Now they can’t hide.
Not Alan Fein, whose Bronx tenants live with urine-soaked hallways, crackhead squatters and filth so severe that one tenant was attacked by a rat in her toilet.
Not Chris Grijalva, whose roach-infested Brooklyn building sports a giant pile of garbage on the front lawn.
And not any of the 153 landlords whose buildings are so disgusting – or so unsafe – they’ve earned a place of shame on a new slumlord watch list from city Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. The site launches Monday.
“We want these landlords to feel like they’re being watched,” de Blasio said. “We need to shine a light on these folks to shame them into action.”
If the scarlet letter treatment works, it can’t come too soon for tenants like Lakisha Haywood, 35, who lives in a fifth-floor apartment in a building Fein owns on Bryant Ave. in the Bronx.
She went to use her bathroom last month and says a giant rat lunged at her from inside the toilet bowl.
“I screamed, slammed down the seat and flushed the toilet 10 times,” said Haywood, adding that the rodent was sucked away.
When the Daily News visited her building last week, there was no hot water in the faucets, the front door lock was broken and hallways were covered with gang graffiti. Residents said squatters smoke crack on the stairs and urinate on the floor.
“My living conditions are making me suffer from depression,” said Haywood, who has lived in the building for 14 years with two teenage sons. “It’s miserable.”
Fein, who lives in a house with a picket fence on a golf course in Woodmere, L.I., owns or has ties to three buildings on the city’s worst-10 list, but denied responsibility.
“I don’t manage those buildings,” he said, insisting he has only a “small interest” in the properties.
De Blasio’s new website – www.pubadvocate.nyc.gov/landlord-watchlist – will let tenants look up a building owner to see if he or she is on the list. They can plug in an address, type in a street or sort to see the worst slumlords in the city. They can also sort by borough or see a map of slumlord buildings in their neighborhood.
(Read More: NY Daily News)
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3 Responses
They can put a few of our landlords on that list too.
As far as squatters are concerned, don’t think it is that easy to get rid of them. The law is extremely hard on landlords. I’ve heard of instances where the house owner was homeless because he’s not allowed to throw out someone who moved in. You must also supply all utilities.
JUST A SEC! HOLD IT THERE!
Did the landlord urinate there? did the landlord hire people to urinate there? did he approve the tenants and their friends filling up their wall with graffiti? What exactly is the landlords crime? that he owns a house? or that the govt is killing them to get these people off the streets and onto somebody elses property? FYI that’s exactly what the city is doing to landlords! they tax them, they inspect them for things that have nothing to do with safety or the law, rather for the inspectors writing the law onsite while the owner can just grind his teeth in frustration.
Ask any landlord what it’s like to own a building. how the city tries soooo hard to get you out of business.