395 Jefferson Avenue,

Brooklyn, NY 11221

It's a nice neighborhood and beautiful street.

Timestamping this for Sept 2022. The owner of this building is negligent with issues in this building including a burst pipe leading to a flooding in the basement (FDNY had to be called to turn the water off as the flood was over 2 feet high) leading to a water outage for over 24 hours. This also led to black mold in the basement. I live on the ground floor and there was a week where I would find a rat in the apartment every other day, whether it was on a mouse trap or running through the apartment. I had called and filed a ticket with the management company and they assured they would send someone. The company in charge of scheduling the appointment for pest control services did not reach out to me until 4 days later, in which time there were live rats trapped on the mouse traps so I had to call a pest control service that arrived within a few hours to get rid of the rats on the traps and plug up the holes with steel wool for prevention (the service the management company provided did not handle it initially which is why the issue persisted) all for $300. The management company refused to refund this from my lease as I had not "followed the proper protocol" though I did and have the time stamps and receipts to prove it. I also had a break-in to the hallway and they stole $500 worth of items from outside of my apartment overnight. I notified management and the owner claimed that it was my fault and that I should not have access to the door in the hallway and that is for maintenance only, though these are the only keys I was given upon moving in and I do not have keys to the front door. Finally, the owner raised rent by $600 in each unit in this building (there are 4 units), totaling an additional $2,400 monthly revenue going to the landlord, which is close to an additional $30k per year. The owner has used this increase in rent to paint the outside of the building and other superficial fixes, though he has failed to provide a safe and clean place for his tenants to live and threatens us by saying he is "angry" we decided to take it upon ourselves to handle matters in a legally timely fashion. My upstairs neighbors have been priced out after 1 year of living here due to the rent increases without any justification besides the "market" i.e we are currently in a downward economy where there are many people going through layoffs, etc and the owner used it as an opportunity to increase rent by 20%.

Increasing rents by 20% across each unit means you have add'l disposable income to cover the cost it requires to maintain the building (if I calculated correctly, around $2,400 add'l cash per month -> ~$30k per year). Listen to your tenants issues instead of using intimidation tactics of blaming the tenants for rats, stolen property, and other issues that that do not make an impact to your bottom line i.e fighting with and intimidating tenants over $300 for pest control services.