Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Administration Announces Historic $2.1 Million Settlement to Address Hazardous Conditions and Tenant Harassment Across 14 Buildings
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for being here. It is a pleasure to stand here alongside incredible members of our administration, our City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, and tenants and those who have been fighting for them. In our great city, certain words carry specific associations. When New Yorkers hear Broadway, they think of talent, creativity. When they hear dollar slice, they may think of 2 Bros [Pizza] and the beautiful past that the cost-of-living crisis has stolen from us. And for too many New Yorkers, when they hear the words A&E real estate, they think of mistreatment and neglect, violations and appalling living conditions. Thousands of our neighbors live in rent-stabilized units managed by A&E, and thousands of our neighbors contend with daily misery as a result. For years, A&E has operated with callous disregard for those residing in its properties, racking up over 140,000 total violations, including 35,000 in the last year alone. This is not just a failure to serve those to whom it holds an obligation. It is overt cruelty to tens of thousands of New Yorkers. City Hall will not sit idly by and accept this illegality, nor will we allow bad actors to continue to harass tenants with impunity. Today, I am proud to stand here alongside our Housing Preservation and Development commissioner, Dina Levy, deputy mayor for Housing and Planning, Leila Bozorg, and director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, Cea Weaver, to announce that New York City has come to a settlement with A&E Realty regarding 14 buildings across three boroughs. This settlement will require A&E to not only pay $2.1 million in restitution, it will impose injunctions preventing them from harassing their tenants and compelling them to correct more than 4,000 building code violations across these 14 buildings. Thank you for all of your work in bringing today and making it possible. Thank you [to] all of you who have been doing this work for far too long without seeing these kinds of results. Because while this settlement covers 14 buildings, I also want to make very clear we are aware of issues across the entirety of A&E Realty's portfolio and we will continue to monitor their conduct. 4,000 building code violations is hard to put into perspective. It is a big number and, frankly, a bureaucratic term. But if you understand it as thousands of children unable to sleep because the heat is off and they're shivering too hard, if you understand it as dozens of elevators out of order, if you understand it as hundreds of apartments festering with mold, then you understand that the action we are taking today is not only one of good governance, it's one of a moral imperative. This is the kind of progress that for too long has not been prioritized by our city government. And I want to make clear that this is what I want New Yorkers to expect from our administration every single day. On my first day in office, I announced that we were revitalizing the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants. I said then what we are following through today. If your landlord does not responsibly steward your home, [the] city government will step in. [The] city government has real power to protect the millions of tenants across the city. And let today be evidence that we are not afraid to use it. But we do not wish to lead this work on our own or to go after bad landlords without the people of New York City informing [us of] the decisions we make or the abuses that we prioritize. And that is why we announced that we will be holding a Rental Ripoff Hearing in each of the five boroughs within the first 100 days of our administration. These are hearings where HPD will work closely with the Department of Buildings, the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and the newly created Office of Mass Engagement to listen to New Yorkers' needs, ending the days of them being considered the preferably unheard, and ensuring that their perspectives are then used to devise not just strategies, but also policies. If this is truly the beginning of a new era, then let it be one defined by a City Hall that is unafraid to take on those who would harass and mistreat New Yorkers and that governs with the people's needs as its North Star. Thank you so much. I'm excited to announce Commissioner Dina Levy will join me next.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWe want to make it clear to everyone in this city that no one is above the law, and that if you are a landlord violating the law, then this administration will hold you to account and will do so because we've just heard of what the consequences are of that inaction. We are quite literally talking about the conditions that determine the day-to-day health or lack thereof of New Yorkers. And too often, these experiences are distilled into statistics that we become numb to. And I am heartened by the incredible work we're already seeing on day 16 of our administration from those within our HPD, our deputy mayor for Housing and Planning, our executive director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, to take this seriously because we've just heard what years of not doing so has looked like.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThe intended outcome is safety and well-being for tenants. That's what we are driven towards. And so we today are announcing a multimillion-dollar settlement with this landlord to actually rectify these violations. That is what we want to see. If a landlord cannot get to that settlement, [and] continues to operate outside of the law, then we will hold them to account in additional ways.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI will continue to make it clear to our partners in Albany, the importance of something that they already know and champion on a day-to-day basis, which is the wellbeing of this city and its fiscal health. And we cannot have it such that a New Yorker would go to sleep on a Friday and wonder if on a Saturday, their basic services will be in doubt. And we have long said that what we are inheriting is not just an administration in the prior one that exhibited incredible fiscal mismanagement, but also a decades-long effort from former Governor Cuomo to pilfer from city coffers at each and every turn. And what that has left this city with is as described by the comptroller, not only a fiscal hole, but frankly, a relationship between city and state where the city contributes 54.5 percent of the state's tax revenues but only receives 40.5 percent in return. And this is the beginning of the budget processes. We will continue to make the case. What we will always make clear is that it's the health and wellbeing of New Yorkers that we're advocating for. [Crosstalk.]
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThis is one of the focuses of the work that we are doing is living up to the commitment that I've made where a cyclist should not be facing a criminal summons, they should be facing a civil summons. And here on day 16, it's one of the things that we're gonna follow up on.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Administration Announces Historic $2.1 Million Settlement to Address Hazardous Conditions and Tenant Harassment Across 14 Buildings.