9013 5 Avenue,

Brooklyn, NY 11209

Large apartments. Some nice finishes, although the carpentry and tile work were done without measuring correctly.

It becomes evident the first time you try to use the shower or kitchen that someone with no knowledge of carpentry was used to renovate those two rooms. The showerhead is over 7 foot high and the bathroom is *entirely* tiled, except the ceiling. You can't put anything on the walls and while the tiles look like marble from a distance, up close, they are ceramic tile with only one pattern, which makes the room look so cheap.

The kitchen sink is almost 2 ft away from the front edge of the kitchen counter, instead of 3-5 inches, as it is normally. Even my 6' 8" friend said that the kitchen sink was so uncomfortable that he couldn't imagine using it on a regular basis. Cabinets were supposedly installed within 5 years of move-in, and we're already falling apart. Wood trim, particularly on the floor edges of the walls, were cut incorrectly, with some of the trim being installed backwards, with the miter cuts being opposite of the other trim pieces where they met at corners.


Very noisy (no insulation between floors, making apartment sounds (even regular footsteps) sound like migrating elephants. Neighbors downstairs came up at 10:30pm the very first night to insist I turn my TV down (it was on 2 out of 40 on the dial.) They obviously had the same issue with the previous tenant, because of the lack of insulation between the joists in the floors and ceilings.


I had to get heavy carpets, thick carpet pads, sound and light blocking curtains, and had to put things on every wall to absorb sound. The downstairs neighbors did nothing to reduce the sound, and I could hear their phone conversations in my apartment, even after I invested a *lot* of money to block the sound, so I wouldn't be *that* neighbor. The neighbors upstairs had nothing on the floors. You could hear complete conversations, and with 9 adults, the sound was 24/7. I offered to pay for a rug for the main room (the living room and dining room combo was a large space, and it would have cost me $500 minimum for a rug for that room and an additional $100-$150 for a carpet pad to go under it, to stop the constant sound of stepping (which sounded like stomping, although I am sure they were just walking - but there were 9 of them,) and they frequently took wood chairs and dragged them across the floor instead of picking them up to reduce the noise (and to protect the hardwood floors. The patriarch of the family refused my offer to get them a rug - I was going to let them choose the design, etc. He said his wife was allergic. What??? I said allergic to what? He said allergic to things rugs were made out of. I said, considering rugs can be made from animal pelts, wool, cotton, or synthetic fiber there had to be rugs she wasn't allergic to, unless she walked around the house all day naked, because if she was allergic to cotton and synthetic materials for rugs, she wouldn't be able to wear clothes. I'm sure that would be an experience for her 3 children in their 20s and their 2 friends and 2 children's spouses that lived there. I also said that it wasn't like I was going to be purchasing a $30,000 hand knotted rug from Morocco made from Yak wool, so she would be safe from the allergies. Anyway, I did put heavy fabric that sound blocked a little on the ceiling, I already had that kind of fabric on the windows, and I put a light/sound blocking heavy duty curtain across the front door, to block as much as I could of the sound from outside, but even with all of that, the apartment was louder than my dorm room in college where I shared a hall with 60 other students.


Between me signing a lease and moving in 3 weeks later, the landlord tore out existing intercom panels inside the apartments instead of fixing it, but left the front panel, which still functioned. So... no doorbell or door release, *but* FedEx/UPS delivery people assumed that since the front panel buzzes, that no one was home because no one answered, and they would take your package back to the depot, which was almost 2 hours away at the main UPS and FedEx depots. Food and grocery delivery was near impossible. The landlords say that because there are less than 8 apartments, they don't need to install an intercom system. The problem is, once an intercom system is installed, removing it is considered by NY State as a *reduction of service* requiring rent reduction, as well a like or better system to be installed to replace the broken one, if there was an intercom previously installed. Less than 8 apartments is only relative if the service wasn't there to begin with (they didn't have to put an intercom system in, if there was never one there.) A related problem is that the front door locking system/release is partially torn out like the apartment panels, so people get inside the building constantly, making the building unsafe.


There was no heat between October 1 and May 31 at night, which is *illegal.* If the courts weren't so backed up from COVID delayed cases, the case would have been heard at housing court. The city housing inspectors only are available from 8am until 5pm (sometimes 6pm,) so the landlords are confident of the timer not being documented. Inspectors can only ask to see the boiler if there is no heat or hot water during the day when they are there to inspect.


Tenants are chosen for *vulnerability* meaning the tenants have to have something that would make them not complain when the landlord broke the law. Some of the qualities would be being illegal aliens or having too many people in an apartment (one apartment has 9 people and another has 10 - all adults. The most that could legally occupy a 2 bedroom apartment in NY State is 6 - 1 married couple per bedroom and one infant child occupying each bedroom with the parents, so 4 adults and two infants - not 9 or 10 adults. The landlords are happy to rent to them, because they know for the groups to legally rent a place with 9 or 10 adults, they would need a 4 or 5 bedroom apartment, and would say nothing to jeopardize their tenancy there. These families are perfect for the landlord who is a slumlord. The great nephew told me he was disappointed in me because he had to *vouch* for me to be rented to.

I had an immaculate rental history, a guarantor for the rent, and a 780+ credit score. What he was insinuating was he had to vouch for me, because I wasn't *controllable* and might say something about the ripped out intercom and/or there not being heat or hot water at night. It was so cold at night, that when it went down to 20° and below (it went to 7° one night,) I could see my breath in front of my face inside the building. I ran 3 space heaters, and because the apartment was sizeable, my electric bill was $2,700 for December to February. Those months should have had very low electric bills, since gas was only for cooking, and heat and hot and cold water were included in the rent, supposedly. My last apartment, which was about the same size, would have less than $50/month for electricity during the winter months. Using 2 air conditioners during the summer that were specifically 45% lower on energy than regular AC units, ran 24/7 all summer long, and my electric bill was still around $450/month because of the lack of insulation. My level billing (if I had stayed the next year and went with the power bill being charged on an average bill price,) was going to be $410/month - for the average of the power bills. Unbelievable.


The landlord, the nephew/translator, the broker, and the agent, who were all in on this, as the agent said to disregard the intercom system issues when I was looking at the apartment, as the landlord would deal with that, and even point blank asked me at the signing (with the landlord, his great nephew, who interpreted for the uncle, the broker, and the agent all present at the signing) whether my mobility would be an issue with it being a second floor apartment. I said that it wasn't ideal being on the second floor, but that it was workable, because the intercom and door release would relieve me from having to walk downstairs to see who was at the door and would keep me from having to be downstairs to let people in when they would come to see me, or if there was a delivery. Instead of telling me about the intent to remove the intercom's functionality between the signing of the lease and my move-in.


There are leaks in the walls, and the hair salon on the first floor gets leaks randomly which are so severe that entire rooms become filled with water. My walls in my kitchen, interior hallway, and my bathroom all had brown stains on the ceiling and water streaks down the walls. There was water from the roof, the 3rd floor apartments, or both that were leaking through the walls and flooding parts of the salon downstairs. This was never dealt with over 6 months with the salon owner being subject to constant flooding and repairs. At times, the walls would have wet spots and would be weak if you pushed on them, making them less and less stable. Eventually, the water that regularly comes down through the building from the third floor apartments (one apartment had an illegal washer/dryer you can hear 2-3 times/week when they used them,) or from the rooftop, the structure inside the building was becoming suspect, because of the walls having interior moisture all the time.

While only the 1st floor apartment had access to the backyard, it was a little disturbing that the back yard was never mowed or clipped back. It would be rather barren in the cold months, but during the summer months, the greenery would grow up the fire escape in the back, almost to the second floor. It would be strange if the overgrown backyard *didn't* have rodents and snakes back there in the yard with growth more than 8ft high. I am glad we never had to use the fire escape. The building was wedged up between two other buildings, so if the fire escape had to be used and the downstairs neighbors were not home, you would be in the overgrown jungle of a backyard, with no way to get out of the back yard except going through downstairs neighbor's apartment. You would be trapped with a fire inside the building you escaped, and the potentially dangerous wildlife under the extremely high undergrowth of the backyard.


Trash and recycling pickup was a joke. You placed bags out somewhere near the curb nearest the front of the building. Sometimes the garbage men would pick it all up, sometimes only part of it, and sometimes skipped the block altogether. The landlord didn't provide cans of any kind, so you had to keep the trash and recycling in your apartment until those 2 pickup days a week (only 1 of the 2 pickups included recycling,) and if they didn't pick up your trash and recycling or skipped the block entirely, it was your job to retrieve your trash and recycling and bring it back inside until the next pickup.


One last thing is the school down the block had playgrounds close enough to the back and side of the apartment, that hundreds of children yelling and screaming (as primary and middle school children would do on the playground,) is overwhelming for a good portion of the year, plus the school itself had construction on the side facing the residential buildings, and they had people doing construction work at night when the children weren't there, so there was hammering, drilling, and sawing at 11pm, midnight, and after.


Let's just say that for the money and the size, if I had a choice (which when I moved out, I did,) Inwood and Washington Heights in Manhattan, Brighton Beach, and other parts of the Bay Ridge, Ft. Hamilton, Dyker Heights, and Sunset neighborhoods all would be better alternatives. They would have included functioning apartments at around the same price per square ft, with the apartments being fully functional, safe, and without the excessive noise and property negligence.


Bottom line: you can do better. A *lot* better. I now live 2 subway stops away in a historic home where I have the entire first floor. The apartment is $100/month more, but is 200 sq ft larger, making the price per sq ft lower. It also has a front patio and a back yard, and has normal civilized trash and recycling pickup.

My case is still working its way through housing court, and you constantly are letting paperwork and taxes lapse in the building. When you are finally caught, there will be so much money you have to pay for penalties, that you will go bankrupt. Good riddance.