After racking up almost 2,000 violations, two Bronx landlords have been ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars in penalties over the conditions of their buildings.
Karan Singh and Rajmattie Persaud, the owners of Robert Fulton Terrace and Fordham Towers, have been slapped with a $31M judgment in a lawsuit brought by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and HPD Commissioner Dina Levy announced Wednesday.
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As part of the judgment, over $900K will be frozen from Singh and Persaud's bank accounts. A housing court judge ordered an independent chief restructuring officer to be appointed. They will use the funds to make critical repairs to the 500 units across the two buildings.
Fannie Mae already initiated foreclosure proceedings on the buildings last year after the landlords defaulted on a $61.5M mortgage. In court filings, the lender alleged that the Environmental Control Board had filed hundreds of violations against both properties, totaling nearly $705K in fines.
The complaint also alleged that the landlords owe several liens on the properties for unpaid utilities, including about $4M to the New York City Water Board and $3M to Consolidated Edison.
Another lawsuit, filed by the Legal Aid Society on behalf of 62 tenants in 2024, claimed that the Fulton property had 600 HPD violations, with 200 classified as “immediately hazardous.”
The violations, which include chronic heat and hot water outages, broken elevators and infestations, now total nearly 2,000, Legal Aid Society Staff Attorney Zoe Kheyman said in a statement on Wednesday. Singh and Persaud have also previously made appearances on New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ Worst Landlord Watchlist.
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The Mamdani administration is now asking that Fannie Mae work with HPD and tenants to identify a buyer who will be able to maintain the buildings.
“This administration secured the largest penalty in HPD’s history because no landlord is above the law. But penalties alone are not enough,” Mamdani said in a statement. “We are taking control of the situation to make sure repairs are made and conditions are permanently improved.”
The case, brought by the Anti-Harassment Unit within HPD’s Housing Litigation Division, was first filed in 2024.
Levy noted that she organized with the tenants in the buildings in 2009, when the properties transitioned out of the Mitchell-Lama Program.
The court judgment will give HPD “leverage in bankruptcy proceedings, which we’ll use to deliver better outcomes for residents,” Levy said in a statement.
The city previously objected to the bankruptcy sale of Pinnacle Group’s 5,200-unit portfolio. Nonetheless, the sale to Zohar Levy’s Summit Properties USA was approved by a judge just days after Mamdani took office.
