“I don’t think he deserves rent at all,” she said. Metayer said Khan’s management company has failed to communicate with tenants, leaving only the superintendent to handle the building. If the situation is dire but doesn’t fit one of the predefined emergency conditions-such as a heat or gas outage, among others-it’s up to the tenant to explain why the problem merits consideration as an emergency. “So many folks are seeing the conditions that they’re living in become more and more acute of a health risk to their entire families,” said Johanna Bassetti, director of product at JustFix.nyc, a nonprofit that builds free tools to support the NYC housing movement, including an online emergency repairs and harassment tool for tenants to bring landlords to court virtually for free.īassetti noted that housing courts are currently holding trials over video and only accepting emergency cases. Stay-at-home protocols can prolong tenants’ exposure to health hazards like mold, potentially exacerbating existing respiratory issues.

During the first month of the shutdown, tenants also reported building-wide gas outages at another Khan-owned building, 2250 Grand Concourse. In April, residents were trying to survive with poor heat and no hot water during a quarantine while also trying to stem the spread of illness. The landlord, Abdul Khan, ranked fourth last year on the Public Advocate’s Worst Landlord Watchlist after averaging 1,135 open housing violations per month (totaled across nine of his worst buildings). These include water leaks that tenant advocates say have resulted in collapsed ceilings, rat and mice infestations, peeling paint with lead or that is presumed to contain lead in multiple areas, and other problems.

Records show 252 open city-issued violations at the building, 98 of which are class C, or immediately hazardous. Many tenants recently suffered through over a year without gas-Metayer said her outage lasted 16 months.

Sometimes Metayer would resort to cleaning herself the way her Haitian-Dominican family does “back home on the islands”: boil water, then bathe with a bucket.įailures of essential services at 1515 Selwyn Ave. Even after repair work, they remained inconsistent, with the latest complaint of a building-wide outage on May 6, according to tenants’ 311 complaints. Yet on the first of April, the heat and hot water disappeared. When Nadia Metayer buses home from her job as an essential worker at a manufacturing company and walks into her Bronx apartment, it would be nice if she could take a hot shower.

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