For Activist, the Battle Comes Home

By ALAN FEUER
The New York TImes

November 7, 2004 -- New York -- It is decidedly not typical behavior to enjoy a court fight with your landlord. Then again, Florence M. Rice is not a typical woman.
For the last five decades, Ms. Rice has been something of a one-woman consumer dynamo in Harlem, fighting utility companies, credit agencies, even furniture stores and banks on behalf of the poor. At 85, she still wears pins reading, ''Economic Racism.'' She is known uptown as the Ralph Nader of Harlem.

Now, Ms. Rice is fighting her own fight.
On Nov. 16, she will go on trial in the city's Housing Court, accused by her landlord, 536-540 West 158th Street L.L.C., of not paying her full rent. She, in turn, has accused the landlord of destroying her apartment, under the guise of renovating it, and forcing her out.

''I'm really glad it happened to me,'' Ms. Rice said the other day in the cafeteria of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building on 125th Street.

''I knew I could get support to expose this sort of problem. If it hadn't happened to me, it would have happened to someone else my age who might have ended up in a hospital or a nursing home.''

Ms. Rice's troubles have attracted the attention of elected officials and ordinary people alike. A woman who once produced the graphics for her protest signs has agreed to testify on her behalf, and politicians, like State Senator David A. Paterson and State Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell Jr., have written letters of support to the court.

''Her activism, especially in the energy department, goes way back,'' Mr. Farrell said. ''She was bringing fights against Con Ed years ago.''

''She's very tenacious,'' he added. ''When Florence came out against you, you knew you were in trouble -- no matter how big the utility or the battle.''
Ms. Rice's problems began in April when she discovered that her landlord had served her with eviction papers, claiming that, for almost three years, she had underpaid her rent by nearly $200 a month. Her legal guardian, Beverly Griggsby, said the landlord had illegally raised Ms. Rice's rent from $291 a month to $458 and, moreover, failed to inform her of the change.

Jesse Baker, a lawyer for the landlord, was on vacation and could not be reached last week. Another lawyer at the landlord's firm -- Guttman, Mintz, Baker & Sonnenfelt -- did not return telephone calls on Thursday and Friday.

In August, after a protracted court scuffle, the landlord agreed in a legal stipulation to repair Ms. Rice's apartment one room at a time so that she could remain while the renovations were being made. According to the stipulation, the landlord agreed to correct several housing violations in the apartment, ''starting in the kitchen and the dining room, then bathroom, then first bedroom, then hallway, then master bedroom, then living room.''

However, when the workmen arrived at Ms. Rice's apartment on Sept. 1, they immediately gutted it, Ms. Griggsby said. They stuffed Ms. Rice's belongings into plastic bags, she said, and tore down the walls so thoroughly that one could stand at the front door and look through an empty apartment at a toilet.

''When I opened the door,'' Ms. Griggsby said, ''there were no walls in the bedroom. Not only were there no walls in the bedroom, there was no bedroom. There was no closet. No sink. No bathtub. Everything was gone.''

Ms. Griggsby contends that the landlord planned to refurbish the apartment and force Ms. Rice to leave so it could be rented at a higher rate. She claims the apartment was segmented into three separate bedrooms, each with its own lock, suggesting that at least three separate tenants were planning to move in.

Ms. Griggsby acknowledged that the landlord had offered Ms. Rice another apartment in the building, but Ms. Griggsby refused to allow her to take it because it was on the fifth floor and Ms. Rice, she said, could not climb stairs.

For the last two months, Ms. Rice has been dividing her time among her family and friends, moving from place to place. She is bowed but clearly undefeated.
''They'll be sorry they ever messed with me,'' she said.