A six-story building in Jackson Heights was old but livable, residents say, until one of NYC’s largest landlords took over.
By COLE SINANIAN | news@queensledger.com
Diana Gaviria had a two-year-old daughter and was pregnant with her second when she moved into her first floor apartment at La Mesa Verde, a six-story, multi-address complex in Jackson Heights, in July 2023.
The building — built in 1927 and mostly rent-regulated — clearly had issues: there was mold in the walls, moisture in the ceiling caused the lead-based paint to bubble, the doorbell didn’t work, electrical problems caused the lights to flicker. Gaviria, who’s from Colombia, would call the building superintendent, though without electrical expertise she said he could do little besides change the lightbulbs.
Things took a turn after her second daughter was born. One night, Gaviria awoke to her newborn screaming. The baby was covered in pellets of brown feces. An enormous rat accompanied her in the crib. Gaviria screamed and grabbed the newborn while her husband chased the rat away.
The nightmare had only begun. Rats — the largest Gaviria had ever seen — appeared to be burrowing into the apartment through holes in the damp, moldy walls. Gaviria and her husband would regularly find rat droppings and urine in their beds. The landlord, a Midtown-based property management company called A&E Real Estate Holdings, sent exterminators who’d do little more than leave a few traps, Gaviria said. Gaviria had to take her youngest daughter, now 2, on frequent trips to the emergency room. She was always coughing, sick with constant colds that never seemed to go away.
“She’d be in the hospital for five days, we’d take her home for three and then she’s back in the hospital for five,” Gaviria said. “They don’t care about my babies’ lives, they don’t care about mine or my husband’s, they just don’t care.”
The Queens Ledger spoke to more than a dozen tenants and spent hours touring apartments at La Mesa Verde and found that Gaviria ’s story is far from unique. She’s one of more than 100 tenants who have joined a lawsuit against A&E seeking immediate correction to over 800 NYC Housing Preservation Department (HPD) violations across La Mesa Verde’s six buildings, dozens of which are “Class C,” indicating “immediately hazardous conditions.” The lawsuit also seeks damages for alleged harassment brought by the company’s failure to address the building’s decay and failing infrastructure that has caused injury and severe distress to the La Mesa Verde’s occupants, many of whom are elderly, longtime residents and immigrants with few other options in an increasingly tight housing market.
The lawsuit at La Mesa Verde against A&E — which is the fourth largest landlord in NYC with more than 16,000 units in 180 buildings across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx — is one of several that the company has faced in recent years for what tenants and elected officials have alleged is a pattern of systemic neglect, causing violations to pile up and buildings to fall into a severe and hazardous state of disrepair.
La Mesa Verde property manager Jenna McKeegan did not respond to requests for comment, while calls to A&E’s Midtown office went straight to voicemail. In an email statement, an unnamed A&E spokesperson, communicated through a third-party PR firm called Rubestein Communications, defended the company’s maintenance policy:
“Since taking over the property in 2016, we’ve invested more than $13 million to renovate and improve La Mesa Verde,” the spokesperson wrote. “We’ve replaced every roof, door and window; corrected more than a thousand violations; replaced the whole gas system; added lighting and security cameras; and replaced concrete with new landscaped courtyards. It’s night and day compared to what it was a decade ago, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t face challenges with some of its older systems. We’re working hard to continue improving the property but for some of these underlying issues, there are no quick fixes.”
But some tenants said the building’s systemic issues are new, having begun only after A&E bought it and stopped attending to maintenance. Property records show that A&E purchased La Mesa Verde in 2016 for $72,500,000 from a company called BRG Queens LLC. Longtime tenants at La Mesa Verde said these prior owners were attentive to repairs, and even had a leasing office where tenants could speak to property managers in the building’s lobby.
“The newest owner is the one that hasn’t been attentive to what’s happening to the tenants,” said 70-year-old Elena Martinez, who’s lived at La Mesa Verde for 35 years. “The first owners kept everything clean, the elevator was always working— they were attentive to anything that happened. There was an office in the lobby, so when there was a problem I’d go down to the office and I’d tell them.”
In an interview with the Ledger, Queens city councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who represents Jackson Heights and has attended tenant’s rallies throughout his district, characterized A&E as a “predatory” landlord and called on HPD to impose stricter regulations on companies with outstanding violations.
“Let me be very clear: A&E’s violations are egregious and their disregard for their tenants’ dignity is harassment, and it’s unacceptable,” Krishnan said.
A hole in Diana Gaviria’s apartment where she said enormous rats entered, causing her daughter health problems.
Systemic Neglect
The tenants’ are represented by lawyers from Communities Resist — a legal nonprofit for low-income tenants — who are currently collecting paperwork to ensure that as many tenants as possible are included in the case. According to attorney Christos Bell, there are six cases total being brought to Queens County Housing Court, one for each of La Mesa Verde’s six addresses, which are 34-19, 33, and 47 90th Street, and 34-18, 32, and 46 91st Street.
Attorneys seek a judge’s order to immediately repair the outstanding violations. As Bell explained, landlords have a duty to correct all HPD violations, whether there’s a lawsuit or not, but a judge’s order could move A&E to action quicker. Once all repairs are corrected, the tenants’ attorneys will also seek damages for alleged landlord-tenant harassment. In NYC housing court, an owner’s repeated failure to make necessary repairs can constitute landlord-tenant harassment, Bell said.
While touring La Mesa Verde, the Ledger observed black mold under sinks and scattered across walls and ceilings in multiple apartments. Some tenants kept all their food and kitchen supplies in airtight plastic bins, while others explained that they wear masks in their bathrooms and kitchens for fear of inhaling mold or rat droppings. Seen from the courtyard, one second floor apartment appeared to be abandoned and exposed to the elements, its blown out window partially covered by a battered wood panel.
Videos and photos viewed by the Ledger showed rainwater dripping profusely through light fixtures, collapsed ceilings, and pipes spewing water into kitchens and bathrooms. Tenants explained that the building’s only two elevators were out of service for more than six months, forcing some elderly residents to walk up multiple flights of stairs and causing stress injuries.
“What worries me most is the elevator, because I live on the sixth floor,” Martinez said. Originally from Mexico, Martinez explained how she’d been seeing her doctor regularly for severe shoulder pain, which began after the elevators broke in early 2025. “When I go to do my laundry, I have to carry full bags,” she said. “Now my shoulders and my knees hurt, because I’m always going up these stairs with my heavy bags.”
70-year-old Elena Martinez has lived at La Mesa Verde for 35 years. After the building’s elevators broke, she’s had shoulder and knee problems from having to carry her bags up the stairs.
Management sent a repair crew to fix one of the elevators last month, while the other remains out of order. According to tenants who had witnessed the repair crew, it was the elevator’s computer system that was malfunctioning, which took the crew just a few minutes to fix.
The tenants and their legal team are headed back to court on January 7. In the meantime, A&E has been sending contractors to address issues in some apartments, although progress is slow. HPD’s online database shows an unresolved violation for peeling lead paint in a fourth floor apartment from 2024. Another Class C violation for a roach infestation dates back to 2021. NYC’s Local Law 31 requires immediate remediation if peeling lead paint is found in an apartment with children under 6 years of age.
Under NYC Local Law 55, building owners are required to thoroughly remediate infestations by removing nests, thoroughly cleaning pest waste and debris using a High-Efficiency Particulate Air filter vacuum, plug holes, gaps, and cracks where pests might enter, and repair all leaks that might provide a water supply to pests. For mold remediation, owners must send two, New York State Department of Labor-licensed contractors— one remediator and one assessor.
In a statement to the Ledger, HPD spokesperson Natasha Kersey clarified that building owners must confirm that remediation was successful after they’ve sent a contractor:
“Property owners and agents must certify only after the conditions are properly corrected,” she wrote. “HPD may audit any certification, and tenants are notified when a certification is received, allowing them to challenge it and trigger an inspection.”
To Bell, the attorney, the depth and scale of the violations at La Mesa Verde is evidence that neglect in the building is systemic. “Throughout the building people are having these severe violations,” Bell said, “which suggests to me that the landlord has been extremely negligent for a long time. It’s not something that just started happening and they haven’t been addressing them.”
The A&E spokesperson provided a statement on the building’s two elevators, one of which was repaired earlier this month.
“The other elevator — which hasn’t been replaced in decades — needs an extensive $400K rehab and repair of its bulkhead,” the statement read. “A&E has secured a contract with an elevator contractor for that rehab, but will be a multi-month job given the amount of work required.”
The spokesperson also stated that management has exterminators treat the entire building twice a month, and that management has “has cleared more than 1K violations since taking over.”
Tenants, however, tell a different story. Contractors hired to remediate mold rooted deep into the walls simply paint it over, they said. Exterminators sent to deal with rats and roaches leave the kinds of cheap traps one could buy at a dollar store.
“The people they send to fix the mold — he just paints over it and that’s it,” Martinez said. “That doesn’t work, because it comes back. They should send someone who actually knows what they’re doing.”
“All they did was send an exterminator that set a few little traps,” Gaviria said. “But the rats are so big that when we went to check them, all the hairs were stuck to the trap but the rats were gone.”
Another tenant, a writer and former union organizer from the Hudson Valley named Celina della Croce, described calling the A&E emergency hotline number and being connected to what she said sounded like a foreign call center.
“They don’t answer after 2pm,” della Croce said, “and all they do is take your info and say someone will call you back in 24 to 48 hours, but no one ever does.”
Mirela Bulagea, who’s originally from Romania, has lived in the building for 23 years. She said that A&E made significant repairs to the building’s exterior when the company first acquired it in 2016, but has mostly neglected to fix issues with the building’s interior. Bulagea said she’s wanted to move for a while, but can’t until her two children have finished school. Affordability is also an issue— when she first moved into La Mesa Verde in the 2000s, her rent for her three-bedroom apartment was $700/month. Now, it’s $2400, still far lower than the city’s $5,000+ average three-bedroom rent.
“How am I gonna move?” Bulagea said. “It is even more expensive now. Can I find a three-bedroom for less than $4,000? No. Plus security deposit and utilities? Impossible.”
For Martinez, whose 80-year-old sister also lives at La Mesa Verde, the building and the broader Jackson Heights neighborhood are home, despite all the problems. And even if they weren’t, Martinez wonders if she could still find a rent-regulated unit within her budget elsewhere.
“I’ve been here for 35 years, I have my rent stabilized at $1,350,” Martinez said. “Where else will I find a place for $1,350? That’s why we put up with it.”
Veena Engineer, a former banker from India, has lived at La Mesa Verde for 38 years. After losing her husband to cancer, she’s been living alone and relying on her neighbors to help her take care of herself. Engineer too appreciates the diverse community and the nearby Indian market. The rats and the roaches, Engineer said, are annoying, but nothing she can’t handle. But it’s the broken elevators that worry her, and what she described as A&E’s generally poor communication. She lost her job after an ankle injury left her disabled, and she now suffers from major joint problems, so carrying bags up multiple flights of stairs can be dangerous. She described how just a few weeks ago she nearly collapsed with a pounding heart rate after walking up La Mesa Verde’s stairs. She went to her doctor, who called her an ambulance. She remained in the hospital for four days.
“Sometimes I feel like I want to kill myself,” Engineer said. “Because I’m exhausted and frustrated, you know? I always went outside and tried to help people, do 2-3 jobs, and now my condition is that I cannot help even myself.”
Jackson Heights City councilmember Shekar Krishnan speaks at a tenant’s rally in July at a separate A&E building on 81st Street, not far from La Mesa Verde. Photo via Instagram.
Queens, Brooklyn and Beyond
The story is much the same at other A&E buildings around the city. In Queens alone, there are 10 ongoing legal proceedings against A&E, according to data provided by CM Krishnan’s office. A July press release from Communities Resist counted A&E’s total citywide HPD violations as 64,000.
At 503 W 122nd Street in Morningside Heights, tenants staged a rent strike in September 2024 and brought A&E President Margaret Brunn and Maintenance Director Brian Garland to court, seeking remediation for the company’s alleged failure to address violations like rampant infestations, black mold, leaks, chronically broken elevators, and cracks in the walls and floor. The Columbia Spectator reported that a judge ordered A&E to correct the violations, but, much like at La Mesa Verde, tenants in the building described “band-aid fixes,” and maintenance crews painting over black mold. In December 2023, a five-alarm fire swept through an A&E building in Sunnyside after a contractor used an unauthorized blow-torch to melt lead paint off a metal door, leaving 450 tenants homeless. And this past summer, tenants filed lawsuits and rallied against broken elevators and hazardous conditions at a different A&E property just a few blocks away from La Mesa Verde, this one at 35-64 81st St.
Founded in 2011, A&E has been known to take out loans to buy older, rent-regulated buildings. In February, “real estate intelligence” outlet PinusCo. reported that A&E faced foreclosure proceedings on a $506.3 million J.P. Morgan Chase loan backing a 31-property portfolio.
“A&E deploys the capital of leading US institutions, endowments, pension plans, and family offices, creating value in New York City neighborhoods often ignored by the market…” the company’s Linkedin bio reads.
Krishnan, who attended a rally in July at the 81st St A&E building, speculated that A&E’s tendency to buy old, rent-regulated buildings and allow violations to pile up while maintaining poor communication with tenants could be part of a wider strategy utilized by landlords that want to charge higher rents than what regulations allow, with poor conditions causing residents to leave, clearing the way for landlords to renovate their units for higher profit returns.
“There’s precedent for these predatory practices throughout my district and throughout the city,” he said. “It’s clear that their objective is to push out rent-stabilized tenants and convert their units to market rate.”
