Citi Urban Management: NYC Housing Code & The Failure To Enforce It

VIDEO CLIP: Flooding At 36 Saint Marks Place Causing Massive Water Damage Goes Unfixed By Citi Urban Management

In December of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic flipped our world on its head, me and my two roommates found what seemed to be a gem in the middle of the trendy East Village of Manhattan. We had found our brand new home at 36 Saint Marks Place, overseen by Citi Urban Management, and it was a real steal! During that time, rent in the city was mid-nosedive from a plummeting market torn apart by the COVID-19 crisis. It felt like a long-awaited silver lining to a year tackled by utter catastrophe. But, as we’d soon find out, our new oasis was just a mirage. And just beyond that blistering illusion — the damning truth of the broken system in New York City regulating and controlling our housing.

AUDIO CLIP: Listen to the voices of the tenants at 36 Saint Marks Place, trapped with no heat for weeks in the winter as they explain to police their situation

From day one it was crystal clear to me and my roommates that staying warm was going to be a battle in our new home. That first winter, my roommates and I played hot potato with a single space heater, just trying to get our rooms warm enough so as not to be kept awake by the violent shivering. We tried to laugh it off, thinking this heat problem was just a one-off snag we’d hit. But boy, were we wrong! Does anybody recall that gut-wrenching final scene from the first Saw film? The one where Adam, arm outstretched, is screaming bloody murder as he becomes trapped forever in the place that would become his untimely tomb? .. Yeah, that’s what being a tenant in a building owned by Citi Urban Management is like, on an endlessly chaotic loop.

“C’mon, John, it can’t be that bad..”

Oh, but it can my dear friend. It can and it is!

LINK: See for yourself Citi Urban Management’s hundreds of one-star reviews left online by tenants detailing the company’s inhumane treatment

Reaching out to the building’s management turned out to be like yelling into a black hole. Getting a single word response from them was rare, and meanwhile, our building seemed to be falling apart at the seams. Broken fixtures, leaks that wouldn’t quit, and rodents — clearly longtime residents who had long made their home of our common spaces and bedrooms. And right outside, trash piled up so high it would block out the sun from reaching the faces of anyone exiting the buildings one and only doorway in and out.

Come summer, we were hit with power outage after power outage, making our air conditioning a luxury we could hardly turn to for relief, our unit becoming a fiery, inhabitable sauna, with coveted exposed brick walls — a renters dream!

As the city’s emergency electrical crew eventually showed up to fix the power, our super heroically went ahead and refused them entry, claiming the management company wanted to deal with it themselves – prioritizing cutting costs over tenant welfare — how did we get so lucky?!

My second winter at 36 Saint Marks Place, in 2021, the situation worsened. Residents were plunged into a chilling and inhumane two full weeks without any heat or hot water. The cold became more than a discomfort; it was a threat. Citi Urban Management ignored emails begging for help — while auto responses detailing how “leadership” was away from the office on vacation would land mockingly in our inboxes.

In response, we banded together, creating a system to check on our elderly neighbors, ensuring they were alive and well in the absence of basic necessities. Electrical outages added insult to injury, rendering even our meager space heaters useless at times. Our electric bills soared, a financial injury from our attempts to extract warmth where there wasn’t any to be found.

There were moments, standing outside in the snow, when I realized the bitter irony: outside was, at times, warmer than the inside of our supposed home. This experience wasn't just about the discomfort or the cold; it was a harrowing insight into a city that, despite its power and wealth, fails to safeguard the basic rights of its citizens.

VIDEO CLIP: See and hear the flaws in HPDs 311 complaint system during an attempt to report massive water damage

Complaints to 311 would be met with inspection, and then a status of “closed” would kill any chance of our voices making it passed the initial steps toward outreach we were desperately grabbing at. New York City’s Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) would elect to assume that upon notice of the state of 36 Saint Marks Place, they would take the necessary actions to fix the issues — even if the HPD's own endless log of former violations and complaints against the management company clearly suggested otherwise.

Things all took a major turn for the worst when the common spaces began to flood. Not to tirelessly reference film scenes, but the grand staircase in Titanic? More like, a Sunday evening with light showers at 36 Saint Marks Place. Any sign of precipitation and the stairwell of our building began to flood uncontrollably. Tenants were slipping on the stone staircase bringing in their groceries, electrical wires were sizzling with the confrontation of their mortal foe, and the walls were disintegrating at a pace like I had never seen before.

Water damage inside of a building may seem like a minor headache, but this type of damage is actually quite severe and leads to fast-forming mold infestations, compromising to the structural integrity of the building, electrical fires and even building collapse.

If I need to point my fellow East Villagers in the direction of any greater example of how electrical fires can be devastating, look no further than the historic Middle Collegiate Church, which met its demise in December 2020 after an electrical fire in an adjacent building spread and gutted the structure entirely. Ironically, that fire happened the day I moved into my apartment here on Saint Marks Place, a bad omen to say the least.

You can look at the flooding as I describe it here.

I had sent an email to Citi Urban Management regarding this endless flooding, demanding that something be done to prevent yet another catastrophic event in this neighborhood, and after I explained to Citi Urban “leadership” over email that endless water damage not only violates all of the habitability laws in New York — it compromises human life itself, Spencer Lewin of Jonis Realty magically joined the email thread.

This is how Spencer Lewin replied to my concerns:

Furthermore, when there was finally a notice posted that a plumber would be hired to “fix the problem in a few minutes” — the company proceeded to pretend to hire a company to come in to assess the damage, sending one of their own employees to the building to lie to tenants.

AUDIO CLIP: Citi Urban Management employee lies to tenant about being a 3rd party licensed plumber

The legal costs suffered by tenants to bring management companies like Citi Urban to court to face their shameful neglect of human life, should never have had to been dished out in the first place. If the Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) only acted on the complaints they receive instead of issuing worthless violations to wealthy management companies who couldn’t care less, we might see the day where New Yorkers were protected by the programs their taxes go toward every year.

It’s shameful, it’s unjust and it is not the New York we should all accept for ourselves.

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Article written by John Mateer for Citi Residents Alliance Ltd.