Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that New York City secured a $31 million judgment against the owners of two Bronx apartment complexes accused of allowing hazardous living conditions and hundreds of housing violations to persist for years.
The judgment targets conditions at the Robert Fulton Houses and Fordham Towers, where tenants have long complained about deteriorating apartments, broken fixtures and unsafe living conditions.
“As the years wore on the dream of luxury you can afford descended into a nightmare,” Mamdani said.
What You Need To Know
The city secured a $31 million judgment against two Bronx building owners over longstanding housing violations
The judgment freezes more than $900,000 in owner assets and appoints a chief restructuring officer to oversee repairs at the buildings
Tenants described years of unsafe conditions, including broken appliances, damaged cabinets and unsanitary trash rooms
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the enforcement action is part of his administration’s broader effort to crack down on negligent landlords
The city said the judgment includes freezing more than $900,000 in owner assets and appointing a chief restructuring officer to oversee repairs at the buildings.
Still, some tenants said they remain frustrated after years of unresolved problems.
“Out of the $31 million, are they going to give us some money? What’s coming directly to the tenant population for our long suffering?” resident Smitty Smith said.
Smith told NY1 he has spent his own money renovating parts of his apartment, including replacing a stove, painting walls and buying blankets to stay warm during winter months.
“If the conditions are bad, I have to make it better for me. I’m willing to do that, but everybody don’t have that. Sometimes that causes my rent to get backed up because I have to make sure that I am able to live the proper way,” Smith said.
Other residents described long-standing maintenance issues inside the buildings.
“They fix one cabinet but the other has been sitting there for 20-years and they haven’t done s*** about it,” one tenant said.
Another resident, Wanda Townsend, described unsanitary conditions in a trash compactor room.
“It was human feces for almost a month in the compactor room for almost a month. I was wondering when they were going to clean it up. How could you empty your trash in the incinerator,” Townsend said.
NY1 reached out to building owners Karan Singh and Rajmattie Persaud for comment but did not receive a response.
Dina Levy, commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said the city will prioritize the most dangerous conditions first.
“We’re going to ask the receiver to address the most dangerous repairs or most hazardous repairs first but then to continue going,” Levy said.
The action marks the latest housing enforcement effort by the Mamdani administration, which has made tenant protections a central focus.
Earlier this year, the administration intervened in a bankruptcy case involving rent-stabilized apartments, securing a $30 million investment for repairs. The city also announced a $2 million settlement with A&E Real Estate over violations across 14 buildings.
“This is a new administration. This is an administration that makes it very clear that there is no intolerance for impunity,” Mamdani said.