NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to crack down on ‘bad landlords.’ First he has to find them

NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weekday, three tenants of an old building in the Bronx were sharing their apartment horror stories in a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.

This was the third in a series of “rent robbery hearings” and a new forum was launched. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled tenants to take their complaints directly to housing authorities and, in some cases, to the mayor.

While waiting in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she was worried that harmful mold in her home would worsen her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a representative of the city’s tenant protection office video of mice running through her kitchen.

Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.

“He let me take three minutes to review it,” he said, holding up a spiral notebook of complaints.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist, took office with the promise diligent tenant advocacyHe framed the event as a fightback session for tenants and assured the standing-room-only crowd that their stories would guide the city’s efforts to “hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law.”

For the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this posed a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned the building.

“This feels like such a simple question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant union. “You would think we would have a right to this information.”

Their situation is hardly unique. As company owners and investor groups Increased its share in the rental market In New York City, they increasingly shield their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.

Simultaneous application spreading nationallyIt is legal. But experts warn that could complicate the crackdown Mamdani has promised and make it harder for the city and tenants to go after chronically negligent property owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.

“There are large slum owners that everyone knows are making predatory investments, but it will be difficult to detect them because of the LLC,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “This is a problem for management and even worse for tenants.”

‘They treat us the same as rats’

For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding landlords is one of many problems affecting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.

Heat and hot water outages are so regular that some tenants keep a thermometer on their refrigerator and keep the city’s complaints line on speed dial. Common areas are often dirty and increasingly populated by drug users. Maitin said getting help with a maintenance emergency “felt like waiting for Christmas in July.”

During the month-long elevator outage, tenant Tommy Rodriguez, who uses a wheelchair, said he was forced to “slide down the stairs like a child.” He said calls to building management regarding the repair timeline went unanswered.

Rodriguez, who grew up in the building in the 1980s, recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and caring neighborhood presence.

“This place was like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “They treat us the same as rats now.”

A large rodent had recently made a hole in the sofa cushion. He carried out the destruction himself, using a two-by-four method.

A sad development

Tenants recently received a tip about their landlord after the partial collapse of another Bronx building. Man described in the news that building’s owner, David Kleiner, shared an office in Brooklyn with building managers Binyomin Herzl.

A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, noting a range of decrepit conditions and unusual changes.

“We didn’t want to be the next thing in the news,” Yuldosheva said, pointing to a crack in the wall of the bedroom shared by her three children. He feared that this crack was a result of the subway rumbling just below his windows.

The lawsuits show Herzl was ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations at at least six buildings in the Bronx; Many of these violations were determined by the judge to pose an imminent danger.

Reached by phone, Herzl said he did not own any of these properties, merely acting as an intermediary between the tenants and the actual owners, whom he refused to list. “There is no landlord,” he said. “This is a group of investors.”

Kleiner, who was previously on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed in a brief phone conversation that he was a partial owner of 705 Gerard but declined to comment further.

Herzl, meanwhile, attributed tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century-old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing rather than going after private landlords.

“Our buildings look like five-star hotels next to his,” he added.

From fines to confiscations

When homeowners refuse to fix a serious violation, such as heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs and then bill the homeowner directly.

Over the past three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs on 38 buildings identified as owned by Herzl or Kleiner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men were billed $446,521 for these repairs.

Mamdani proposed using such fines as a tool to place problem rental properties under municipal administration, aggressively pursuing foreclosures against delinquent homeowners and purchasing their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.

Mamdani said that just as the city could shut down unhealthy restaurants, “landlords that consistently put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — no exceptions.”

In reality the process is resource intensive and legally problematic. This situation is further complicated by the hotbed of LLCs that are often used by landlords to hide the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office of Tenant Protection.

“It would be great to know better who owns the buildings we regulate and inspect,” he said.

State legislation that would make it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul following pressure from homeowners.

New Yorkers Versus Bad Landlords

Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant recommendations include: freezing of rent for regulated tenants – will force landlords to make cuts to maintenance and services.

“This will lead to losses from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a matter of math: These buildings are collapsing because of policies, not because of bad landlords.”

He called the rent robbery hearings “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Despite combative branding – it screams “New Yorkers Against Bad Landlords” a promotion — The Bronx event mostly resembled a standard voter service night: City officials asked questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.

Maitin felt “delighted to be heard by someone who could actually do something about the problem” but felt it was too early to tell whether “it’s all talk”.

The next morning, he was surprised to see the building inspector applying a fresh coat of paint to the stairs. Outside, workers had been removing scaffolding in front of the building for years.

“I think they got wind of the rent robbery,” Maitin said. “They were scared.”