He’s the worst of the worst — for the second year running.
A Big Apple “slumlord” has retained his infamous title of being the city’s worst landlord, according to a new report released Wednesday by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
Johnathan Santana topped the 2023 “Worst Landlord Watchlist” after racking up a record 3,293 open violations across 15 buildings in Manhattan and Queens, the report said.
The staggering number of violations, which span 306 different units, surpassed the 2,980 infractions recorded in his buildings last year.
“They have let these buildings deteriorate into squalor and it’s a shame because these are beautiful buildings,” John Reeds, a longtime tenant of one of Santana’s dilapidated Midtown buildings, told The Post.
Williams announced this year’s worst landlord list outside the building at 410 West 46th Street, which just weeks ago was placed under the control of an outside administrator after tenants waged a years-long court battle to remedy unsafe conditions inside.
Reeds, who had no hesitation in slamming Santana and others linked to the building as “slumlords”, said the building has for years been plagued by drug-addicted squatters, as well as flooding and heating outages.
“One of the worst that I remember was for over 20 days we were without heat and hot water in the winter suffering. So it’s just been on and on,” Reed said.
A fire sparked by electrical issues seven years ago also destroyed parts of the roof — leaving tenants to live under tarps for more than a year and many apartments uninhabitable, he added.
“These apartments are completely devastated. The whole ceilings are in rubble on the floor and when you look up you see the lathing,” Reed said.
Meanwhile, Loyda Irizarry, who lives at a West 170th Street building included on Santana’s list, said she feared that the dwelling could fall “at any moment” given it was in such disrepair.
“It’s the water that’s seeping through to the bottom of the building,” she said. “It’s just gathering there and it destroying the foundation. It could fall at any minute,” Irizarry, 70, said.
“We had drug users, squatters. The drug users were sleeping in the hallways, defecating it in the hallways and spreading it all over the walls,” she continued. “The chimney catches fire every year.”
Santana was listed as the designated head officer for the buildings, which are registered under an assortment of LLCs, as well as another notorious owner, Daniel Ohebshalom, the public advocate said.
Registering buildings under corporations and head officers is a common tactic for owners to avoid accountability for the conditions of the dwellings.
Properties previously in Santana’s name were recently re-classified to list Ohebshalom as the officer on record, Williams said.
“Johnathan Santana and Daniel Ohebshalom may be shameless in their negligence and predatory practices, as is clear in their record violations, but it’s clear that spotlighting and shaming them and other worst landlords in the city can have a meaningful impact,” Williams said.
The annual name-and-shame list, which spotlights the most negligent property owners in Gotham, is determined by Department of Housing Preservation and Development data that tracks the average number of housing code violations opened each month.
More than a dozen other landlords outed on this year’s list averaged well over 1,000 open violations each in their buildings, Williams said.
Behind Santana, the next four worst landlords on the list were: David Tennenbaum (2,416 open violations), Larry Hirchfield (1,394 open violations), Sima Abdavies (1,372 open violations), and Alfred Thompson (1,341 open violations).
The Post’s efforts to reach Santana were unsuccessful.