Tenants and public officials gathered in Manhattan on Tuesday to protest the city's worst landlords.
Public Advocate Letitia James released the 2017 Worst Landlords Watchlist in Foley Square.
100 landlords made the list.
At the top is Jonathan Cohen with Silvershore Properties, who has 19 buildings in Brooklyn and Queens.
The company was sued back in June, as some residents said their apartments were without heat, hot water or gas, and were surrounded by vermin and mold.
"This gentleman does nothing," said tenant Michelle Stamp. "He doesn't do any repairs, and we are infested with vermins and insects and leaks and, you name it, we have it."
"You see, our worst landlords list is designed to stop these bad actors in their tracks and to call out the most awful, and demand they do better," James said.
Arthur James's apartment is crumbling around him. A cabinet fell a year ago and has not been replaced. A rag and some tape plugs a mouse hole. In every corner, there is some sort of disrepair.
"This is the worst that the building has ever been like this," Arthur James said.
Resident Evelyn Morgan agrees. She said the lobby door of her building often does not lock. "People come out of the subway and could just pop it open and pee in the hallway," said Morgan, who is part of St. Nicholas Manor Tenant Association. "I have to walk around pee twice a week."
Morgan's building had an average of 199 violations from the Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development in the past year, helping to catapult owner Joel Goldstein to the seventh spot on the worst landlords list.
The top ten landlords on the list have more than 7,800 violations among them, with more than a thousand of those belonging to Cohen.
On Tuesday, James visited two of the buildings on her list, including Arthur James's building, delivering a message:
"Mr. Landlord, it's really immoral and unethical that you would allow these residents to live in these conditions that are threatening to their safety and their health," the public advocate said.
The list was started in 2010, and officials say this type of public shaming works; six of the landlords from last year's top ten list did not make the list at all this year, meaning they cleaned up their building and their acts.
As for this year's list, the landlord branded as the absolute worst said it inherited most of the violations when it bought the properties, and has done a "tremendous amount of work" addressing them.
GFB Management, which said it took control of Arthur James's building just two months ago, claimed it has been "working to clear pre-existing violations."
You can see the full list at landlordwatchlist.com.