Building owner Barry Singer is making his debut on the public advocate’s annual “worst landlords” list in spectacular fashion — by taking the top spot.
Singer racked up a total of 1,804 violations in 2024, according to the list of the 100 landlords with the most citations issued by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, released Wednesday by the office of Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
Six of the seven most-troubled buildings Singer owns are in the Bronx, with the seventh in Brooklyn, encompassing nearly 200 units. The most egregious on the list, with 532 violations, is 620 E. 178th St., a 5-story apartment building between Hughes and Arthur avenues that contains 47 residential units. Its tenants in the past few years have complained to the city’s Housing Department most frequently about pests, peeling paint and a lack of hot water and heat, city records show. Singer’s second-worst is 265 E. 181st St., a 5-story, 25-unit building between Valentine and Ryer avenues that amassed 292 violations from December 2023 through November 2024, according to Williams’ office.
This may be Singer’s first time making the ranking, but as a landlord, he has a “long, documented history of egregious neglect and misconduct dating back decades,” Williams said. Singer was already making headlines back in 2001 for a number of violations at his buildings in the Bronx and his alleged malicious attempts to evict tenants he didn’t think were paying enough in rent, the New York Post reported at the time.
After Singer, Alfred Thompson, with 1,285 violations; Karen Geer, with 1,193; Melanie Martin, with 1,132; and Claudette Henry, with 1,130, round out the top five.
“The people on this list are at best dangerously negligent and at worst actively choosing to profit off the pain of New Yorkers living in unsafe, deplorable conditions,” he said.
Some of the 100 names on the list may be unfamiliar to tenants — as is their goal. Many purposely shield their identity through opaque shell companies. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a watered-down bill in 2023 to help increase transparency with those kinds of limited liability companies, although only law enforcement officials have access to the owners’ names, not the public.
Notably absent from the latest list is notorious landlord Daniel Ohebshalom, who found himself behind bars for the second time in September after failing to fix dangerous living conditions at two of his long-dilapidated apartment buildings in Washington Heights, Crain’s previously reported.
“Last year’s worst landlord has been to jail twice since the list was published,” Williams said, “a clear message to owners of what their tenants deserve and the consequences of their inaction.”
