Tenants without hot water in dilapidated building owned by city’s ‘worst landlord’

Tenant organizers at 41-25 Case St. said the building has been without hot water for nearly a week and their landlord, A&E Realty, still has not performed needed repairs throughout the building. Eagle file photo by Noah Powelson

By Noah Powelson

As the city’s “worst landlord” gets ready to head to court next week over conditions at one of its Queens buildings, Elmhurst tenants say they’ve been living without hot water for days and that many court-ordered repairs to crumbling building still haven’t taken place.

Tenant organizers at 41-25 Case St., an Elmhurst apartment building owned by A&E Realty, told the Eagle on Wednesday that tenants have been living without hot water and heat since Saturday, Sept. 26. Organizers also said that many of the building’s problems a judge earlier this year ordered A&E to fix – including mold infestations, broken locks and malfunctioning elevators – have either received only temporary fixes or haven’t been addressed at all.

The loss of heat and hot water comes less than a week before A&E – which was ranked the worst landlord in the city by the public advocate – is scheduled to reappear in Queens Civil Court after a judge ordered them to significantly address the hundreds of violations the building has accumulated.

Amber Gill, a tenant organizer for the Case Street building, told the Eagle the boiler for the building first went down late Friday night. Tenants were repeatedly told repairs would be finished throughout the week, Gill said. But they were still without hot water as of Wednesday.

Gill said this isn’t the first time the building’s boiler has gone down.

“Repairs are still not being done,” Gill told the Eagle. “We didn't know what was going on, and they just put up a sign that said, ‘The boiler is not working, it will be back on ASAP,’ and then it still hasn't happened. And we honestly don't know when it will happen because last year, we were without heat and water for almost a month.”

Other issues in the building that a judge ordered A&E to address back in June have continued to persist, the tenant said.

Gill said that repair workers sent by A&E would often only do temporary or visual fixes on the building – such as painting over mold – that did not hold up to inspection by the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development.

The locks to the front door of the building, for example, had long been broken, and trespassers and stolen packages were common. Gill said that while A&E sent someone to work on the locks, the repairs only lasted for a few days, and the building still has issues with nonresidents loitering in the staircase.

Many tenants, Gill said, still have not had anyone come by to conduct repairs on their individual apartments.

Gill said that she believes the lack of permanent fixes is “retaliation simply for speaking out against A&E and the fact that we're continuously going back and forth in the court.”

“We want repairs,” she said. “We're being as patient as we can, but we were promised by [A&E], they were court ordered and nothing's changing.”

In response to an Eagle inquiry, an A&E spokesperson said they were aware of hot water outages this past week, but said the problem was fixed on Tuesday. The spokesperson also said the hot water would be turned off on Thursday while they continued work, and that A&E had invested almost $5 million into repairs and general maintenance for the building.

The spokesperson also claimed the company had reduced the number of open violations in the building by 80 percent this year, and claimed many of the violations were duplicates.

“There is no doubt that the building is in far better shape now than it was at the time of acquisition,” the spokesperson said. “This real progress does not mean that our work is finished, that progress is easy, or that there will be no setback…We are proud of the work we've done so far and the money we have invested into the property, despite the extraordinary and well-known financial constraints facing operators of rent-stabilized housing, which demonstrate our commitment to the building and its community.”

According to HPD’s online portal, the Case St. building currently has 265 open violations.

The new accusation from tenants comes as A&E and the tenants get ready for their next court date this coming Monday, the third appearance in the case before Queens Judge Shorab Ibrahim.

Alex Jacobs, a staff attorney with Queens Legal Services representing the Case St. tenants, told the Eagle they were aware some repairs had taken place since their last court appearance over the summer. Jacobs said tenants had reported that A&E replaced kitchen tiles on some individual apartment units, but that the repair work was often shoddy or temporary.

Over 20 residents are listed in the lawsuit against A&E, and Jacobs said QLS was still trying to get an understanding from each resident about what repairs have or haven’t happened.

Depending on what the tenants want, the attorney may consider asking the judge to find the landlord in contempt of court.

“Some work has been done. The question is if it’s enough to say [A&E] deserves another six weeks with what they’re doing, or if it's insufficient and clearly they're just dragging their feet and doing bad work,” Jacobs said.

The landlord of 41-25 Case St., Margaret Brunn, is an A&E executive who was ranked as the city’s worst landlord in 2025 by New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

Brunn is also the landlord of 43-09 47th Ave., a Sunnyside building that suffered a major fire that left 14 people injured and 250 people displaced on Dec. 20, 2023.

Brunn and A&E executive Donald Hastings, the city’s second-worst rated landlord on the public advocate’s list, were both sued in a class action lawsuit in July after a watchdog group alleged A&E had illegally overcharged millions of dollars in rent. The Housing Rights Initiative claimed their investigation found A&E had increased rent across five Queens rent-stabilized buildings without providing legally required improvements. A&E has denied the allegations.

Brunn and Hastings manage 60 buildings across the city with over 8,600 collective HPD violations between them in 2025, according to the public advocate’s office.