A Bronx apartment building Mayor Mamdani showcased to highlight the talents of his new housing commissioner has accumulated almost 200 unresolved violations — including citations for broken doors, broken refrigerators, rat and roach infestation, and potentially hazardous mold.
That is the conclusion of an exclusive New York Post investigation of the nonprofit-owned and operated building in Morris Heights that the newly elected mayor cited to “highlight the talents” of his new housing commissioner, Dina Levy.
“The 102-unit building at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in Morris Heights as of Saturday had a staggering 194 open housing-code violations dating back to 2016 — including 88 “Class C” violations considered “immediately hazardous,” the Post reported Sunday, citing city records.
Mamdani visited the “affordable-housing ” complex on January 4 to introduce Levy, 54, whom the report described as a “longtime tenant’s rights advocate” and former state housing official, naming her Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) commissioner.
Dina Levy, commissioner of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD), center, and Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, right, during a news conference in the Bronx borough of New York, on Sunday, January 4, 2026. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Levy, who reportedly will be paid a $277,605 annual salary, helped make the 2011 deal for nonprofit Workforce Housing Advisors to buy and rehab the Sedgwick Avenue complex from private landlords.
Tenants, however, aren’t so happy with their nonprofit landlord and say things were better when the apartments building was privately owned.
“Since [the nonprofit] took over, the building has deteriorated,” 25-year tenant Mordistine Alexander, 49, told the Post. “They lack porters. No one is maintaining it, and the complaints fall on deaf ears – especially if you complain a lot.”
She has a lengthy list. Renting her three-bedroom apartment since 1999, she said the unit routinely has no heat or hot water, has a crumbling bathroom and kitchen, and its windows need to be replaced.
Alexander is among the dozens of tenants whose units have open HPD violations. She also complained the nonprofit does a poor job of screening potential renters, which apparently has resulted in difficult neighbors.
The complaints and violations by Alexander and her fellow tenants are a sharp contrast to Democratic Socialist Mamdani’s campaign promise to provide good, affordable housing to struggling New Yorkers.
He named Levy, the daughter of two high-powered Washington, DC, lawyers, to replace private landlords with nonprofits wherever possible.
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HPD defended Levy’s involvement in the sale of the Sedgwick Avenue building to the nonprofit group.
“When the building was at risk of being purchased by a predatory buyer, Dina Levy organized alongside the tenants and kept the building affordable,” agency spokesman Matt Rauschenbach told the Post.
The spokesman added, “And now the building is undergoing an $8 million preservation renovation to improve conditions and make sure it is a safe, affordable place for the tenants who live there to call home.”
However, according to Kenny Burgos, a former Bronx Democrat assemblyman, the Sedgwick Avenue site has more open HPD violations than roughly three-quarters of the privately owned, rent-stabilized buildings in New York City. Burgos heads the New York Apartment Association that represents landlords of rent-stabilized units.
He told the tabloid that Mamdani’s showcase building is not an exception, but the rule when it comes to apartments owned and run by nonprofit landlords.
Nonprofit-managed housing “consistently run higher violation counts despite having government-backed loans and [being eligible to avoid] paying property taxes, so they should have a lot more freed-up cash to make these buildings run efficiently, and yet are unable to do so — even with good intentions and no goal of profit,” Burgos said.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more
