The easy ways to deal with fruit flies are disposing of fruits, vegetables and other foods before they become overripe, store cooked foods covered and appropriately; seal all stored foods in containers with air-tight lids.
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NYC's Ten Worst Tenants
We hope you don't live next to these people
It turned out that "John Brown" was fictitious and that both the order of protection and the domestic-violence incident report had been forged, according to prosecutors. Last October, Malone admitted to investigators that she had paid $500 to a woman named Cynthia who was selling Section 8 paperwork.
In October 2010, Malone was charged with grand larceny. She allegedly stole $14,000 worth of subsidies. Malone has pled not guilty, and the case is pending.
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This Bronx building on East 168th Street was run by an anti-tenant tenants’ association.
Over the past year, six women have been arrested for allegedly falsely claiming to be victims of domestic violence in order to obtain public housing or Section 8 housing vouchers. In another case, Chevelle Richardson filled out an application for her 20-year-old daughter, Chandera, that included not only a fabricated domestic-violence incident report and a phony order of protection but also a forged letter from the domestic-violence shelter organization Safe Horizon.
As the government cuts sharply back on its subsidized-housing programs, there may be greater incentive for people to falsify complaints. Because of long waiting lists and budget cuts in the program, the only people who are now permitted to apply for Section 8 subsidies are victims of domestic violence, youngsters who become too old to stay in foster care, and people in witness-protection programs. It's a crisis for people who would legitimately qualify for public housing: Officials say there are currently 130,000 people on the waiting list.
Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city's Department of Investigation, says she finds the domestic-violence fakers to be especially repugnant: "I mean, there are real victims of domestic violence out there," she tells the Voice.
The Scammer
In February 2010, 21-year-old public-housing tenant Unique Jones put an ad on Craigslist to sublet her two-bedroom apartment in the heart of hipster-filled Williamsburg-Bushwick corridor. Her apartment, she wrote in the post, had "hardwood floors" and was located in a "peaceful area." The rent she asked for was a steal: "$400 a month with $800 security deposit."
Jones also noted something that, in less desperate times, might have scared potential renters away: "Public housing apt building," the ad read, "working class only."
But Jones had no shortage of responses to her ad for the apartment in the Williamsburg Houses, a 20-building residential complex built in 1937 on 12 blocks near Bushwick Avenue. According to the city's Department of Investigation, Jones defrauded eight people, including students, a security guard, and a couple. Jones took their deposit money but then, in most cases, prevented them from moving in.
One man, an exchange student from Thailand, told officials that he paid Jones $600 to move in but was given a key that did not work. She is accused of collecting $2,400 from two other prospective renters whom she prevented from moving in and, at the same time, collecting $2,400 from a man to whom she actually did rent the apartment, for six months beginning in March, say authorities.
Her actual rent was $256 a month, which meant she defrauded the city of around $3,500.
Jones was charged with grand larceny, petty larceny, and fraud. According to authorities, she is still at large.
Victims of the scam told investigators that they weren't aware that it was illegal for New York City Housing Authority tenants to sublet their apartments.
Kill the Super
Shayne Sinclair had an onerous, but ostensibly simple, task. Errol Irving, one of the tenants in a Brooklyn boarding house at 1485 East 51st Street, near Avenue L in Flatlands, owed three weeks' worth of back rent.
It amounted to several hundred dollars, and the 40-year-old super had great incentive to go to the boarding house on the evening of February 4 to collect it. According to news reports, he himself hadn't been paid by the landlord for three weeks—and he was also struggling financially, trying to take care of his wife and baby daughter.
For his trouble, Sinclair was stabbed in the chest by the 60-year-old Irving, say police, who found him unconscious at the boarding house at about 8:30 p.m. The super was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital, where he died.
Irving has been charged with second-degree murder, according to news reports, and he already had a miserable track record as a human being: He had been released from prison in 2007 after serving 20 years for sodomy and sexual abuse, according to news reports. At last report, Irving was being held without bail in jail, where rent is free.
The super's family was, of course, devastated. They say that Sinclair would have been paid by the landlord after collecting Irving's overdue rent. The Daily News quoted a relative as saying, "He wasn't doing anything wrong. All he wanted was his pay. He left home to go look for a paycheck, and he's dead now."
The family told reporters that Sinclair was a kind and gentle man and that he had planned to move from the city with his wife and daughter when he could afford to.
The Mattress-cide
In the wee hours of December 1, 2009, the use of a mattress kept people awake at an apartment building at 683 East 222nd Street in the Wakefield neighborhood of the Bronx. But not for the usual reason.
Omari Richards, 26, the basement tenant in a building owned by George Shim, 37, was quarreling with Shim's fiancée, according to news reports and police.
58 comments
The easy ways to deal with fruit flies are disposing of fruits, vegetables and other foods before they become overripe, store cooked foods covered and appropriately; seal all stored foods in containers with air-tight lids.
The easy ways to deal with fruit flies are disposing of fruits, vegetables and other foods before they become overripe, store cooked foods covered and appropriately; seal all stored foods in containers with air-tight lids.
The easy ways to deal with fruit flies are disposing of fruits, vegetables and other foods before they become overripe, store cooked foods covered and appropriately; seal all stored foods in containers with air-tight lids.
The easy ways to deal with fruit flies are disposing of fruits, vegetables and other foods before they become overripe, store cooked foods covered and appropriately; seal all stored foods in containers with air-tight lids.
The easy ways to deal with fruit flies are disposing of fruits, vegetables and other foods before they become overripe, store cooked foods covered and appropriately; seal all stored foods in containers with air-tight lids.
The truth is the best weapon. they cannot say you are making things up about them when you have video. I'm not damaging their character or calling them crooks out of the blue. video and audio clips supports everything. I need help.We need help. Lets make this a level playing field.I will not lose my home because of people that made sucking off the state's tit for support a family practice. Hear my story tell me yours. There is alot more of us than one would think.email me at baddtenants@live.com and check out where I'm putting these badd tenants at: dropshots.com/baddtenants
I'm one of many landlords who is suffering and it's not fair to open your home to someone who's true intent is to make you homeless. Yes the only to change this is for us to join together and we will get things done. these baddtenants create a ripple effect. i.e. programs hat help people run out of money or close down al together. I hear now sec.8 accepts only domestic violence candidates only. Join me at baddtenants@live.com
It has come to my attention that Elizabeth Dworskin was paid by David Brody of Borah Goldstein to write the article. David Brody and Borah Goldstein are 'gangster' lawyers and will do anything to get what their clients want. But clearly, people see through this writting piece of crap. SHAME ON YOU VILLAGE VOICE for allowing your paper to become scum ! you should fire Elizabeth Dworskin and have a REAL REPORTER investigate BORAH GOLDSTEIN and their mobster like practice.
Elizabeth Drowskin should have her hands chopped off so she cannot write anymore - her slander and false reporting DESTROYS LIVES. Elizabeth Dworskin will go to gehenem for her false reporting - she is a murderer!
I would like to know what web site I can go on to post up bad tents because I have a couple names that needs to be open to landlords that care and I don't want other great landlords get hurt like i did with these evil tents i can be email at hotreds19@gmail.com thanks i would like someone to help me asap . . .
If you have tenants who call 311 NYC’s Dept of Buildings you must sign up to DOB Alerts.
This site DOBAlerts.com runs a program which notifies you if someone called 311 on your property. It works great if you have crazy depressed neighbors who walk around the neighborhood calling 311 and try to get people into trouble
This site runs a program which notifies you if someone called 311 on your property. It works great if you have crazy depressed neighbors who walk around the neighborhood calling 311 and try to get people into trouble
Good tenants are a blessing. Most of them are horrible. It's a simple concept, pay rent on time, if you can't afford the place don't get the place...
I would like to invite you to be my guest and do a walk thru on a property damaged by one of the very type of scum described in this piece. If you are half the man you think you are , pony up 30k for legal fees and another 150k for renovations and oh don't forget your hammer. What a fine man you are to help and as a reminder bring the other 6 that thnk like you do.
There was a time when the Village Voice really was "the voice of the people". The Voice used to boldly take on slumlords and developers, on behalf of the common man and woman - the scum of the real estate business used to fear the "10 worst landlords" issue every year.
Now, we see the pathetic spectacle of the Voice attacking the poorest of New York's tenants, in what amounts to pro landlord propaganda.
This is PATHETIC!
I'm disgusted at what the Village Voice has degenerated into - nothing more than a mouthpiece for the real estate speculators!
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Buy addresses---- tntn.usTips (48 hours after the special product is invalid)
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"This list is heavy with people who live in public housing or otherwise receive housing subsidies. But we're not picking on poor people."
No, you're just too lazy to do any actual investigative reporting. What a haphazard collection of disparate people. The only connection they have to one another is that they rent apts in New York City. What is the point of this article, besides being a collection of gossipy tales?
Really crap article. The "list" was so uneven and the idea that tenancy defined these people seemed flimsy. Some of the people were tenants behaving like bad landlords (one WAS a landlord trying to get a tenant subsidy), one of the cases where a tenant killed a landlord the reporter writes that it was too soon to tell whether it was done in self defense (!?). Hoarding on the level described at the Christopher St. bldg (as noted by someone below) is a sign of mental illness, not some goofy little quirk or a conscious act of malice. The fixation with it here -- as in the TV show "Hoarders" -- is just exploitation. The story of that super being murdered is horrible but the snarky writing renders the piece devoid of sympathy or respect.
A newspaper with a commitment to journalism would have taken one of these stories and written something in depth about them: hoarding, problems with the City's limited equity coop program, etc. Instead we have this uneven "list" which trades on the facile notion that "tenants are just as bad" as landlords in this city without any analysis or understanding of how this city works. Tabloid garbage.
Oh...I think I can join this list, maybe even shoot right to top billing, albeit, in suburbs, just over the Bronx/Westchester County border. My back yard neighbor runs a custom car installation business from his back yard. I'm not talking about cute little stereos for classical music enjoyment, I'm talking Hip-Hop/Rap with enormous amplifiers in the trunks of cars and 6 to 8 speakers in the vehicle. The volume and decibel levels are outrageously loud, and the bass capabilities are such that they have actually shaken panes of glass from older windows, right out of their frames! Needless to say, the authorities have done little to nothing in answering my complaints. I am very tempted to make use of the IRS Whistleblower program, where one gets financially compensated from turning in tax cheats (I know this guy runs a cash only business, in an area strictly zoned for residential, so I might get a nice piece of change and noise relief in one shot. and BTW....forget talking to the guy and reasoning with him. That tactic almost had me in a brawl with the guy, with him calling me a maricon and puto as a prelude to a reasonable chat over the back fence.
what is the point of this article? just juicy gossip? where is the social commentary or analysis? i wonder why tenants forge documents to get affordable housing? hm, maybe it's because there is no real affordable and decent housing? how can you talk about tenants forging documents to get into public housing and not talk about how the waiting list is 8 years long, how the city stopped building public housing in 1974 and has had no real plan to provide affordable housing to new yorkers since? or how there are at least 10,000 vacant apartments in public housing that have been vacant for more than 10 years waiting to be "rennovated?" or how the landlords and speculators who are increasingly transnational corporations are intentionally displacing low-income tenants from affordable housing to make a quick buck? i wonder who got you to write this one. This isn't reporting. This is tabloid. Welcome to the Fox News of the new york city journalism.
While it is true that tenants can be slobs and scammers, the harm they inflict on the world is miniscule compared to the misery perpetrated by slumlords, and those landlords who overcharge, harass and rip off their tenants. You should stick to the 10 worst landlords; it does far more social good. This article is just juicy gosssip and your effort to appear even handed.
Charles Rangel got away with defrauding NYC over property and is still in Congress....why wasn't he spotlighted in the article??
IN MEMORIAM of the REAL Village Voice -- which was slowly bled to death as James Ridgeway, Nat Hentoff, Wayne Barrett and Tom Robbins were pushed out the door: These new imposters will never fool your original fan base -- and CERTAINLY not when they pull a complete 180 turn by trying to pass off such low-stooping, heartless, flat-out ignorant drivel as frontpage journalism. From this point on -- you couldn't PAY me to pick up an issue of the NEW Village Voice.
Thank you!
Ridgeway, Hentoff, Barrett and Robbins were REAL JOURNALISTS, who took on the crooked and the powerful.
This article is just pro landlord propaganda garbage - a pathetic attempt to be "fair and balanced" rather than telling the real story of landlord profiteering and a city government that doesn't give a damn about tenants!
These people are just as crooked. Posing as downtrodden welfare recipents means that the really needy are deprived. Crime is crime.
What an incredible thing!!! The VILLAGE VOICE actually cares about LANDLORDS???? I own a two family and evicted a true scumbag in EVERY sense of that word last year... He almost made me default on my mortgage. I wrote a letter to the editor once...
http://www.villagevoice.com/20...
Tenants, Landlords... there are good people and bad people. The difference isn't in your position.
I read this piece in the paper and was surprised that it'd been written and published. I'm a real estate agent who, in the past year and a half have been involved in three apartment rentals to seemingly ideal tenants, who turned out to be extraordinarily horrible. They range from a young, white couple with two small children to a retired registered nurse. Among these tenants, the landlords are owed, cumulatively, in excess of twenty-five thousand dollars. All the landlords have mortgages to pay. These are two and three family houses which are the homes of these landlords, They have suffered through threats of arson and murder. They've had to live with daily visits from the police or fire department for problems which do not exist in pristine apartments with zero violations. On more than one occasion, one has had to sleep in her car for fear of going into her house. Endless visits to court have been mostly futile. Reports to the police get nowhere. An eviction granted in October of last year has not yet been enforced/completed. It just goes on and on.
I find it amazing that you were unable to get stories of that kind. What a waste.
Hi, read your comment and wondering about info you have as it sounds like people we encountered. We just partly emerged from nightmare of personal threats of attack by tenants who evaded giving full identities of their past huge evasive fraud associations (over $15million fraud associations) and then communicated to us numerous fatwa like threats including claiming they are going to make our life a living hell, take our home, ruin our health etc etc.
They did all this abusing what we estimate to be in excess of $80,000 lost to taxpayer funded agencies and local NYC institutions in just 5 weeks or so not including the losses to local vendors and landlord. Civil lawyers call them professional tenants, may not report their criminal acts and seem to let them go on to their next potential victims. People tell us that the public agencies know about the fake reports but have no method in place for years to stop or at least prevent it. No inter-agency data base as these types move from one agency to another complaining falsely or in grossly exaggerated ways while destroying viable housing which lawyers tell us they take the home or apartment as "hostage". It is like rinse and repeat business; the taxpayers and society the victims are hurt as it raise costs to good tenants and good landlords; not to mention taxpayers where state budgets are at risk these days. It loses services that should be devoted to those truly in need at same time.
Heh, any competent journalist should be able to dredge up far more horrible stories than these. This is New York!!
It takes all kinds but when the only way you have to get help if you are in legitimate need is to lie about domestic violence there is something wrong with the system. As for the people scamming the system who own property or have jobs and can pay the rent they should be in jail and the reason so many of them are repeat offenders is because on the whole they get probation.
Are you kidding me? "We're not picking on poor people." It's just that their lives are more heavily policed and surveilled, since the right to privacy comes at a price in this country. Amazing that this got conceived, assigned, written, edited, and published.
I'm also shocked at this article. There was a purpose in the ten worst landlords list. There was a purpose to investigative journalism. There was a purpose to the Village Voice.
WHO ARE YOU TO SAY "SILENCE"?!!! What the h--- are these comment sections for? (PS - The fact that you have no opinion to voice of your own other than bellowing like a God-wannabe speaks volumes about you, pal...)
what dreck! more power to the people who work out ways to game the system!
when this country learns to stop spending trillions fucking in other nations' business, then i'll be offended by poor people who manage to get a measly 20k from the corrupt government.
til then, power to the people!
As an owner of properties and a property management company for the past 29 years, this is not even a taste of whats out there in the city that protects tenants such as the article points out. Many claim that the landlords make so much money- yet the fact that the Bloomberg administration is now looking to obtain 35% of the rent roll for property taxes, and $1,000 per unit in water sewer charges- the landlords are no longer able to cope with this and many more fees created by bloomberg. Couple that with the rent control tenants ( a wartime act that remained intact), and the landlord/tenant courts that have the landlord guilty until proven innocent, the housing game will get worse soon enough. If the rent controls were removed, overall prices for apartment rentals would fall dramatically- similar to "water finding its level".
I suspect if you titled this article "Section 8 and Public Housing Scammers" most would have thought this was the trashy Post. What crap, are you serious?
how far the VV has fallen. Firing Barrett (and many others) and now printing NY Post-like dreck like this. Yeah, everybody knows there are asshole tenants. I've lived next to some. But they aren't responsible for extortionate rents and everything else greedy pig landlords get away with in this city. Fuck you, VV -- I'm gone. But I'm sure you don't give a shit, now that you've gotten all the right-wing yuppie scum (like those posting comments here) to read your worthless rag.
For the most part I'm cheering "AMEN," Giorgio (... up until the words "F--- you...etc" -- let's stay above that.) I WILL NEVER pick up the NEW Village Voice again. Clearly, they've slid on down the slippery easy-money DRAIN that Fox News & Co have become by catering to the mindless (& soul-less) money-grubbers.
As a landlord in Colorado, this article makes me feel better about some of the miscreants I have dealt with. The idea of spending years in court with a tenant sounds like a horrendous waste of time and money (in most cases).
I work in real estate management and can tell you that this article presents only the tip of the iceberg. The entitlement mentality created by the rent laws and other "protections" granted to tenants by our infinitely-wise elected officials and the resultant near-impossibility of getting bad tenants out of buildings is at the root of this problem. If these people could be forced to shape-up or ship-out and stop being a burden to all of their neighbors (the good tenants that all building-owners really want to keep), building owners could focus on providing the services and improvements to their good tenants. It's time to get rid of rent-control and rent-stabilization so that landlords are not required to keep doing business with deadbeats and selfish neighbors.
Me again! Ms. Dwoskin did a fantastic job researching this article. Pulitzer anyone? I wonder if she is one of THE Dwoskin family in Atlanta. Hmm. Inquiring minds want to know. They are like really classy people. Atlanta legends, really. The bottom line is, she can spend the remainder of her writing career researching people who rent apartments in NYC and boroughs. This story was so incredible. Especially Ms. Baum/Best. Give that woman an award for chutzpa! Every minute of her life must be calculated in thoughts about how to scam the next guy/gal. Honey, that's a movie in the makin'! Goldie Hawn could have played her a decade ago. Maybe Naomi Watts? In all the years I have lived in NYC (on-and-off since '67) I have met some of the most incredibly emotionally damaged people on earth. I have lived all over the world but nothing compares to NYC. The island is a magnet for lost souls. This is limbo for some, pergatory for others and for the people in this story, it's hell on earth. I am on the cusp between limbo and pergatory. However, there have been years of hell for me, too. I leave only to return again and again. This last time I threw in the towel and said, "Well, this is it for me. I'm not leaving Manhattan again!" I am between severe old age and the black body bag. Stories like this keep the heart tickin' and my mind movin'. MORE!
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