Supermodel Emily Ratajkowski and her millionaire producer husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard, are in trouble with their landlord again. This time, their landlord claims they are nightmare neighbors who blast music and host parties into the early hours, according to a new report.
The couple came under fire recently for not paying around $120,000 in rent since 2017, by claiming protection under the state’s Loft Law, a building rep said.
Additionally, the couple are “nightmare neighbors” according to their landlord in a new court document, reported the New York Post.
The landlord, Antoni Ghosh, who lives next door to the couple, presented the court with a series of phone texts he submitted as evidence.
“Can you turn music off, trying to sleep, it’s 4:30 [in the morning],” he texted Bear-McClard on Dec. 14, 2015, in a Manhattan Supreme Court filing, reported the New York Post.
Bear-McClard responded saying he wasn’t home at the time, but Ghosh said he could hear voices amid the music and asked Bear-McClard to tell his friends “not to crank music that late…the walls act like speakers and my bedroom is on the other side. As it is I can hear voices.”
However, the loud music at early hours continued.
View this post on InstagramFinding the light ✨ with my @kerastase_official family. #kerastaseclub #elixirultime
In May of 2016, Ghosh again texted Bear-McClard to “turn it down” at 12:43 a.m. according to the court papers. And two days later, he again texted around the same time. This time, he wrote, “Hey Sebastian, I don’t know if you got a home theater system, but it sounds like it’s in my apartment, can you turn it down, trying to sleep.”
A few months later, in October 2016, he texted, “Hey, can you turn it down, 4 a.m. and you woke me and my daughter up. I can’t have late parties here, otherwise [the space] has to become completely commercial with no residential.”
Ghosh is asking the court to evict the couple, as they’ve been avoiding rent since 2017.
The two have been able to live rent-free since their lease expired in 2017 because of an obscure New York state law called the Loft Law. Enacted in 1982, the law was meant to keep landlords from evicting impoverished artists and other low-income tenants who live illegally in former commercial or factory buildings.
Under the Loft Law, tenants can’t be evicted if their building does not have a certificate of occupancy. It was meant to push landlords to bring their buildings’ fire and safety codes up to modern standards.
The loft where Ratajkowski and Bear-McClard live does not have the certificate.
However, Ratajkowski, 27, is reportedly worth an estimated $6 million, while her husband, Bear-McClard, 31, is worth about $11 million.
Carolyn Daly, a spokeswoman for a coalition of building owners, including the building where the couple lives, has criticized the couple’s actions. Daly told the New York Post they have “taken advantage” of a law meant to help those struggling to make ends meet.
“Here is a prime example, in prime NYC real estate, where an uber-wealthy celebrity couple and tenant can take advantage and exploit a law that was intended for truly struggling artists and low-income families in need of affordable housing,” she told the Post.
“The idea that one of these wealthy individuals is exploiting the system to save what, for him, is chump change, is a kick in the a– to the people who made Bleecker Street what it is” https://t.co/hsI78YFso2
— New York Magazine (@NYMag) March 5, 2019
