Manhattan Bed Bug Registry Infestation Maps, Residential and Hotel

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In addition to owning dozens of buildings used as shelters, Mr. Levitan has another source of steady revenue: He operates a for-profit maintenance company, Liberty One, that performs upkeep at many of his properties. At the building he bought in 2018 in College Point, Queens, the maintenance company was paid more than $800,000 in the last fiscal year money that also comes from the city, according to budget documents.

City contracting rules require the nonprofit groups running shelters to control costs by soliciting at least three independent bids for services. But in two cases identified in an independent audit and a lease Mr. Levitan required nonprofit groups to use his company without bidding, The Times found.

Mr. Levitan said there was zero requirement that nonprofit groups hire his company. However, Mr. McGinn, the city spokesman, said a review, done in response to questions from The Times, had discovered such a provision in one groups lease. He called the arrangement inappropriate and said it would be changed.

Mr. Levitan also owns an extermination company used in at least one of the new shelters, according to city records and a corporate disclosure. When ants infested some rooms in the building in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the Bronx, his company, Squash Exterminating, was called in to help.

Mr. Levitan said he started both the maintenance and the extermination company to streamline operations and provide better services.

In the more than two decades that he has been enmeshed in New Yorks homelessness machinery, Mr. Levitan has been repeatedly accused of neglect and poor conditions at some of his buildings.

In 2014, elected officials battled a plan to open a permanent shelter in Elmhurst, Queens, in the former Pan American hotel, which was owned by a limited liability company connected to Mr. Levitan. Residents of that building, which housed hundreds of homeless families, reported infestations of bedbugs, peeling lead paint and a lack of heat or hot water. The New York Daily News published a video, provided by tenants, of a growing horde of rats near a childrens play area.

Read more from the original source:
To Open Homeless Shelters, N.Y.C. Relied on Landlord With Checkered History - The New York Times

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