Mayor Zohran Mamdani lately celebrated the switch of possession of three long-neglected rent-stabilized buildings in Brooklyn from Rubin Dukler, an proprietor who’d made frequent appearances on the town’s worst landlord listing, to a brand new landlord named Mark Schwartz.
Schwartz is the mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey, and owns rent-stabilized residence buildings throughout the town. Underneath the owner swap that was cheered by the mayor and sponsored by the town, Schwartz has pledged to repair up the three Dukler buildings and supply tenants with respectable dwelling circumstances that they had lengthy been denied.
In a Sept. 3 assertion, Mamdani known as the switch “a brand new chapter” for the tenants and promised to work with the brand new proprietor “to place these 88 properties on a path towards stability and clarify that each New Yorker deserves a protected, well-maintained and steady place to name dwelling.”
What the mayor didn’t point out was that Schwartz and his companions have racked up greater than 1,400 open housing code violations deemed hazardous or instantly hazardous within the 28 buildings they now personal or handle throughout the town, in keeping with an inner metropolis doc obtained by The Metropolis Reporter.
Data present that the town Division of Housing Preservation and Improvement (HPD) — the company that can monitor Schwartz’s improve of the Dukler properties — has repeatedly cited Schwartz’s buildings for a sobering number of squalid circumstances. Within the final 4 years alone, they’ve sued him or his companions 15 instances to drive required repairs.
And HPD has needed to rent contractors to treatment circumstances at their buildings as a result of the house owners failed to finish required repairs. The interior metropolis doc notes Schwartz and his companions presently owe the town $1.3 million for this work.
Of Mice and Mould
Tenants at 3569 Dekalb Ave., a 54-unit tenement close to Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx that Schwartz and his companions have owned for a few years, know all about this.
As of Nov. 2, that constructing had accrued 268 open violations for circumstances inspectors deemed hazardous or instantly hazardous, together with 30 citations issued Aug. 26 for rat and mice infestations, non-functioning smoke detectors and poisonous mould. Since Schwartz took possession in 2018, the town has spent $21,500 to rent contractors to carry out required repairs there.
“The roaches and the rats are loopy,” Maritza Diaz-Sanchez, 40, lately instructed The Metropolis Reporter, recalling a current encounter when she mentioned rats and mice ran via the foyer and up the staircase throughout her path. She pointed to a patch the constructing tremendous had put in over a gap within the foyer ground to attempt to block extra furry visitors.
“Two mouses and two rats,” she mentioned. “It was a household.”
‘A Ton of Care’
In an interview, Schwartz admitted he was “embarrassed” by circumstances at Dekalb Avenue, however insisted he’s aggressively shifting to handle all excellent violations there and at his different properties throughout the town.
He mentioned he’s had various levels of oversight of his buildings, relying at instances on companions and third-party entities to remain on prime of constructing circumstances. This association, he mentioned, has not all the time obtained optimum outcomes.
“Once I deal with it myself, they’re very clear. When, over the previous years, over time in previous years when others deal with it, they don’t get taken care of in addition to they need to,” he mentioned. “Each few years we give buildings backwards and forwards to companions and third events and it simply doesn’t for essentially the most half work out.”
“If I screw up I’ll say I screwed up,” he added. “For those who depend on different folks, you possibly can’t say that.”
Final month Schwartz mentioned he took management of 11 rent-stabilized buildings by which he had a small stake as a result of he needs to raised help Mamdani’s efforts to protect current reasonably priced housing.
“This administration and myself are getting very closely concerned in preservation. The rent-stabilized trade is a large number proper now. The buildings want a ton of care,” he mentioned. “I need to make sure that our buildings are taken care of earlier than I work with others. I’m very happy with our inner monitor file and the buildings we took over.”
Schwartz insisted he has “hit the bottom” to treatment open citations: “We instantly started attacking all of the violations and have made nice progress.”
He has his work lower out for him. At a kind of properties, a four-story property at 2044 Bergen St. in Crown Heights, a mile away from the Dukler buildings, Schwartz mentioned he had been a “small associate” there for years however on Oct. 1 took full cost.
‘A Worthwhile Enterprise Mannequin’?
One in all his first orders of enterprise shall be to handle a lawsuit HPD filed final month. On the time there have been 92 open violations in a constructing with 16 items, together with 76 deemed hazardous. That represented a per-dwelling common of 4.75 hazardous violations — far in extra of the citywide common for rent-stabilized buildings of 0.05 violations per dwelling. Hazardous violations cited this yr included roach and mice infestations and non-functioning self-closing doorways and smoke detectors.
HPD alleged the house owners had falsely licensed that dozens of different violations had been remedied when inspectors found they weren’t. They usually identified that the handle of the constructing’s registered agent, Brian Dulitz, was a mail drop in a UPS retailer in Decrease Manhattan. Dulitz has served as a registered agent on a number of Schwartz properties, together with the Dukler buildings on Japanese Parkway.
HPD characterised the sample of failure to handle restore requests as deliberate, alleging the house owners had “turned deferring upkeep of rent-stabilized buildings right into a worthwhile enterprise mannequin.”
How Schwartz grew to become the go-to man within the Mamdani-supported landlord swap begins with him buying the mortgage on the Dukler properties in late 2024. Since then he mentioned he’s moved to foreclose, however Dukler has continued to be the registered agent accountable for managing the three buildings.
Schwartz mentioned in the summertime of 2025, pissed off residents who had shaped a tenants union after years of inaction from Dukler approached Schwartz about stepping in. Schwartz mentioned he then started working with HPD — first below Eric Adams, then below Mamdani — in search of metropolis subsidies to assist him protect and improve the 88 rent-stabilized flats within the three buildings.
Lease Strike
On Sept. 4, the Dukler Tenant Union introduced they’d reached an “settlement in precept” with Schwartz to rehabilitate their buildings with a long-term objective of changing them to co-ops that tenants would have the choice to buy.
The union mentioned Schwartz agreed to cancel all arrears accrued throughout a years-long hire strike in protest of Dukler’s failures, and that tenants can have some oversight over the upgrades to “guarantee prime quality renovations.” HPD will monitor contractors performing the rehabilitation.
“HPD could be very hands-on,” Schwartz mentioned. “The town is making an attempt to expedite this for months. The town is begging to get this completed by June. That may be a dream. I’m not going to deceive you. It’s pressuring us.”
Requested to touch upon Schwartz’s monitor file, the mayor’s workplace despatched a press release from Cea Weaver, who runs Mamdani’s Workplace to Defend Tenants.
“Working alongside new possession, the Dukler Tenant Union has negotiated a robust Memo of Understanding with Mark Schwartz in order that they’ve one other device of their toolbox to carry constructing administration accountable,” Weaver mentioned. “As we do with any constructing, we are going to use each mechanism at our disposal to implement the town’s Housing Upkeep Code and help each constructing house owners who come to the desk in good religion, and tenants who struggle for his or her proper to dwell in a protected, steady dwelling.”
Schwartz mentioned tenants had been conscious of his monitor file once they signed the memorandum of understanding, however when The Metropolis Reporter visited the Dukler buildings on Monday, tenants universally declined to remark about their soon-to-be new landlord.
Arielle Hersh, director of coverage on the nonprofit City Homesteading Help Board, which helped manage the Dukler tenants, mentioned she wouldn’t focus on Schwartz’s portfolio on the file.
Schwartz, for his half, mentioned he’s enthusiastically working with the Mamdani crew to make his takeover of the Dukler buildings work, however he famous the administration’s plans to drastically develop this tactic to different in-need buildings would require ample funding.
He estimated repairs alone on the Dukler buildings are anticipated to price $150,000 per unit.
“I really like their method. I need to work with them on their method,” he mentioned, including that “the Japanese Parkway bundle, it’s a number of hundred thousand per unit. That’s three buildings. How do you do that with lots of of buildings? I don’t know the place they’re going to get the cash.”
