By Gabriele Holtermann
Tired of broken boilers, illegal hotels and a landlord dubbed NYC’s worst, a group of Hell’s Kitchen tenants are fighting back — not just to fix their buildings, but to buy them and change housing laws citywide.
Tenants of 438 and 440 W45th Street in Hell’s Kitchen rallied outside their buildings on March 29, calling on the New York State Legislature and New York City Council to pass the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) and the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA). They were joined by elected officials, housing advocacy groups like NYC Community Land Initiative and Housing Justice for All as well as supporters from Housing Conservation Coordinators, the West Side Neighborhood Alliance and the New Economy Project.
For years, the tenants of these buildings have fought their landlord, Daniel Ohebshalom, to fix unsafe living conditions, including leaks, mold, heat and hot water outages, occupied apartments falling into disrepair and unsheltered persons breaking into the buildings. Currently, 16 of the 30 units are either warehoused or used as illegal hotels. Ohebshalom, who did two stints in Rikers Island for endangering tenant health and safety and was named the city’s “worst landlord” in 2022 and 2023 by the Public Advocate’s office, foreclosed on the buildings in 2023 and ownership reverted to real estate investment firm Maguire Capital Group.
Now, Maguire Capital Group wants to sell the buildings to the highest bidder. In response, tenants formed the 438/440 W45th Street Tenants Association, which is working with This Land is Ours, a community land trust, to purchase both buildings and preserve their homes as community-owned affordable housing.
The passage of TOPA and COPA would empower tenants to collectively take control of their homes and create permanent affordable housing, stabilizing disinvested and gentrifying communities and paving the path to home ownership for many low- to middle-income New Yorkers. Similar policies in cities like San Fransisco and Washington DC have created or preserved thousands of affordable homes.
Addressing the crowd, Nicholas Latimer, who has lived at 440 W45th Street for 40 years, pointed out that the new owner, Maguire Capital Group, reneged on its promise to address the unsafe building conditions.
“We are just two small buildings, but we are an important part of the fabric of this city, and we’re not the only ones facing off against greedy landlords and over-zealous developers who want to force us out of our homes to make way for luxury housing,” Latimer said. “To these landlords and developers, we say we can care for our homes better than you can, because we’ve invested much more than money. We’ve invested our lives.”
Rents in New York City are at an all-time high, pushing low to middle-income renters out of their homes. According to a report, published by the New York City Comptroller’s Office in 2024, 69% of New York City dwellers are renters and the majority are them are rent-burdened, with nearly 30% of low-income renters severely rent-burdened — meaning they spend more than 50% of their pre-tax income on rent.
Councilmember Erik Bottcher, whose district includes Hell’s Kitchen, said that TOPA and COPA were an opportunity to create desperately needed permanent affordable housing.
“If we do everything we know that needs to be done, we can look back and say that we were the generation of New Yorkers that took back control of our city and made it New York City once again, where everyone can afford to live in every neighborhood, where people can come here with a few bucks in their pocket and make a life for themselves, once again. Where people can afford to live who don’t make a six-figure or even seven-figure salary,” Bottcher said.
Assemblymember Tony Simone reminded the crowd that the tenant movement had more power than landlords — according to a poll by the Community Service Society, 82 percent of New Yorkers support TOPA.
“Landlords may have the money, but tenants have the numbers, and you have to keep fighting,” Simone said.
South Bronx resident Claudia Waterton, E134th Street tenant leader, shared her journey from renter to homeowner. In 2017, a new landlord bought her building and threatened to hike up the rents and take the units out of rent stabilization. Claudia and other tenants sued the landlord in housing court and with the support of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB), purchased their building, turning it into a limited equity cooperative.
Once they took ownership, they replaced windows and installed a new boiler, heating and cooling system, and stoves. “This just shows you, when tenants own their building, that stuff gets done. When landlords own the building, stuff doesn’t get done,” said Claudia, emphasizing that the journey to homeownership would have been less problematic had TOPA and COPA already been in place.
“Fighting for funding would have been a lot easier. This is why we need TOPA, so more buildings like this that are organized can buy their building and make it livable,” Claudia said.
Hell’s Kitchen community organizer and journalist Red Young, who grew up at 438 W45th Street, told W42ST that the challenges TOPA and COPA encountered largely rested with politicians who didn’t believe that tenants and nonprofits were capable or prepared to run, develop and own community housing.
“They’re wrong, because it’s been done in the past, as we heard from Claudia in the Bronx and TOPA has been in place since 1980 in DC,” Red pointed out. “So we have precedence for this. There’s no time to wait. There’s a housing crisis, and TOPA can create a lot of affordable housing.”