Morris Lieberman’s Lilmor Management will pay a “lilmore” this time.
The firm settled a housing violations case brought by the New York attorney general and Manhattan’s U.S. attorney for $6.5 million, three years after its agent Jason Korn settled a similar case with New York City for $235,000.
The cost amounts to little more than a speed bump for Lilmore, which owns or manages 2,539 rent-stabilized apartments across 49 buildings, according to AG Letitia James. The $6.5 million breaks down to $2,560 per unit — approximately two months’ rent.
Of that, tenants will get $2.9 million in restitution, or about $1,140 apiece from Lilmore, which is based on Avenue J in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Lilmore could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon as its office was closed for the weekend.
James and U.S. Attorney Damian Williams found the buildings operated by Lilmore and Korn riddled with lead paint, mold, and housing maintenance code violations. They also accused Lilmor of misrepresenting the buildings’ condition to current and prospective tenants.
In settlements, the accused party typically does not admit wrongdoing. But in this consent decree Lilmor and Lieberman took responsibility for a slew of violations, including failing to provide tenants prior to lease-signings before 2020 with information about lead-based paint hazards flagged by city inspectors. Since 2012, more than 130 children in their units have been found to have elevated lead levels in their blood.
The housing providers also acknowledged not checking their apartments for children younger than 6, as required by law, from 2015 to 2019, and making inadequate checks since then.
Nor did they check for lead itself. They admitted in the decree to having systematically failed to conduct proper lead paint inspection and remediation before new tenants moved in. The building operators used in-house crews to do work that required certifications they did not have — keeping records that prosecutors later used to document the violations.
In the decree, the Lilmor and Lieberman agreed to hire a contractor approved by the attorney general and U.S. attorney to fix the lead paint hazards.
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A press release from James noted that Lilmor and Korn were among the top offenders on the public advocate’s “Worst Landlord” list in 2019 and 2020. The list is based on a raw count of building violations, which have become more common in the kind of properties Lilmor operates since the 2019 rent stabilization overhaul signed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The problems in Lilmor’s buildings — all built before 1978 — clearly predate the 2019 reform, but the legislation did prevent landlords from raising rents more than a nominal amount to pay for building-wide or individual apartment improvements.Online reviews of Lilmore buildings are almost universally negative, which is not unusual for rent-stabilized buildings.