Our story

For decades, Pinnacle Group took tenants’ rent checks and ignored our requests for repairs and basic maintenance. Across the city, our landlord and the like used systematic neglect and illegal rent increases to drive out long-term tenants and drive up rents. The Union of Pinnacle Tenants was founded in the fall of 2025 after our landlord, Pinnacle Group, filed for bankruptcy and put 93 of its buildings up for auction in bankruptcy court. Unsure if your building was part of the bankruptcy auction? Click here for a list.

We came together to say: ENOUGH! We’re rent stabilized, we’re organized, and we want a say in who controls our homes.

We formed a citywide tenant union to demand improved living conditions and to demand a seat at the table in the auction. We rallied tenants’ associations in buildings across the city. We organized for the Legal Aid Society to represent our interests in court with twenty-two elected officials pushing for our demands. And together, we won the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani on his first day in office.

"This is New York’s first portfolio-wide union in recent memory, and surely the first to be built at such dizzying scale." – The New Republic

In January 2026, a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of the 93 buildings from Pinnacle Group to Summit Properties. However, because of our collective power and organizing, we won guarantees of repairs for these buildings:

• Summit will be forced to cure all Class B and C violations of the city housing codes

• within six months of taking ownership.

• Summit will spend at least $30 million on repairs and maintenance in the first 5 years.

Our history

Pinnacle Group

In 1995, Joel Wiener – the CEO of Pinnacle Group – began purchasing apartment buildings and making profit as a real estate developer and landlord. He set his sights on working-class, predominantly Black and immigrant neighbourhoods that had been subject to decades of state abandonment and capital divestment: Harlem, Washington Heights, Crown Heights, and the South Bronx. Pinnacle Group’s business strategy employs the classic slumlord playbook. They purchase rent-stabilized buildings and intentionally allow them to fall into disrepair, creating hazardous conditions in an attempt to force long-term tenants out. 

Pinnacle's financial connections to the occupation of Palestine 

By 2017, Wiener had hoarded 9,185 units across New York City, most of them rent-regulated. That same year, he appeared on Bloomberg’s list of billionaires, as the CEO’s net worth soared above $1 billion. In 2012, Pinnacle became one of the first US companies to turn to the Israeli bond market to fund its schemes. By 2017, it had raised roughly $500 million from those bonds, making it one of the largest American borrowers on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

The Israeli occupation’s banks and institutional investors lend Pinnacle money to buy rent-stabilized buildings in New York, and Pinnacle pays them back with interest on those loans. What this means is that in occupied Palestine, Zionist investors are counting on the displacement of rent-stabilized tenants in Crown Heights to see a return on their investments.

Origins of our organizing in the Crown Heights Tenants Union

Members of the Crown Heights Tenants Union have been organizing buildings owned by Pinnacle for years, given the egregious conditions tenants live under (including 20 buildings during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic).

From October 7 of 2023, the Palestine Solidarity Working Group of Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU) heightened the urgency of this campaign, to intentionally disrupt the connected processes of displacement between Palestine and Brooklyn. They began by focusing on a cluster of rent-stabilized buildings in South West Crown Heights, since Pinnacle’s business model is centered on destabilizing them. For the first six months, the working group went door to door and had conversations in lobbies and lounges, on sidewalks and stoops. This was a slow process that moved atthe speed of trust. As the Palestine Solidarity Working Group of Crown Heights Tenant Union wrote, "Capital thinks and acts globally, and we have the capacity to do the same: to engage in robust internationalist struggle, building power from our couches and kitchens, our hallways and laundry rooms. We must reject the living conditions being thrust upon us here and the devastation of life and land in Palestine."

What's Next?

Because of what we have already accomplished, we have opportunities to secure better living conditions and protect our rights. We're collecting tenant's demands and taking them directly to our landlords, to ensure they are finally met. At the same time, we're working directly with the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants (MOPT) and the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) to support our fight.

Our strength comes from organizing together.

When tenants act collectively we can push landlords to negotiate with us and ensure our demands are met. The first step is making sure our demands reflect what tenants actually need. We are inviting tenants across all Pinnacle and Summit buildings to help shape these priorities. We will engage with the power of city agencies, with our support from elected officials, and with media attention and more forms of escalation with collective action, to pressure our landlords to give us what we deserve.