Got yourself a dreaded case of the post-Memorial Day Tuesdays? Start your short week off right by catching up on last week's episode of the Hell Gate Podcast. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Persistently negligent landlords, especially those who own hundreds of units across New York City, are no strangers to the City's housing agencies. They're constantly issued violations, levied fines, and told to clean up their act and stop terrorizing their tenants.
But the gears of housing justice grind at a glacial pace, and for the City to actually get rid of those landlords who won't listen to the City—by forcing the sale of their properties in the hope of finding a better owner—is a yearslong process, with sometimes uneven results. Take the saga of Daniel Ohebshalom, one of the city's "worst landlords": He's ended up on Rikers repeatedly for failing to repair his properties, but the City has still not successfully been able to force a sale of his portfolio, as his tenants continue living through hell.
Now, City Hall says it has a strategy for dealing with persistently bad landlords as part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's long-awaited housing plan, to be announced later today.