Bldg. owner one of worst of the ‘worst’
BRONX TOTS’ DEATHS PROBED
Our city failed to protect two little girls — Ibanez and Scylee Ambrose — from their deaths by knowingly placing them in a cluster-site shelter owned by an unscrupulous landlord with a long history of subjecting tenants to dangerous and hazardous living conditions. This never should have happened. Two little girls lost their lives because the cluster-site program placed them in a building owned by Moshe Piller, the fourth-worst landlord on my 2015 “Worst Landlords” watchlist and the 10th-worst landlord on our 2014 list. There are multiple lawsuits against Piller for subjecting tenants to dangerous and unsanitary conditions and for rent overcharges. We know that ending our homelessness crisis will not happen overnight, but improving the safety of the places we house homeless New Yorkers must start today. James is the city’s public advocate. THE CITY has been placing dozens of homeless families in apartments owned by the worst landlords in New York, Public Advocate Letitia James charged Thursday.
At least five landlords who made her “100 Worst Landlords” list have been taking in families sent by the city Department of Homeless Services in the past three years.
That includes Moshe Piller, owner of the building on Hunts Point Ave. in the Bronx where two kids died Wednesday after a radiator turned their bedroom into a spitting steam bath.
The cause of that horrific accident is under investigation by the city and the Bronx district attorney’s office, but the record is clear that Piller has long been red-flagged by James as a notorious slumlord.
“Our city failed to protect two little girls from their deaths by knowingly placing them in a building owned by an unscrupulous landlord,” James said.
Piller made the “worst landlords” list in 2014 and 2015, including when the city placed the family of the two children in one of his buildings. The list tallies the total number of housing and building code violations.
Piller fell off the list this year after reducing his total number, but as of Thursday his two cluster sites in the Bronx had racked up 66 open violations each, records show.
On Thursday, officials said they had not checked the “worst landlord” list before placing families in these buildings through nonprofits they hire to handle the cluster site program.
Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks made clear the city is trying to phase out cluster sites. But James said besides Piller, four other cluster site landlords have been on her “worst” list since 2014. The four tallied 2,396 code violations this year alone, records show.
Piller has been sued repeatedly, including in an action filed last year by Legal Services NYC and the Legal Aid Society alleging dangerous conditions in a Bronx building, including rats and roaches. The suit is pending.
When the suit was announced, Banks made a point of criticizing Piller, saying, “There is no excuse for a landlord to refuse to maintain safe conditions.”