Tish to shame banks behind worst landlords

YOU’VE MET New York City’s worst landlords — now meet their banks.

Public Advocate Letitia James will roll out a list of the financial organizations backing the property owners on her office’s “Worst Landlords Watchlist” (inset) Tuesday — with 10 banks lending more than $300 million in mortgages for landlords who landed on the list.

James’ office reached out to the banks, asking them to change the way they loan to landlords flagged by her office — taking it into account when considering a loan along with current violations, hazardous conditions or harassment findings.

The public advocate is also asking banks to condition their loans on removal of violations, and to appoint a liaison to work with the landlord to create a remediation plan with monthly inspections if they wind up on the list after getting a loan.

At the top of the lender list is Signature Bank, which James’ office said handed out 58 loans to landlords on the list, with a total of $130 million in mortgages held by the bank for properties on the list.

Signature took issue with the list noting that one property listed as belonging to a “worst” landlord had been sold before they loaned money to the building’s new owner.

“We lend to experienced building owners, people that own multiple properties, and in many instances they’ll buy a property that’s distressed and then they fix it up,” John Tamberlane, vice chairman and co-founder of Signature Bank, told the Daily News. “We make it a condition of the loan that they have to fix it up.”

But Signature has been targeted for its ties to lousy landlords before — with dozens of demonstrators showing up outside a shareholders meeting in April to protest its lending to Vad Parkash, a perennial figure on the list who they argued had not been using the money to fix things up.

Earlier this year, he made headlines when a disease spread through rat urine nearly killed one of his tenants.

Tamberlane said Parkash is a longtime owner of multiple properties who had “never destabilized an apartment.”

“They’re in not very nice neighborhoods. We have been putting a lot of pressure on him” to get buildings fixed up, Tamberlane said. “But if not, then we have no choice but to stop lending to him.”

The company said it hadn’t verified James’ figures, but argued even if it had lent $130 million to buildings on the list, it would be just 2.3% of the bank’s multifamily portfolio. The bank said 77% of that portfolio was for low-to-moderate income housing.