From left: Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, 245 Sullivan Place and 78 Post Avenue (building credits: PropertyShark)

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio released his third annual list of the city’s worst buildings and landlords meant to shame the landlords into improving conditions, according to the New York Daily News.

The worst building is 245 Sullivan Place in Crown Heights. The 40-unit rental building has 654 open violations thanks to crumbling ceilings, exposed wiring and a lack of electricity, hot water and heat in certain apartments. It’s been owned by James Crossman since 1971, public records show, and the News reported he is now 92 and in ill health. [more]

The Brooklyn Housing Court’s disrepair gives “special privileges” to landlord attorneys and fosters “a culture of disrespect towards tenants,” according to a report from the New York Daily News. The News cited a recent report by nonprofit group Make the Road to New York, which is one of several agencies pushing to change the facility.

The groups met with Judge Fern Fisher, who is in charge of housing courts citywide. Fisher said she is working to engineer some of the changes recommended by the group, including easier-to-read signs and better accommodations for tenants, but admitted budget restraints make change difficult. [more]

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has encouraged the New York City Housing Authority to discontinue Section 8 rent subsidies termination notices until problems with the agency’s new computer system are fixed. De Blasio will release a report today showing the agency’s failings during the last year, he told the Post.

“Tenants are getting eviction notices slipped under their doors because NYCHA has withheld months’ worth of rent that it should have paid,” the public advocate told the Post. “Months of unpaid rent is not a simple glitch — it’s a full-blown crisis. NYCHA needs to ensure that actual human beings are checking these cases to ensure the agency isn’t wrongfully throwing landlords into default, and tenants out on the street.” [more]

David Bistricer, a Brooklyn landlord highly ranked on Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s slumlord watchlist, has been slapped with a lawsuit by the Flatbush Gardens Tenant Association, according to Crain’s. The suit alleges that Bistricer failed to live up to his part of an agreement with the association that the tenant organization would provide a letter of support for him in his attempt to buy Brooklyn’s huge affordable housing complex Starrett City in 2007 in return for his efforts to improve conditions at 1402-04 Brooklyn Avenue, a Flatbush Gardens building. The letter of support was delivered, the improvements were not, the tenants say. [more]

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio latest stop in his campaign against negligent New York City landlords? Craigslist. According to the New York Times, apartment searches on the listings site now turn up a link to “NYC’s worst landlords,” which leads wary home hunters to a Google Maps-powered visual of the building owners with the worst histories of building code violations. The list was first launched last year and currently has more than 400 buildings and 320 landlords. The Craigslist deal is one of eight new initiatives de Blasio is set to propose today, intended to coerce landlords into compliance. [more]

The City Council is set to approve legislation tomorrow that would give stricter penalties to landlords who violate city heat laws, the Wall Street Journal reported. The legislation was sponsored by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to sign the bill into law, an aide confirmed. “For too long, bad landlords have profited by withholding heat from tenants every winter,” de Blasio said. “Passing the Heat Act will toughen penalties on those repeat offenders and make them think twice before leaving tenants in the cold.” [more]

City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio will announce the removal today of 13 of the city’s worst landlords from the slumlord watch list, thanks to improvements which cleared 22 buildings from the list, according to the Daily News. These will be the first landlords to “graduate” from the online registry, which launched in August. David Bistricer’s 59-building Flatbush Gardens complex is on the list. “These are buildings that were falling apart, with holes in the ceilings and floors, with unsafe fixtures and dangerous molds,” de Blasio said. “But now real, solid improvements have been made.” [more]

A group of elderly tenants at the 59-building Flatbush Gardens complex in Brooklyn have received eviction notices from landlord David Bistricer on the grounds that they’ve been holding raucous parties at their apartments, the Daily News reported. “You… or guests of yours, have been observed smoking, drinking alcohol, loitering and gambling in the common areas of the building,” Bistricer, principal of Clipper Equity, wrote to tenant Victoria Davis, 69. Davis, a survivor of two strokes who has no children and who says she hasn’t had a drink in decades, pays $680 per month for her one-bedroom home.
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Flatbush Gardens — an East Flatbush housing complex where developer David Bistricer is on Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s watchlist of slumlords — has been the victim of deadly violence and residents are concerned about their safety. Two men have been murdered in the last two weeks at the 30-acre, 57-building complex, the Daily News reported. In total, three people have been killed, and six have been shot there in 2010, according to statistics from the New York police department. “There’s so much drug selling, it’s crazy, and a lot of shootings all the time,” said disabled veteran Leroy Marks, 57, a longtime resident. The mostly rent-stabilized complex, formerly known as Vanderveer Estates, was sold in 2005 for $140 million to a group led by Bistricer, who promised to make improvements. But, residents say doors are broken, surveillance cameras and streetlights don’t work and private security patrols are understaffed. [NYDN]

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Brooklyn real estate developer David Bistricer of Clipper Equity has been added to Public Advocate Bill de Blasio’s watch list of slumlords. Bistricer’s Flatbush Gardens, a 30-acre, 59-building complex in East Flatbush has 6,475 open code violations, with 827 of them for serious threats to health or safety. “The landlord is clearly trying to change the nature of the development and make it more appealing to upper-income tenants,” de Blasio told the Daily News. “This may be a landlord who purposely wants to reduce the level of service to encourage… tenants to leave.” During a tour, the Daily News spotted raw sewage collecting in a graffiti-covered basement, broken locks, shattered windows and exposed wiring. Several tenants complained of mice and roach infestations as well ceilings collapsing from water damage.

Richard Rubenstein, a spokesperson for Bistricer, who led the group of investors that bought the complex in 2005 for $138.5 million, said the owners have addressed and removed over 5,000 violations and that they intend to meet with de Blasio to do what it takes to get off the slumlord list. The conditions at Flatbush Gardens — formerly known as Vanderveer Estates — were one factor federal officials cited when they rejected Clipper Equity’s $1.3 million bid for the 46-building Starrett City complex in 2007. They also cited a 1998 court order banning Bistricer from selling condos in New York because of financial irregularities. [NYDN]

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