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Meet the Midtown residents paying $3,200 a month to share a building with squatters
By
Charles Lane
Published Feb 17, 2025
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Charles Lane/Gothamist
By
Charles Lane
Published Feb 17, 2025
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Midtown residents paying $3,200 a month for one-bedroom apartments say they share their buildings with squatters and people using drugs in communal spaces, and their landlord isn't doing anything about it.
Tenants in at least eight apartment buildings on 49th Street, a block from the tourist trappings of Times Square, say they’ve made frequent complaints to their landlord, police and the district attorney’s office about the illegal activity. Still, they say, the problems persist because the neighborhood is overrun with visible drug use and the landlord hasn’t made what they call simple fixes to building security.
In the last three months, these buildings and the area around them have been the locations of at least one homicide, a fire and multiple drug and trespassing arrests, according to police. Residents describe a street of lawlessness in one of the priciest zip codes in the world. They say the problems include missing locks and windows, broken buzzers and infestations.
Meanwhile, police say they can address individual complaints but that there’s little they can do to stop the larger problem without the cooperation from either the landlord or the housing department and other city agencies that could force the landlord to address hundreds of city violations.
Numerous messages left with the building’s management company, Nieuw Amsterdam Managment, its owner and its owner’s lawyers were not returned.
The issues consumed the majority of a late January NYPD Midtown North precinct meeting where Deputy Inspector Robert Gault said there’s little police can do.
“Building owners have a responsibility to operate a safe building,” he said. “We’re going to be bringing various agencies and holding them to account with some of these issues.”
Gault said that he had hoped to post more police officers on the block, but a new effort to push more officers into the subway system prevented him from doing so.
Zhanique Phyall pays $3,500 a month and complains squatters have taken over several apartments in her building.
Charles Lane / Gothamist
Residents of the buildings on W. 49th St. told Gothamist that while police have tried to help, the main problem is the building’s management company’s lack of security measures.
“It’s like living in prison,” resident Jason Burke said. “People are doing their drugs in the hall, standing in your way looking at you like they are going to beat you up.”
Burke said he has lived in the building for eight years and that it turned bad in 2023. He showed Gothamist videos of him confronting a woman who admitted she didn’t live in the building. He and other residents showed Gothamist dozens of videos and photos of disoriented people appearing to smoke drugs in the halls, people sleeping on stairs, blood splattered walls and feces and syringes on the floor.
“ They come in. They do their drugs. They eat their food, throw it around, and they just lay there asleep all night,” Burke said. “Cops would come and clean them up sometimes, but then it was so bad they wouldn't even come. The cops stopped coming.”
Burke, a 55-year-old investor, said he pays $3,200 a month in rent.
Unique Walker, who lives in a neighboring building, said her home was burglarized twice while she was staying with her mom while recovering from childbirth. She said her window didn’t lock, and her full-size bed, bed frame, couch, clothes and bathroom mirror were all stolen through the window.
“The people kicked my AC in in the back room, and they came in and took all of my stuff,” Walker, 25, said. “They took it out through the fire escape.”
In December, Walker said, she came home to find a man wearing “black and dingy” clothes sleeping on her living room floor.
”We made eye contact. I said, 'Listen, just get out. Just get out,'” she said. “I'm done crying. I'm done shedding my tears.”
After she complained to her landlord about windows that didn’t lock on the fire escape, the super screwed the windows shut, Walker said. She showed Gothamist windows with several screws in the frame blocking the exit to the fire escape.
Unique Walker says her landlord screwed shut the windows leading to the fire escape in order to prevent people from entering her apartment.
Charles Lane / Gothamist
Burke, Walker and numerous others said that in addition to unabated drug use in the neighborhood, the main problem is people gaining illegal access to the building.
According to city records, the buildings’ head officer is Matthew Keller, who is listed as a partner at Black Spruce Management. Records show he runs hundreds of buildings in the city.
Emily Tuttle, a spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, said the DA is working with police and other city agencies “alongside community members to improve public safety and quality of life in Midtown, including through the newly expanded Midtown Community Improvement Coalition.”
Zhanique Phyall, 26, works for the MTA and said she has lived in the building for four years. She’s outraged at paying $3,500 a month to live above squatters who she says recently tried to cook in a vacant unit and started a fire.
The most important fix she wants is better security.
“ I work from home now because I'm scared to go work because I don't want them to break into my apartment,” she said.
Tagged
public safety
manhattan
Charles Lane
Charles is a Day-of reporter focused on breaking news and enterprise. He’s very friendly and can be reached at [email protected], or more securely on whatsapp/signal 631-295-6715
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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