Zara Vile

 

 QNS

During one of the hottest days in New York City on Thursday, July 27, Imran Patel, a Flushing resident at 140-60 Beech Ave. claimed that he and his family are facing eviction by Jamaica-based real estate company Zara Realty for putting an air conditioner in their apartment. 

“We’re in the middle of a heatwave here in NYC and they’re threatening to kick us out of our home because we want to be able to live in this heat,” Patel said. “They claim that we’re violating the lease, but nothing in the lease says that we can’t have an AC in the window. They gave us no warning — the super had even told me two years ago that it was fine, but two weeks ago we were given a notice that Zara wanted to evict us.” 

A spokesman for Zara Realty said Patel’s claims for not being able to have air conditioning in his apartment is false and is a safety concern. According to the company, the building has air conditioner sleeves and the tenant refused to install the air conditioner where it is supposed to be.

“Putting the air conditioner in the window is a significant risk to health and human safety as it could fall out of the window onto someone below causing serious injury or death,” the spokesman said. “The air conditioner sleeve is the appropriate, safest, and approved place for the air conditioner unit, not the window.”

Patel, who has been living at the apartment for 20 years, was joined by rent-stabilized tenants from two other buildings owned by Zara Realty (140-30 Ash Ave. and 140-50 Ash Ave.) at the July 27 press conference in calling out the company for alleged harassment of immigrant tenants, including asking for birth and marriage certifies, excessive fees for keys, and increasing rents by nearly $300 per month. 

“Zara has been continuously harassing us since they bought the building in 2019—there is no peace,” Patel said. “When Zara changed the locks, they only gave us one key for our family of five. We still only have one key. We have leaks and mold in our bathroom; the electrical outlets are loose and often don’t work.” 

“And I’m not the only one,” Patel continued. “They’ve started eviction cases against a few other families in the building for the same reason. I’ll fight back and I know I will win, but I also know that for every tenant like me, there’s another who would move out of fear because an eviction record can destroy your chance at finding a home.”

After two years, Maria Jenny Lopez, a tenant of 140-30 Ash Ave., was able to get a key for her brother who lives with her. Lopez claims she suffered harassment, including Zara employees on the fire escape taking pictures through her window. 

“Other tenants are still waiting for a key and are forced to pay up to $100. It’s outrageous for such a simple yet important thing. They are also asking us for marriage or birth certificates. This isn’t right. That is abuse. That is harassment,” Lopez said. 

Doug Ostling, a tenant organizer and resident of 140-50 Ash Ave., said he’s “sick and tired of Zara’s harassment tactics and attempts” to raise their rents. 

“This is our home. This is our community. We pay our rent just like everyone else, but Zara continues to harass us and treat us like pawns in their money-making schemes,” Ostling said. “They don’t make basic repairs and then try to raise our rent? Enough is enough. We just want to live peacefully and in safe and livable homes!” 

The tenants claim Zara is trying to unlawfully raise rents by filing Major Capital Improvement (MCI) applications with the NYS Department of Homes and Community Renewal (DHCR), the state agency that oversees rent-stabilized buildings in New York. 

They’re calling on DHCR to deny Zara’s applications due to building disrepairs and apply the letter of the law which prohibits MCIs while certain violations exist. 

The tenants allege that there is a lack of heat and hot water, roaches and mice infestation in the hallway and basement, leaking roofs, broken garage chutes, and security cameras they can’t access. According to the tenants, Zara’s repairs include “patchwork jobs” that quickly fall back into disrepair.

 

Judge calls NYCHA a criminal landlord...then he vanished

  

 

NY Daily News

That was the message from a Queens Housing Court judge outraged by the agency’s failure to provide hot water to as many as 300 tenants in a Rockaway apartment building since November, the Daily News has learned.

“If this was a private small landlord he [the landlord] would be in jail by now,” Judge Kimon Thermos said during a Jan. 20 hearing. “He would have been in jail by now and the fines would have been $500 per day, per apartment. So he would have been in jail and he would have been losing his building too.”

As a city-run agency, the New York City Housing Authority is not eligible for the same penalties as a private landlord who neglects its properties and tenants.

“Why is your crime shielded this way?” Thermos asked a NYCHA lawyer. “NYCHA is dropping the ball big time here.”

Tenants in Carleton Manor say NYCHA did little for months to fix the water problem that makes taking a shower a major undertaking. Dozens of tenants have filed a petition in Housing Court seeking to force NYCHA to make repairs at the 174-unit building on Beach Channel Dr. and Beach 74th St. in Arverne.

“This is the dead of winter,” said Alisha Robinson, 42. “We need this corrected. We need some attention on fixing this.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said. “I have to go to a hotel to take a decent shower.”

 

The legal fight began Nov. 29, when one tenant, Shaniya Callender, filed a petition to get the water problem fixed. That yielded no progress, so on Dec. 28, 45 tenants signed a petition threatening housing court action if no repairs were made by Jan. 10.

That deadline came and went, so the tenants took NYCHA to court. At the Jan. 20 hearing, Judge Thermos was outraged that NYCHA’s work on the building was being overseen by an unlicensed plumber.

The judge said he was considering issuing a subpoena demanding NYCHA Chairman Gregory Russ appear in court. But before he could, Thermos was replaced on the case by a different judge, for unclear reasons.

 

Predatory slumlord swindled city housing agencies for 8 years

QNS 

A Far Rockaway man was charged for defrauding government rental assistance programs by renting out dilapidated apartments he did not own to families in need, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Paul Fishbein, 47, faces wire and mail fraud charges for allegedly falsely claiming to be the owner and landlord of 20 rental properties, mostly in the Bronx, while collecting government subsidies and evicting tenants over the course of eight years, according to the Southern District of New York.

“As alleged, Paul Fishbein not only took advantage of New Yorkers in need, he also defrauded city and federal government programs designed to help these very people,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said. “Fishbein allegedly lied about ownership of residential properties, fraudulently took rent subsidies and other benefits from those government housing programs, and often evicted tenants without cause from housing that was substandard in any event. Now Paul Fishbein is in custody and facing serious federal charges for his alleged fraud and exploitation.”

According to a complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court Tuesday, Fishbein allegedly lied about owning the properties beginning in 2013 based on forged deeds. He then allegedly rented the properties to homeless and low- to moderate-income families through rental assistance programs operated by three city agencies — NYCHA, the Human Resources Administration and Housing Preservation & Development — and collected money, including federal funds, as the purported owner and landlord of the properties.

The complaint estimates Fishbein defrauded the three city agencies out of about $1.5 million, including more than $270,000 in federal funds. In addition to taking payments, Fishbein allegedly faked using a broker to rent out the properties and kept certain broker’s fees for himself that the HRA issued as payment.

Fishbein is also accused of faking financial eligibility for Medicaid since at least 2014, the complaint says. He allegedly told the HRA he worked at a company where his total income was about $150 a week — or $600 a month — when he in actuality made hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Prosecutors allege Fishbein received nearly $50,000 in Medicaid benefits to which he was not entitled to as part of his scheme.

Tenant gets his property thrown out of his apartment in a tenement building owned by Barabara Corcoran and Alex Rodriguez while he was hospitalized with COVID

NBC New York 

 

The absurd thing about this savagery is that the piano and turtle remained because the people they hired surely thought they were to heavy to move and a bunch of goons moving a turtle on the street would have easily got filmed and lots of play on social media. Of course Corcoran and ARod won't be charged for illegally evicting a tentant from his apartment during a pandemic. And looting his belongings.

Slumlord NYCHA deprives tenants of gas. Again.

 

 

Queens Chronicle

Annie CottonMorris, who heads the tenants association at the 71-year-old Woodside Houses, lives just a block from the nearest deli but it takes her two hours to buy a newspaper these days.

“That’s how many people stop me now to talk about what’s wrong with their apartments,” she told an outdoor rally of angry Woodside Houses residents Tuesday.

The latest complaint sweeping the city-owned housing complex is a utility outage that has left 12 apartments without gas.

Some tenants have been cooking on hot plates since last November, CottonMorris said.

Six units were fixed last week, said the New York City Housing Authority, which manages the 1,350-unit complex.

Six other apartments are due for repairs starting this weekend, a NYCHA spokesman said.

“While we understand gas service interruptions are inconvenient, we also want to ensure our residents’ safety as we work to restore service as quickly as possible,” the agency said in an emailed statement.

The complex of 20 six-story buildings straddles Broadway between 49th and 51st streets and has had its fair share of problems.

At the height of last month’s snowstorm, the heat and hot water failed throughout the 22-acre complex for several hours.

Some 40 tenants — joined by an equal number of residents of other NYCHA projects, many with similar breakdowns — called the rally to dramatize what they said were other, more longstanding deficiencies.

“I’ve lived here for 30 years,” said Marie Richardson. “When I moved here, it was a paradise. Now, I pay $2,000 a month rent and I have no gas.”

Other tenants complained of water being turned off late at night, mold, broken doors and bathroom fixtures, mounting trash and vermin.

“You can see the mice play tag on the scaffolding,” said one angry tenant.

“This is an ongoing situation,” Tomasina Reyes, another resident, told the rally. “It just doesn’t stop.”

HUD apartment building's LLC landlord is putting elderly tenants at risk of contracting coronavirus

AM New York

Some residents of Astoria’s Bridgeview II Co Apartments were left without hot water and heat for more than 55 hours over the weekend, one tenant’s son told QNS.

Although the hot water went back on for a few hours on Monday, March 16, it is off again as of Tuesday morning, according to Dannelly Rodriguez, a student at CUNY Law and a community activist who’s mother lives in the building. He said the heat never went back on.

“On Saturday at like 8:30 a.m., there was no hot water or heat, and the day before there was brown water,” Rodriguez said. “This is especially problematic because a lot of the tenants are elders who are most susceptible to COVID-19, so I felt like something needed to be done immediately.”

Rodriguez’s mother, who he says has serious health conditions and receives Section 8, is one of those tenants. When he went to visit her on the eighth floor, he realized the issue and that a number of other people in the building also didn’t have hot water and heat. He then started encouraging neighbors to file complaints with management and call 311.

Bridgeview II Apartments, located at 26-45 9th Street, is a low income, HUD apartment building with 110 units. It is currently managed by Axion Management LLC, according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) website.

Rodriguez, a former tenant of the building, said this is not an “isolated incident.” He recalls filing a lawsuit a few years prior in order to have the building fix his mother’s leaking roof.

“They have had these kinds of incidents in the past, including boiler, heat, mold issues, broken appliances and windows issues,” Rodriguez said. “The building has a host of violations. The culture of this building is that they’re actively negligent and fail to make repairs for the people who live there. Having this boiler issue now is a manifestation of everything that’s happened throughout the years.”

An HPD spokesperson told QNS that inspectors assessed the building on Monday, and found the hot water and heat were “adequate.” They said heat was at 68 degrees (the high yesterday was 45 degrees) and the hot water was 120 degrees, OSHA’s recommended temperature for domestic hot water.

Rodriguez said the hot water was working after complaints were filed, but the heat still wasn’t working as of Monday — for several apartment units, not just his mother’s apartment.
HPD said they will work directly with tenants who need hot water and heat.

Over the weekend, Rodriguez took to Twitter to document what was going on — knowing that he’d get more responses that way.

My mother’s who has serious health issues & many other tenants at 26-45 9th St. Astoria Queens are without hot water for 24 hrs due to the negligence of Wavecrest Management. How is this acceptable in the 21st century & amidst this Corona virus pandemic? @NYCHousing @HealthNYGov

— Dannelly Rodriguez (@DR0DRIGUEZ) March 15, 2020

de Blasio is setting up a new deal for the city to buy cluster buildings from another slumlord

 NY Daily News

Ashley Taliercio and her two children have been in their Harlem apartment for three months, but it feels like years.

Each day they’re forced to walk a gauntlet of squalor: caved-in ceilings, used condoms, cigarette butts lining the stairways and constant cold inside their claustrophobic studio.

All of it has begun to numb the 30-year-old mother.

“There’s roaches, there’s fighting. There’s people doing drugs in the hallway,” she told the Daily News, her son crying in her arms, her daughter sitting stone-faced on the bed they share. “It’s not safe. But it is what it is.”

Taliercio lives at 148 W. 124 St., one of 14 buildings in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx the city is planning to buy from Mark Irgang, a landlord who already earns money from the city by housing homeless people in emergency “cluster-site” housing.

The land deal, which the city has treated as a closely guarded secret since announcing it in November, is the second part of its plan to phase out cluster housing by buying it and converting it into permanent affordable apartments.

The practice of housing people in cluster, or scatter-site, apartments has come under fire because the units cost the city a fortune to rent, and are often in a terrible state of disrepair.

Buying the Irgang’s 14 apartment buildings outright will also cost the city, however. Property records show the buildings are worth at least $41 million.

And it won’t just cost in terms of taxpayer money. Buying property from shady landlords does not happen without at least some political fallout. The purchase price in phase one of Mayor de Blasio’s cluster site conversion plan was a major headache for him both before and after the deal’s completion.

He came under fire earlier this year when The News revealed the city would be buying 17 buildings from notorious landlords, Jay and Stuart Podolsky. That was phase one of the plan. The brothers ultimately ended up making $173 million on the deal — despite one city appraisal that valued the properties at just $49 million. The city comptroller launched a probe into the appraisal process, which is ongoing.

Further complicating matters in phase two is that the controversial Acacia Network manages some of the Irgang properties.

LLC slumlords lets Far Rockaway building rot

CBS NY

Bronx landlord menaced and is now evicting tenant for trying to report uninhabitable conditions at her apartment

NY Daily News

Keep your mouth shut, and you can stay put.

That’s the loud-and-clear message a social services provider sent to a Bronx mother of three when it made her promise to stop calling the city’s 311 help line with gripes about her heat-less, rodent-filled subsidized apartment.

Iesha Poindexter told the Daily News that since she moved into her 4453 White Plains Rd. unit in 2013, it’s been one nightmare after another, with spotty heat and hot water and a near-constant sprinkling of rodent droppings on her family’s clothing.

When management failed to remedy the issues, she complained to 311 — which irked staffers so much, they told her to stop calling, or go.

In August, Poindexter was presented with a form that stipulated she must stop contacting the city helpline with complaints, or she’d get the boot. The form said she must “refrain from calling 311 in regard to any complaints or repair work that needs to be completed in your apartment or on any of Five Stars Management property.”

Poindexter, afraid she’d find herself on the street with her three sons — and the two kittens she adopted as a form of rodent control — reluctantly signed.

But now, she told The News, management is going to kick her out anyway when her lease expires in March.

“They just gave me a lease ... but said there’s no way they’re renewing it,” she said. “They evil.”

The building she lives in, Poindexter said, houses tenants who receive a mix of rent subsidies, including supportive housing and welfare money, which she receives, as well as other sources of funding like Section 8 vouchers and veterans assistance.

She pays rent out of her own pocket through supportive housing subsidies from the Acacia Network — the entity that provides social services in the building and whose letterhead appears on the form she signed — and with welfare money she gets through the city Department of Homeless Services, she said. All of it goes to the building’s property manager, Five Stars Management.

Ah, that scalliwag Acacia Network, which all you long-time Crapper readers should be familiar with.

Recidivist city slumlords bringing their scummy tactics upstate

The Real Deal

E&M Management — a longtime multifamily owner known for buying rent-stabilized buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx and converting them to market rate — is finding greener pastures beyond the city.

The controversial landlord, which owns and manages more than 3,000 apartments in the boroughs, is aggressively expanding its portfolio to upstate New York, where taxes are lower and rental laws are far less stringent.

E&M pounced on the Hudson Valley rental market in March 2018 when it bought two multifamily complexes in Kingston, Lakeshore Villas and Sunset Gardens, for $44 million. The firm is also set to close on another rental complex in Kingston for $28 million and has plans to buy a six-story senior residence in Newburgh.

E&M is “out of the city,” said managing partner Daniel Goldstein, who has taken over the company’s day-to-day operations, while its founder, Irving Langer, spends most of his time in Florida.

The landlord is on track to own and manage more than 850 units upstate. At the same time, E&M has been selling off dozens of properties in the city, reportedly including two Harlem portfolios last year that went for north of $300 million combined.

Goldstein said the upstate expansion was a natural move for the company for several reasons: 

Negative media attention in the city was causing publicity problems, while hefty regulations and property taxes were putting a squeeze on E&M’s bottom line, among other factors.

But tenants and public officials accuse the landlord of foul play — from aggressively pushing out tenants to failing to provide basic maintenance in areas like heating and plumbing. An E&M subsidiary was a subject of an extensive New York Times exposé last year for evicting 15 low-income renters and suing 250 rent-regulated tenants at a property in East Harlem.

And the company may soon face similar pressures in Ulster County, as two bills in the state Senate could extend the reach of New York’s rental laws and hinder the firm’s plans to corner the Hudson Valley market.

Here's proof of E & M's shenanigans.

Phantom landlord terrorizes tenants by weaponizing construction

CBS NY

An apartment battle in the Brooklyn between rent-stabilized tenants and their landlord is getting heated.

Residents claim they’re being forced out with a construction nightmare and now they’re fighting back.

CBS2 first told you about the tenants at 97 and 99 Clay Street last week. They claim their landlord is using construction to harass them in an effort to drive them from their rent-stabilized apartments.

They add they’ve enduring leaking ceilings, construction debris, and the threat of rats in their building. Now they’re rallying for their rights.

 The owners are sidestepping accountability,” tenant George Manatos said.

The property is run by a company called “Perfect Management,” under LJC Towers LLC, but the address leads to this shipping store filled with non-descript mailboxes.

“You can’t talk to a mailbox, there’s no one to talk to and they don’t want you talking to them, they don’t even want you know who they are,” Williamsburg resident Phil Smrek explained.

Smrek says he endured the same kind of abuse and knows the game landlords play all too well; especially when it comes to construction violations.

“I’ve seen them pay the fines like parking tickets, $5,000, $10,000… when you’re talking about $20 million  properties, a $5,000 fine is nothing so there has to be actual prosecution and prison time for these landlords.

CBS2 reached out to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development which investigates tenant harassment. The agency said it rejects “mail drop addresses” like this location.

“Many times they have the buildings listed under DOB with one owner and under HPD with a different owner. They drop letters in their last names, they change their spelling, it’s very shrouded, they’re under LLC’s.

CBS2 checked the address for LJC Towers LLC on the HPD website; it’s not at Lee Avenue where they claim, but a building on Manhattan Avenue that says Perfect Management on the door.

CBS2’s Valerie Castro rang their buzzer to ask some questions, but while she was waiting they turned the lights out.

 This is where I got my internet handle from.

Developer and recidivist slumlord gets loan from bank he robbed to buy historic building and bar

Patch

When the White Horse Tavern building was purchased by the notorious landlord Steve Croman, West Villagers grew anxious for the building's future.

Croman had served jail time for tax fraud and was required to pay $8 million in restitution back to tenants he was accused of harassing. The landlord ultimately pleaded guilty to a scheme that involved obtaining multi-million dollar refinancing loans — which included submitting false mortgage documents to New York Community Bank and Capital One Bank.

But now, New York Community Bank has welcomed Croman back.

The bank is the lender for Croman's purchase of the $13.7 million building, located at 567 Hudson St., mortgage documents and property records show.

A spokesman for New York Community Bank did not return multiple calls for comment. 

 Tenants' advocates have raised concerns about the standards banks hold landlords to when they give out loans.

"I'll leave it to the bank regulators to decide whether it's safe and sound to lend to someone who defrauded you," said Jaime Weisberg, a senior campaign analyst for Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD).

"We've been in regular conversation with the bank about this particular landlord for years," Weisberg added. "To be doing business with somebody with such a poor record with tenants is concerning.
"We want banks to be mindful of this because their lending matters," she said. 

Ridgewood citizens assemble protest against recidivist slumlord

 Queens Eagle

Dozens of Ridgewood renters marched through their neighborhood Saturday to denounce a property owner routinely featured on the New York City public advocate’s annual Worst Landlord List. Their chants of “Fight Fight Fight, Housing is Right” prompted nods from passersby, supportive honks from an FDNY fire truck driving along Myrtle Avenue and words of encouragement from local elected officials.

The Ridgewood Tenants Union’s demonstration against Silvershore Properties attracted renters from Ridgewood and neighboring Bushwick who said they have been harassed by landlords who go to extreme measures to evict or wear down their tenants in order to jack up rents, especially in rent-stabilized apartments.

Silvershore’s former owner, Jonathan Cohen, was named the city’s worst landlord in 2017 by former Public Advocate Letitia James. The company owns nearly 100 buildings and continues the conduct that Cohen instituted, tenants say.

Gloria Nieves, a tenant leader at 1708 Summerfield St., described how Silvershore neglected tenants who went without heat or hot water and had to perform their own building maintenance.

“The people who run Silvershore Properties will say that they are good people and that we are the bad guys but to leave an entire building without any heat and oftentimes hot water during some of the coldest days of winter is not something a good person does,” Nieves said. “They have made our lives impossible and that is why we need landlords like them and all the other landlords in our neighborhood to understand that they cannot take advantage of us in this way.”

The demonstration began in front of 61-20 Madison Ave., a Silvershore Properties building, before community members marched down Fresh Pond Road and Myrtle Avenue, the neighborhood’s two bustling commercial strips. The event ended in front of 1708 Summerfield St., where at least one senior tenant watched from her apartment before heading outside to join the rally.

Several tenants told the Eagle about the bad experiences they have had with landlords — abusive companies with large property portfolios as well as opportunistic single building owners — who tried to drive long-term tenants out of their buildings.

Eugenio Vasquez said the owner of his Bushwick apartment building sold the property to a new landlord who immediately raised rent and took him to housing court to try to evict him.

Ahtziri Campos, a 15-year-old volunteer organizer, said her landlord has tried to drive her immigrant family out of the building for five years so that he can raise the rent and attract wealthier tenants amid Ridgewood’s gentrification.

“He only bothered us,” Campos said. “We are the minority in the building and he made us afraid of getting displaced.”  

2 Queens slumlords make PA's top 10 list of bad landlords

From the Queens Tribune:

Public Advocate Letitia James ranked two city landlords with properties in Ridgewood among the city’s 10 worst in her annual Worst Landlords Watchlist, which was released on Tuesday.

James’ list is a database that ranks the worst landlords in the city based on monthly updates of open violations. Silvershore Properties’ Jonathan Cohen—who owns a property at 17-08 Summerfield St. in Ridgewood, which has a total of 116 violations—was ranked as the city’s worst, while Meir Fried—who owns a property at 16-45 Summerfield St. in Ridgewood, which has a total of 28 violations—came in at number eight. Both landlords primarily own buildings in Brooklyn.

Queens properties with the most violations included Hillside House Management Co.’s site at 87-40 165th St. in Jamaica—which ranked first and had 383 violations—and Nada Gracin’s property at 150-15 Sanford Ave. in Flushing, which had 244 violations.

Proposed Astoria Cove site is a disaster

From the Daily News:

Frustrated neighbors for the last few years have bombarded 311 with noise and other complaints. And they’ve called any agency they think can help.

Officials with the state Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed they were investigating complaints at the site at 8-01 26th Ave. in Astoria.

Alma Realty, principal investor of 2030 Astoria Developers, the company intending to build on the site, denied any illegal activity had occurred.

Under state environmental law, anyone found guilty of dumping hazardous waste can face criminal charges and a fine of $37,500 for each day of violation and civil penalties up to $22,500.

Three years ago, the now-blighted lot was going to be the next hot waterfront development — Astoria Cove.

Mayor de Blasio praised it during his 2015 State of the City address — claiming its affordable housing component was a victory for his administration.

But instead of the promised housing, and jobs and community benefits, Astoria Cove brought chaos and frustration, local residents say.

Alma Realty owner Efstathios “Steve” Valiotis — who landed at No. 3 in Public Advocate Tish James’ list of worst landlords in 2016 — pledged to use union workers for all phases of clean-up and construction at the site, according to Build Up NYC, an umbrella-group of various labor groups.

Instead of hiring union workers to do environmental clean-up at the site, he brought in a “low-road” company called Tristate Cleaning Solutions...

Another snag followed.

The state’s 421-A tax abatement program — which gave subsidies to developers including affordable housing in their projects — expired in the summer of 2016. Without the tax break the project was completely stalled, Astoria Cove principals maintained.

Since 2016, no meaningful work has been done on the massive waterfront construction site — but there’s a constant flow of material on and off the property...

Slumlord brothers sentenced to community service

From NY1:

Two Brooklyn landlords this week answered to charges of harassing and illegally forcing rent-stabilized tenants out of their apartments.

Joel and Aaron Israel own several buildings in Bushwick, Greenpoint and Williamsburg.

The brothers were arrested in April, accused of deliberately destroying the kitchens and bathrooms in several apartments under the guise of renovations.

Prosecutors charged they wanted to remove rent-stabilized tenants, to rent the apartments at market rate.

As part of a deal, the two have pleaded guilty to scheming to defraud and unlawful eviction.

Both will receive five years probation, perform community service, and pay a nearly a quarter-million dollars in restitution.

Slumlord arrested, sued

From New York Magazine:

Even in a city filled with bad landlords, Steven Croman stood out. A regular on “worst landlord” lists, his company would buy up Manhattan apartment buildings, then push for tenants in rent-regulated apartments to leave, either by buying out their leases or, tenants said, harassing them until they left. Then, once he deregulated the rent-stabilized apartments, he would charge much higher rents. But this morning Croman was charged with 20 felonies, including grand larceny, falsifying business records, and a scheme to defraud; he faces up to 25 years in prison.

That’s not all the bad news for Croman: The Times reports that the New York state attorney general’s office also sued Croman today, seeking to force him not just to give up his real-estate business, but to pay millions of dollars in restitution to tenants and penalties. In its lawsuit, the attorney general’s office, which investigated Croman for nearly two years, accused him of harassing and coercing “countless working-class and low-income families out of their longtime homes.”

Unhappy Valentine's Day for Maspeth family

From PIX11:

Imagine what it's like if your apartment inside is as cold as it is outside, just as New York City is experiencing the coldest temperatures and wind chills in 20 years this weekend.

One Maspeth family knows firsthand.

"We keep the heater going nonstop and we keep bundled up at all times," Dawn Stahl told PIX11 News.

Dawn, her husband Michael and 16-year-old daughter Ashley have been living in the second-floor apartment at 54–66 46 Street with no heat and hot water for three months.

Her Con Edison bill is over $2000.

And to make matters worse, her oven and stove don't work because she said National Grid removed the gas meter in the basement because her landlord didn't pay his bills. She's now using a hot plate for cooking.

The family stopped paying rent months ago and took the landlord to court.

And now they're moving out in April, but, in the meantime, they have to deal with this weekend's arctic blast.

Fire damaged property left to rot with tenants inside

From DNA Info:

The city’s worst illegal hotel operator has left tenants living without gas or a roof for more than six months, residents said.

And they suspect it's a tactic employed by Highpoint Associates to force them to abandon their rent-stabilized homes.

The lack of gas followed a fire on Feb. 4 at 412 W. 46th St., which the FDNY concluded was sparked accidentally by electrical wires and tore through the building's roof.

Nearly seven months later, the landlord still has not completed repairs.

Samaritan Village loves doing business with slumlords

From the Times Ledger:

The owners of Glendale’s soon to be homeless shelter have experience with owning residential buildings. They also have experience with complaints.

The city Department of Buildings approved permits in early March to turn the empty factory on 78-16 Cooper Ave. into transitional housing – a sore point for the surrounding Glendale community. Samaritan Village will run the shelter, but the owner of the building is the estate of Joseph Wilner.

The estate also owns a building in Kew Gardens that has amassed dozens of open, unresolved violations, according to the city agency Housing Preservation and Development. And many of these violations are considered hazardous by the city, which raises questions about how well maintained the homeless shelter will be.

Many of the open and hazardous violations issued to the apartment building on 119-14 Union Turnpike deal with rodent infestations, defective electric outlets and broken lights. Many of the violations were issued several times, yet the estate of Joseph Wilner has not fixed the problem.