By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-11-24 18:43:11 | Updated at 2024-11-24 20:22:18
1 hour ago
When it rains, it pours inside the apartments of a crumbling Chelsea building — forcing one resident to wear a helmet in his bathroom to prevent parts of the ceiling from hitting him.
“Our lives are miserable — we live in danger,” said longtime tenant Waleed Said to The Post, describing how he would put on a bike helmet for years when he entered his bathroom. “I could have died because of the ceiling collapsing on my head.”
Said and other residents of 136 W. 28th St. in the typically tony Manhattan neighborhood claim their New Jersey-based landlord, Frank Ng, has purposefully let the property decay to a “dangerous” state that has left them fearful for their lives with constant leaks, floods, collapsed ceilings, heat outages — and for six months this year, no water.
Five of the tenants have stuck out a multiyear courtroom odyssey to sue Ng for letting the building decay to such a degree that it has racked up 325 housing violations in the past two years alone and he has been forced to pay city agencies more than $130,000 for repairs, fees, violations and settlements.
They may soon get some relief when a city housing-court judge rules whether Ng is in contempt of orders to make repairs or face more steep penalties.
The tenants’ suit claims that the neglect amounts to harassment and is intentional — to drive out longtime residents.
Said, who was a lawyer in his native Egypt, keeps meticulous notes on his landlord’s actions — and alleged inactions — in an accordion-style folder.
“He’s not doing repairs, he’s not following court orders,” Said, 55, told The Post. “And he’s getting away with it. … It’s really a nightmare.”
Fernado Garotti, a flight attendant and resident at the building for more than 25 years, said the previous landlord was always reasonable with repairs.
But since Ng bought the property for $14 million as part of a three-lot deal in 2007 — with the other two sites now developed with towering mid-block hotels — he said his life has been filled with “chaos.”
“In my over 15 years of practice, I’ve seldom seen a landlord have such little regard for the law and the wellbeing of his tenants,” said lawyer Altagracia Pierre-Outerbridge, who is repping some of the tenants. “Hundreds of serious violations and a refusal to cure them. Despite being on trial for contempt, this landlord persists in flouting the law.”
Ng’s lawyer, Thomas Berinato, declined to comment to The Post on the pending litigation.
In letters to the court, Ng claims that he has been attempting to complete repairs but is facing “difficulty” in accessing the apartments, saying the tenants have sometimes been “hostile to the workmen.” He even singled out Garotti as being an issue.
“They look at us like we’re the scum of the Earth,” said Bonnie Zijic, a resident for 20 years and whose family used to run a tropical plant shop, Plant House, directly across the street. “They messed with the wrong people.”
The tenants said they decided enough was enough after a massive rainstorm in 2020, which sent a “waterfall” of stormwater cascading through ceilings across nearly every floor in the five-story building, a result of longtime unaddressed issues with the roof.
Water poured through ceiling-mounted light fixtures, and the electricity was cut to avoid a potential blaze.
It took more than four years for Ng to complete major repairs to their apartments, tenants told The Post.
Tenants on the top floor said that around a third of their apartments’ ceilings crashed in.
“It didn’t just happen one day, you know, one rainstorm,” said Sabrina Ho, who has lived on the top floor of the building for more than 13 years and says she complained about her leaky ceiling for a decade. “It was leaking over years and years.”
Ho is also a flight attendant — the New York to Hong Kong route — and luckily wasn’t home for the storm.
She said that when she returned, she found huge slabs of her ceiling all over her apartment — including on her bed where she would have been sleeping.
It took nine months for Ho’s ceiling to be fixed, she said.
Her neighbor and fellow flight attendant, Garotti, 53, was home and fast asleep at the time.
He said he woke up to find his ceiling collapsed in his bedroom and kitchen.
“I lost my mattress, clothing, oven, fridge,” he said. “There was over a foot of water inside my home.”
Eventually, Ng’s daughter came by to assess his damage, Garotti said. She was toting a Ferragamo bag and wearing Chanel shoes at the time, he said.
He said she told him, “ ‘It’s all cheap Ikea furniture.’
“She said what happened was my fault and nothing to worry about,” he claimed.
On the second floor, Said’s bathroom ceiling also collapsed during the storm, just moments after he stepped out of the room.
He said he took to wearing a helmet before entering for four years, till his ceiling was be repaired.
Said said the landlord told him, “ ‘This isn’t a five-star hotel.
” ‘if you keep calling 311 and the Fire Department, you’re just delaying the repairs.’ “
Ho said, “That’s why after [the storm] happened, we decided: Why don’t we come together, because we all have the same problem.”
In just the past two years, the residents have lodged 349 complaints with the city’s Housing and Preservation Department, who are responsible for enforcing housing regulations.
Records from HPD show a staggering 325 open housing violations — 91 of which are considered “immediately hazardous” — ranging from cockroach and mice infestations, snarled flooring, busted bathtubs and toilets, broken self-closing fire doors, mold, broken windows and fire escapes and exposed wires to failing plumbing.
Documents also show a staggering number of HPD work orders — more than $67,000 in total — plus nearly $33,000 in fees, mostly related to the building joining the Alternate Enforcement Program in 2021, a special housing inspection scheme reserved for some of the city’s worst offenders.
In 2022, Ng settled a separate lawsuit with HPD for $12,000 which stipulated that all violations — especially including heat and water issues — be resolved within three months of the agreement or more fines would ensue.
HPD did not respond to a Post request for comment.
The building also has accrued just under $20,000 in fines from the city Buildings Department for loose facade bricks — including involving a crumbing 2-by-3-foot piece of decorative arch they were fined for in 2023 — and other dangerous hazards, such as illegally storing wooden planks on the roof.
But despite the tenants’ efforts in court and the $131,000 in fines and work paid by the landlord to the HPD and DOB, the residents say their apartments remain in disrepair.
Heat and water problems are still occurring — and have gotten worse, they said.
At a court hearing Friday, the building’s superintendent admitted during cross-examination that he did not take any action on a court order until at least six months later, according to a lawyer in the courtroom.
“I’ve lost over 100 days of work waiting for [the landlord] to arrive to do work,” said Garotti, whose airline route includes long flights to Brazil.
While Ho’s ceiling might be patched, she said heavy rain still means flooding in her top-floor unit.
She said she can’t figure out where the water comes from.
