David Melendez
'Horrible bedbugs coming from one of the walls'
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Photos you won't see in the real estate brochures
Scraped from the bottom of the barrel, tales of living hell
'The No. 1 Worst in the United States'
by Jay Bachhuber and Samara Smith
'All I do is fix, and they damage'
by Taina Borrero
'When it rains, it rains inside the building.'
by Olaf Bertram-Nothnagel
'Sometimes they don't open the windows and let the walls breathe'
by Ryan Vu and Joanna Raccuglia
'When he came in, all the problems came in'
by Charlene A. Joseph and Kendall J. Matthews
'We were greeted by blood in the elevator one morning'
by Dana Eshghi
Most of the bathrooms leak
by Ruben Gonzalez
'No question she's going to push me out'
by Allison Steinberg
'Threatened tenants with a bat'
by Adam F. Hutton
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Juan Martinez is willing to make repairs to his apartment at 258 Jefferson on his own—he has already started fixing the walls and ceiling in his bathroom. All he asks is that Melendez provide the materials, which the landlord refuses to do. There's also a foot-wide opening in Martinez's kitchen wall about two feet from the ceiling, exposing pipes. The building made HPD's 2003 "Major Problem Owner" list. Conditions in the building have only worsened since then, according to the department.
HPD estimates that Melendez owns at least five other buildings, three of them in Bushwick as well. They are not in any better shape. His buildings at 194 and 198 Knickerbocker Avenue have almost 200 pending violations, and even the building where he lives has 38 open violations.
