Harvard Legal Aid offers to drop lawsuit if Cruz takes offer of $600,000

Although they purported to be representing the tenants, the law students offer to drop the lawsuit if Cruz agrees to sell his property to Urban Edge for $600,000, up from an initial $500,000. They claimed that this price represents the true market value of the property (despite a signed purchase agreement for $1.3 million, over twice that amount) and that this offer is more than generous in exchange for foregoing the significant potential damages from litigation.

But why would the tenants of 26 School Street be so motivated to steer the property to Urban Edge? If each tenant was really due an average of $223,024, wouldn’t they be even more motivated to continue the lawsuit and reap the rewards?

The truth is that the tenants had no idea they were supposedly due these astronomical sums of money. In fact, they had no idea that any claims or settlement offers were being made on their behalf. They were never told of move-out offers of $20,000 each from Cruz. City Life and Harvard Legal Aid, despite claiming to represent these tenants, were in fact using them as a tool to bully and strip landlord Cruz of his sole significant asset and life’s work.

Unethical? For sure. Criminal extortion? Possibly.

The malfeasance involved in this situation is as great as it is troubling. By claiming to represent the tenants while in reality acting in the best interests of a third party, Harvard Legal Aid student-attorneys are guilty of numerous ethical violations that may rise to the level of justifying disbarment. Finally, by using these tenants to financially squeeze Cruz and further threaten absolute financial ruin, both City Life and Harvard Legal Aid appear to be engaged in a potentially criminal conspiracy to extort inexperienced and vulnerable property owners. By encouraging the tenants to continue the eviction process rather than accepting move-out agreements, City Life was endangering their record and potentially harming their attempts to rent housing down the line. It is highly doubtful that City Life explained these potential consequences to the tenants.

While these groups and others like them make bold claims of helping the underprivileged, they are merely exchanging one victimized group with another, expecting elderly small property owners like Cruz to subsidize low-cost housing for renters when Cruz himself has been providing very inexpensive housing with below-market rents for 30 years. Cruz has been left trapped with a devalued house, and little recourse or hope for the wrongdoing to be corrected. If this activity were going on within a family, it would be called “elder abuse.” It is elder abuse anyway.