It’s a nightmare on West 83rd street!
Residents of an Upper West Side building said they are “living in fear” after their landlord struck a secretive deal to move homeless and ex-cons into their quiet working-class complex.
Members of the tenants association at 126 W. 86th St. said they were blindsided by the building’s agreement with the city that allows up to 30% of the 72-unit rent-stabilized units to be filled with hard-to-place adults – including active drug users and mentally ill individuals straight from the shelter system.
“We don’t want to be a shelter. We don’t want to be program housing,” one disgruntled resident told The Post.
The traumatized tenants are still reeling from the 2023 murder of their neighbor, 74-year-old Maria Hernandez — who was brutally killed by the complex’s ex-convict superintendent who was hired without a background check.
Now they’re facing a new nightmare – as the city is filling the building’s vacant apartments with unsupervised placements from Mayor Zohran Mamdani-backed programs like The Fortune Society – without providing on-site social workers or oversight.
“It is not an exaggeration to say that many tenants are living in fear for their safety,” the Tenant Association said in a statement.
Six tenants interviewed by The Post — all of whom refused to be named over fear of retaliation or losing their homes — said open-air drug use, trespassing and suspected prostitution are part of their daily lives.
Pungent fumes from crack cocaine and meth billow through the vents and unstable residents routinely scream obscenities at all hours of the night, multiple tenants claimed.
One of the placements has been arrested three times since moving into the building in 2024 – including twice for stabbings, tenants claimed.
“Tenant association officials insist that most, if not all, of the placements require supportive services and supervision, and should not be living independently in a rent-stabilized building filled with children, elderly, and working families,” the group wrote in a statement.
The building is currently owned by a now-defunct church that used to operate across the street — St. Timothy’s and St. Matthews Housing Corporation. The city first took out a lien against the building in 2018 after the group failed to pay its property taxes.
In 2023 — just six months after the murder of Hernandez — the group transferred the deed of the building to become a Housing Development Fund Corporation, giving the city the rights to utilize it for affordable housing initiatives.
In exchange, the city canceled the buildings’ over $2.3 million in property tax debt. That same day, the HDFC entered into a supportive housing agreement with the HPD — declining to inform tenants of the transfer.
“This was going on behind the scenes, but none of us were made aware of this,” one long-term tenant claimed.
“We just kept getting our rent checks. We just kept paying them to St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s. Meanwhile, the church also closed, and we’re still paying rent to them, which felt weird.”
Now it’s in the process of being sold off to another HDFC nonprofit, Sisters of Charity.
“We just feel like we’re not being listened to, and we are very concerned that, you know, they’re going to take advantage of the 30% and remove those apartments from making rent stabilization,” another tenant and association leader told The Post.
Ann Korchak, president of the Small Property Owners of New York, said landlords fear the model will become the new normal.
“No New York renter would be immune from the nightmare that the residents of this Upper West Side building are experiencing,” she said.
“Small owners are deeply concerned that the City Administration’s supportive housing model will eventually be integrated into privately-owned residential properties.”
HPD officials and the Sisters of Charity CEO Matthew Janeczko told residents at a meeting that the placements would be strictly capped at eight units, but the building’s 40-year agreement reviewed by The Post explicitly permits the owner to set aside up to 30% of the building – up to 23 apartments – for alternative placements.
The Article XI contract, which was approved by the New York City Council in 2024, also subsidizes the landlord for the placements with payments of up to $6,000 a month. All standard Article XI regulatory agreements require 10% of units for formerly homeless households.
Residents charge that the agreement gives the landlord incentive to force the building’s current tenants – many of who are elderly or work for the city as teachers and public servants.
“We know that as we are rent-stabilized tenants, we know that they can’t kick us out, but they could make our living conditions so horrendous that we just choose to leave,” said one tenant who has lived in the building for over ten years.
New York City primarily uses two models to move homeless and high-risk individuals into permanent housing – congregate housing, in which an entire building is dedicated to supportive housing with onsite social service – and scattered-site housing – in which individuals lease conventional and private buildings.
The scattered site model still requires social workers, case managers or weekly mobile crisis teams to visit clients on a scheduled basis – but all of the tenants interviewed by the Post claimed they have never observed support staff in or outside of the building.
“It is not OK to gamble on our safety,” another longtime resident said. “You have done so already, twice. So what’s it gonna take?”
A spokesperson for the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development said officials are “listening to the residents’ concerns” and working alongside elected officials to address them.
“HPD recently oversaw the appointment of a new property management company and is working with them to strengthen the financial and physical stability of the building now and for decades to come,” the spokesperson said.
“We are also exploring a transfer of the building to a new nonprofit owner with greater capacity to address long-running issues facing the building,” the spokesperson added. “As always, our top priority is to ensure the safety and stability of all tenants and their building, preserving much-needed affordable housing in a neighborhood with too little of it.”
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