By Gus Saltonstall
For a week, Upper West Sider Stuart Kalmenson kept the same routine.
He would start his day at Starbucks on West 86th Street and Columbus Avenue, where he could get a coffee and a refill, then head to Domino’s on West 88th Street, where he would order something small and sit in the restaurant for as long as he could, before returning to the Starbucks for the air conditioning and the Wi-Fi connection.
When darkness fell, he would head to his new sleeping spot: benches on Central Park West in the upper 80s.
He repeated this routine for seven days, all the while carrying three backpacks with as many belongings as he could fit and doing his best to keep his dog Charles comfortable.
“I’ve been in a state of disbelief,” Kalmenson told West Side Rag recently, as we spoke in a coffee shop near The Bowery Mission homeless shelter on the Lower East Side, where he had spent the previous night with his dog. “The situation just keeps snowballing. Right now, I’m totally in shock.”
Kalmenson had been the last holdout tenant of a brownstone on West 89th Street, between Columbus and Central Park West, where he had lived since 2006. Since 2020, he’s been locked in a legal battle with an ownership group led by former New York Giants football player Chris Canty, who had bought the property that year for more than $5 million.
Neither Canty nor his lawyer, who represented him in proceedings related to the Upper West Side brownstone, responded to the Rag’s request for comment, but in an earlier statement to the New York Post, the lawyer, William Moran, denied any wrongdoing by the former Giants player.
Eviction proceedings in the court system had stretched for years, including several winters when Kalmenson lived in his apartment with no heat or hot water.
Then, earlier this month, the judge in the eviction case made her ruling — to remove Kalmenson.
A city marshal evicted Kalmenson on May 19. He would spend the next week living on the streets before getting a room at the Lower East Side homeless shelter.
“Right now, I’m in the worst straits of my entire life. I’m dealing with the Department of [Homeless Services]. They’re sending me to places like Bellevue Hospital. I can’t believe my life has become this,” Kalmenson said. “Two weeks ago, I was living in my Upper West Side apartment, where I’ve been for 20 years. How did this happen?”
To make matters more challenging, Kalmenson had additional legal issues to sort out. The longtime Upper West Sider was notified of the judge’s eviction decision as he sat inside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, where he was was working through a report of an incident at the brownstone that had taken place on February 18.
“They pushed in, they beat the hell out of me,” Kalmenson said about an incident that took place on February 18 of this year, when he says, he was hospitalized after men attempted to get into the apartment, allegedly to do repairs. “I had to recuperate from a concussion connected to that and I was a little bit out of it. They really gave me a beating.”
A New York Police Department spokesperson confirmed to West Side Rag that three men were arrested on February 18, including Kalmenson, in connection with a verbal dispute that became physical after two men attempted to enter an apartment at 33 West 89th Street “to make a repair.”
“I didn’t give them permission to enter,” Kalmenson told the Rag. “I didn’t trust what they would do.”
A spokesperson from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office confirmed to WSR that Drayquan Robinson and Giovanni Castro had been charged and arraigned on multiple counts of assault, harassment, and criminal mischief in connection with the fight in February within the Upper West Side brownstone.
While Kalmenson was also arrested on February 18, the Manhattan DA spokesperson told the Rag that his case had been sealed. The spokesperson didn’t specify the reason for this, but did say that common reasons for this action included the charges being dropped or the defendant pleading to “disorderly conduct” or another unspecified violation, neither of which is a crime.
In terms of the rest of Kalmenson’s belongings, his items were placed into storage by the owner of the brownstone, according to Kalmenson and the city’s legal guide to eviction. If he is not able to retrieve the belongings and find somewhere for them to go within a month of the eviction, the items are sold.
“Imagine you have a backpack with you, a watch on your wrist, the clothes on your back, and everything else goes away. It’s not sinking in to me. I have to really take it step by step,” Kalmenson said. “I’m still in shock. I can’t believe this is happening to me.”
Kalemson, who previously worked as a data scientist and consultant, admits that the time spent working on the legal proceedings over the past five years and the corresponding stress factored into his recent inability to hold down a job.
“I have this resume to fall back on,” Kalmeson added. “I need to shower and get an internet connection but the idea is once I get a little stability, the idea is to get a job.”
Kalmenson says he’s taking it one step at a time, but before anything else, he is focused on retrieving his belongings.
“What I’ve realized is that I can’t think too far ahead. It becomes too overwhelming,” he said. “Right now, my dog is safe. The next thing I have to do is focus on everything I own being sold in 21 days, so I have to find a way to get it back.”
While a ruling was made in Kalmenson’s eviction case, he is still holding out hope in the form of a different legal proceeding . This one relates to whether his longtime Upper West Side building should have been classified as rent-stabilized, despite the previous owners operating it as a co-op and charging market-rate prices.
If the building is found by the court system to be made up of rent-stabilized units, then Kalmenson – along with the tenants who moved out after their leases expired in May of 2020, should have been offered lease renewals, according to city law.
Canty’s group has denied this claim, previous court documents show.
Kalmenson reiterated one other element of his situation in his conversation with WSR: The kindness of Upper West Siders.
“The one thing I want to keep mentioning is the kindness of some of the people in the neighborhood,” Kalmenson said. “I was sitting on the same benches for seven nights along Central Park West, and people saw me with my three backpacks and a dog, and a lot of people wanted to help. Everybody from scruffy looking guys you wouldn’t expect to be nice, to little old ladies. People came with food, dog supplies, and all sorts of things. It kept me going.”
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WSR readers don’t be gratuitously nasty to a homeless guy challenge: hopefully not impossible? (Like, you can believe that the landlord was within his rights to evict him and still recognize that it puts him in a grim place that merits compassion.)
I have zero sympathy for people who manufacture problems in hopes of a huge payout