The Eco–Yogi Slumlords of Brooklyn

How did a couple who BUILT AN EMPIRE of YOGA STUDIOS, VEGAN RESTAURANTS, and homes with LIVING WALLS” end up as PANDEMIC VILLAINS?

- By Bridget Read

THE BATTLE OF 1214 DEAN STREET commenced on a warm afternoon in early July. Angie Martinez, a 24-year-old Brooklyn native and barista, returned home to the Crown Heights rowhouse she shared with eight roommates to find her landlords, Gennaro Brooks-Church and his ex-partner, Loretta Gendville, crowding the front door with their three children, two dogs, two handymen, and a mattress. Martinez had been paying them $865 a month via Venmo for a room with one window, no heat, and no working fire alarm. The run-down four-story structure, classified as a single-family home by the City of New York, had been illegally converted and rented out by the room. In March, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, several tenants, including Martinez, had lost their jobs, and in April, many in the house had stopped paying rent.

BROOKS-CHURCH and his then partner, LORETTA GENDVILLE, became media darlings during the Brooklyn boom.