Queens residents sue city’s ‘worst landlord’ over crumbling building — Queens Daily Eagle

Bianca Zarate-MacPherson, a senior staff attorney with the Tenant Rights Coalition of Legal Services NYC’s Queens office who represents the tenants, said the lawsuit was brought forward after years of reporting violations failed to produce meaningful improvements.

“The tenants have done their due diligence,” Zarate-MacPherson told the Eagle. “They have reached out to A&E management personally, nothing happened. They called 311, had hundreds of violations placed in their building, nothing happened. They sent a demand letter to management with the list of conditions, and still with that, nothing happened.”

“The next course of action is to take the landlord to court for these repairs,” Zarate-MacPherson added.

During the rally, tenants were joined by Queens Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, who said A&E’s neglect is a common source of problems for buildings across Queens.

“In my district, we have countless cases of A&E’s abuse, over and over again,” González-Rojas said. “This is not just one building, this is about whether working class New Yorkers, immigrant families, seniors and long-time residents can remain in the communities they help build and trust that the laws will protect them.”

During the hearing, attorneys representing both the tenants and A&E acknowledged the building had at one point accumulated over 600 violations in a single year. Many of those were resolved or addressed in some way before the hearing on Monday, but by the time the lawsuit was filed, the building still had 372 open violations with HPD.

As of Monday, June 1, the 41-25 Case St. building had 362 open violations.

Speaking before Queens Judge Shorab Ibrahim on Monday, Zarate-MacPherson and other Legal Services NYC attorneys requested the court force A&E to take serious action to address the building’s poor conditions.

Ibraham adjourned the case until Wednesday, June 3, but indicated during the hearing he was strongly inclined to grant the tenants’ request.

A&E said that it’s made many improvements to the building over the years.

“We have invested $4.5 million into 41-25 Case Street to improve living conditions for residents and deliver the quality of housing they need and deserve,” a spokesperson for the landlord said. “This is a significant investment that has made a meaningful difference in the form of electrical upgrades, window replacements, new boilers, and the closure of 2,000 work orders. Our progress shows why relying solely on the raw amount of HPD violations does not tell the full story, as many violations are duplicates or unable to be addressed if residents do not grant access to their homes for necessary repairs, to say nothing of the many currently closed pending inspection.”

“Most importantly, it demonstrates our commitment to the building and its community, and we welcome the opportunity to work directly with residents to address each concern they may have rather than through litigation,” they added.

The landlord of 41-25 Case St., Margaret Brunn, is an A&E executive who was ranked as the city’s worst landlord in 2025 by New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

Brunn is also the landlord of 43-09 47th Ave., a Sunnyside building that suffered a major fire that left 14 people injured and 250 people displaced on Dec. 20, 2023. Last February, residents of the Sunnyside building and Queens elected officials called on A&E to pay $6 million to repair the building, an amount that A&E claimed hasn’t been paid because of issues with their insurance company.

In January 2026, A&E agreed to pay $2.1 million in a settlement with HPD for violations accumulated in 14 buildings across three boroughs. Roughly 750 tenants live in the buildings, and reportedly dealt with bed bugs, fire hazards, broken elevators and many other issues. Among the buildings included in the settlement was the A&E-owned apartment building at 35-64 84th St. in Jackson Heights.

When Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the settlement back in January, he said it would be the first of many legal actions the city would take to address A&E’s history of violations.

“For years, A&E has operated with callous disregard for those residing in its properties, racking up over 140,000 total violations,” Mamdani said at the time. “This is not just a failure to serve those to whom it holds an obligation, it is a cruelty to over tens of thousands of New Yorkers.”