Hoarder in Coop--Legal Options?
Slightly complicated legal situation here. My coop still has about 6 sponsor-owned units (out of 25); one is a rent-controlled tenant who long predates the building’s becoming a coop. He is a hoarder and has been a constant problem in terms of odor, bugs, etc. We’ve periodically fined the unit owner and demanded they send…
Slightly complicated legal situation here. My coop still has about 6 sponsor-owned units (out of 25); one is a rent-controlled tenant who long predates the building’s becoming a coop. He is a hoarder and has been a constant problem in terms of odor, bugs, etc. We’ve periodically fined the unit owner and demanded they send in cleaners but the tenant is noncompliant at best. Now he has bed bugs. He has allowed an exterminator in to treat the unit but has not done any of the laundry, mattress encasing, follow-up, etc., that would make the extermination successful, and the hoarding behavior obviously only makes it worse.
I have made a referral to Adult Protective Services and they are trying to get in to assess the apartment, but he refuses them access.
The landlord/sponsor is trying to be helpful, but they’re not the most on-the-ball people either.
What do we do? Can anyone either advise on legal options wrt either tenant or owner/sponsor, or recommend a lawyer?
The owner is obviously in breach of the proprietary lease right now, but the last thing we want is to terminate the proprietary lease and end up as the landlords ourselves in this situation!
I don’t care what one’s views are on rent control, everybody must agree this is insane. How how how is it the law protects someone who is destroying the apartment if not the whole building and creating a dangerous health situation for other residents? I just keep thinking how there would be people with babies and young children in the building but this hoarder gets more consideration than they do. It’s awful. Hoarders should not be coddled in the way they are. Sure it’s mental illness. But if they were hitting people they’d be arrested. Consequences of severe hoarding and filth are just as harmful to others’ health and well being.
a company to consider that could provide you with both thermal and pesticide treatments is standard pest management. aaa superior is another.
the cooperative association is responsible for pest extermination. not advised to try to make tenants/leasees pay for own bed bug extermination — you (the corporation) lose control over the quality of the job that way. also, you discourage reporting of a problem by people who are concerned about the cost of professional extermination and try to do it themselves. diy bed bug exterm efforts can often just make the problem worse. if you have a leasee whom you believe presents a risk of repeated re-infestation because of behavior like hoarding, i think there should be a way to hang the cost on that unit for future problems — this is what we are purusing in our coop wrt to a similar situation, though we had more cooperation from the resident of the unit than you are getting. we are working with a lawyer to try to lay the groundwork for having the owner of record of the unit pay for future extermination traceable to the unit resident’s behavior. can’t tell you if it will work as has not been tested legally — and hopefully our problem tenant will in fact change her behavior, as she has been spoken to about it repeatedly by both us and her family.
The good news is that hoarders can be evicted. The bad news is that NYC courts bend over backwards not to evict anybody. Hopefully the bedbug issue will push the Housing Court judge to move things along.
Try calling NY1 and getting this story into the news. . .
starfish: depends on offering plan, proprietary lease, by-laws, etc. Generally, owner is responsible to coop for own unit. Maybe sponsor could try to pass on expense to tenant (i.e., after reimbursing coop), but if rent controller there might be issues of ability to pay or even ability to enforce. That’s not co-op’s prob. Don’t feel bad for sponsor –it probably made a fortune converting building, and would have been responsible for expense of dealing w/hoarder anyway. It converted a building w/rc hoarder, perfectly fair for it to cover expense, IMO.
i have nothing to add except that i feel bad for you. you might me able to go to the A&E website and look up the show hoarders… they might have a few links that could help your situation. in all the episodes ive seen of the show, it never involved rent controlled tenants (that i know of…), some shows featured hoarders in apt buildings, but they were not in nyc.
*rob*
flatbush,
Just curious – why would the sponsor be responsible for the cost of cleaning up a dangerous mess inside a tenant’s apartment? The court should bill the tenant for that. It’s the least it could do.
Second the idea to treat with heat. A landlord about a month ago posted in the forum here about her successful eradication of a bedbug infestation using heat. Hopefully you can find it. Also, I don’t know who is the best exterminator for residential situations, but a fellow named Andrew Klein famously handles all the bed bug problems of the world’s biggest retailers. He’s reportedly top notch. Good luck.
The board needs to hire a good lawyer, not a heavy-handed one. Probably do not want to pursue eviction – a waste of time and $$. Even a rent control lease permits LL entry to rectify health and safety issues, so the atty might advise getting an injunction to enter and clean, invite adult services or other social worker-type person to help prevent future build up of junk. This can be done pretty quickly, i.e., weeks not years. With the proper light touch, you may find the court will be sympathetic. (You may also find that the sponsor is responsible for paying the legal fees and clean-up cost).