Do you have a loose floorboard in your living room that's been gnawing at you for a while? Been trying to get the super to fix that leak in your kitchen ceiling since Memorial Day? Sick of watching that foot-long rat nibble on the toxic mold growing on the lead paint wall behind those shattered bathroom pipes that primarily function as homes for twelve generations of cockroach families? Let Public Advocate for the City of New York Bill de Blasio know—his office just put out their NYC's Worst Landlords watchlist rankings for 2012.
The ignominious roundup documents all the slumlords and tenement tyrants who continue to terrorize city renters with their vermin-filled, toxic paint-driven deathtraps. Best of all, de Blasio's people were kind enough to compile the top offenders in a handy-dandy interactive map, which highlights 360 buildings with poorly-ranked owners based on location and borough, making it easier for prospective renters and even current tenants to catch crappy landlords on the loose.
De Blasio, by the way, ranked landlord Eli Abbott and his company, College Management, as the worst in the city. Abbott's company runs three buildings in the Bronx and ran up 724 city violations, including lack of heat and hot water, massive rodent and vermin infestations, toxic mold, broken plumbing and collapsed ceilings. "I spent three years sitting on the toilet with an umbrella," one of Abbott's tenants, Lucy Sanchez, told the Daily News in reference to her leaky ceiling, and her neighbor showed reporters rat bite marks on her refrigerator.
That being said, a 1 bedroom in one of Abbott's buildings only runs $1300 a month, and with rents in the city getting higher and higher (and apartments, presumably, smaller and smaller), we can't afford to be too picky, can we?
