John Kosman

Francine Andrews plugged a bathroom wall with plastic grocery bags at Kosman’s Clinton Avenue building photo: Rubén González

As part of his guilty plea last year, Kosman promised to hire professional management for his properties. Tenants say he told them to contact a company called Pale Management. When asked by the Voiceabout the state of disrepair of Kosman's buildings, Scott Leisner of Pale Management says the company had only a verbal agreement with Kosman and that Kosman "is no longer with us." Asked for the termination date of their agreement, Leisner says that "as of right now, as of the letter being written and sent out." Leisner says he's unable to tend to Kosman's buildings because "he wasn't giving me any funds, but peanuts."

HPD has had to provide emergency repairs for Kosman's buildings, which include performing a building-wide lead analysis, installing new thermal windows, repairing leaks, removing radiators, and sanitizing "the public halls and stairs at all floors to remove the odor and residue of urine and fecal matter." These and other repairs have cost the city $170,437, excluding administrative fees and taxes, since 2000. Kosman still owes $102,931. The city is going to court in an effort to take away two of his properties—1329 Clinton and 117 West 142nd—in a foreclosure hearing scheduled for this fall. At another property, 1822 George Street in Ridgewood, Queens, Kosman has been fined $7,500 for lack of heat and hot water.

Kosman appeared in Judge Jerald R. Klein's courtroom in the Bronx on June 12 regarding his building at 1329 Clinton. The hearing's purpose was "to punish" Kosman for not providing livable conditions for tenants. Kosman showed up with a new management company, and the judge reserved decision about punitive action until he saw how the new company performed.

Judge Lebovits, who back in December 2004 also sentenced landlord Peter Golia to 10 days in jail and a $150,500 fine, says that "sometimes landlords think that they'll come to court and the judge will just sit there, smile, and be dumb," adding emphatically, "but that's not true." Lebovits does have some words of hope. "I will make sure that tenants will not suffer," he says, "with lack of heat and hot water and rats and mold and lead paint and collapsing buildings and everything else. That just plainly will not happen."