Thursday, March 12, marked the 71st day of Zohran Mamdani’s term as mayor. amNewYork is following Mamdani around his first 100 days in office. We are closely tracking his progress on fulfilling campaign promises, appointing key leaders to government posts, and managing the city’s finances. Here’s a summary of what the mayor did today.
The Mamdani administration says a Bronx court has created a new enforcement template against negligent landlords by treating prolonged uncorrected apartment conditions as a public nuisance — a strategy officials say they now plan to replicate citywide.
Speaking Thursday in the rotunda of Bronx Supreme Court, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Corporation Counsel Steve Banks presented the ruling over 919 Prospect Ave. as a major escalation in how New York City will pursue landlords who allow dangerous conditions to persist.
The city said Bronx Supreme Court found that longstanding conditions at the building constituted a public nuisance under the nuisance abatement law and entered a judgment requiring the defendants to correct open violations while imposing steep civil penalties. The judgment, dated Feb. 24 and filed March 3, orders Class 1 violations corrected within 14 days and Class 2, fire, health and environmental violations corrected within 30 days.
If Class 1 violations are not corrected on time, the defendants face continuing civil penalties of $1,000 per day per violation. For uncorrected Class 2 violations, the judgment imposes $250 per month, per violation. The court also awarded the city $2,174,000 in civil penalties accrued from April 21, 2019, to April 3, 2025
A Bronx Supreme Court judge ruled that long-standing code violations at 919 Prospect Ave. constitute a public nuisance under New York City’s Nuisance Abatement Law, granting the city summary judgment, a permanent injunction and civil penalties against the building’s owners.
In a Feb. 21 decision filed March 3, Judge Marissa Soto said certified records established a prima facie case of persistent violations and held that code violations of this sort support automatic injunctive relief. Soto also found that the owners’ repeated failure to correct conditions, file certifications or appear at OATH hearings justified maximum penalties under city law.
Mamdani sees ‘landmark victory’
Calling it a “landmark victory,” Mamdani said it was “the first time that the court has levied the maximum civil penalties allowed on a landlord under the nuisance abatement law,” and said the city now has “a strong precedent to pursue the same kind of legal action” against other negligent owners.
“This decision is not just about one building,” Mamdani said. “It is a message to every landlord in this city” that City Hall will move against owners who force tenants to live in unsafe conditions. He said the city had allocated more than $85 million in its preliminary budget to add 200 attorneys and 100 support staff to the Law Department so it can take on more cases like this one.
City officials described 919 Prospect as an extreme case of prolonged neglect. Mamdani said tenants had endured infestations of mice, rats and cockroaches, leaking pipes, collapsed ceilings, black mold and lead paint. He also accused the landlord of cutting off heat in winter, locking elderly residents out of bathrooms and suspending utilities as punishment for tenants who complained. “We are not speaking about a failure of building management,” he said. “We are speaking about open contempt.”
Banks said the case signals a broader willingness by the city to use public nuisance law when housing conditions rise to the level of a wider health and safety threat. “Leaving tenants in deplorable conditions that create a public nuisance will not be tolerated,” Banks said. “The law department will be ready to take action on behalf of tenants in this city who’ve been living through deplorable conditions.”
He described the ruling as part of a “whole of government approach” involving the Buildings Department, Health Department, Fire Department and Housing Department, along with tenant-side legal advocates. Asked how the city would ensure the orders are enforced, Banks declined to spell out the next steps in detail, but said, “There are multiple ways forward,” and added, “rest assured, we will be ready.”
Tenant advocates welcomed the ruling while warning that its significance will depend on whether the city uses the same approach in other cases. “This case shows the city has more tools to hold negligent landlords accountable than it has sometimes been willing to use,” said Darius Khalil Gordon, executive director of Met Council on Housing. “When buildings are allowed to deteriorate to the point that they threaten tenants’ health and safety, that is not just a housing code issue, it becomes a public safety issue for the entire community.”
Gordon said public nuisance law could become “an important enforcement tool” in the most extreme cases of chronic disrepair, but added that “what matters now is whether the city is willing to apply this approach consistently when landlords repeatedly ignore violations.”
Landlord-side attorneys and owner groups, however, questioned whether the administration was overstating the ruling’s broader legal significance.
Jeffrey L. Goldman, a founding and co-managing partner at Belkin Burden Goldman who represents building owners in real estate litigation, said public nuisance is an available tool in severe cases but argued the city already has other ways to compel repairs and penalize bad actors through housing court and court-appointed administrators. In his view, the ruling is “more symbolic” than binding and functions largely as a political “warning shot.”
Goldman said cases like 919 Prospect are unusual and that public nuisance “doesn’t really come up” in the day-to-day run of landlord-tenant disputes. He argued that while the facts described by the city may justify an aggressive response, the same practical remedies already exist in housing court. He said public nuisance is better understood as an option for extreme, long-running neglect than as a likely day-to-day model for ordinary landlord-tenant enforcement.
Ann Korchak, board president of Small Property Owners of New York, framed the ruling as a warning sign for small landlords. Korchak said she worried the Mamdani administration would use what she called a worst-case scenario as a test case for broader action against private owners and accused City Hall of trying to “weaponize the Courts against small property owners.”
Mamdani says he’ll defend free speech for Khalil and anti-Muslim protesters alike
Speaking at the same press conference Thursday, Mayor Mamdani defended his decision to host Mahmoud Khalil and his family at an iftar at Gracie Mansion, saying, “As the mayor of New York City, I believe it is my responsibility to fight for the safety and for the rights of each and every New Yorker.”
In response to criticism for hosting the Khalil, Mamdani described the pro-Palestinian activist as “a New Yorker” who, “one year prior to the Iftar that we shared with him, was returning from another Iftar when he was detained by ICE agents, flown to Louisiana and held in an ICE facility, and he was held there for months.” He added that “the only charge that was levied against him was the exercising of his first amendment rights.”
The mayor said he has “long maintained that he and any New Yorker should be able to exercise their First Amendment rights in the city without fear of the kind of punishment that was inflicted upon” Khalil.
He then widened the point by invoking the recent anti-Muslim protest outside Gracie Mansion, saying, “as much as I abhor the views that were expressed by the protesters who set up a protest outside of Gracie Mansion in their words to protest the ‘Islamic takeover’ of New York City, the fact that they brought a goat and a bigoted display of what they viewed to be Islam, that they brought a roasted pig to my residence during the month of Ramadan, I still believe they have the right to protest, and I will still protect that right for each and every New Yorker.”
Mamdani also said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro “reached out to check in on me and on my wife,” adding that Shapiro “shared some words of support” and “made clear that Pennsylvania stands ready to help our city and our state in pursuing accountability for the two individuals who came across state lines throwing an IED.”
The two suspects accused of throwing dud bombs at protesters outside Gracie Mansion on Saturday face federal charges in what Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch described Monday as a possible “ISIS-inspired” act of terrorism. Police said the men hurled two improvised explosive devices at protesters and counter protesters gathered outside the mayoral residence during a demonstration led by far-right provocateur and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang.
