Ceilings are collapsing in a New York apartment building, mushrooms are growing from the walls from moisture, but tenants can do nothing to the landlord

When Gillian Heft noticed a mushroom growing on the wall of her East Village apartment, all she could do was laugh, reports patch.

“I couldn't stop laughing then,” Gillian said. “The mushrooms keep dying and growing back.”

However, now Heft and her neighbors are not laughing. The dangerous conditions at 331 E. 14th St., residents say, are caused by the negligence of their notorious landlord.

“A lot has happened, I don’t even know where to start this story. So many things,” Gillian is embarrassed.

“Good Deal” Failed

A civil lawsuit against their landlord, Daniel Ohebshalom, aka Dan Shalom, sounds like a list of New York renters' worst nightmares.

In recent months, two ceilings have collapsed, and rodents roam the building. And the lock on the front door is so bad that the homeless were able to get in and take over “almost every vacant apartment” in the 24-apartment building. There, according to court documents, they used drugs, urinated and defecate.

Ohebshalom's lawyer, Simon Reiff, denied the allegations in court documents.

Heft, who works in the public relations department, never thought she would face such conditions. Two years ago, the woman was confident that she had made a “good deal” on the lease.

The rent for a prime location in the East Village was cheap, she said, about $1600. And judging by the flow of people Heft saw walking down the hallways, it seemed like she had a lot of neighbors.

“Turns out it wasn't really like that,” Gillian said. “These wanderers turned out to be uninvited guests staying in empty apartments.”

She quickly realized that only 10 people, including herself, were legally living in the building.

On the subject: Homeowner in New York to pay tenants $ 1 million in compensation: what he did to them

The broken front door, which the building management failed to properly fix, served as a welcome mat for intruders. They destroyed the mailboxes, as a result of which the residents cannot receive parcels and mail.

According to Heft, human feces and drug paraphernalia have become commonplace in the entryway.

“People have learned that our building can be entered and spent the night in it,” she laments.

Residents became afraid to walk along their own corridors.

Without a California-based superintendent and building manager, little was done to repair the front door or anything else.

Heft says it's risky to call the police alone because the building doesn't have a working intercom.

“Hence,” she muses, “the intruders can see that I am the person who denounced them.”

An association

Gillian and her neighbors eventually banded together and refused to pay rent.

“If me and my neighbors don’t fight this slum boss Daniel Ohebshal, then who will?” Heft asks rhetorically.

They got help from the Lower East Side and turned to justice, but their landlord, Ohebshalom, is no stranger to litigation.

Ohebshalom is the scion of a real estate family. They are said to be slum owners with a long line of complaints, including harassment, mismanagement and neglect in New York City. He and related companies were included in the New York Public Advocate's list of worst landlords in 2015 and 2018.

Just last year, a group of Queens tenants sued Ohebshalom after their building was infested with rodents, burst pipes and piles of trash.

Fred Magovern, a lawyer for TakeRoot Justice, said the East Village lawsuit is an attempt to hold Ohebshalom accountable.

In "Process 7A," Magoverne is actually asking the judge to appoint a rent administrator to take the place of the landlord.

“It should be a temporary shift of the landlord. So that they do not pocket money and do not fulfill their duties as a landlord, ”he explained.

Originally known as the “tenant strike law,” 7A was passed decades ago. Back then, tenants turned down en masse payments to slum owners, who saw more profit in letting buildings fall apart than repairing them, Magovern said.

Such proceedings have become difficult to conduct

Mainly because they require the consent of one-third of the tenants in occupied apartments. There are also loopholes that landlords can exploit at the last minute, he said.

“It [the law] is hardly used,” Magovern said. "It's very, very rare."

Magoverne bet that 7A's "escalation" could still help Heft and her neighbors. It alleges that landlords have failed to address conditions inside the building that are “dangerous” to the life, health, and safety of tenants.

The trial in this case is scheduled for November 28. It will unfold after the process is dragged out by Ohebshal and his lawyer.

“They're playing with fire,” Magovern said. "And it's a very dangerous game."

As for the mushrooms, they continue to grow from the wall in Heft's bathroom. She suspects that an unfixed leak from the roof is feeding the mushrooms. Yes, and water often gushing from the wall far from the sink.

“The last mushroom I saw was this weekend,” Heft stated. “He was pretty big.”