Ella Taliercio moved into her Park Slope two-bedroom on Carroll Street in 1958, the year I was born. She’s been living in that apartment for as long as I’ve been alive and has raised three
kids there. Two of them died and are buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.
Now the Berkeley Carrol School, which bought the building a few years ago, wants Taliercio out so they can turn the building into classrooms. Why do they need classrooms so far away from the school buildings on Carroll Street and Lincoln Place? The whole things sounds fishy to me.
According to Gothamist: "The
apartment is rent-stabilized—Taliercio paid $33 a month in ’58 and
$147.08 today—but Berkeley Carroll has non-profit status, enabling the
school to evict the couple. Taliercio tells the Daily News through tears, "It’s my home. How do you just shut the door on something where you’ve been for so many years?" Don’t worry, Ella, Berkeley administrators will have the eviction marshal help you with that."
This is a publicity nightmare for Berkeley Carroll, portrayed in various local newspapers as a fancy school that charges more than $25,000 per child a year. There must be a better way to handle this. Is Berkeley Carroll finding Taliercio a new home in the Slope. I heard they offered her $20,000 but that doesn’t sound like enough to me.
There must be a way that Berkeley Carroll can handle this situation with grace and humanity.
I hate to sound crass about this, but I disagree. As the comments on Curbed showed yesterday, the vast majority of people have no sympathy for her. She’s in a rent stablized apartment and has long enjoyed a rent well below market. B-C, as the owners of the building, have the legal right to evict her, and in the mid-80s, they offered her $50,000. Had she taken her savings and that money, she could be the proud owner of a multi-million-dollar Park Slope apt.
While the $20,000 seems low, they don’t have to offer her anything, and she just sounds entitled to something that isn’t hers. If I rent a couch and the rental company wants it back, should I go to the press and start complaining about something that isn’t mine being reclaimed by the owners?
As I understand it, she’s been offered other pretty fair deals over the years & rejected them. I read, too, that she has a decent income & is just “gaming the system.” I was initially sympathetic but now feel that B/C is justified in what they’re doing.