A social media video has sparked outrage after a landlady claimed she steals packages from her tenants who have not paid rent. The clip ...
A social media video has sparked outrage after a landlady claimed she steals packages from her tenants who have not paid rent.
The clip posted by Abbe Awosanya on TikTok Saturday featured the captions: 'My tenant is late on rent and is avoiding me but has money to order. So I take all their packages until they pay up.'
'I'm so petty,' the New York woman continued in the footage set to the sounds of DripReport's Sketchers song.
Awosanya's profile says she is a realtor, Senior Manager of Operations in IT and interior designer and has garnered more than 6,000 followers.
New York landlady Abbe Awosanya has received a backlash after posting a controversial TikTok video on Saturday. Awosanya captioned it: 'My tenant is late on rent and is avoiding me but has money to order. So I take all their packages until they pay up'
Awosanya's profile says she is a realtor, Senior Manager of Operations in IT and interior designer and has garnered more than 6,000 followers. But her skit has been viewed millions of times
TikTok users blasted Awosanya in the comments explaining that it was illegal and unethical to take the package
However the controversial video received 200,000 views on TikTok and went on to receive millions more as others shared it on other platforms.
'Landlords are a menace to society,' one Twitter user captioned the clip of Awosanya tossing the Amazon package to the side and dancing around her home in New York City.
Her recording garnered more than 5.3 million views alone as of Sunday morning.
In comments on the original post, many viewers blasted Awosanya.
'What if it's their baby's formula? They have $20 but not $800 in rent,' one person commented.
'It's ok to be late during a pandemic, it's illegal to withhold packages,' another posted.
Awosanya replied to one woman who commented 'late rent vs a federal offense', saying that the mail package in the video was in fact her own.
'Thanks for the concern. All my mail but it's nice that y'all only care about renters like landlords don't have bills,' she replied.
The comedy footage is set to the sounds of DripReport's Sketchers tune and shows her dancing around her home
The landlady has since said the skit was not based on a true event. However she asked people to show landlord's sympathy during the coronavirus pandemic
She later explained that it was all a joke but she wanted to make a statement with the skit.
'Honestly, in the past, I had this issue with other tenants and I wished I could do this to them because they were blatantly ignoring me,' Awosanya continued in a comment to Buzzfeed News. 'Nothing to do with current tenants. If my tenants told me they couldn't pay, I would understand. My tenants have been late before.'
Awosanya added: 'Compassion should be for everyone because we are all going through the pandemic together.'
The Brooklyn-born landlady said in an April 2019 interview with Melanin People that she started her social media channels as an outlet for her stresses as a landlady.
'I had a very bad tenant! I needed an outlet and drama has always been something I was into since junior high school,' she explained in the article.
In New York - where Awosanya is based – thousands of tenants have gone on strike demanding rent cancellation, as unemployment soars and much of the country remains homebound in shelter.
Nearly two-thirds of New York's 8.6 million residents rent in a housing market where, according to tracker RentCafe, the average two-bedroom can run from $2,500 per month in Queens to more than $4,000 in Manhattan.
An estimated 12,000 unique tenants across 100 buildings in America's coronavirus epicenter participated in Friday's strike, according to preliminary figures from the advocacy group Housing Justice for All, a lead organizer of the movement.
The protests, which coincide with May Day, are believed to be the largest such coordinated tenant activity in New York since the 1930s, when mass strikes took aim at rent gouging.
Similar movements took place across the country, which has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths -- more than one million people have been infected and more than 64,000 have died.
Awosanya revealed that the mail featured in the video belonged to her and the clip was a joke
Awosanya later apologized for upsetting people with the comedy skit posted online Saturday
A sign is displayed in a car window in Times Square during a driving caravan protest calling for cancelling rent and workers rights during May Day protests in Manhattan during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York City on Friday
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