City Ignores UES 'Slumlord' Hell, Tenants Say

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An Upper East Side building riddled with housing violations that rival some of the worst properties in Manhattan is getting the cold shoulder from city’s housing agency as tenants plead for help with getting repairs.

It’s all part of what they call an intense campaign of illegal harassment from a landlord giant — including an attempt to evict a 93-year-old tenant.

Now tenants are begging — and suing — for the city to help make their building habitable and safe. And, they claim, the city is ignoring them.

“This landlord is a slumlord”

From the outside, 1264 Lexington Ave., on the corner of East 85th Street, appears innocuous. Peering through the glass front door, the lobby looks clean and recently renovated.

A sign out front shows that it's owned by a major property group, The Moinian Group, a small part of their over 20 million square feet of real estate holdings.

But inside the seven-story building, tenants say they’ve been living through a management-directed hell, where the owners allowed over 300 housing violations to pile up and for years ignored their requests for repairs.

A group of nine tenants are suing the owners, asking for the city to appoint a third-party administrator to step in and fix up the building.

But the tenants say the city is fighting against their request, forcing a lengthy court battle.

“This landlord is a slumlord,” said their attorney, Leon Behar. “And just because the building is on 85th street, it doesn't mean he shouldn't take care of it.”

Ask a tenant what the issues are, and they’ll ask how much time you have.

Some are hazards common to certain segments of the aging New York City housing stock: rats, cockroaches, leaks, ceilings that collapse, broken intercoms, unauthorized construction, busted radiators, broken floors, boiler issues, leaks, mold, interrupted gas service and rent stabilized tenants charged above their legal rents.

Other described conditions are a bit more unique, like recurring carbon monoxide leaks, off-the-record apartments split into two units sharing circuit breakers and an elevator so precarious that tenants fear using it.

In June, the building had accumulated over 300 open housing violations issued by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

That’s when tenants decided enough was enough, and filed for their building to join the 7A program, in which the city appoints a third-party administrator to order repairs and bring the building back into habitable condition.

Declined to support

But the city doesn’t want to help, the tenants say.

According to HPD, an assessment after the 7A action was filed determined that the appointment of an administrator was not needed to address conditions.

“Our priority is safety and inspecting complaints, issuing violations, and using all of our tools, including education, outreach and enhanced enforcement when necessary, to ensure owners take appropriate action to address violations,” said HPD spokesperson, Natasha Kersey.

“HPD specifically declined to support our 7A application,” their lawyer Behar said, adding that the agency never provided an explanation in court.

City Council Member Keith Powers said his office “advocated to HPD to accept the building’s application to the 7A program.”

“The numerous violations at 1264 Lexington Avenue deserve a quick and efficient response from management,” Powers said.

Tenants have also been working with Assembly Member Alex Bores, who says all renters “deserve safe living conditions free from the exploitation of bad faith landlords like the one in this case, who refuse to be held accountable for a building with a staggering 285 violations, 71 of which are class C violations."

"The tenants at 1264 Lexington Ave have endured unacceptable living conditions, landlord-tenant harassment, and numerous quality of life issues, including noncompliance with ADA accessibility,” Bores told Patch.

Jason Wu, Attorney-in-Charge of the Harlem Community Law Office at The Legal Aid Society, said that when tenants resort to housing court, “it is because conditions have typically gotten so bad and nothing else has worked.”

“HPD needs to enforce housing rights, including 7A proceedings,” he said, “and we need judges to take these legal remedies seriously."

Patch sent a list of questions to Moinian regarding the property and an opportunity to comment, but they did not respond.

Evictions for the young and old

Numerous tenants at 1264 Lexington Ave. are facing eviction proceedings for not paying their rent. Many have decided to withhold rent for years because they say the landlord let conditions get so bad, they broke their part of the agreement.

“I'm not getting services,” said Carletta Downs, a tenant since 1991, “why would I pay rent?”

Downs, 65, and her husband raised three boys in the apartment. One of her sons is an FDNY firefighter in Harlem, and another ran for New York City mayor when he was a teenager.

Moinian first tried to evict Downs after her apartment was literally falling apart, and she spent $10,000 of her own money fixing it up. The eviction case cited unauthorized alterations.

What pushed her to the limit was when her kitchen ceiling collapsed on her then eight-year-old son, and when a dilapidated kitchen drawer flipped out of its cabinet as the same son was reaching for a spoon.

“He would have lost his arm,” Downs said. “It was really traumatic,” she said of both incidents.

“I just said: ‘I can’t live like this,’” she recalled.

So she went ahead and repaired the kitchen herself, at her own expense: new cabinets, new sink, new laminate floor. Downs also made repairs to the bathroom and flooring in two other rooms. The total cost was over $10,000.

When city inspectors said the work was to code, the owners changed tact and said that actually, the tenant-funded capital improvement entitled them to increase her rent-stabilized lease by over $500-per-month, according to court filings — effectively forcing her to pay for the repairs twice.

Her then attorney convinced her it was a good deal to make, but now, Behar, her current lawyer, says the text of the settlement agreement actually only entitled Moinian to the increase if inspectors found issues.

So far, courts have said they’re right — or at least Moinian’s claim to the rental increase is ambiguous, and that case was dropped.

“The Court is unclear how Petitioner can sue for non-payment if there is, in fact, no lease between the parties,” wrote Judge Daniele Chinea in September.

Moinian refiled for a new eviction suit based on the non-payment of the increased rent just weeks later.

The property giant has also reported several tenants who are withholding rent to all of the major credit reporting agencies.

Moinian is also trying to evict a 93-year-old tenant who first moved to her apartment in 1967, records show, alleging that she lives elsewhere.

“Every day I get a call”

A Manhattan Supreme Court judge on Aug. 10 ordered Moinian to fix 165 violations within three months — sooner for the more severe violations — or else risk daily fines that could total hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, and be found in contempt proceedings.

The elevator, the judge added in a handwritten note, should also remain functioning in a “safe manner.”

Nearly eight months later, at least 64 HPD violations issued before Aug. 10 remain open. And the elevator, tenants say, is as dangerous as ever. Currently, the building has over 100 open HPD violations, with roughly 45 new violations issued since the August order.

In court filings, Moinian’s attorney says they’ve made great progress, and it’s only the tenants ability to give them unfettered access preventing them from making all repairs. To that, Behar says his clients have had to “repeatedly eviscerate their schedules,” only for workers to never show, and if they do, it’s often without the right equipment or tools to complete the work.

A rough calculation shows that the judge could levy around $115,000 in fines per month for the currently outstanding violations.

But for anyone playing the long game, the fines are just pennies against the potential payout, Behar said, suggesting they could make over $100 million by selling or developing the prime corner lot.

“Every day I get a phone call or an email from my clients saying there is no heat, there is no hot water, there's no elevator service or I'm stuck in the elevator,” Behar said.

“He wants to get them all evicted,” he said. “Harassment is the issue — systemic harassment.”

Some city agencies have already levied hundreds of violations against the building — including nearly $50,000 in fines issued in a single day.

1264 Lexington Ave. had over 300 open housing violations in June, according to the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development, including 62 Class C, or immediately hazardous, violations.

Those numbers rival some of the worst buildings in the city, including ones listed on the Public Advocate’s “Worst Landlord Watchlist.”

Records show 20 Buildings Department violations since 2022, most of which are for unauthorized, unsafe electrical work and the constantly broken elevator, totaling just under $28,000 in fines.

Since March 2023, HPD told Patch that 301 violations have been dismissed, and that the building is now in the Alternative Enforcement Program. That means they have until May 31 to remedy nearly all of the violations or be subject to fines, emergency repair fees and possible tax liens.

Gas leaks and kicked-in doors

At the close of 2023, DOB inspectors discovered three illegally created unregistered apartments in the building, and issued an additional $45,000 in fines with the demand that the subdivided apartments be restored.

A spokesperson from the Buildings Department said that the apartments were found on the fourth, fifth and seventh floor, but said the inspectors did not issue a vacate order. One could be issued in the future if a judge, or later inspections, warrant it, but the official said it would have to be a last resort.

The illegally divided apartments each share a single electrical box with the other half of their original unit, residents said.

One tenant who moved into one of those newly-created apartments, and asked not to be named, says that when he works from home, the demands on the electrical panel from two apartments frequently trips the breakers, killing power to the apartment and cloaking the unit in darkness until his neighbor returns home.

“The facts of life are anything involved with electricity that is not done by an electrician — a licensed electrician — could be dangerous,” Behar told Patch, “and it will be dangerous eventually. It’s just a matter of time.”

The building has a history of fires, Downs said, including one a decade ago right beneath her unit.

Later, when his neighbor moved, the power was cut. Con Ed told him the account had been closed.

But that wasn’t the only utility issue.

Shortly after moving in, he woke up one day to a strong gas smell, he told Patch. Management took two weeks to send someone over, according to the tenant.

When Con Ed came to his unit to test the line, he said they told him that gas was “pouring out,” and had been for at least two weeks, exposing him and his small dog to carbon monoxide.

It’s a fear he’s lived with since.

“It causes me so much anxiety if my dog is at home and I’m out,” he said. “I’m in an illegal apartment.”

The same tenant was out at dinner one night in January when his carbon monoxide alarm went off. The super replaced the batteries, and assured him everything was ok.

When the alarm went off again a short time later, the tenant opened the apartment windows, grabbed his dog and fled to a friend’s place.

Firefighters kicked in his door — and several others — the following morning for a building-wide carbon monoxide leak. The boiler was shut down by FDNY officials, according to tenants and a notice from Con Ed.

The starting rent for his sub-divided, unregistered apartment was $3,500 per month. He's now refusing to pay.

“Cheating people out of a good apartment.”

Nearly every tenant cites the building’s single elevator as a top fear.

Many recounted getting trapped inside, and firefighters rescuing them. Sometimes, children who live in the building are the ones trapped between floors, waiting for help from a grown-up.

One tenant told Patch that the elevator was out of service for “probably six or seven months in one year.”

Buildings Department records show six elevator violations since 2022, totaling nearly $9,000 in fines.

The most recent violation issued in late March cites a tampered door safety device.

Sammmy Management, the entity who manages the building, told tenants the elevator was now cleared for use the day after that violation. Later that night, a tenant using the elevator was trapped between floors. Firefighters rescued them after 20 minutes.

Patch asked the FDNY for records of how many elevator calls they've received at this address in the past year. The department did not respond with the data before publication.

Most tenants regard the elevator as too dangerous to even risk it.

Instead, the young and fit residents take the steep stairwell that surrounds the shaft, but that’s not an option for all.

For some, like Ashley Earnest, a tenant on the sixth floor, it’s created an impossible situation.

Earnest has had several surgeries and medical procedures recently, and because the elevator is so unreliable, she is often forced to book a hotel room during post-op recovery.

“It affects your health,” Earnest said, who worked for years in commercial real estate and asset management.

She suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2018 after a car accident, and was in outpatient care for 16 months. When her neurologist recommended she have a grab bar installed in her shower, management balked, then told her she would have to purchase the bar, pay for its installation — and its removal upon her leaving the unit.

Upper East Side State Senator Liz Krueger’s office sent a letter to Moinian, demanding they help accommodate her disability. Her office told Patch they couldn't locate the letter, but that they recall Earnest and her struggles.

In 2023, Earnest had a medical emergency and needed to be hospitalized when the elevator was in the middle of a multi-month outage. That forced her down six flights of stairs because the medics were unable to bring their gurney up the narrow, twisting stairwell that surrounds the elevator shaft.

A year earlier, she was taking a bag of trash to the basement when the elevator broke. Firefighters were summoned once again to rescue her, lifting her from the cab suspended between the fifth and sixth floors.

Downs, who lives on the top floor, says that a team of delivery workers were once stuck in the elevator for 30 minutes.

“The anxiety of getting into that elevator, I can't even explain what it's like,” she said.

Sometimes the stairs pose a risk, too.

Tenant Corey Friedman, who is a party in the 7A suit, said that on the same day the stairs were being painted, the elevator went out.

He saw paint prints from his neighbors’ shoes all over the hallways, so he picked up his 65-pound pooch to save his paws from the heavy-duty industrial paint.

But there was no similar warning about the hole at the bottom of the stairs, where workers were doing some work on the cement floor. He fell in, holding his dog. X-rays showed a sprained ankle.

Friedman, like many others, says he also discovered that his apartment was illegally deregulated, and claims that Moinian has been overcharging him.

Since March 2022, he’s withheld his rent because of the elevator, and a host of other issues that he says breaches housing laws.

“What I hope out of all this is to stay in this building, to have it be livable,” Friedman said, “because there's people in here who have been here for like 20 years.”

“I don't want to leave my building,” he said.

“He's been cheating people out of a good apartment.”