New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani held the third in a series of hearings he launched for renters to air complaints directly to housing officials. Mamdani proposed using fines to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship by pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.

"Landlords that repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions," Mamdani said. He said that renters' stories would guide the city's efforts to hold landlords accountable when they did not follow the law.

Among the tenants who spoke was Tommy Rodriguez, a wheelchair user who said he was forced to slide down the steps of his building during a monthslong elevator outage. Rodriguez said calls to building management about a repair timeline went unanswered. "This felt like a home before," Rodriguez said. He said he exterminated rodents himself using a two-by-four after one chewed through his couch cushion.

Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child's asthma. Marina Quiroz showed a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city's tenant protection office.

The tenants' building, a six-story structure near Yankee Stadium at 705 Gerard Avenue, has 72 units. Tenants visited each unit and logged conditions they described as decrepit and unusual alterations. Residents did not know the identity of their building's owner. Tenants of the building regularly experience heat and hot water outages.

Ann Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building's tenant association, spoke at the hearing. "He let me go over my three minutes," Maitin said, referring to Mamdani.

Corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies — a practice that is legal. Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed state legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners.

Building manager Binyomin Herzl said he did not own any of the properties but acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whose identities he declined to list. "There's no one landlord. It's a group of investors," Herzl said. He attributed tenants' complaints to normal wear and tear on a nearly century-old building.

Herzl said, "Mamadani should focus on improving the city's public housing, rather than going after private landlords." He added, "Our buildings look like five star hotels against his."

According to court filings, Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations in at least six Bronx buildings, and a judge found several posed an imminent hazard. According to public records, inspectors ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings listing either Herzl or David Kleiner as an owner in the last three years, and the two were billed $446,521 for those repairs. Kleiner, previously featured on the city's list of problem landlords, confirmed partial ownership of 705 Gerard Avenue but declined further comment.