Slumlord Steve Croman To Pay $8 Million To Harassed Tenants

EAST VILLAGE, NY — The notorious slumlord Steve Croman has to pay $8 million in restitution to former tenants he harassed in the largest settlement of its kind, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Croman's $8 million payout is the largest-ever settlement with an individual landlord, according to New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who announced the consent decree.

One of New York City's most notorious landlords, Croman was convicted earlier this year in an illegal refinancing scheme related to his various properties. He was sentenced to serve a year on Rikers Island and pay $5 million in restitution.

On top of his criminal charges, Croman was also slapped with a civil lawsuit from Schneiderman, which accused him of harassing hundreds his tenants to try and push out rent-stabilized residents so he could replace them with new renters.

The consent decree requires Croman to fork over $8 million into a tenant restitution fund, and also mandates than more than 100 of Croman's properties must be run by a new, independent management company for five years. The decree also requires a seven-year monitor to ensure that Croman complies with these terms.

The lawsuit, originally filed in May 2016, accused Croman of using a range of tactics to try and push out rent-stabilized tenants. The landlord frequently created "intolerable living conditions" in his residences by refusing to livability issues. Over the past decade, according to the suit, Croman has hired henchmen to "intimidate, stalk, and threaten" rent-regulated tenants, file frivolous lawsuits against them, turn their homes into "hazardous construction zones" filled with "constant and pervasive lead-contaminated dust."

Croman's tenants reported "ceilings collapsing in their children's bedrooms, sewage backflowing through their pipes and rain pouring through holes in the roof," according to the attorney general's office.

Croman also used illegal construction as a means to push tenants out of his properties, and also filed baseless lawsuits against tenants he wanted to leave, Schneiderman's office said.

Activists with the Croman Tenants' Alliance have compiled a list of all the Croman-owned properties they could find using online city records. His largest cluster is in the East Village, but he also owns buildings in many other parts of Manhattan — Chinatown, the Financial District, the Lower East Side, SoHo, the West Village, Chelsea, Midtown, Hell's Kitchen, the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side, Harlem and beyond.

Image credit: Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Twitter