Jacob Riis Porn

The Village Voice’s always-enjoyable Ten Worst Landlords feature is back, and it doesn’t disappoint. A sample:

David Melendez owns a swath of dilapidated, vermin-infested, crime-ridden slums hidden on a forgotten block of Jefferson Street in Bushwick.

. . .

Melendez’s four buildings at 253, 255, 258, and 260 Jefferson have a total of 473 pending code violations. He appears to be in no rush to fix them: HPD has recently made 49 emergency repairs to those buildings and charged Melendez $23,029.

. . .

Agustina Cricantos, who has lived at 260 Jefferson for 25 years, says that the only time tenants ever see Melendez is on the first of the month — when he comes to collect the rent. She pays $600 a month for her two-bedroom apartment and complains about a window in her kitchen that doesn’t open, leaks in the kitchen ceiling, and a faucet that drips constantly. The bathroom walls are rotting, and the toilet bowl isn’t mounted to the bathroom floor, causing the bowl to shift when in use. The light fixture in the bathroom dangles from exposed wires, and a large hole in the wall allows rats to scurry through. After her first interview with the Voice, HPD replaced the window in Cricantos’s kitchen, at the taxpayers’ expense.

“I had horrible bedbugs coming from one of the walls in the bedroom into my mattresses,” she says, “so I had to throw them out and buy new ones. I had to buy a new crib mattress for my daughter.” The front door to the apartment, contaminated by lead paint — a serious hazard known to cause brain damage in children — was replaced by the city this year. But other areas of her apartment that also contain lead paint have not been repaired. A three-year-old lives in these dangerous conditions.

Melendez tells the Voice that he “wouldn’t mind getting rid of my Mexican and Ecuadorian tenants,” adding that “in California, they don’t even rent apartments to Mexicans.” (He says he’d prefer Chinese and Indian tenants because they pay higher rents.) The apartments are rent stabilized, so legally he can raise the rent by only $45 to $50. Cricantos claims that one of the tenants was charged $200 for a copy of his lease and that Melendez frequently raises the rent when the city makes repairs.