Brooklyn Tenants Say A Health Inspector Called Their Building Too Dangerous To Enter While Mice Roam Free And Their Landlord, No. 23 On NYC’s Worst Landlords List, Will Not Meet Them

On Monday night, Nov. 9, tenants of 3821 18th Ave. in the Kensington section of Brooklyn stood outside their own building and demanded something most renters take for granted: a home without mice running through it.

A brown brick apartment building seen from the street, the kind of older multi-unit housing in the tenants story.

Their landlord, Robert Izsak, sits at No. 23 on the Public Advocate’s Top 100 Worst Landlords Watchlist. The tenants say he refuses to sit down with them, and the rally was their way of making noise until somebody does.

According to ABC7 New York’s report on the rally, the building has hundreds of unresolved housing violations on the books with the city.

“The Mice Are Constant” Says A Tenant Whose Complaints Went Nowhere

Micheline Durandisse lives in the building, and she says the mice never let up. She has reported the problem to her landlord again and again, and she says she got no response.

That is the kind of detail that turns a bad living situation into a maddening one. A pest problem is one thing. Asking for help over and over and hearing nothing back is another.

Organizers at the rally listed what residents live with day to day. They pointed to dead rodents, droppings, overflowing garbage and a laundry room that has badly deteriorated.

Anybody who has ever rented a place with a broken laundry room knows how much that single room matters. It is where families wash work clothes, school clothes and bedding, and when it falls apart, the whole building feels it.

An Organizer Says Even A Health Inspector Said “This Is Too Dangerous”

The most striking claim of the night came from an organizer named Shabir. He said a health inspector who came to the building was reluctant to go inside, telling tenants, “this is too dangerous.”

Think about that for a moment. The person whose job is to walk into a troubled building and write down what is wrong, according to the organizer, hesitated at the door.

Whether or not every resident has seen the worst of it, the picture the tenants painted was clear enough. They want the building cleaned up, the pests dealt with and the repairs done, and they want a landlord who will talk to them.

A Landlord On The City’s Worst List Is Accused Of Ducking His Own Tenants

Organizers allege that Izsak refuses to meet with the tenant union. A tenant union is simply the residents of a building organizing together so they can bargain as a group instead of one frightened household at a time.

That matters because one renter complaining is easy to ignore, while a whole building speaking with one voice is much harder to brush off. It is also why so many tenant groups end up outside the building with a microphone.

Management did not respond when asked for comment on the rally and the tenants’ claims.

The Public Advocate’s watchlist is the city’s public way of naming landlords with the worst records, and Izsak’s ranking at No. 23 puts him in the top quarter of the list’s 100 names.

The City Has Already Stepped In, And A Coordinator Is Supposed To Meet With Tenants

The building is part of the city’s Alternative Enforcement Program, a program aimed at the buildings with the worst housing code problems. In general terms, it lets the city step in when an owner will not make repairs on his own.

As part of that program, a coordinator has been appointed to meet with the tenants. For residents who have waited a long time for a response, a person assigned to listen counts as a first step, even if the real test is whether the mice, the garbage and the laundry room actually get fixed.

What Renters Can Do When A Landlord Stops Answering

If you rent and your landlord has gone quiet, the first move is the dull one that wins cases. Put every request in writing, keep copies, and take dated photos of the problem, whether that is droppings in a hallway or a laundry room with broken machines.

In New York City, tenants can report housing problems by calling 311, which sends the complaint to the city’s housing agency for inspection. Those complaint records become a public paper trail, and a building with hundreds of open violations is exactly the sort of record that organizers point to when they rally.

Tenants can also take a landlord to housing court with what is called an HP action, which asks a judge to order repairs. Tenant groups and legal aid organizations often help with that process, and many people find it easier to start by talking with neighbors, because the same problem is usually happening down the hall.

The Kensington tenants chose the loudest tool they had, which was showing up together on a Monday night in November. Whether Izsak finally takes a seat across the table from them is the question every renter in that building is waiting to see answered.

For the rest of us, the lesson is an old one. A landlord’s name on a worst list, a stack of violations and a building full of neighbors who refuse to stay quiet can add up to real pressure, and sometimes pressure is the thing that finally gets a repair done.

Willow and Hearth