A couple renting an apartment at the legendary Ansonia building on the Upper West Side filed a lawsuit claiming their apartment is "completely uninhabitable" due to cockroach infestation. The lawsuit from lawyers Alan Arkin (no relation to the actor) and Suzanne Bagert details these nightmare-inducing incidents:
They crawl across the floor, on the walls, on the ceilings, on the curtains and even in the bed...Perhaps most disgustingly, cockroaches have crawled in their food and coffee maker. Killing them does very little. Recently after the cockroaches were crushed, killed and vacuumed away during the day, (they) counted 16 cockroaches in the hallway outside the apartment....The hallway outside their apartment is constantly covered with cockroaches; on any given day, there can be 20 to 30 cockroaches crawling on the walls and the doors of the apartments.
The couple has even, per the NY Times, "collected about 50 dead roaches over the last three days, storing them in a jar, and they are also keeping a log of roach sightings." They can't even turn off the lights, or else the roaches will swarm! Arkin also found a roach in his sock the other morning.
The couple is renting the apartment from family friends who charge them a rather low (for the building) $2,400 for a one-bedroom. They have tried exterminators but with limited success, hence the lawsuit against management company Sirius Realty. They blame another tenant who allegedly refuses to have her apartment treated.
