For months, tenants in dozens of rent-stabilized buildings owned by Pinnacle Group tried to do something New York housing law almost never permits: stop their landlord from selling their homes to another speculative owner.

They organized across buildings, formed what became a tenants’ union across Pinnacle’s real estate portfolio, staged protests, and went to court. As one tenant put it during the town hall, the organizing began because “nothing else was working”: complaints went unanswered and conditions worsened. Eventually, they won the backing of city hall under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. They still lost in court.

Last month, a federal bankruptcy judge rejected the city’s request to delay the sale of roughly 5,100 rent-stabilized apartments across more than ninety buildings, clearing the way for the portfolio to be transferred from Pinnacle Group to Summit Properties USA. The case grew out of years of neglect. Under Pinnacle’s ownership, the properties fell into severe disrepair and accumulated thousands of housing code violations, before the company declared bankruptcy last year after defaulting on more than $560 million in loans.