Tenants sue Bronx landlords over ‘hazardous’ conditions; owners owe $24.7M in back property taxes
Residents of a Bronx apartment building are suing its owners after years of poor living conditions that deteriorated despite hundreds of unaddressed housing violations — a situation that leads the local City Council member to say the city is failing to crack down on its worst landlords.
The Legal Aid Society filed the lawsuit in Bronx Housing Court on Tuesday on behalf of about two dozen tenants of 2201-05 Davidson Ave. in University Heights.
It names Romad Realty, Inc., 2201 Davidson NY Holdings, LLC and landlords Dov Guttman and David Kornitzer, who records show owe the city $24.7 million in unpaid taxes. They could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to the suit, the circa-1929 rent-stabilized property has been “in a state of serious disrepair” for over a decade. At a press conference on Tuesday in the building’s garbage-filled lobby, tenants described living with mold, vermin and an elevator that’s been out of order since August.
“The consistent neglect has continuously made a huge negative impact on this building and my apartment for over 50 years and there needs to be a positive and immediate change,” said Jenel Young, 27, who grew up in the building and whose grandmother lived there decades before shoddy conditions forced her out.
“If the building’s damages continue there will be nothing out of what could be a beautiful opportunity for a historic complex,” Young said.
The building has almost 500 open violations with the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and 83 violations with the Department of Buildings.
“This hit me right here in the heart and in the gut, to see a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old walking by with a wall of black mold, with a hole in their ceiling,” said Councilmember Pierina Sanchez. “That ain’t right. That’s not what the city of New York is supposed to be about.”
Tenants say that besides seeking repairs, they want the city to intervene and place the building under new ownership — ideally with a nonprofit, or with the tenants themselves. It’s a demand they’ve been making for years, but a confluence of factors has kept that from happening.
The city’s Third-Party Transfer program is one avenue that could allow for such a transfer. The program, which allows buildings that owe back taxes or other debt to the city to be transferred to new owners, has been on hold since 2019, when it was found to unfairly take property ownership away from communities of color. Sanchez said the city is “very seriously” looking into reforming the program so it can be used in cases like this one.
“It’s not that the city’s enforcement programs don’t work. They just don’t work for the worst owners,” Sanchez said. “Buildings like this will do absolutely nothing until the property is taken away.”
Bankruptcy proceedings tied up the city’s effort to foreclose on the building in 2015. The city and the tenants moved in 2018 to dismiss the case, in the expectation the dismissal would let the city foreclose on the building to recover millions in unpaid property taxes.
But Kornitzer and the other investors never paid up, Legal Aid says — a claim confirmed by city records.
Meanwhile, the Davidson Avenue complex has been in Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s Alternative Enforcement Program, earmarked for the city’s “severely distressed” buildings, for over a decade — with no discernible improvements, residents said.
Young places blame for the situation squarely with the building’s landlords. She said she’s had to spend thousands of dollars of her own money to fix up her apartment, and she and her sister have been forced to rely on a toaster and small electric stove for meals since their stove broke down.
But looking at happy childhood photos she said she is determined to repair her home rather than move away.
“I see those kinds of pictures, I’m like, ‘No, you gotta come back and fix her apartment,’” Young said. “You can’t just take the easy way out and run and go to Brooklyn.”
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