We’ve all heard horror stories about the landlords who refuse to deal with rodent infestation, who kick you out long before you expect your lease to end or who are just total a-holes. This week, The Landlord Watchlist by New York public advocate Letitia James published an official list of the 100 worst landlords and buildings in all five boroughs. Think your apartment management is bad? You may be sending your lazy landlord a huge thank you after seeing some of the kinds of numbers these landlords rack up.
In terms of Brooklyn buildings, 153 Chauncey St (Stuyvesant Heights), managed by Eli Maor, is the worst, with 631 violations, and the second-worst Brooklyn landlord is Stanley Crossman, racking up 485 violations at 245 Sullivan Place. Coming in third is Larry Hirschfield, who manages 754 Miller Avenue and earned 449 violations in 2014, followed James Dimitriades earns fourth place, at 245 Hawthorne Street with 428 violations and Salvatore Parlanti at 7040 Colonial Road brings up the rear as the fifth worst landlord in the borough with 400 violations.
Also at the top of the list are landlords in Carroll Gardens, Bushwick and Bed-Stuy. So basically, barely anywhere in Brooklyn is safe from terrible landlords. Looking at the map, you’ve got a big cluster of bad landlords in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, which has been cursed as an “up and coming” neighborhood. That means plenty of instances of landlords ignoring rent-stabilized tenant complaints and otherwise acting poorly in an attempt to drive out their poorer residents. So it makes sense, even if it’s morally atrocious.
What can you do about it except angstily tweet about how your damn landlord won’t fix the bathroom sink? Firstly, know your tenants rights. This includes legal access to heat and hot water, keeping apartments in “good repair” and without vermin and not evicting you without a proper warrant. And if those rights are being violated, get yourself a decent lawyer, blacklist be damned.