New York's Ten Worst Landlords, Part 1

[Elmore Furth]

So you think your landlord was bad. Here is the Hall of Fame.


http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-03-16/news/new-york-s-ten-worst-landlords/

[NYC_SKP]

1. I was a super in a building run by one of the Village Voice's Top Ten Worst Landlords.

For the year 1980, IIRC.

Burton Kagen, owner, 227 Sullivan St (between Bleeker and Wash Sq.).

I was a student, needed cheap housing, this was free, garden apartment first floor.

My first job was to clean blood off the walls in the stairwell and apartment of hospitalized tenant John M.

John was on rent-control and was an organizer of rent strikes.

He was beaten nearly to death by the prior super. He recovered and came back a week or two later.

My first big task was to remodel the two ground floor apartments- three room railroad flats.

Kagen had begun turning each room into a tiny studio apartment, the smallest was 7' x 10' x 11' high.

As an architecture student at Cooper Union, I knew this was illegal and exceeded the certificate of occupancy and restored both sides from six studios to two apartments.

Kagen would ask me to turn off people's gas and water and electric and, frankly, I did what he said but was always available when the police came and I'd turn everything back on.

I lasted, I think, just over one year, then moved to the lower east side on Houston at B in a small but light apartment for $285/month.

Shortly after I moved Kagen was busted for the John M. beating and went to Rikers.

Not long after, he made the Village Voice Top Ten.

That is all.

No link, pre-Internet.

You'd have to go to this place called a library, probably, and look at microfiche.

:P