One of the “worst landlords” is allegedly back to his old ways.
The Legal Aid Society filed a lawsuit against Ved Parkash and co-defendant Luis Bello, on behalf of five tenants, the New York Daily News reported. The case was filed in Bronx Superior Court.
The pair are accused of scheming to circumvent the rent stabilization law by using illusory tenancies. In rent stabilization, illusory tenancies are when someone not named on the lease lives in an apartment; landlords sometimes take advantage of this by charging more than what’s allowed to the actual occupant.
One alleged victim claimed she rented $1,000 for a single room in Wakefield from Bello before learning that her roommate was also being charged $1,000. The unit’s registered legal rent was barely over $1,100 in total, according to the lawsuit.
Parkash allegedly leased rent-stabilized units to Bello, who then allegedly subleased those units through his company, Kenny Rooms, charging inflated rents in the process. On top of that, Bello allegedly intimidated and harassed tenants, breaking into apartments, changing locks and unlawfully evicting tenants, according to the suit.
Parkash and Bello did not comment on the litigation, but Parkash’s attorneys denied the allegations. Legal Aid attorney Jeanne Schoenfelder, who secured a temporary restraining order against the defendants and their associates, referred to alleged rent stabilization violators as “unscrupulous landlords” in a statement on Thursday.
The lawsuit seeks rent-stabilized leases for the plaintiffs, as well as damages.
Parkash owns over 70 properties in the Bronx and Queens. He gained notoriety in 2015 when he landed on top of the public advocate’s worst landlord list, racking up 2,200 open housing violations. Since then, he’s been sued by dozens of tenants, been accused of Section 8 discrimination, was fined for cramming extra units into buildings and has been accused of wage theft.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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