Notorious Upper East Side Slumlord Slavik Gofman Continues his Fraudulent Scheme to Unlawfully Deregulate Rent Stabilized & Rent Control Apartments in Broad Daylight

Ever since he added 179 East 93rd Street - the historic childhood home of the Marx Brothers - to his NYC real estate portfolio, Landlord Slavik Gofman has and continues to engage in an ongoing fraudulent scheme to unlawfully deregulate Rent Control and Rent Stabilized apartments throughout the building.

When Gofman bought 179 East 93rd Street on January 17, 1996, every apartment in the building was regulated by the New York State Division of Homes & Community Renewal (DHCR). Some of the apartments were Rent Control and others were Rent Stabilized. 

But, as Gofman's goal was and still is to deregulate 179 East 93rd Street apartments, each time a legacy tenant (a tenant who was living at 179E93 when Gofman bought the building) moves out, Gofman either files a false rent registration at DHCR (e.g., sometimes doubling the rent, sometimes tripling the rent, etc.) or, in other cases, Gofman simply stops registering the Regulated apartment with the DHCR all together. 

According to the NYC Rent Guidelines Board, there are approximately one million Rent-Stabilized apartments in NYC. 

So the DHCR only investigates Landlord Fraud (where a landlord falsely claims a regulated apartment is no longer regulated as Landlord Gofman has done with RSL & RC apartments that have turned over since he bought 179E93) if and when a tenant files a Rent Overcharge Complaint or a Complaint demanding a Rent Stabilized lease for an apartment the tenant believes should be RSL, but which the landlord refuses to acknowledge as RSL as Landlord Slavik Gofman has and continues to do with the 179E93 Rent Regulated apartments that have turned over since he purchased the historic property in Carnegie Hill.

This is the same method by which myriad NYC Landlords have gotten away with robbing NYC of tens of thousands of Rent-Stabilized apartments over the last few decades.

In The Theft of Affordable Housing: How Rent-Stabilized Apartments are Disappearing from Fraudulent Individual Apartment Improvements and What Can be Done to Save Them, Justin R. La Mort eloquently explains exactly how landlords have, for years, been gaming the system, overcharging tenants and cheating NYC out of much needed RSL apartments.

While Landlord Slavik Gofman has used a variety of fraudulent schemes to overcharge tenants and deny to tenants the Rent Stabilized leases to which they are legally entitled at 179 East 93rd Street, his Modus Operandi often hues closely - if not exactly - to the IAI fraud schemes described by La Mort in his excellent article which reads like a blueprint for the Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA) of 2019 (which the NY State Legislature did, in fact, enact after La Mort's article was published).

In one such case, after a long-term legacy tenant finally retired to Florida, without any legal justification, Gofman jacked-up the rent on the tiny studio apartment, by multiples, despite doing less than the bare minimum before the new tenant took occupancy (there were even dead roaches left in the dusty kitchen cabinets and mice droppings dried to the oven broiler).

Gofman simply re-registered the apartment with the DHCR at a grossly inflated rent. And because the DHCR does not have the time or staff to check-up on representations that Landlords make to the state agency charged with the duty to administer New York's Rent Regulations, Gofman got away with it for years.

But once a tenant - who believed the subject apartment is Rent-Stabilized - filed a Rent Overcharge Complaint, Gofman's ruse was exposed; Exposed for having cheated this tenant out of a substantial amount of money and a Rent Stabilized lease, the DHCR served upon Gofman a Final Notice that the agency would be imposing Treble Damages on top of the dollar amount of the years-long Rent Overcharge. 

Caught red-handed and backed into a corner, Gofman tried to back-track. And in the process of trying to cover his tracks, Gofman perjured himself and corrupted NYC Government records along the way.

Although he had never mentioned any work, upgrades or improvements to the subject apartment - because Gofman had not done any such work - suddenly, out of thin air, Gofman concocts a bogus story and forges fraudulent documents, as thin as gossamer wings, in attempt to back-stop a factious renovation that did not happen. 

Landlord Gofman and his attorneys literally worked backwards; figuring out the dollar amount that would justify an IAI and backed fictions work into that dollar amount. Gofman swore he had gutted the apartment and even included a fraudulent claim that he had put in all new hardwood floors.

But Gofman's fictitious renovation was also exposed. For, the tenant was able to show that the work Gofman described was not done and there are, in fact, no hardwood floors in the apartment, just cheap and peeling, circa 1980s, Vinyl laminate flooring.

So as Gofman's bogus story began to unravel, he panicked and started aggressively harassing the tenant in an effort to intimidate the tenant into moving and making his whole perjurious smokescreen go away. But that didn't work for Gofman either.

Nonetheless, the experience did not deter Gofman from his goal of ridding 179 East 93rd Street of Rent Stabilized apartments. In fact, in the wake of his 2nd loss (he had previously sued a long-time RSL tenant claiming that her apartment was not her primary residence when it is, in fact; so he lost that one too) Gofman has only doubled-down on his unscrupulous efforts to circumvent NY's Rent Regulations.

Quite brazenly, Gofman continues to misrepresent the apartments in 179 East 93rd Street as deregulated despite doing no significant work; certainly nothing that would qualify for Individual Apartment Improvements [IAIs] (which were eliminated by the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019).

Ironically, other than painting the walls (which is required even in apartments that are not rent regulated) and replacing old, dilapidated and broken stoves, the most common thing Gofman has done throughout 179 East 93rd Street is that in most, if not all, of the legacy studio apartments, Gofman has had his regular workers illegally construct lofts without permits from the NYC Department of Buildings. 

In fact, when you search for 179 East 93rd Street NYC, on the NYC DOB website, the first thing that comes up is a STOP WORK ORDER issued years ago when someone blew the whistle on Gofman's illegal loft construction and the NYC DOB shut down the illegal un-permitted work. And Gofman has never bothered trying to get permits to make legal all the illegal lofts which lofts he brazenly advertises online.

None of the violations issued by NYC DOB or NYC HPD deter Gofman one bit. For Gofman prides himself on getting away with flouting the law, corrupting the system and cutting corners despite the demonstrated fact that those illegal transgressions put the health & safety of his tenants in jeopardy.

You see, Gofman doesn't care one iota about his tenants or their safety. The only thing he cares about is greedily getting his own way. And whether that means bullying tenants, paying off city officials, committing perjury, committing fraud, corrupting the public records at NYS DHCR, NYC HPD and NYC DOB, it's all just another day at the office to Slavik Gofman. For, like the feudal lords he emulates, Gofman believes he is entitled to do whatever he pleases with his buildings and their occupants. 

Rather than remorse for chronically putting tenants lives in danger, and failing to maintain 179 East 93rd Street in a safe and habitable condition, Gofman revels in how clever he thinks he and his attorneys are at manipulating and corrupting the system. That is why behind his back, Gofman's own workers call him "The Criminal".

So a NYC DOB STOP WORK ORDER means nothing to Gofman. He just waits it out and when the coast is clear, he sends his workers back in again to build more illegal and un-permitted (so possibly unsafe as they have not been inspected and approved by NYC DOB) lofts in the studio apartments which he brazenly advertises online.

Illegal construction work and a complete disregard for the law and tenant & public safety is a part of Slavik Gofman's Building Management DNA. 

In fact, when he constructed illegal walls, etc. in commercial properties Gofman owns on the West Side of Manhattan (@ West 39th Street, West 30th Street and Grand Street), the City of NY sued Gofman for his "deceptive" and "fraudulent" business practices, demanding $546,000.00 in damages owed to the city ($46,000 in unpaid violation penalties and $500,000 in punitive damages because Gofman's transgressions are so egregiously dangerous to the health & safety of tenants and the public). You can read all about Gofman's illegal business practices here and at NY County Supreme Court Case Index Number 451327/2019 which can be found at the NYSCEF website.

And Gofman has systematically deployed this same scheme with regards to the 1-Bedroom legacy apartments at 179 East 93rd Street. 

So it goes like this: When a legacy tenant moves out of one of the 1-Bedroom apartments at 179 East 93rd Street, without any permits from the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB), Gofman constructs an un-permitted wall, cutting short the living room, dividing the living room space so as to create a 2nd bedroom. 

Gofman then fraudulently misrepresents the apartment as a 2-Bedroom de-regulated apartment for which he charges a ton more in rent than is statutorily permitted for the 1-Bedroom (no permit, no 2nd bedroom) Rent Stabilized apartment that it still is (despite Gofman's fraudulent misrepresentations) as a matter of law and fact.

Enter Apartment 2C:

After being subjected to a never-ending litany of un-cured apartment defects and un-cured building defects - including raw sewage busting through the 179E93 entry hallway; packages being stolen from the hallway because Gofman refuses to install a security camera; NO HEAT during subzero weather (an ongoing theme @ 179E93); mice running wild due to the landlord's failure to secure the building's basement which basement, according to HPD Violation #14362927, is also contaminated with raw sewage; persistent mold, etc. - the tenants in Apartment 2C made like Elvis and finally left the building. 

As of this writing, Landlord Slavik Gofman has 124 Open NYC HPD Violations at 179 East 93rd Street and countless DOB Violations including for the illegal gas pipe fittings that Gofman installed in the basement of 179E93 after Con Edison discovered a GAS LEAK on January 28, 2021. 

So Apartment 2C sits empty. That is why, when Landlord Slavik Gofman's worker announced on Friday, May 28, 2021 that they are "starting a BIG JOB here on Wednesday," June 2nd, the Tenants Association became concerned that Gofman may attempt to gut Apartment 2C in an effort to retroactively cover-up the fact that for several years, Gofman has been fraudulently renting out this 1-Bedroom RSL apartment as a 2-Bedroom Deregulated apartment and cheating the tenants out of tens of thousands of dollars in the process.

For the fact is that Apartment 2C is registered as a #RentControl apartment (presumably now RSL) with the New York State Division of Housing & Community Renewal. 

         And while Apartment 2C is now most likely Rent-Stabilized, and not Rent Control (as it would have legally converted to RSL after the Rent Control tenant moved out), #Landlord Slavik Gofman has been flouting NY law and violating tenants rights, for years, by misrepresenting Apartment 2C as deregulated, denying tenants the Rent Stabilized leases to which they are entitled & by grossly overcharging and gouging unsuspecting tenants. So, in the event Landlord Slavik Gofman might try to cover-up his RSL fraud by gutting Apartment 2C and then retroactively claim that the apartment had been renovated all along, the Tenants Association posts here, these 2021 photographs of Apartment 2C, showing that Landlord Gofman has not renovated this apartment, nor has he made any significant improvements. But these photographs and affidavits provided to the Tenants Association do show that Landlord Gofman did, in fact, install in Apt. 2C a wall - without a NYC DOB permit - in order to pass off this 1-Bedroom RSL apartment as a 2-Bedroom deregulated apartment. 
Welcome to this pictorial tour of Apt. 2C at 179 East 93rd St in Carnegie Hill NYC:    Right at the threshold to Apartment 2C, a 1-Bedroom RSL apartment at 179 East 93rd Street in Carnegie Hill NYC, one can see the worn entryway. In the photo on the right, one can also see the contrast between the ancient hardwood floor in Apt. 2C and the less-ancient-but-still-decades-old, Circa 1980s, Vinyl/Laminate flooring in the common hallway which was installed years before Slavik Gofman bought the building in 1996.No significant improvements have been made to the very modest kitchen in Apt. 2C (Photograph, 2021). In fact, as you can see from this screenshot of the various NYC Department of Housing, Preservation & Development (HPD) Violations issued against Landlord Slavik Gofman, for Apt. 2C in 2020, not only has Apt. 2C not been significantly improved, but Apt. 2C is not even NYC Code compliant. The previous stove in Apt. 2C was broken. So before the new tenants took occupancy in 2018, Landlord Slavik Gofman was forced to replace the non-working stove. Of course, providing a working stove is not an individual apartment improvement (IA); It is required, just like a landlord is required, by law, to paint the apartment walls. 
Please note that the specific defective condition for which NYC HPD issued Violation #13578710, on March 2, 2020 - for the cracks in the kitchen floor in Apartment 2C - was supposed to have been cured by April 21, 2020. But, as you can see from this photograph of the kitchen floor in Apt. 2C, to date, Landlord Slavik Gofman has failed to cure the defective condition for which HPD Violation #13578710 was issued. 

No significant improvements or upgrades to the living room in Apartment 2C (Photograph 2021):

In fact, just as he did with his properties in the West 30's - which resulted in countless DOB violations, penalties and a lawsuit that the City brought against Gofman (the kingpin in that deceptive illegal scheme) and his associates - rather than an upgrade, without a NYC DOB permit, Landlord Slavik Gofman had his regular workers construct a wall in Apt. 2C - cutting in half the living room - in order to create a box-like structure that Gofman represents as a 2nd bedroom, so that he can gouge tenants even more for an apartment that is, in fact, Rent-Stabilized, but which Gofman misrepresents as being deregulated.

In the second photo above, one can see the other side of the un-permitted walls which Landlord Slavik Gofman installed without a NYC DOB permit in order to jack-up the rent even more for an RSL apartment that Gofman fraudulently misrepresents as deregulated. 

As this additional wall has not been inspected by the NYC DOB, it poses safety issues for Apartment 2C and raises the question as to whether its un-permitted and still un-inspected construction may have compromised the structural integrity of this RSL apartment.

As stated above, because of the myriad chronic apartment and building-wide defects, unfortunately, those tenants have also vacated Apt. 2C as the conditions were intolerable. 

And none of this justifies Landlord Slavik Gofman's disregard for New York's Rent Regulations. The apartments in 179 East 93rd Street are Rent Stabilized. Landlord Gofman's wish for it to be otherwise does not make it so. And his ongoing fraudulent scheme to circumvent New York's Rent Regulations and pick the pockets of unsuspecting new tenants robs not only tenants, but pilfers the City's dwindling RSL housing stock.

A slick and savvy businessman - with a diversified portfolio filled with NYC real estate, both commercial and residential properties - when he bought 179 East 93rd Street, Landlord Slavik Gofman knew full-well that he was buying a Rent Regulated building. 

In fact, Landlord Slavik Gofman is such a notoriously calculating businessman, that in its lawsuit against Gofman, the city goes so far as to describe his business practices as "deceptive" and "fraudulent":

In other words, Gofman has no business complaining about or trying to thwart the Rent Regulations that govern the RSL building he bought at 179 East 93rd Street because he knew exactly what he was buying and the legal obligations of an owner of an RSL building. 

Yet, Gofman's actions, since the time he bought 179 East 93rd Street, make clear the fact that he deeply resents NY's Rent Regulations and will do anything to avoid complying with the legal requirements of the RSL and HSTPA; including endangering his tenants, corrupting government agencies and corrupting the public records held in public trust by those government agencies. Essentially, Gofman is like a spoiled brat having a hissy fit while refusing to play by the rules.

So there is an easy solution here: Slavik Gofman should sell 179 East 93rd Street and go buy a building that is not subject to New York's Rent Regulations. Problem solved.

In the meantime, the 179 East 93rd Street Tenants Association hopes that, with this documentary evidence and material information, the City of New York will prevent Landlord Slavik Gofman from unlawfully deregulating another RSL apartment.  For the City and its residents can not afford to abide Landlord Slavik Gofman's fraudulent theft of NY's vital Rent Stabilized housing stock.