Nobody likes their landlord. I’m a landlord and it causes self-loathing. Usually, though, this dislike stems from annoying rules, slow response times, or some other relatively minor thing. Not these landlords.
The NYC Public Advocate put together a Google map mashup of the worst offending landlords in the five boroughs. Each has received different classes of violations. Here is a description of the worst type:
Class C: Immediately hazardous violations, such as inadequate fire exits, rodents, lead-based paint, lack of heat, hot water, electricity, or gas. An owner has 24 hours to correct a C violation and five days to certify the correction to remove the violation. If the owner fails to comply with emergency C violations such as lack of heat or hot water, HPD initiates corrective action through its Emergency Repair Program.
Some landlords have 160 violations of this type – and nearly 1,000 total. How are you even a landlord at that point?
Anyway, it’s worth looking around the map and seeing some of the trends/worst offenders. The actual map isn’t embeddable but a screenshot is below and here’s the real thing. What’s interesting is that most educated people have known for some time that Astoria is the greatest neighborhood outside of Manhattan. This map bears that out. Nothing but gold and sunshine in northwestern Queens.
Unfortunately, of course, this map really represents landlords taking advantage of tenants in lower income areas. One would think that some government official could take action against those with so many violations, but hopefully some public shame is a good start.
