New York City has won a $31 million judgment against the owners of two long-troubled Bronx apartment buildings, the largest civil penalty obtained by the city’s housing department in its history \u2014 and one that will give the city significant leverage over the buildings’ future, officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s housing agency secured the judgment against Karan Singh and Rajmattie Persaud, the owners of Robert Fulton Terrace and Fordham Towers in the Bronx, where tenants and officials said roughly 500 families have lived for years with broken elevators, rat infestations, failing appliances and stretches without hot water or heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years, Singh and Persaud let more than 1,000 violations accumulate while they collected rent month after month,\u201d Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference Wednesday morning at Robert Fulton Terrace. \u201c\u200aThey are on Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ list of worst landlords, and for good reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mamdani has made cracking down on bad landlords and steering property sales to what he calls \u201cresponsible buyers\u201d a priority of his administration, though the litigation against the two Bronx property owners began under Mayor Eric Adams in 2024. Those efforts haven\u2019t always been successful. Earlier this year, the Mamdani administration tried to block the bankruptcy sale of more than 5,000 rent-stabilized apartments owned by Pinnacle Group, but a federal judge approved the sale over the city\u2019s objection in January.<\/p>\n
As part of the judgment, an independent chief restructuring officer has been appointed to oversee the buildings, and Mamdani said that officer has already hired a property manager to begin making repairs. To help fund those repairs, the city has frozen more than $900,000 from the owners’ bank accounts.<\/p>\n
Officials said the buildings are already in foreclosure, and Fannie Mae, which holds the mortgage for both, is moving to take them from Singh and Persaud.<\/p>\n
Attorneys for the two landlords did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The $31 million judgment will be converted into liens on the properties, meaning any future buyer will have to deal with the city, said Housing Commissioner Dina Levy, who organized tenants in the same buildings in 2009.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis judgment will make it nearly impossible for anybody to purchase the buildings without coming to deal with us first,\u201d Levy said in an interview with Gothamist.<\/p>\n
City officials said they are pushing Fannie Mae to find a buyer approved by the tenants and housing agency who would preserve the buildings.<\/p>\n
Robert Fulton Terrace opened in 1967, Mamdani said during the press conference. Apartments were marketed to middle-income families as “luxury you can afford,” with rents of $29.30 per room and a quarter of units set aside for seniors.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor working families, these apartments offered a path to a life of dignity. This is what the American dream had felt like,\u201d the mayor said. \u201cBut as the years wore on, the dream of luxury you can afford descended into a nightmare. The two buildings were sold to a series of speculators, and soon fell into a pattern of disrepair and foreclosure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mamdani described residents going without hot water for days on end and broken elevators trapping people in \u201c17-story towers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThese conditions, to put it very simply, were inhumane,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ahshaki Long, president of Fordham Towers’ tenant association, said she\u2019s lived in the building for 25 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have lived through those violations, what they really meant, not as a list on a report, but as an everyday challenge that affected my sense of safety, comfort and dignity,\u201d Long said during the press conference. \u201cWe are struggling with broken elevators that make it difficult just to get home; rats and roaches that turn living spaces into sources of stress; old and failing appliances that are never replaced; persistent leaks that damage our homes; and mold that threatens our health.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tenants\u2019 frustration was clear. During a question-and-answer period following officials\u2019 formal remarks, one tenant spoke up to press Mamdani on whether any of the $31 million in penalties would reach residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we going to be reimbursed for not having a heater for the last three years and having to buy heaters? No stove? No refrigerator working?\u201d the man asked. \u201c\u200aAnything going into the tenants’ pockets for all the stuff that we invested? And now y’all just coming to the table and saying, \u2018OK, this needs to be done.\u2019 But we’ve been living this way for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others began to speak up, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell him,\u201d one person said. \u201cYes!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we going to be reimbursed for our suffering?” the man asked.<\/p>\n
Mamdani acknowledged previous lawsuits against the owners hadn’t changed the conditions much, but said he was focused on making sure this time would be different.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been a number of false dawns in this city when it comes to actually listening to tenants,\u201d he said. \u201cI do not begrudge any tenant their frustration. If I had to pay out of my pocket for the services that my rent were supposed to be paying for, I, too, would have to see until I actually believed it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City has won a $31 million judgment against the owners of two long-troubled Bronx apartment buildings,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[4982,87440,17,2538,9,24,12,4999,63,7994,21888,7178,134,136,135,25774,87439],"class_list":["post-222196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-arts","tag-classical","tag-culture","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-npr","tag-nyc","tag-podcasts","tag-public","tag-radio","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-wnyc","tag-wnyc-studios"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}