the building, where undergraduate upperclassmen take the place of outgoing graduate students each year. Gross said this request has also been ignored. 542 W 112th currently appears on Columbia Housing websites as available for undergraduate room selection. The school informed the residents that “they will receive a credit toward moving expenses, and that rents will be prorated with no cancellation fees charged,” as per an email sent to the Tenants Union by the University on Feb. 25. Columbia Housing did not respond to The Blue and White’s request for comment. 

In another battle for the Heights, the school has burdened its law students. In a February 2026 lunch meeting, the school informed law students that it would impose a 20 percent fee on all students who wished to remain in their dorms for the summer to study for the bar exam. Columbia Residential prices their grad student housing at roughly $2,200 a month, meaning this proposed fee could run students an extra $1,300 over the course of a three-month stay. This fee was, in Gross’ words, “mentioned in passing.” The University had posted about the fee last semester, but made no other communication to law students. The Union demanded the fee be rescinded, especially given its short notice. Their emails, combined with pushback from law students, persuaded the University to change course. In an email obtained by The Blue and White, the University informed the Union, “the fee will be waived this year.” 

The Union also demands that Columbia require ICE and Law Enforcement to present judicial warrants to enter University buildings. This is the school’s policy–and was at the time of Mahmoud Khalil’s, SIPA ’24, detention last year–but the Union feels the school needs to do more to make its international students feel safe. This concern comes after ICE agents detained Khalil, for pro-Palestinian speech in a University building last March; the detaining of Mohsen Mahdawi, GS ’25, SIPA ’27; and the de-enrollment of Ranjani Srinivasan, previously a Ph.D. candidate at GSAPP, after her student visa was revoked by DHS and federal agents tried to enter her apartment on March 8, 2025, the same day as Khalil’s detention. Just last month on Feb. 26, five DHS agents entered a Columbia GS dorm on 121st Street, claiming they were police officers in search of a missing child. They possessed a fabricated missing poster and told the Public Safety officer present that they had reason to believe the child was in the building. Without presenting a warrant, DHS entered the building, where they detained Elmina Aghayeva, GS ’26, who was released later the day. The school’s policy, evidently, has failed to protect its international students. “Our demand is for Columbia to make sure that individual apartment buildings are secure from ICE and DHS entry that doesn’t involve a judicial warrant,” Gross said. This includes ensuring that Public Safety is adequately prepared to deal with federal agents. As of now, they clearly are not.  

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Many of the Union’s demands have thus far focused on student housing, but Gross says it is also trying to protect non-affiliates from Columbia’s landlord practices. “Columbia has this practice throughout its history of pushing tenants out to turn [buildings] into student housing,” Gross argues. Though the courts’ printers are no longer backlogged with pink eviction notices for the school to post around its domain, it still acts in ways that often result in the forced removal of tenants. Two decades ago, this took the form of the creation of the Manhattanville Campus in West Harlem. Now, the University goes after succession rights, Gross said: “Their uncle or their grandpa or their dad passes on the apartment to them. Columbia has in the past has challenged that succession.” One case, decided in February 2024, concerns Henry Ramirez, whose family member passed away while possessing a rent-controlled apartment owned by Columbia. Ramirez took Columbia to housing court over the school’s seizure of what he believed was rightfully his property. The court sided with Columbia, taking the unit from the Ramirez family and opening it to the market. This is a repeated practice in Columbia’s history: When a non-affiliate dies, Columbia converts their unit into student housing. The Union, unsurprisingly, wants the school to value its non-affiliated tenants.

More immediately, the Union wants to see Columbia open its vacant units to the market. The University recently announced it is opening eight units to non-affiliates through a lottery system. “We appreciate Columbia for doing that,” Gross said. “Columbia’s the largest landlord in the city. We think they should play a role in making more affordable housing available to New Yorkers.” The University does not regularly disclose the total number of vacant units it possesses. 

We are a long way from 1987. Columbia’s abuses are no longer so violent. It does not call in NYPD officers to remove tenants from their homes as enthusiastically as they once did. It no longer pursues lengthy court proceedings to dispossess thousands of people each year. But the University still controls its subjects. It refuses to compensate its victims, tells entire buildings to vacate on a whim, and levies undue taxes on its law students. The Union is fighting, but the University has done what it can to reduce building-wide issues into “individual tenant concerns,” Gross says. Against a territory so vast as Columbia’s, the fight against the University is a long one.