New York's Ten Worst Landlords, Part 2

Lee Avenue is the main drag of Hasidic Williamsburg. Besides one Assembly of God Church that caters to Latinos, the 10-block stretch of Lee Avenue around the building appears to be entirely Jewish. You want repairs? As tenant Sara Oyola—a cheery 53-year-old grandmother who has lived in the building for 28 years and acts as the de facto super for the other Latino tenants—says, "The workers came and said, 'You're not a [VIP], so what do you expect—a great job?' "

The city is also suing Plaza to make repairs at 325 Melrose Street, a small building in Bushwick that is also on the city's worst-violations list. The building has only eight apartments, but all together, they have 169 violations. Tenants of 325 Melrose Street couldn't be reached for comment because there currently are none. In January 2009, the city sued Plaza and Bernat to force them to make repairs. The next month, the city took the rare step of issuing a "vacate order," conducting an emergency evacuation of the building because it had no water supply or heat, a defective fire escape, and gaping holes in ceilings and walls. The building is still blanketed by a blue tarp.

The Almontes’ bathroom ceiling

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PREVIOUSLY
New York's Ten Worst Landlords, Part 1
By Elizabeth Dwoskin

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Mitigating factors: City records indicate that Plaza has taken care of about 90 violations since November 2009 at 273 Lee Avenue.

Future: The Latino tenants say that Plaza representatives have been offering them money to move out—but that the money offered isn't enough. Cindy Reyes says her family was offered $10,000, but her mother, Julia Sanchez, says, "It's expensive to move. When we calculated it out, we wouldn't have had anything left."

Longtime tenant Oyola says: "They first offered $5,000. Then $7,000. Then $12,500. They were very insistent. But I say, 'I don't want to leave my apartment. I just want repairs.' "

Former Latino tenants couldn't be reached for comment.

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED

Landlord: Sam Suzuki

Sam Suzuki emerged as a player in decaying Bronx apartment buildings (through an entity called Hunter Properties) in part because of the collapse of New York's real estate bubble.

The company whose bubble burst was Ocelot Capital. In 2005, New York lawyer Rachel Arfa and her husband, Alexander Shpigel, founded Ocelot as a real estate venture heavily backed by Israeli investors through a Tel-Aviv company called Eldan-Tech. (Accounts in the Israeli press and elsewhere characterize Ocelot as a subsidiary of Eldan-Tech.) In 2006 and 2007, Ocelot received millions of dollars in loans to buy about two dozen rent-stabilized buildings in the Bronx. In March 2007, Real Estate Weekly dubbed Arfa, a former partner in the powerhouse law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, one of the year's "Residential Rising Stars."

But the income generated from rents wasn't enough to support Ocelot's vast debt. (The city later criticized the properties as over-leveraged, and Fannie Mae later admitted that the loans didn't meet the agency's underwriting standards.) As the economy collapsed and Ocelot fell behind on its mortgage payments, building maintenance practically ground to a halt. Tenants and housing advocates describe it as a near total abandonment of buildings by a landlord.

The buildings, plagued by rat infestations and electrical fires, racked up thousands of code violations, records show. Of Ocelot's 25 properties, 10 made the city's worst-violations lists published at the end of 2007 and 2008. (No other landlord had as many properties on the list.)

As the problems piled up, Eldan-Tech reported heavy losses and backed out. Amid that acrimonious breakup with Eldan-Tech, Ocelot passed the job of managing 20 of the buildings to Sam Suzuki.

Suzuki, who grew up in Queens, began his career in real estate on the banking side, first with Dime Savings Bank and then at Citibank. In 1993, he founded (and, until recently, controlled) the Vintage Group, which claims to manage more than $300 million worth of real estate, including Chelsea condos. Suzuki is also a prime developer in Flushing. In 2005, he landed on the list of "Outstanding Asian Americans in Business." In 2007, the Lubavitchers' Chabad of Port Washington gave Suzuki its "Community Service Award"; he was the only non-Jewish honoree.

That said, the winter of 2008–2009 was another winter without heat for many of the 20 buildings under Suzuki's control. But the number of violations did go down under Suzuki, in general.

Arfa also attempted to sell the 20 buildings to Suzuki. In November 2008, the two entered into a sales contract, but the deal fell through. A few months later, 14 of the properties went into foreclosure. (Mo Vaughn, the former Met and Boston Red Sox baseball player now in the real estate/rehab business, took over those buildings.)

Records indicate that Suzuki, through a newly created entity called BXP1, did apparently acquire six of the buildings—he and Hunter attorney Alice Belmonte are listed on the deeds as the buyers. Rachel Arfa's attorney, David Katz, tells the Voice that Suzuki and Belmonte were the only representatives of BXP1 at the closing. But Belmonte says Suzuki is only managing the buildings—and she won't name BXP1's principal or investors.

Quotable: "They say a lot of things. And they do a lot of nothing," University Avenue tenant Thomas Capone says of the landlord and building managers.