Top mayoral contender Eric Adams failed to register Brooklyn rental property for years
A Bedford-Stuyvesant building owned by mayoral contender Eric Adams hasn’t been registered with the city agency that enforces housing codes for 12 years, public records show.
Adams, who serves as Brooklyn borough president and is considered a potential frontrunner in the mayor’s race, has owned the brick three-story at 936 Lafayette Ave. since 2003, but city records show that since 2009, he’s failed to register it with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the city agency responsible for enforcing rules against tenant harassment and unhealthy living conditions.
According to HPD’s website, Adams “failed to file a valid registration” through 2019 as required, subjecting him to the possibility of up to $3,000 in fines.
“It’s a cause for concern,” said Michael McKee, a fair housing advocate and treasurer of the Tenants PAC. “There’s a reason for this law, and it’s a good reason. This doesn’t mean he’s a bad landlord. It just means he’s not complying with the law.”
McKee said the requirement to register rental properties is important because it helps the city track landlords, many of whom “operate outside the law.”
“It gives you a baseline of information when a building is not maintained,” he said. “And it should go a bit further than it does. I believe managing agents should be licensed. The threat of having your license yanked if you don’t comply with the law would be a pretty good incentive.”
Adams’ campaign spokesman Evan Thies described the mayoral candidate’s failure to register the rental property as a bona fide mistake.
“Eric made an honest oversight and will update the registration immediately,” Thies said.
In at least one year of owning the building, Adams reported drawing rental income of between $20,000 and $50,000 specifically from that address, a 2012 state financial disclosure filing shows.
City financial disclosure forms from 2016 to 2019 reveal that Adams pulled in comparable rental income — up to $48,000 annually — in those years, but those forms do not specify the building’s address.
Before serving as Brooklyn borough president, Adams represented central Brooklyn as a state senator. Before that, he was an NYPD captain.
Aside from his failure to register it, the building has been slapped with 14 Sanitation Department violations. Four of them — for “loose rubbish” — remain unpaid to the tune of $100 each.
Adams also appears to still be on the hook for an eight-year-old open HPD violation that, according to city records, appears to have been issued in October 2012 for failing to “provide adequate lighting at or near the outside of the front entranceway.”
Thies said the violation was remedied in 2012 and that HPD simply did not update its records.
While other candidates for mayor have publicly vowed to refuse political contributions from real-estate developers, Adams has not, labeling such pledges as “hypocrisy.”
“What is real estate? I’m real estate in the fact that I own a small home,” Adams told the Daily News in an interview last February. “I think that they’re finding a sound bite that is insulting to the public.”
In his Bed Stuy real estate venture, Adams was also slapped with two city Buildings Department violations for construction without a permit and an illegal conversion, both of which records indicate have been closed after an inspector failed to gain entry to the building.
City records also show that Adams applied for a construction permit for the building in 2003. The permit was approved, but according to the Department of Building’s website, a “no good” check for a $100 fee was offered as payment in connection with the job.
Thies said Adams doesn’t recall applying for the permit, which would have been the responsibility of the contractor.
