For the past seven years, Lillian Pagan has lived a largely peaceful existence in The Bronx’s River Park Towers. Her apartment, which looms over the Major Deegan Expressway, is filled with her beadwork, hand-sewn stuffed figures and family photos, and shared with her white cat, Alexis.
So last year, when 76-year-old Pagan learned her landlord sought to evict her, she was confused. She said she regularly paid her rent and had never had a case brought against her in Housing Court before.
“I panicked,” Pagan said.
Pagan, a life-long New Yorker who deals with several medical and mental health issues, soon found she risked being kicked out not because she was behind on rent. Instead, it was because of a problem with paperwork — from two years before — that investors in the building needed to get tax credits.
Each year, tenants in River Park Towers must recertify their household size and income so the development can comply with requirements under the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, which incentivizes companies to invest in affordable housing. River Park Towers has rent-regulated apartments for low-income tenants.
The widely used LIHTC program gives tax credits to investors that finance housing for low-income households. If the building doesn’t have the proper recertification paperwork, it can get hit with financial penalties.
Each year, Pagan said the recertification process went relatively smoothly for her. She kept her documents in order, and if management had any questions or needed more paperwork, she provided it, she said.
The first red flag arrived in May 2023, when Pagan received a notice from management that stated she hadn’t completed her recertification, but it didn’t say for which year. She went to the on-site office of the management company, Paths Management Services, LLC, where she said staff told her not to worry.
But two years later, in December 2025, an eviction notice arrived. After appearing in Housing Court and securing papers from management proving her lease and good standing, the case is still pending, and she’s still facing the possibility of having to leave her home.
“I’ve gone through a lot in my life, which I’ve had to battle on my own. This is just one more battle that I have to face,” Pagan said. “But if they put me out, they better have a good reason because right now there’s no reason for them to put me out.”
Pagan isn’t the only one in this situation: since July 2024, have nearly 500 eviction cases across the development, amounting to almost 30% of all units, based on claims that the tenants failed to complete the required income recertification, according to court documents.
The Legal Aid Society on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in New York County Supreme Court with four tenants as plaintiffs in order to stop the evictions, reform the recertification process at River Park Towers and seek damages for the residents.
“When you see more than a quarter of the residents of a 1,600-unit apartment building being brought to court for eviction, there’s something wrong,” said Russell Crane, a Legal Aid attorney who filed the suit. “The number of cases of eviction that they’ve filed is just so far beyond what could possibly be if they were acting in good faith and genuinely trying to complete recertifications for tenants.”
Lawyers for the plaintiffs are seeking class-action status for the suit, which would mean it would represent not just the four named tenants, but other tenants in similar situations.
The suit was filed against two companies that own the complex — River Park Bronx Apartments, Inc. and River Park Residences, L.P. — and Paths, the management company.
The complaint states that the pattern of evictions is meant “to create an illusion to government auditors” that the tenants are at fault for the lack of income recertifications, instead of the owner and management’s “failure to have an adequate, legally required system for tenants to recertify their annual income.”
The state Department of Homes and Community Renewal, which oversees owners of LIHTC buildings, declined to comment on the pending litigation.
“Paths Management Services is a mission driven provider of affordable housing whose sole business is providing quality, secure, affordable housing to its residents,” said Mike Paffmann, spokesperson for Paths. “Though we do not comment on pending litigation, we are confident that this matter will be resolved in a manner reflecting our commitment to the communities that we serve.”
No Cure
The lawsuit alleges the companies failed to annually recertify tenant incomes, as required by law. If there’s an issue, or information missing, tenants receive a “notice to cure.” But those notices, the suit alleges, contained no details about which documents were required to successfully recertify — sometimes the tenants didn’t even know for which year the documents were alleged to be missing.
“The whole point of a notice to cure is to give you an opportunity to avoid having a court case, so that you could submit the thing that was missing,” Crane said.
The lawsuit alleged the owners did not provide advance notice of deadlines for recertification, as well as when, how or where to recertify; that tenants were turned away at the management office and informed there were not enough staff there to see them; and that the owners mishandled or failed to properly process the documents.
According to the complaint, more than 300 of the cases were settled with the landlords providing a stipulation that the tenant will move forward with providing the necessary documents to recertify, but the lawsuit alleges the owners didn’t specify which documents the tenant needs.
The debacle caused tenants stress and confusion, and in some cases, disrupted their lives, according to the suit.
For instance, resident Jill Grant, one of the four tenants in the class said she had to unexpectedly miss an entire day of work as a paraprofessional at an elementary school during one of the multiple times she showed up in court for her eviction case, and a supervisor wrote her up.
Grant, 61, has lived in River Park Towers for half a century. She moved there as a child, then raised her own two kids in the development. Like Pagan, she couldn’t recall any past issues with the recertification process, but in October 2023, she was served a notice that there was something amiss with her paperwork. More than a year later, she received documents from management and then court indicating she had to leave.
A few months later, she got off NYCHA’s waitlist for a Section 8 rental assistance voucher — a notoriously long process that often takes years — and secured a new lease into 2026. Months after that, River Park Towers filed an eviction against her.
In April, her case was discontinued, according to court documents. But she still worries about the many other tenants caught up in court.
“I love my apartment. I don’t bother anybody, they don’t bother me, but it seems to me like they’re picking and picking and picking. It’s like a form of harassment,” Grant said. “What, do you want to force us out? That’s the way I feel sometimes, like, do you want us to move?”
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