Tish puts heat on landlords from hell

THEY’RE THE city’s top landlords — in rat infestations, holes in the wall and leaking ceilings.

Public Advocate Letitia James unveiled this year’s list of the city’s 100 worst landlords Tuesday. The No. 1 spot went to Jonathan Cohen of Silvershore Properties, whose 19 buildings in Brooklyn and Queens racked up 1,090 housing code violations.

“There are some unscrupulous property owners who have chosen to exploit the market and the dire need for housing. They subject their tenants to dangerous and unsanitary conditions — apartments infested with vermin and mold, ceilings falling in, no heat or hot water, no electricity, units that are literally falling apart,” James said at a news conference at Foley Square. “Today, we shame them,” she said. Next on the list were Rawle Isaacs, whose four buildings have 969 violations, and Thomas Steiner, whose four buildings have 843.

The number of violations is an average based on a dozen points in time over the last year.

Sylvia Tapia, 42, who lives in a building owned by Cohen’s company in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, said garbage piles up in the courtyard and she’s forced to walk her three kids to school past trespassers in the building using drugs.

“We are human, and we deserve to live in a safe home,” she said. “We don’t want to live for free. We pay rent, so we should get the repairs that we need.”

After months of complaints, repair workers were finally sent to address mold on the bathroom floor and walls, a leaking sink and toilet, and a sink coming out of the wall — but the job was left half done. “They come today, they make a hole in the wall, they leave,” she said. “They tell me they’re going to come back, but they never come back.”

Tenants at the Silvershore properties have sued over the conditions.

The company said in an email that the 19 buildings on the bought recently.

The “majority of the properties have been purchased from long-term owners who have neglected the properties, and many of the problems causing the violations were inherited at our purchase,” the statement said.

“We have been extremely proactive about addressing any issues in each of the buildings.”

The other landlords could not be reached for comment.

Michelle Stamp, whose Crown Heights, Brooklyn, building is owned by Rubin Dukler, the 11th-worst landlord on the list, said she’s angry because of the conditions her 98-year grandmother, who has lived there for more than 50 years, must face.

“This gentleman does nothing. He doesn’t do any repairs. We are infested with vermin and insects and leaks and mold. You name it, we have it,” said Stamp, 54.

Six of the landlords who were in the top 10 in 2016 are now off the worst landlord list altogether because of improvements in their buildings. list were