Mushrooms Grow Out Of The Walls In 'Dangerous' NYC Building

NEW YORK CITY — When Jillian Heft spied a mushroom growing from the wall of her East Village apartment, there was only one thing she could do.

“I couldn’t stop laughing, the first one,” she told Patch. "They basically keep dying and growing back.”

But the mushrooms cap what Heft and her fellow say isn’t a laughing matter — the dangerous and squalid conditions within their building at 331 E. 14th St. that they say are caused by their notorious landlord's neglect.

"A lot has happened, I don’t even know where to go with this story, there’s just so much," Heft said.

A 'Good Deal' Gone Bad

A civil court petition Heft and seven of her neighbors filed against their landlord — Daniel Ohebshalom, who is also known as Dan Shalom — reads like a laundry list of New York City renters' worst nightmares.

Two ceilings collapsed in recent months, rodents roam the building, and the front door's lock is so shoddy that squatters were able to freely enter and take over "nearly every vacant apartment" in the 24-unit building, where they did drugs, urinated and defecated with abandon, according to court documents.

Ohebshalom's attorney Simon Reiff, who has denied the accusations in court filings, didn't respond to Patch's request for comment.

Heft, who works in public relations, never dreamed she'd face these conditions when two years ago she thought she scored a "good deal" lease.

The rent was cheap — about $1,600 — for a prime East Village location, she said. And, based on the flow of people Heft saw walking the halls, it seemed like she had a lot of neighbors.

"Turns out they actually weren't," Heft said. "They were intruders staying in vacant units.”

Only 10 people, including Heft, actually legally live in the building, Heft said she quickly learned.

A broken front door — which the building's management failed to adequately fix, despite many desperate pleas — served as a welcome mat for intruders and intruders-turned-squatters, Heft said. The unwelcome visitors destroyed mailboxes, leaving tenants unable to receive packages and mail, she said.

Human feces and drug paraphernalia became common sights, Heft said.

"People came to know our building as one you can break into and one that you could sleep in,” she said.

"A lot has happened, I don’t even know where to go with this story, there’s just so much."

Tenants grew afraid to walk their own hallways, Heft said.

Without a live-in superintendent and a building manager located in California, Heft said little was done to fix the front door, or anything else.

And Heft said calling the police by herself was a fraught endeavor because the building doesn't have a working intercom.

"Therefore," said Heft, "the intruder can see I’m the person who snitched on them.”

Banding Together

Heft and her neighbors eventually banded together and refused to pay rent, the East Village tenant told Patch.

“If me and my neighbors don’t fight back against this slumlord, Daniel Ohebshalom," Heft said, "Then who will?”

They got help from Good Old Lower East Side and TakeRoot Justice, but their landlord — Ohebshalom — isn't a stranger to a legal fight.

Ohebshalom is a scion of a real estate family — some say slumlords — with a long trail of complaints of harassment, mismanagement and neglect in New York City. He and companies linked to him were listed on the New York City Public Advocate’s worst landlords list in 2015 and in 2018.

Just last year, a group of Queens tenants sued Ohebshalom's company after their building filled with rodents, burst pipes and piles of trash.

Fred Magovern, an attorney with TakeRoot Justice, said the East Village lawsuit is trying a now-rare path to hold Ohebshalom accountable.

Under what's called a "7A proceeding," Magovern is effectively asking a judge to appoint a rent administrator who, for all intents and purposes, will take the place of the landlord.

“It’s meant to be a temporary displacement of the landlord, so they don’t just pocket the money and not carry out their duties as a landlord,” he said.

Originally known as the "rent strike law," 7A was set up decades ago when tenants en masse withhold paying slumlords who saw more profit in letting buildings fall apart than fixing them, Magovern said.

But such proceedings have become difficult to pursue, mostly because they need one-third of tenants in occupied units to agree, Magovern said. There are also loopholes that can benefit landlords at the 11th hour, he said.

"It’s barely used," Magovern said. "It’s very, very rare,”

Still, Magovern wagered that a 7A "escalation" could still provide help Heft and her neighbors. It argues that the landlords failed to address conditions within the building are "dangerous" to the life, health and safety of tenants.

A trial in the case is scheduled for Nov. 28 — a proceeding that will unfold after legal foot-dragging by Ohebshalom and his attorney that Magovern openly questioned in a spate of court filings.

“They do a pretty good job of walking just up to the line,” Magovern said. “And it’s an abysmal line.”

As for the mushrooms, they keep growing out of Heft's bathroom wall. She strongly suspects an unfixed leak from the roof is feeding the fungi as water frequently gushes from the wall far from her sink.

“The most recent one was this weekend," Heft said. "It was quite large.”