NYC voted him #1 worst landlord & now his building is on fire
they can't keep getting away with this
On January 10, 2025 a Bronx 6 story building, that housed 98 rent stabilized apartment units, burst into flames. This fire has displaced over 260 tenants with 70 still looking for emergency housing as I type this. While they have not figured out what has caused the fire, residents and people familiar with the poor conditions of the building have a good idea.
The building is owned by Ved Parkash of Parkash 2910 LLC. His property management company is based in Jamaica, Queens, and he owns 72 other buildings. This building in particular, along with many of his other properties, had HUNDREDS of complaints of no heat. Signs are pointing to a space heater being the cause. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, space heaters are involved in more than a thousand home fires every year. What’s horrifying is these rich greedy landlords get away with stuff like this all the time in New York.
Landlords like Ved Parkash know housing is expensive, they know that tenants are less likely to move or push complaints further because they are scared of retaliation. When push comes to shove it makes more sense to just buy a space heater and hope your landlord will eventually fix your heat instead of move out of a rent stabilized building. It’s not fair that New York tenants have to risk their lives in their homes just to get heat during the winter.
Here’s what i’ve learned:
Looking deeper only pissed me off even more. Some have dubbed him the “King of Queens” because Ved does his business in the first home he’s owned and raised all of his kids in- located in Queens, NY. He bought properties in the 80s and took out loans on each building to fund the next one. Though he lives in Queens he only has 7 properties there, his big business is in Bronx, NY.
He owns 60 properties in Bronx and is on record saying that the judges in Queens were “too hard” on property owners. He mentions how the Bronx court system favored landlords and he knew that’s where he would do his best business. Which can be roughly translated to court systems in Queens were holding him accountable for his properties being understaffed and undermanaged.
The building that burnt down on the 10th of January was one of 10 of his properties that were being monitored by a city program hosted by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The Heat Sensors Program requires landlords with the most violations and complaints to put monitors in each apartment that automatically sends temperature data. Last year Mr. Parkash sued to get out of the program and failed.
Failure to install the sensors in each apartment or provide them with adequate heat could result in penalties of thousands of dollars for the landlords, depending on the type and amount of violations. Here’s my thing, fines are NOT enough. Ved Parkash has ten buildings that need to be monitored by the state department because he refuses to provide heat for his tenants.
He owns SEVENTY TWO APRTMENT BUILDINGS. THE GUY HAS MONEY. He just bought two more buildings for 27 million dollars. Parkash is obviously a danger to society just by owning but not maintaining these apartments in extremely cold weather. WHY IS HE STILL ALLOWED TO BUY PROPERTIES? If you can throw money at the problem someone with a bunch of it will never have the motivation to actually fix things. What is his incentive to be better?
He’s not afraid of losing his home. He’s not afraid of losing his license. This guy went from being number one on New York’s worst landlord list to number five and saw that as an accomplishment. Do we now collectively see the problem here?
Links I used to write this Substack:
More definitely needs to be done about slumlords, we’re having this exact same issue in my area of Cleveland, Ohio smh.