One tenant began pulling her hair out. Literally.
patch.com
Park Slope Hero's Progeny Landlords Ruin Tenants Lives, They Say
One tenant began pulling her hair out. Literally.
Posted Sun, Apr 2, 2023 at 10:44 am ET
Replies (3)
Part of the iconic blue buildings on Park Slope's Fifth Avenue owned by the Cabbad family, prior to the city erecting an emergency sidewalk shed to protect pedestrians from a crumbling facade. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A beloved Park Slope landlord once known as the "Mayor of Fifth Avenue" bequeathed his buildings to children who enrage, terrify and possibly endanger their tenants, a Patch investigation has found.
Tenants of the Cabbad buildings — about a dozen Fifth Avenue multi-uses, some painted powder blue in honor of the family matriarch's eyes — tell Patch roaches fall from the ceiling, a super threatens violence, heating conks out for months and unpermitted construction makes the building shake.
One tenant began pulling her hair out. Literally.
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“[I had] a roach falling on my head,” said another. “Yet I have the landlord telling me there's not an infestation.”
Most of the Cabbad's properties are on Fifth Avenue, between Prospect and Sterling Places. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
City records confirm deteriorating conditions in the 13 buildings in the form of hundreds of housing violations, a stop work order and a $10 million civil lawsuit filed by one sibling against the others over an alleged attempted coup.
"[Debra Cabbad] commenced a lawsuit to…ensure that the buildings would be managed in a competent manner," attorney Robert Abrams said, "to ensure the safety and well being of the tenants."
Meanwhile Philip Cabbad, the brother she accuses of funneling cash out of the family business to fund luxury bike shops in New York and California, replied to Patch's request to comment on tenants' concerns with language for which he apologized.
“That’s the jackass in 95,” Philip said. "He’s a little prick — sorry for the English.”
A Fifth Avenue Dynasty
Park Slope loved Albert Cabbad because Albert Cabbad loved his wife, Fifth Avenue and Park Slope.
The Syrian immigrant arrived in Park Slope in 1958, when Fifth Avenue wasn't much more than a "ghost town," as his son put it in an interview with Bklyner.
Cabbad went to work.
The former R&A Discount Store, named for Ramona and Albert, at 106 Fifth Ave. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
He created a bridge between the 78th Precinct and the community, befriending cops, attending meetings and engaging fellow business owners.
He joined Community Board 6, founded the Arab-American Parade Committee, and launched two businesses whose names also honor his wife Ramona:
R&A Discount and R&A Cycles.
Cabbad also bought 13 buildings, 11 on Fifth Avenue between Sterling and Prospect places and two around the corner on Baltic Street, court records show.
The so-called
Mayor of Park Slope spent decades revitalizing Fifth Avenue and in 2014, three weeks after Ramona's death, he
passed away.
“He felt that businesses should be able to live in their own communities and be proud of them," former district manager Craig Hammerman (
more on him here) told Bklyner at the time.
"Al wanted justice and equity for all."
Seven years later, Cabbad tenant Johnn Fedor said he reported potentially dangerous building problems to city officials only to receive surprise visits from the super, who once threatened to punch him in the face.
Ironically, it was Albert's legacy of civic engagement that first drew Fedor and his girlfriend to the building.
“We kind of banked on the fact that [Albert Cabbad] was still kind of present in the family — those values," Fedor said. "We were very wrong."
A Fifth Avenue Dynasty Lawsuit
Philip Cabbad stopped paying rent on his luxury bike shops less than one month after his father died, his sister Debra said in a 2021 lawsuit filed against her family.
In his response, Philip accused Debra of illegally paying herself and her son Steven Cordero $500,000 and lost the company $5 million more through incompetence, court records show.
Debra, executor of Albert Cabbad's estate and majority-shareholder in the family business, accused her siblings of a "corrupt take-over" and demanded $8.9 million in a
lawsuit filed in New York City Supreme Court.
The lawsuit claims Debra's brothers tried to oust her as estate manager without proper authority (as they owned only 30 percent share in the company) by writing banks and telling them on Cabbad LLC paper that Debra was out.
Once the brothers had control of Cabbad LLC, they had agreed not to charge themselves the rent owed to the family business, the lawsuit said.
A ceiling in the entrance to one of the Cabbad's blue buildings collapsed after months of complaining about a leak last summer. Debris narrowly missed the head of a tenant when it happened. (Courtesy photo)
"[They] have engaged in self-dealing and diversion of corporate assets to benefit themselves financially," the suit states. "[They] have wasted corporate assets and refused to pursue the repayments of debts."
But in a counterclaim filed in February, the Cabbad brothers say they voted their sister out in 2019.
They say her incompetent management has seen eleven profitable storefronts, which could have earned an estimated $3 million in rent, stand empty and incurred $2 million in estate tax arrears.
"DEBRA CABBAD has caused the looting and wasting of CABBAD LLC's corporate assets for their non-corporate purposes," the counterclaim contends ."[Defendants] have been, and will be, damaged."
Both parties are slated to conference in May, court records show.
Philip declined to comment on his sister's allegations but he had lots to say about the tenants who told Patch about how their living conditions changed after the lawsuit was filed.
“The Jackass At 95”
Johnn Fedor's girlfriend Anissa Garcia stopped living with him in the summer of 2022 for the sake of her sanity.
“There are people out there that really have no decency and don't care what they do to other people,” Garcia said. “They're so completely selfish.”
Of course, Garcia was not talking about Fedor — who remains her boyfriend — she's talking about the building owners she blames for her chronic bronchitis and trichotillomania, a condition that causes a person to pull out her hair.
The couple moved into their apartment at 95 Fifth Ave. in January 2021, about nine months before Debra filed her lawsuit. They say the building was never without problems.
Promised repairs to the apartment's broken floors, countertop, buzzer and smoke detectors were never made. The super tried to squeeze cash out of Fedor after a quick radiator repair, arrived uninvited at odd hours and refused to hand over the mailbox key, they said.
Johnn Fedor thought that the Cabbad family legacy was a good sign when he moved in to one of their buildings in 2021. Now he says he was wrong. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
But the breaking point came in early January 2022 when the late-night, building-shaking construction began in the vacant storefront two floors below, Garcia said.
The couple called the cops when the noise got bad one night, said Garcia, and they began wearing masks at home as dust filled their apartment.
Philip Cabbad initially apologized for the dust in emails shared with Patch, but two days later he told Fedor to "worry about other things."
“You are on the top floor," the January 2022 email reads. "So what is the issue?”
The Health department's issue was a “moderate to heavy accumulation of construction dust” in the third floor apartment, heavy amounts of dust in the hallways and insufficient dust control, according to an official report shared with Patch.
A collection of inspections and violations from city agencies and a gas utility for 102 and 95 Fifth Ave. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
Patch asked Philip about the dust issues, but he accused Fedor of living in the building "illegally" and of calling the city too much.
“His lease was up nine months ago," Philip said. “He automatically calls DOB, Health department, and we didn’t know anything about it."
As tension mounted between tenants and owners, Garcia became afraid someone was going to force himself into her home, she told Patch
Her fears were not unfounded.
One day the super showed up swearing into his cellphone on the other side of their apartment door.
“He’s shouting, talking about me, saying: ‘motherf---er, f---ing f--- him, f--- that guy,’” Fedor told Patch. “We hear him coming up and we’re like: ‘what the hell is going to happen?
“He says something to the effect of: ‘I'm going up there, and I'm gonna punch him in his face.'"
“I Don’t Want To Blow Up In This F---ing Apartment”
In another Cabbad building across Fifth Avenue, tenant Paige told Patch her biggest gripe was not the construction site she found in her bathroom, the water leaks that left her walls soft to the touch, the bugs, the decaying tin ceiling or the kitchen that had no cabinets (until her boyfriend spent $400 to install some himself). It was the gas.
“I don’t want to blow up in this f---ing apartment,” Paige told Patch.
Paige, standing in her hallway at 102 Fifth Ave. covered by patch-jobs and a bannister seemingly ready to collapse. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
Paige's fears circle around an ongoing battle between the Cabbads and National Grid, the public utility that supplies gas to 102 Fifth Ave., which came to a head when the gas and hot water went out for four weeks last August.
As Paige's handy boyfriend cooked meals in a hot pot and the pair relied on a handful of very cold showers, Paige went looking for answers.
While the Cabbads said National Grid was to blame for the outage, an inspector told Paige owners had ignored two years worth of safety compliance notices, forcing the utility to shut off the gas for the tenants' safety.
Paige asked Philip Cabbad for help and the gas suddenly turned back on, but the next day National Grid issued a major violation for “unauthorized work on the house line," according to records shared with Patch.
A subsequent Buildings department inspection found no violations on the gas line, but they did
issue a violation, since resolved, for a 50-gallon electric water heater installed without a permit.
Philip Cabbad dismissed the violation as city bureaucracy as usual.
“DOB has to look for something wrong," Philip told Patch. "And they couldn’t find anything wrong.”
But Paige felt something wrong in her home on Dec. 2 when a Housing Preservation and Development inspector recorded it was just 57 degrees in her apartment, she told Patch.
Philip once again pointed the blame at National Grid, saying the utility shut off the heat for the sake of the pipes and that he was waiting on boiler parts to complete repairs.
“It’s not my fault," he said. “There’s a plumber taking care of it already — so what is the issue now?”
But Paige said when the heat finally was restored on Dec. 21, it was the first time that season.
"Stop Calling The Inspectors”
Cabbad tenants decided to organize about one year after the Cabbad's Shakespearean lawsuit hit the courts, when residents received warnings that their buildings had been sold and they had one month to move out.
But according to public property records, no recorded sale took place.
One vacated apartment was quickly
listed for $700 more per month, and another
appeared with a $1,300 increase, tenants told Patch. Paige pleaded to stay, but the Cabbads told her she needed to start paying double the rent, or $6,000 a month.
Philip Cabbad told Patch the deal fell through and blamed "stupid people" who didn't want to move out.
“They have issues," Philip said.
“They were disgusted by our hallways and lack of heat," Paige told Patch. "And [our] floors.” (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
The flipped apartments, strange messaging from the Cabbads over who exactly managed the building, and worsening conditions spurred 11 tenants to organize, they said.
The group even reached out to the Fifth Avenue Committee, which the late Cabbad patriarch Albert helped form.
Tenant organizer Jeffrey Aronowitz toured the buildings and confirmed their suspicions that they were living with serious problems.
Aronowitz found mold, water damage, cracked facades, broken buzzers at every building he visited, he said.
“[It was] a very, very clear case of building neglect,” Aronowitz said.
Their tenant action have since led to a slew of inspections.
Housing Preservation and Development inspectors issued on Nov. 21 more than 100 violations across five Cabbad buildings, including 33 deemed immediately hazardous, city records show.
The 106 violations include roaches, mice, piles of garbage, defective smoke alarms and several broken self-closing doors — a problem that
officials say fueled last year's Twin Parks fire in The Bronx, which killed 17 residents.
One day of HPD inspections found over 100 violations at the Cabbad's buildings. (Peter Senzamici/Patch)
Paige’s building had the most violations at 35, among them roaches, broken floors and banisters, peeling paint in the hallways, broken smoke detectors and those missing kitchen cabinets.
“They were disgusted by our hallways and lack of heat," Paige told Patch. "And [our] floors.”
Building inspectors who visited on Nov. 9 found
missing fireproofing in commercial storefront unit at 95 Fifth Ave. and
cracked facades at Philip's bike shop and his uncle's hardware shop, records show.
“The facades of these four buildings were posing a hazard to pedestrians," a Department of Buildings spokesperson said.
"Our inspectors found that the facades of 101, 103, 105 & 107 5th Avenue were all in a state of disrepair, with loose masonry and cracked lintels throughout."
The Buildings department demanded the fireproofing be replaced and sidewalk sheds installed. As of March 31, the sheds still stand.
The sheds installed to protect pedestrians from a decaying Cabbad building facade as observed by a Patch reporter on March 31. (Matt Troutman/Patch)
Progress didn't come quickly enough for Fedor, who ultimately decided to move out in February when he was given an official notice that the Cabbad's wouldn't renew his lease. Paige left at the start of the year, just days after the heat returned.
But at least one representative of the Cabbads took immediate action, video shared with Patch shows.
Minutes after the building inspector left, the super climbed the creaky stairs to Fedor’s apartment, banged on his door and walls and demanded he open up.
“You call too much the inspectors," he screamed. "Stop calling the inspectors.”