Landlord slaughters tenants over unpaid rent since the pandemic started

 

 NY Daily News

A Queens landlord accused of stabbing his girlfriend and two tenants to death told cops he “just snapped” after his partner mocked him about back rent and refused to pay her share, prosecutors said Wednesday.

In a statement to cops shortly after turning himself in, David Daniel blamed “stress” for Tuesday morning’s deadly outburst, an excuse he backed up a day later when he told reporters outside a Queens precinct that he had been under “a lot of pressure.”

Daniel showed up Tuesday at the 113th Precinct stationhouse and confessed that he “did something bad” inside his Milburn St. home in St. Albans, cops said.

Officers rushed to his home to find Coleen Caesar Fields, 51, dead in an upstairs bedroom. Two other victims, a man and a woman, were found dead in a basement apartment.

Investigators believe Daniel killed all three as part of an ongoing landlord-tenant dispute. The couple downstairs had not paid their rent since the start of the COVID pandemic, a police source said.

“I’m having trouble with my tenants, they haven’t paid rent in a long time,” Daniel said in a statement to cops, according to prosecutors. “I did a horrible thing, real bad.”

Officers at the precinct asked him if he had killed someone. Daniel replied, “Yes.”

“I just need some time, I was trying to see if I can get the bodies out because they didn’t want to come out,” he told the officers on Tuesday. “This morning it happened, everyone is there now.

“Tenants and the person I live with — everyone is dead, honestly,” he said. “The tenants are downstairs in the basement, one male, one female The backdoor leads upstairs to the bedroom.”

Then Daniel described the confrontation that led to the carnage.

“My partner began to mock me because I wasn’t doing anything about the payment,” he said. “She locked me out of the room and I told her we don’t have to share a room, but she has to pay $1,500 in rent. She refused to do that and I just snapped. I was just so angry from all the stress.”

 

Rockaway property owner can't evict crazy deadbeat tenant

 

 NY Daily News

A Queens woman does her damage from a third-floor apartment with an ocean view: Water left running for days, flooding the building. Smoke pouring from beneath her front door. Hoarding old junk in the hallway, from bicycles to shopping carts. Taking a sledgehammer to her kitchen cabinets.

But her exasperated Rockaways landlord and unnerved neighbors can’t get help from anywhere. Not from the cops. Not from the Fire Department. And not from a Housing Court crippled by the pandemic.

 I’m trying to evict her because she’s a nuisance and the courts are supposedly open for business,” said building owner Martin Hanan, who is out roughly $40,000 in lost rent. “But apparently they’re not, because they really don’t care. They don’t want to hear a word ... Honestly, I gave up on calling the city.”

Hanan compiled a staggering six-page litany of Annamarie Hosang’s behavior, from allegedly tossing a fire extinguisher at the building superintendent to once blasting music from her apartment for 20 straight hours.

A Daily News review of Housing Court documents detailed the woman’s alleged activities, with multiple reports of flooding the Beach 113th St. building, ringing her neighbor’s doorbells and even threatening one of her neighbors with a pipe.

When the NYPD and FDNY arrived on multiple occasions, they dealt with the situation and moved on, the landlord said, adding his tenants declined to bring charges against the woman over fear of reprisals.

Hanan is still awaiting a long-delayed hearing for her eviction, a process that began in Queens Housing Court in September 2020. Things became even more complicated after Hosang twice applied — in October 2021 and this past February — for a COVID relief program that assures her a home during the pandemic.

Hanan says Hosang has paid no rent for her $1,725-a-month residence since April 2021 and that he can’t even lease out the apartment downstairs because the cascading water from above collapsed its ceiling. The stench of mildew from her water-soaked apartment seeps through the building.

Two longtime residents of the nine-unit building shared their own tales, with both asking for anonymity rather than risk incurring their neighbor’s wrath. One of the pair, referring to Hosang only as “the squatter,” recited a list of unnerving incidents — including one where she chased his wife with a shovel.

Dirty cop ripping off tenants and charging above market rate for basement apartment

 

 

NY Daily News

A duplicitous NYPD veteran is accused of scamming eight apartment hunters by posing as the owner of his rented Queens home, collecting a security deposit and first month’s rent from his victims before disappearing, the Daily News has learned.

Officer Burban Pierre advertised his rented basement apartment in Ozone Park via Craigslist over a four-month stretch in which prospective tenants paid up to $2,800 in move-in costs for the leased space that he called home, according to a victim and one of his neighbors.

Vivian Griffith answered the officer’s ad in April, recalling how she texted Pierre, signed a lease and paid $2,200 upfront for security and rent. But the frustrated woman was never able to move inside, and neighbors eventually alerted her to the officer’s ongoing swindle.

“I knocked on the people’s door upstairs,” she recalled. “They answered and said, ‘Pierre is the tenant living downstairs.’ I showed them the lease. They said, ‘Oh, he’s good. You’re the eighth one. We’ve had eight people come here on this.’ He never told me he was a cop.”

But Pierre, who earned nearly $130,000 on the job last year, definitely told her the building belonged to him, Griffith added.

“I feel very upset with the fact that this comes from an officer who is supposed to protect and serve,” added the mother of two daughters. “It’s shocking that a police officer would go to such lengths to take from people who don’t have. It’s disheartening and upsetting.”

The NYPD confirmed an investigation targeting Pierre, who joined the department in 2010 and was recently moved to the Bronx Court section after working in a pair of Manhattan precincts.

Queens tenants living in hell sue landlord

Have a tenant horror story for you. Tenants at 84-53 Dana Court in Queens have been living in disgusting squalor for months thanks to their negligent landlord who has let garbage pile up inside and outside the building and refuses to address the rats, cockroaches, mice infestations as well as water damage and mold. Mgmt company has also been harassing tenants, sending them fake bills for rent. One tenant’s daughter is actually afraid to go in the hallway because a rat once bit her. Tenants believe landlord just wants them out.

 

 

The landlord, Highpoint Associates run by Donald Ammons, who has been on the Worst Landlord List multiple times, fired the super back in September 2020 and now garbage continues to pile up inside and outside the apartment, causing a rat infestation among other issues. The landlord has racked up more than $800,000 in fines and fees, according to our calculations, and over 400 building violations. The tenants have sued the landlord for repairs and have a court date on Friday, May 20. 6sqft covered this landlord before here. Tenants are willing to talk to you and show you the building this week ahead of the court date. Thanks.

Best,
Seth Hoy, Director of Communications
Legal Services NYC
40 Worth Street, Suite 606
New York, NY 10013

Landlord suspected of starting fire in illegally converted Elmhurst house

 

 NY Post

An FDNY dog found traces of accelerant on three gloves inside the car of a Queens landlord whose apartment house burned down in a suspicious fire that killed three people, police sources told The Post.

Cops and fire investigators were searching the home and Toyota 4Runner of Eric Chen in Flushing late Tuesday, when the canine made the discovery, the sources said.

Police seized the SUV, as well as digital recording equipment, a computer monitor and a hard drive, the sources said.

No arrests have been made in the case and no charges have been brought.

Chen, 29, purchased the home at 90-31 48th Ave. in February, and had since tried evict eight tenants who remained in the house.

Building department records show that as many as 60 people may have lived in the home at one point — one of 26 open violations at the three-family Elmhurst home.

Most of the violations occurred before Chen bought the property, records show.

Tenant kills his landlord

NY Post

 A deadbeat, rent-owing tenant shoved his Queens landlord down their building’s front stairs so hard on Sunday that the man later died — and the whole thing was caught on the home’s security camera, the victim’s grandson and police sources told the Post.

Landlord Edgar Moncayo, 71, was trying to collect rent around 3 p.m. at his 102nd Street building in Corona when 22-year-old tenant Alex Garces allegedly pushed him down the stairs, cops said.
His grandson, Nicolas Jativa, 20, told the Post that Moncayo was pronounced dead at 12:30 p.m. Monday after being on life support with head trauma at NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst.

“My grandmother wasn’t home when this happened, she was on her way back home already when she got a call from a neighbor telling her what had happened,” the grieving grandson said. “As soon as she saw my grandfather she just dropped to her knees and started crying. I didn’t believe it until I saw the video for myself and it’s horrible.”

Police attributed Moncayo’s injuries to a landlord-tenant dispute and were looking for Garces and possibly a second person for questioning, according to officials.

The tenant initially told cops the fall was an accident that happened as he tried to carry his mattress out of the building and hit the front door, causing Moncayo to fall, police sources said.
But the landlord’s family reviewed video from the Ring video camera installed on their door and saw a horrifying series of events unfold.

In the video, the victim can be seen standing in front of the building on the phone with his wife trying to hold the door shut to keep Garces from leaving, the grandson said. The tenant was able to get the door open, however, and allegedly pushed the landlord down the steps, where his head hit the concrete, he said.

Landlord sued over illegal converting apartments into AirBnB rentals

From AMNY:

An “unscrupulous” Airbnb host is being sued by the city after he allegedly converted four apartments into illegal hotel listings that misled renters, placing them in hazardous living conditions, according to the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement (OSE).

The lawsuit was brought against David Schuchter De Oliveira by OSE on behalf of 10 unnamed plaintiffs who detailed horror stories of being duped into staying in illegally converted apartments in Manhattan, sometimes with dozens of other guests at the same time. Schuchter De Oliveira rents, but does not own the apartments, three of which are located in rent-stabilized buildings, per a city spokeswoman.

One plaintiff, David, said he was led to believe he was renting a room in a young couple’s guest bedroom with quality amenities and access to a shared living space, bathroom and kitchen.

“I first sensed something dubious about the host/listing when the key pick-up instructions sent me on a clandestine mission, several blocks from the apartment, to pick up keys from inside a small lockbox attached to a public telephone booth,” he said, adding that he realized it was an illegal Airbnb as soon as he walked into the apartment.

David said the two-bedroom unit had been converted into a hostel-like hotel with five bedrooms, each with their own lock, one bathroom and no common areas.

“Each bedroom was furnished to sleep up to six people, except for the kitchen which had been converted into a bedroom with a single bed,” he added.

Glendale landlord hoards tenants' trash

From CBS 2:

For tenants in one Queens building, it’s a living nightmare.

They claim their landlord hoards their trash and that the smell has caused a cascade of problems, CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported Sunday night.

Kathleen Midlaw is literally bugging out inside her Glendale apartment. It’s infested with gnats.

When she invited CBS2 to the building, Sanchez sensed the root of the problem — a horrible stench coming from the basement

Garbage, huge bags of it, were stacked up, wall to wall in the basement of the building on 65th Place. Midlaw and her neighbors blame their landlord, Maria Hlawaty. Tenants say she has been hoarding their garbage for years.

Tenants claim that illegal construction is being used to evict

From AM-NY:

East Williamsburg residents are taking a stand against their new landlord, who they say has been threatening them and using illegal construction to get them to leave their apartments.

The tenants of 272 Stagg St. were joined on Tuesday by dozens of housing advocates with St. Nicks Alliance and the Stand for Tenant Safety Coalition as they rallied against landlord Silvio Cruz outside of their building.

“The tenants feel very unsafe,” said St. Nicks Alliance deputy director Rolando Guzman, who has been providing counseling services to the tenants. “Before the construction started, the landlord's contractor told one of the tenants, ‘you need to move out or you will be put in shelters.’ ”

Since Nov. 14, the building has racked up 17 complaints from the Department of Buildings, two of which remain open, as of Tuesday. The complaints ranged from construction without a permit to cutting off gas to part of the building and an inadequate tenant protection plan, according to DOB records.

Guzman said the tenants have been filing complaints about Cruz and the construction work since November, when he bought the building.

Illegal construction leaves family homeless

From CBS:

A rally was held Tuesday in support of tenants at a Brooklyn building – one in particular who has been forced to live in a shelter due to illegal construction by the landlord.

As WCBS 880’s John Metaxas reported, some 50 protesters gathered in front of Brooklyn Housing Court in support of Najary Torres and her family.

The Mexican immigrant told a tale of bewildering governmental apathy. She has been forced to live in a city shelter with her husband and three young daughters for the last two and a half years, after the city forced her out of her apartment in the building at 94 Franklin Ave. in North Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

The vacate order came after her landlord built an illegal synagogue in the backyard , blocking access and creating an unsafe condition.

Willets Point businesses evicted from Queens now evicted from the Bronx

On September 21, 2017, video producer Robert LoScalzo attended a press conference of Sunrise Cooperative, a group of Willets Point automotive businesses, held at the Bronx site where they intended to relocate. They announced their pending eviction from the Bronx site, and requested that Mayor Bill de Blasio intervene. LoScalzo published this brief video synopsis. (c) 2017 LoScalzo Media Design LLC.

Ozone Park cellar fire kills sleeping landlord

From CBS 2:

Police say 68-year-old landlord Mohinder Singh was in the basement of the home and didn’t make it out alive. When the more than 60 firefighters got the blaze under control, they found him lifeless inside.

Roughly nine others who live in three-story multi-family home woke up to thick smoke. They ran out in pajamas, rushing to safety.

According to DOB records, this house is not a "multi-family" but a 2 family. That's also a cellar and not a basement. No one should have been sleeping in the cellar.

Locals support the Flagship Diner

From DNA Info:

Dozens of Queens residents and several elected officials came together for a rally Tuesday to support a popular diner, which is currently facing a court battle with a new landlord after more than five decades in business.

The owners of The Flagship Diner, at 138-30 Queens Blvd., which has been a community fixture since 1965, said their new landlord — Jamaica-based White Rock Management — began harassing them shortly after White Rockpurchased the site for $6.125 million last year and promptly obtained permits to knock down the restaurant and replace it with a seven-story, mixed-use apartment building containing 64 units.

On Tuesday, patrons holding signs that read “No more buildings — Save the Flagship,” “Stop Unfair Landlord” and “Stop the Harassment White Rock,” said that the diner has been like a “second home.”

The diner's owners — Vincent Pupplo, Jimmy Skartsiaris and Frank Lountzis — said they were initially hoping to keep their business open until their lease expires in October 2019, and then most likely retire.

The landlord proposed to buy them out, offering each of them $100,000, but they turned it down, the owners said.

Since then, they said, the landlord sent them several "notices to cure," requiring them to address a variety of issues within five days if they wanted to avoid eviction, including accusations that their parking lot, sidewalk and back steps are in disrepair and have to be ripped up and replaced immediately.

The owners said that their lawyer was able to obtain a “Yellowstone injunction” for each notice which temporarily suspends the time period during which they must address the issues.

In July, the restaurant owners filed a lawsuit in the Queens County Supreme Court accusing the landlord of harassing them, with the first hearing scheduled for Sept. 19.

South Ozone Park landlord engages in rental scam

From PIX11:

Samintra Boodram from Queens went to see the apartment at 117-20 Lincoln St. in South Ozone Park, Queens.

It’s in a multi-family house. She says a man who identified himself as Tony Bacchus, the landlord, showed her the three-bedroom unit.

It was obvious people were living in the apartment. The landlord told her the tenants lease was nearly up and urged her to put down a $2,000 security deposit. She did. A week later he asked for another $2,000 in cash for the first month’s rent. She paid that, too.

Sumintra says the landlord told her she could move in August 17, after he had fixed up the apartment. But she says he then stopped answering her calls and emails. She went to the house and says she heard voices inside the apartment, but no one would open the door.

“I called the police and the neighbors came out. Everybody was saying how he had been doing this to a lot of people,” says Sumintra.

Tenants forced to use fire escape to enter building

From PIX11:

Tenants of an Upper West Side five-story walk-up were briefly forced to use the fire escape to access their apartments after their landlord told them about plans to renovate the building’s only staircase.

The Department of Buildings has since issued a stop work order on the West 83rd Street building after the tenants, some of whom are elderly, had an emergency meeting with Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal.

The situation was even worse for some tenants. They don't have access to the fire escape from their apartment.

Landlord threatens to call ICE on tenants

From the Daily News:

A landlord who’s faced past allegations of tenant harassment has posted signs touting a Department of Homeland Security tip line in some of his Queens buildings, which have unnerved some tenants.

Between President Trump’s push to deport undocumented residents and a spike in immigration raids, the Bangladeshi tenants of a Zara Realty apartment building on 168th St. in Jamaica are on edge.

“It’s to scare the people,” said Abukhar Hossain, whose family has lived at the nine-story brick address for 15 years.

A recent visit showed the DHS placards posted prominently at 168th St. and at another Zara-managed building a block away on 88th Ave.

Tenants at 168th St. said the signs have been up since Zara arrived in 2014. Tenants at 88th Ave. didn’t know when they first went up.

Hossain said he couldn’t say whether the signs at 168th St. resulted in DHS activity, but noted that at least one undocumented family was among several tenants who’ve moved out since Zara Realty took over.

Landlord renting from MTA refusing repairs in Kew Gardens

Excellent report in the Queens Tribune:

Kew Gardens businesses have been waiting eight years for $3 million in repairs to their buildings on Lefferts Boulevard and several store owners have said there appears to be no end in sight.

According to business owners on the Lefferts Boulevard bridge over the LIRR tracks between Austin and Greenfell Streets, the landlord of the property has refused to maintain the buildings for the eight years he has leased them from the MTA.

Since the master tenant, Zee N Kay, took over the lease in 2009, Nathalie Reid, owner of Thyme Market, said she has had a hole in the floor of the storage room through which she can see the passing LIRR trains below, and Zee N Kay has not made any attempt to repair it. She has since covered it with plywood boards.

Reid said that the stores are so poorly insulated that they have to keep the heat on high during the night so the pipes don’t burst. Thyme Market carries vitamins with gel capsules and during the night, in the high heat, those capsules melt. “My heating bill is astronomical,” Reid said.

Pradeep Argawal, a certified public accountant with an office on Lefferts Boulevard, said that his pipes have frozen several times and the landlord sent someone to fix it, but it is only a temporary fix as it will freeze again regardless of whether or not the heat is kept on.

Both Argawal and Reid have asked for reimbursements for heating expenses since they say that Zee N Kay has never insulated the pipes, but that request was refused.

Senior seeking reimbursement from landlord

From DNA Info:

Ronald Peters has not seen his wife since Dec. 7, the day the elevator in his 6-story building on Austin Street, near 84th Road, in Kew Gardens was shut down for a major repair.

The 82-year old Korean War veteran, who needs a walker to move around and is unable to climb stairs, was forced to temporarily relocate to a Holiday Inn near the Veterans Hospital in Brooklyn where he had a number of appointments scheduled for December and January, he said.

His wife Virginia, 80, who also can't climb stairs, stayed in their apartment on the top floor.

Peters, who said he has been unable to get in touch with his landlord, PSRS Realty Group, since early December, already paid more than $7,000 for his stay at the hotel, according to the bills he shared with DNAinfo New York.

Now, he wants the landlord to pay him back, he said.

“They should reimburse me because what do they want me to do? Go up these steps?" said Peters, who has a pacemaker and suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, among other illnesses. "I can’t go up six flights.”

“It’s so aggravating," he said, adding that if the landlord does not reimburse him, he will consider legal action.

PSRS Realty Group did not return multiple phone calls from DNAinfo seeking comment.

Elderly and infirm residents are trapped in their building

From PIX11:

Imagine you have no elevator service for a month and you're a senior citizen or have serious health issues.

That's what dozens of residents in a Kew Gardens apartment building are coping with.

"We do the best we can," Sidney Tesher, an 87-year-old tenant of the Austin Street building, told PIX11. "Excuse me for being out of breath."

PIX11 News reached out to the building's management company, PSRS Realty Group, for comment, but has not received a response.

Nobody was working on the elevator when PIX11 was there. The realty group told residents in a sign in the building that elevator service will be restored on Jan. 18.

More rats than at a council meeting

From NY1:

The sidewalk was littered with dead rats just hours after dozens of the rodents sent residents running in disgust at the Baisley Park Gardens complex on Sutphin Boulevard and 122nd Avenue.

They say the rats emerged after someone shifted a mounting pile of garbage in front of the building. That garbage was removed Thursday, but residents say the trash is an ongoing issue, as are the rats, and that management has failed to address both problems.

When NY1 reached out to the management company, Reliant Realty, the president called us back immediately. She said she wasn't aware of previous problems but maintained this current issue was addressed immediately.

Exterminators and a cleaning crew were back at the complex Thursday evening, where a manager also told residents their apartments will be addressed as well.