NYC announced a record $31 million court judgment against Bronx landlords Karan Singh and Rajmattie Persaud for years of neglect at Robert Fulton Terrace (540 East 169th Street) and Fordham Towers (480 East 188th Street). Over 500 families endured no heat, no hot water, broken elevators, and thousands of code violations. HPD’s Anti-Harassment Unit secured the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the city’s housing agency.
Why this $31M fine matters for every NYC homeowner and tenant
The judgment against Singh and Persaud is not a one-off — it is the clearest signal yet that NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development is escalating enforcement against landlords who let buildings rot while collecting rent. The Anti-Harassment Unit (AHU), formed in 2017 under Local Law 7, has been gradually building cases against repeat offenders. The Fulton Terrace and Fordham Towers case took multiple years to litigate and resulted in thousands of documented code violations: no heat in the dead of winter, no hot water for weeks at a time, broken elevators in buildings housing seniors and disabled tenants, and pest infestations that the landlords ignored despite hundreds of complaints.
The previous record civil penalty obtained by HPD was approximately $5 million. The Singh/Persaud judgment is more than six times that figure, which is the city signaling — loudly — that the cost of neglect now exceeds the cost of repairs. For Staten Island and Brooklyn homeowners, this matters even if you have nothing to do with multifamily buildings in the Bronx, because the policy direction it sets carries downstream effects.
What this means for Staten Island and Brooklyn 2-to-4 family owners
Most Staten Island and Brooklyn homeowners I work with own 1-to-4 family houses, not 500-unit apartment complexes. The AHU is not coming for the homeowner who is a month behind on a leaky faucet repair. But the city’s tolerance for absentee landlord behavior has hit a wall, and that change is now bleeding into how HPD inspectors treat smaller buildings too. If you own a 2-family in Sheepshead Bay or a 3-family in Stapleton and rent out a unit, three practical things changed this week:
- Tenant complaints get logged faster. 311 housing complaints are now routed to HPD with shorter response windows. A tenant complaint about heat in January can trigger an inspection within 24 hours.
- Civil penalties for repeat violations are stacking. Under the new enforcement posture, the same violation cited twice in 12 months gets a multiplier — not a flat fine.
- Buyers are paying attention to violation history. When you sell a multi-family, the buyer’s attorney pulls HPD violation history in due diligence. A clean record is now a meaningful price lever.
The 3 things to check on your own building this month
Whether you own a 2-family in Great Kills or a 4-family in Bay Ridge, do these three things in the next two weeks:
- Pull your HPD violation history. Go to hpdonline.nyc.gov, look up your address, and document anything open. Open violations follow the building, not the owner — and they get disclosed to buyers.
- Test your heat and hot water now, before fall. Heat season legally starts October 1. Fixing a boiler in September is routine maintenance. Fixing it in January under HPD pressure is a violation plus a repair bill.
- Document repairs in writing. If a tenant requests something, respond in writing within 14 days. The AHU cases hinge on a paper trail showing landlords ignored repeated requests. A texted “I’ll get to it” is now part of the evidentiary record either way.
What this is really signaling about NYC’s housing politics
The $31M judgment lands in the same week the Rent Guidelines Board voted on stabilized-rent increases and the Mansion Tax debate heated up in Albany. Taken together, the message from City Hall and HPD is unmistakable: tenant-side enforcement is the political winning move, and landlords (especially institutional and absentee ones) should expect that posture to harden, not soften, through 2026. For owner-occupants who rent out one or two units alongside their own residence, the practical impact is smaller — but the inspection bar moved this week, and the smart play is to get ahead of it.
Thinking about selling a 2-to-4 family in Staten Island or Brooklyn?
Multi-family pricing in Staten Island and Brooklyn is sensitive to two things right now: cap rate compression on the buy side, and HPD violation history on the disclosure side. If you are considering listing, run the numbers through the 2-to-4 Family House Hack Calculator first to see what an owner-occupant buyer can afford to pay, then read the Sell a 2-Family in Staten Island 2026 guide or the Sell a 2-Family in Brooklyn 2026 guide. If you would rather just talk it through, text or call me at 917-905-2541 — same number, all year, every year.
