Billionaire Real Estate Investor Sues Public Advocate for 'Worst Landlords' List

NEW YORK, NY — A billionaire real estate investor is suing Public Advocate Letitia James for $15 million after he was included on the city's 100 worst landlords list for the second consecutive year.

Kamran Hakim — who owns real estate holdings on the Upper East Side, Upper West Side and Midtown Manhattan — argues that the public advocate his libeled him and deprived him of due process in a lawsuit filed in the New York State Supreme Court on Dec. 20. In this year's edition of the list Hakim was named the 52nd worst landlord in New York City due to numerous HPD violations levied against four of his properties on the Upper East Side.

Hakim's lawyer Darren Marks claimed that his client should not be included on the list because two of the buildings with violations — 1209 and 1211 1st avenue — are being kept vacant for demolition and because HPD violations at his other holdings have been resolved.

Marks, in a July 2016 letter to Public Advocate James, said that Hakim should not be on the list because he has spent millions to correct the violations and that the public advocate's office did not take factors such as uncooperative tenants, holdout tenants or vacancies into account.

"We are confident that the Public Advocate's Office would have determined that Landlord should never have been placed on the Watchlist had reasonable efforts been taken by the Public Advocate into the reasons why the violation's exist," Marks wrote in the letter.

Hakim, who emigrated to the United States from Iran, owns an estimated 129 properties in New York City valued at $1.8 billion, according to a 2014 article in Bloomberg.

Photo by Matt Cohen via Flickr/Creative Commons