For the fourth year in a row, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has been named the worst landlord in the city, according to Public Advocate and gubernatorial candidate Jumaane Williams. While outgoing mayor Bill de Blasio remains laser-focused on enforcing vaccine mandates, the city continues to descend into an uninhabitable wasteland.
After earning the top spot on the annual Worst Landlord Watch List in 2020, 2019, and 2018, the long-troubled Housing Authority, the landlord to around 400,000 predominantly low-income and working-class New Yorkers, has done it again.
NYCHA was first declared the city’s worst landlord in 2018 by then-Public Advocate Letitia James. NYCHA spokeswoman Barbara Brancaccio said at the time, “Everyone across the nation is well aware that NYCHA needs $40 billion to renovate its 2,200 buildings.” She continued, “Work orders have increased because we are aggressively documenting every single thing that’s wrong with our apartments. This list is kicking New York City public housing yet again — when instead NYCHA needs to be funded and supported — and it conveniently takes the media attention away from private landlords, who need to be similarly held accountable.”
According to the New York Post, the public advocate has rated landlords since 2010 based on the average number of open housing code violations on their properties, as determined by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s statistics.
Since early 2019, the Housing Authority has been overseen by a federal monitor due to decaying conditions in its buildings. As of November 2021, it had 600,480 open work orders, up from over 120,000 at the same time last year. The repair backlog has grown by more than 100,000 since 2014 when de Blasio took office.
Williams recently said, “In the last year and a half, it seems like everything has changed. But even amid this pandemic, some things have stayed constant,” adding that New York City public housing has seen a “dramatic increase in the number of deteriorating or dangerous conditions. The city itself is truly the worst landlord. They are so bad that we continually have to put them in their own category.”
Upper East Side resident Saundrea Coleman complained of “unhealthy and hazardous conditions” that have caused her to have medical issues. She also noted that “Any other landlord would either be in court or prosecuted with these conditions. Everybody deserves humane conditions.”
The watchlist ranks Sugar Hill Capital Partners’ David Schorr as the worst private landlord in the city. According to the Public Advocate’s Office, his 17 buildings with 330 units had an average of 1,442 housing agency infractions. Abdul Khan of MK Realty Group is second on the list, averaging 1,302 open violations per month across 12 buildings and 209 apartments.
Nathaniel Montgomery of Throop Court LP came in third, with an average of 1,192 infractions in 17 buildings throughout the five boroughs.
