A Broken Front Door, a Worst-Landlord Ranking, and Tenants Who Refuse to Leave

The front door at 2342 Atlantic Avenue has been broken for months. Residents say ICE agents have walked into the building more than once. A cabinet fell off the bathroom wall during a council visit. Rats chewed through the wiring of a tenant’s motorcycle in the back lot. On the fifth floor, Michelle Campbell keeps plastic sheeting ready for the next rainstorm because her ceiling still leaks through what she calls a “dry weather building.”

On Monday afternoon, tenants of the 24-unit rent-stabilized building in Cypress Hills stepped outside with a bullhorn and a demand: that the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development make this address a priority, and that its landlord, Joseph Safdie, stop running out the clock on the people who live here.

“We’re proud to stand here,” said Council Member Sandy Nurse, who represents District 37. “This building needs attention and it needs resources. The owner of this building, the landlord Joseph Safdie, is a slumlord. He is number 62 on New York City’s worst landlords watch list. He has over 500 open violations across many buildings.”

Public records confirm the pattern. According to JustFix’s Who Owns What database, 2342 Atlantic Avenue has 58 open HPD violations, 1,148 lifetime violations, 62 eviction filings, and 11 evictions executed at the property. The building is registered to 2342 ATLANTIC 22 LLC, with Safdie listed as head officer and JSAF Management LLC as the corporation of record. Safdie appears on the 2025 Worst Landlord Watchlist published by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, tied to five buildings and 56 units across his portfolio.

Eyewitness News reported on conditions here in January when residents were without heat during a cold snap. Eight months later, tenants say the underlying failures have not been fixed — they have multiplied.

“We’ve been eleven months without gas, without heat, without hot water”

Darnell Ellis has lived at 2342 Atlantic since 2023. He stepped up to the mic in a Ninja 650 riding jacket and laid out the ledger:

“We’ve been eleven months without gas, without heat, without hot water. We had to buy heaters, and they’re not trying to reimburse us for any of that. We have the rat problem. My bike sitting back there — the electrical wires all bit up because of the rat problem. We got roaches. We got flies in the building. The elevator’s always out. We got elderly and disabled people in the building. This is not right. It’s not fair.”

Ellis said he has stayed and organized instead of leaving. “If we move, what’s gonna happen to the next people that move in? I wouldn’t feel right letting other people go through what I’m going through, living in this building.”

Michelle Campbell, in apartment 5B, described the same three years from the top floor. “When it’s weather like this, we good. The minute rain begins to fall, it becomes like a strain. Water leaks all over. I’m on the fifth floor, so the roof is above me. You make reports and nobody comes. They come in and they fix inside, but they’re not fixing the main problem, which is on top.”

A third tenant, who declined to give her full name, walked reporters to a first-floor window her son had lived behind. The glass has been out for roughly six months. Trash was lined up outside her apartment door. She said rent on her unit runs about $2,600 a month and that a housing court date is scheduled for November over back rent she disputes.

A safety failure that goes beyond code

Nurse said her office first visited the building about a month ago after being contacted by UHAB, the citywide tenant-organizing nonprofit. What she saw in the hallway is what most of the coverage of this address has led with — roaches, mold, water damage, a filthy elevator. What she pushed harder on Monday was the door.

“Because the door doesn’t work, ICE has been in the building multiple times, and this puts everybody there at risk,” Nurse said. “This is a reckless, dangerous situation. The failure of the landlord to address these things is causing the tenants to be unsafe.”

An unlocked entry converts a maintenance failure into a civil-safety failure. In a building where the majority of tenants are immigrants and long-term working-class Brooklynites, an open front door is not a nuisance. It is a threat.

The Borough President’s office signs on

Deputy Borough President Rev. Kim Council, speaking on behalf of Borough President Antonio Reynoso, told the crowd the office would stand with the tenants “every single step of the way.”

“Healthy, safe, and dignified housing is a basic human right,” Council said. “An apartment without basic utilities in a deteriorating building is not healthy. It is not safe. It is not dignified. To JSAF Management, we are calling on you to respond to the demand letter, to the rent reduction, without delay.”

Council thanked the East Brooklyn Housing Task Force and named three tenant leaders — Darnell, Andrea, and Jennifer — for organizing publicly. She said she grew up in HUD-subsidized housing herself: “I know what it’s like to have things break down and to have people act like they don’t care.”

What the tenants are asking for

The rally produced a specific, checkable list of asks:

• HPD prioritization. Nurse’s office is calling on the agency to treat 2342 Atlantic Avenue as a priority case rather than one more address in an enforcement queue.
• A response from JSAF Management to the tenants’ demand letter and their request for a rent reduction, without further delay.
• Repairs to the front door and utility-room access that would end the pattern of unauthorized entry.
• Real repairs to the roof, plumbing, gas service, and pest infestation — not cosmetic patches that fail with the next rain.
• No retaliation against tenants who are organizing publicly.

Whether the building meets the criteria for HPD’s Alternative Enforcement Program, which places the worst-conditioned buildings under heightened city oversight, is a question Nurse said she could not answer at the rally without seeing the class-by-class breakdown of the property’s open violations. It is the right question, and it is the one HPD should now answer on the record.

Why this rally matters beyond one building

Safdie is not the top of the Worst Landlord Watchlist — that distinction went to Margaret Brunn this year, with 24 buildings and 4,872 open violations. He sits at #62. But the story at 2342 Atlantic Avenue is what a rank in the middle of the list actually feels like to the people paying rent inside it: years of unresolved complaints, a building operated through an LLC, an eviction docket that outnumbers the units, and a tenant body that has decided the fight is worth more than the exit.

Nurse closed the rally with a note to the tenants themselves: “This is the first rally. You all did a really great job. It takes a lot to get coordinated and come out here and do this. We’re at the start of a long process. Please do not give up on this process.”

About the reporting. Public-record figures on 2342 Atlantic Avenue are drawn from JustFix’s Who Owns What, the 2025 NYC Worst Landlord Watchlist, and prior on-site reporting by ABC7 Eyewitness News. Tenant quotations are from a September 8, 2026 rally recorded by The East New York Times. Elected-official titles and jurisdictions were confirmed through the NYC Council and the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office.