New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams called out dozens of landlords across the city who made his annual ‘worst landlords watchlist’ for failing to address issues with the buildings they rent and operate.  The list, which ranks the landlords by the number of buildings they own and the number of open Housing Preservation and Development violations, was revealed at a virtual press conference Wednesday afternoon.   This year’s top five offenders were Barry Singer, Alfred Thompson, Karen Greer, Melanie Martin and Claudette Henry, according to the public advocate. According to the list, all of them operated multiple residential buildings in the city, often under hard to track LLC’s that make it quite difficult to see who the buildings’ owners are. They also all had at least one thousand open HPD violations, the advocate’s office said. Landlords on the Worst Landlord Watchlist are, in the Public Advocate's words, "at best dangerously negligent, and at worst, actively choosing to profit off the pain of New Yorkers living in unsafe, deplorable conditions."The top 100: https://t.co/AE4fs4P8QX#WorstLandlordsNYC pic.twitter.com/0h6KcUYsE5— Office of the Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams (@nycpa) January 22, 2025 Williams said the list was a way of providing transparency for tenants in terms of who owns the LLC’s that oversee the buildings they live in. He said Governor Kathy Hochul was part of the problem because she weakened a bill that would’ve given tenants the ability to do just that.  “She prevented access from the public to certain LLC information that would tell folks who owns companies and in this case buildings,” Williams said. “These landlords do their best to try to hide who they are.” That was the case for Olga Camille’s apartment building on West 170th Street in Washington Heights. Publicly, Melanie Martin is listed as the landlord, but both Camille and Williams made it clear that Martin is just a representative for Daniel Ohebshalow—the landlord who not only topped last year’s list but was also jailed twice for mismanagement of his buildings.  “He changed the name,” Camille said when asked about Ohebshalow. “Now he has another name to try to cover himself.”  Camille, who struggled to keep her composure as she spoke to members of the media, said she and other tenants in the building had been dealing with issues ranging from loss of heat to infestations of rats and rodents for at least five years. Those issues are in addition to the open vacant and dilapidated apartments she said she and her daughter have had to live next to—in some cases for nearly 20 years.   “We feel insecure,” Camille said. “My daughter has put a camera on the door because it’s just us living here.”  Attempts to reach out for comment from multiple landlords who made the list were unsuccessful.  However, the New York Apartment Association’s CEO Kenny Burgos issued the following statement to News 4:  “As the Public Advocate said, NYCHA is the worst landlord in New York City. They continue to fail renters, while the vast majority of private building owners provide better quality housing with less money. The small number of bad actors who fail to maintain their buildings are being held accountable, as they should be.“This list is a distraction from larger housing policy problems. If we had policies that allowed for abundant housing, bad actors would be out of business and the quality of housing would improve for all renters. A better use of the public advocate’s time would be advocating for pro-housing policies that would make the city more affordable.” Eva Santos Veloz, a tenant organizer with Met Council on Housing, said she’s been working with Camille and other tenants to try to hold Ohebshalow accountable for what she said were years of neglect.  She pointed to one apartment that had exposed and unstable wooden floorboards and large holes with what appeared to be exposed rebar in the ceiling. She told News 4 that it had been vacant since 2008 and that there were at least a dozen more just like it.  “Imagine living under these conditions. You would eventually be affected—your ceiling, your water, your pipes,” she said. “That also includes the infestations that are happening in each apartment from the rats, the mice, the birds that are coming in through the windows.” Veloz said her hope was that the city would step in and take the buildings Ohebshalow owns away from him.  “One of the things we want is for HPB to take away the buildings from this landlord and finally give the tenants the peace of mind they deserve because as you can see giving him chance after chance to fix the apartment and clear his violations—it’s just not going to happen.”