Bed-Stuy Vets Go Without Heat In Building Owned By Worst Landlord

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Toxic lead paint is peeling off the walls, the heating system breaks down in the winter and long, deep cracks trail down the front of one of the worst buildings in Brooklyn.

“This place is a mess,” said Timothy Nash, a 69-year-old veteran who has lived at 401 Macon St. for the past four years. “No hot water, when it gets cold, no heat.

“I’ve never seen a place like this.”

Nash is one of thousands of tenants whose landlord was named on the watchlist of New York City's 100 worst landlords released by Public Advocate Letitia James on Tuesday.

James took a tour of Nash’s Bed-Stuy building on Tuesday to showcase the living conditions of the city’s unluckiest tenants.

“The conditions in this building are actually horrendous,” James said outside the building, which belongs to the 14th worst landlord in the city, Ervin Johnson. “This is a message to Mr. Johnson, we’re coming after you.”

Resident Solomon Quick, 73, took a group of reporters through the four-story building, pointing out a slew of problems that have plagued tenants — several of whom are elderly, disabled, or both — for years.

Mail carriers cannot deliver because the box is broken and the management company will not replace it. Mold crawls up the walls and leaky pipes rain down into people’s homes. Faulty wiring left one tenant with a single functioning outlet, he said.

“We’ve got a pile, for years, of 311 complaints,” said Quick.

Last winter, the heat never came on and Quick watched his 80-year-old neighbor trek down three flights of stairs every day to warm herself at a nearby senior center.

“I read them the riot act about that,” said Quick. HDP is currently investigating Johnson for his failure to provide tenants with heat and hot water last winter, city records show.

“Ms. Emma,” as Quick called his neighbor, still battles leaks in her bathroom and is “at war with mice,” he said.

There are 16 apartments in the four-story building, which has racked up 357 housing code violations and nine building code violations.

The building has been cited 13 times for apartments with hazardous lead paint since 2010, according to HPD records, and DOB inspectors fined Johnson $10,000 in 2016 for ignoring hazardous cracks on the third story of the building’s exterior wall, records show.

Johnson erected a scaffolding that, like the cracks, remained in place on Tuesday.

Johnson owns four properties — two in Bed-Stuy, one in Ditmas Park and one in Coney Island — which racked up 557 outstanding housing code violations and 11 building code violations.

About 45 of the hundreds of buildings mentioned in James’ report are in Bed Stuy.

Jonathan Cohen of Silvershore Properties topped the list with 1,090 outstanding housing code violations. Three of his 19 Brooklyn buildings are in Bed-Stuy and they racked up 204 violations.

James' office compiled the list based on the average number of open violations in a given month between October 2016 and October 2017.

James said she’s hoping to pressure state senators to pass three bills designed to protect tenants — a repeal of vacancy protection, preferential rent protection and rent control protection — and to convince landlords to address outstanding housing violations.

“Shame works,” she said.

Contact information was not immediately available for Johnson, but a building employee named Naquan Fisher, 30, blamed residents for the building's multiple problems.

"We are updating the building every day," said Fisher, standing outside a first-floor home with a broken window taped over with cardboard. Fisher said tenants had denied his workers access into their homes.

"It ain't the violations," said Fisher. "It's the people."

Click here to see the full 2017 Worst Landlords Watchlist.

Photos by Kathleen Culliton show 401 Macon St., resident Solomon Quick holding a stack of HPD complaint forms, and conditions inside the home of a veteran named Mark who has just one working outlet.

Patch editor Noah Manskar contributed reporting.