A Williamsburg couple say they were the targets of a months-long harassment campaign that their landlord ignored and enabled, according to a Curbed feature that Greenpointers pointed readers to in its weekly North Brooklyn roundup.
Harold and Elena Joyce have lived in their second-floor loft at 56 South 11th Street for 16 years, Curbed reported. The trouble began in early February 2025, when a group of men set up an air mattress in the long-empty apartment next door, saying it was for a friend who needed a place to crash.
Then came dozens of prank calls a day at all hours, middle-of-the-night police “wellness checks” responding to anonymous 311 complaints, and an anonymous call to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services alleging “screaming, excessive consumption of alcohol, and child abuse” in the apartment. ACS investigated, and the claim was ultimately confirmed as unfounded, per Curbed.
In November, the Joyces sued in Kings County Supreme Court. The suit names the neighbor, identified as Moshe (“John Doe”); Dov Land USA LLC, which owns the building; and landlord Wolfe Landau and his son, Mordechai Landau. It alleges the landlords “have been consistently made aware of such harassment and have at all times continued to ignore and enable such conduct.” The Joyces believe the campaign is tied to a long-running rent-stabilization fight in the converted loft building, where tenants organized against steep rent increases starting in 2013, Curbed reported.
Wolfe Landau, the principal at Watermark Capital Group, denied to Curbed that there is any conspiracy, saying he put work into the building after buying it in 2004 and is legally letting vacant apartments sit empty until he can collect market-rate rents. “I won’t rent it right now because if I rent it next year, six months from now, I’m gonna get free-market rent,” he said.
The item ran alongside the rest of Greenpointers’ weekly North Brooklyn dispatch, which also covered a car crash that has Greenpoint neighbors asking for safety upgrades at a busy intersection and a proposed 100 percent affordable building that some neighbors say the developer has pitched in discriminatory terms. The full Curbed feature, “Who Was the Man in 2B?,” is on Curbed.com.
