PHOTOS: Williamsburg Tenants Sue Their Landlord, Document 'Unlivable' Conditions

SOUTH WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — Murky, putrid water flowing from the bathroom sink and onto the moldy tile floor. A leak that swells the wooden bathroom door shut and warps the nearby kitchen floor. A kitchen floor so sharp and crooked that it has to be covered with a makeshift slab of wood to protect a young grandchild from cutting his feet.

These are just three of dozens of conditions that the Latino tenants of South Williamsburg's 273 Lee Ave. have documented in their apartments over the past decade, according to a federal lawsuit they filed against their landlord, Naftali Steinmetz.

The three plaintiffs — Cindy Sanchez, Sara Oyola, and Kathleen Santiago — claim Steinmetz is discriminating against them by neglecting since 2006 to conduct repairs that posed immediate danger to them and their families, including failing to provide heat through at least two winters, court documents say.

Sara Wolkensdorfer, a staff attorney and Poverty Justice Solutions Fellow for Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A, who is currently representing the tenants in housing court, gave Patch access to photos of the current conditions in the plaintiffs' apartments.

In March 2016, a worker from Steinmetz's management company at the time came to Sanchez's apartment to install window guards, and without her consent or knowledge, fiddled with her apartment's front door, which still doesn't close properly. The front door's inability to close is a fire hazard, the case alleges.

A photo taken in September 2016 shows Sanchez's front door, with no handle, which is in the same condition today, according to Wolkensdorfer:

In May 2015, the building's super named Devi called Sanchez with an "emergency," saying he believed she was responsible for a leak underneath her apartment in a unit inhabited by Hasidic Jews, court documents allege.

Oyola lived directly underneath the Hasidic Jewish tenants and had been experiencing the same exact leak since May 2014, she said. She told management when she first noticed the leak, but they did nothing about it, she said.

Here's what Oyola's walls looked like for a year and a half before the pipes were repaired:

In May 2015, after other tenants complained of a leak and blamed Sanchez's showers, Devi sent a plumber to Sanchez's bathroom. Sanchez and Oyola were sure it was old pipes that were the problem, not Sanchez.

Devi knocked down the bathroom wall to the apartment inhabited by Hasidic Jews who had filed the complaint and found a broken pipe to be the culprit of the leak. Fixing the broken pipe required him to gain access to Oyola's bathroom, which was directly underneath it.

Workers knocked down Oyola's shower walls with a sledgehammer in order to reach the pipes. Oyola's shower walls remained unfixed and covered with a plastic sheet for three months, court documents show.

In July 2015, workers came to fix Oyola's shower, using cheap plastic panels, according to the lawsuit.

Here's what Oyola's shower repairs look like today:

In January 2016, Oyola experienced a massive bathroom sink leak unrelated to the leak in the ceiling, court documents show.

"The bathroom sink began overflowing, causing damage to the floor in Plaintiff Oyola's bathroom and kitchen. The water from the sink had murky, putrid, and foul-smelling water coming from it," the court document says.

The leak remained constant for several weeks, Oyola said. She would return from work to find inches of water flooded over her bathroom floor, she said.

The leak became so bad that she had to cut out a portion of her bathroom's wooden door because it was swollen from the water and couldn't properly close, court documents show.

The kitchen floor next to the bathroom also suffered massive leakage and became warped from water damage, Oyola said. She had to cover the floor with a wooden board for almost a month to protect her 7-year-old grandson from injury, she said.

Here's what the kitchen floor looks like from the leak, which hasn't been repaired to this day:

No one came to do repairs in the bathroom until Oyola filed a case in housing court and the case had gone on for four months, court documents say.

Here is what Oyola's apartment looked like for weeks during repairs:

Oyola's bathroom door has been replaced twice since then by workers, according to the lawsuit.

"They replaced her bathroom door with a door that looked like someone had just taken a handsaw and sawed off the top and the bottom," Wolkensdorfer told Patch. "It was sharp, completely crooked, and it didn't fit in the frame correctly."

In the early summer of 2016, HPD came back to reinspect that new door, and they gave it another violation, Wolkensdorfer added. It still hasn't been replaced, she said.

Currently, there is also a third leak ready to burst in Oyola's kitchen ceiling:

Sanchez, Santiago, and Oyola allege that these conditions are tactics used as means of "forcing Latino tenants to leave deplorable and unlivable conditions," according to court documents. They are suing Steinmetz under violation of the Fair Housing Act, the New York State Human Rights Law, the NYC Human Rights Law, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, court documents show.

YHT Management has overseen the tenants' repairs since January 2016, Wolkensdorfer said. YHT is better than previous management companies in that they can be reached by phone, she said. They do more repairs than previous management companies, but the repairs are extremely shoddy, she added.

"Management has also changed seven times just since 2010, and it leaves the tenants without supers for large periods of time," Wolkensdorfer added.

The tenants are currently experiencing problems with their heat as well, which has been an ongoing problem since at least 2006, Wolkensdorfer said. A thermostat in the hallway that controlled the building's temperature for a year was previously locked, and an unknown person had the key, the tenants said. In housing court, the tenants requested that the lock be taken off the thermostat. The next day, the lock was taken off, but the thermostat was disconnected from the building's heat, Wolkensdorfer explained.

The tenants told Wolkensdorfer that they now believe someone else in the building may have control of the secret functioning thermostat, Wolkensdorfer told Patch.

Steinmetz has not responded to Patch's several requests for comment.

"This is where their entire lives are," Wolkensdorfer said. "Sara [Oyola] raised her children and her grandchildren here. This is where they've shared memories with their families, they've watched their family members grow up, this is their community and their home. The goal is just to be able to live in a place where they are treated with dignity and respect."

Photos courtesy of Sara Wolkensdorfer/Brooklyn Legal Services Corp. A