Tenants Association member Judith Mosely, Carmen Parrilla and George Moton (l. to r.) with one of the faulty elevators in their apartment building at 939 Woodycrest Ave. in the Bronx. The property is owned and managed by Phillip Goldfarb.
THE KING OF the Goldfarb real estate empire lives in a 3,400-square-foot mansion on a leafy suburban cul-de-sac, miles from the Bronx apartment building he owns where fire escapes were removed and tenants last week found themselves homeless.
Phillip Goldfarb occasionally jets off to his luxury beachfront condo in Hollywood, Fla., but he also spends much of his time answering hundreds of code violations that his buildings rack up in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.
Goldfarb caught the city’s attention last week when he sought to close out several such violations at 2400 Webb Ave., in the Bronx. Instead, Housing Preservation & Development inspectors who showed up discovered all the fire escapes had been removed from the building.
HPD slapped Goldfarb with even more violations and the city ordered all 200 tenants out of their apartments until the problem is solved.
But long before the fire escape debacle, Goldfarb’s 14 city buildings were already catching flak from agencies that are supposed to keep housing in the city safe.
In the last decade, these buildings have amassed 307 building code violations. They currently have 226 open housing code violations as well.
In one Goldfarb building on E. 80th St., a caller complained to the city in March that entry to the lobby from the rear stairwells had been sealed off, effectively eliminating a second exit as required by law.
Yvette Lanneaux, an attorney who rents a two-bedroom for $6,600 a month in that building, says a few months back the granite mantel over her fireplace suddenly collapsed onto her 13-year-old son.
“It just fell off and broke into a bunch of pieces,” she said. “His arm was injured. It wasn’t a break, but he had a cast on for a week.”
She says management eventually made repairs, but never said they were sorry or offered compensation. She withheld one month’s rent, and is still furious about the incident.
“I was so appalled that they weren’t even pretending to be apologetic,” she said. “The mantel falls off the wall. Smoke alarms don’t work. They just let the building go.”
Last fall, dozens of tenants at 1700 Grand Concourse complained to City Councilman Fernando Cabrera that Goldfarb Properties was harassing them in a bid to force them out.
At that same building, tenant Douglas Weiss was jolted awake at 2 a.m. when a chunk of ceiling concrete fell and smacked him in the face. He sued and won an unspecified settlement in 2009.
NORMAN Y. LONO FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Phillip Goldfarb lives in this large house in Westchester County, while his tenants have to deal with problems in his buildings.
“He had complained about the ceiling ahead of time and nothing was done,” said his lawyer, Eitan Ogen.
Records show tenants in several other Goldfarb buildings have complained about harassment, with construction work performed at odd hours (such as 7 a.m. Saturday) and without proper permits.
At 939 Woodycrest Ave., tenant association member Judith Mosely says since 2010 residents have been hit with surcharges after Goldfarb claimed to have repaired constantly useless elevators.
“Now the elevators still cut out,” she said. “We had an elderly woman stuck in between floors. We had to call the fire department to get her out last fall.”
Phillip Goldfarb has ignored repeated requests for comment from The News about the fire escape screwup and his other buildings.
Last week, Goldfarb roared past a News reporter in his Mercedes, scurrying back into the four-bedroom Westchester manse — with swimming pool — he bought for $900,000 in 2003.
That home is a world away from the building he owns in the Bronx that thrust him into the headlines this week.
At the Webb Ave. building, the city found that Goldfarb had hired an engineer whose license had once been suspended after he pleaded guilty to criminal charges in a bid rigging scheme.
In April, engineer Roland Draper self-certified the plan to remove the fire escapes and the city marked it as approved, although a permit for the job was not yet awarded.
The state suspended Draper’s engineering license in 2005 for one month and put him on probation for two years. Though
most of Draper’s work is in the city, the state did not inform the city Buildings Department about Draper’s troubles, officials said.
Buildings officials are now investigating the cause of the fire escape incident. Meanwhile,
displaced tenants have not been told how long they’ll be forced to live elsewhere.
They’ve scattered to the wind, staying with friends, family and in lonely hotel rooms until their lives are returned.
Mike Staton, a 46-year-old MTA conductor who spent his first two nights at a hotel, is staying at a studio for another six days, and then he’s not sure where’s going.
“We have no idea in terms of when we can go back in,” he said. “It puts my life in an uproar. We’re living out of a suitcase.”
gsmith@nydailynews.com
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