On Blast: NYC's Worst Landlords Publicly Shamed Via Craigslist

A new website provides a list of the NYC landlords with the most housing code violations.

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Complex Original

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In college, I lived across the street from a vigilant, stooped man in his 70s who also happened to be my landlord. Mario, my neighbor/landlord, only had to walk across the street to fix a blown fuse or inspect a ceiling leak. Of course, he also only had to walk across the street to yell at me for having too many people on my porch or for staying up too late ("Why you up, listening with music?" he called from the stoop, the lights from my bedroom windows reflected in his remarkably large glasses. My response: "I'm not tired.") Mario would not have made this new list linked through Craigslist that spotlights landlords with ridiculously high housing code violations. Though a bitter pain in my ass at times, everything in my apartment remained up to code, always.

NYC's Worst Landlord Watchlist is the project of New York Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. Just this week the list became accessible via Craigslist, allowing users looking for rentals to quickly check on the potential landlord's shittiness-level. Currently, the list boasts a rogue's gallery of over 320 landlords and over 400 buildings. With 2,047 violations, Lisa Dreshaj is the lucky winner of the contest for most awful. In a perfect world, Dreshaj would live across the street from my old landlord, Mario, and he would yell at her in his broken English till she ceased to suck. If only.

[via Gothamist]

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