Residents say their Upper West Side building has become a nightmare.
Tenants at the working-class complex say they are “living in fear” after learning that their landlord reached a behind-the-scenes agreement to place homeless individuals and former inmates in the building.
Members of the tenants association at 126 W. 86th St. said they were caught off guard by an agreement with the city allowing up to 30% of the building’s 72 rent-stabilized apartments to house adults considered difficult to place, including people with active drug addictions and mental illnesses transitioning directly from the shelter system.
“We don’t want to be a shelter. We don’t want to be program housing,” one frustrated resident told The Post.
Tenants are still shaken by the 2023 murder of their 74-year-old neighbor, Maria Hernandez, who was brutally killed by the complex’s superintendent, a convicted felon who residents say had been hired without a background check.
Now residents say they are confronting another threat: the city is placing people in vacant apartments through Mayor Zohran Mamdani-backed programs, including The Fortune Society, without providing on-site social workers or direct supervision.
“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 — none of whom agreed to be identified because they feared retaliation or losing their homes — said open-air drug use, trespassing and suspected prostitution have become part of daily life.
Several tenants also described crack cocaine and methamphetamine fumes drifting through the building’s ventilation system, while residents they characterized as unstable allegedly scream obscenities throughout the night.
Tenants claimed that one person placed in the building had been arrested three times since moving in during 2024, including twice in connection with stabbings.
“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 said in a statement.
The building is owned by a now-defunct church that once operated across the street, St. Timothy’s and St. Matthews Housing Corporation. The city placed its first lien on the property in 2018 after the group failed to pay its property taxes.
In 2023, six months after Hernandez’s murder, the group transferred the building’s deed to a Housing Development Fund Corporation, giving the city the ability to use the property for affordable-housing initiatives.
In return, the city canceled more than $2.3 million in property-tax debt. That same day, the HDFC signed a supportive-housing agreement with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development without notifying the tenants.
“This was going on behind the scenes, but none of us were made aware of this,” one longtime tenant said.
“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.”
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The property is now in the process of being sold 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 are concerned that the arrangement could become a model for other buildings.
“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.”
At a meeting with residents, HPD officials and Sisters of Charity CEO Matthew Janeczko said the placements would be limited to eight apartments. However, the building’s 40-year agreement, reviewed by The Post, expressly allows the owner to reserve as many as 30% of the property — up to 23 apartments — for alternative placements.
The Article XI contract, approved by the New York City Council in 2024, also provides the landlord with subsidies of up to $6,000 per month for the placements. Standard Article XI regulatory agreements require 10% of units to be set aside for formerly homeless households.
Residents allege that the agreement gives the landlord an incentive to pressure current tenants to leave, many of whom 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 more than a decade.
New York City generally uses two approaches to house homeless and high-risk individuals permanently. Congregate housing dedicates an entire building to supportive housing with on-site social services, while scattered-site housing places individuals in conventional private buildings.
The scattered-site model still calls for social workers, case managers or mobile crisis teams to visit clients on a regular schedule. But all of the tenants interviewed by The Post said they had never seen support staff in or around 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 were “listening to the residents’ concerns” and coordinating with 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.”
