Landlord of Burned Bronx Building Sued to Stop Heat Monitoring
Hundreds of tenants were displaced after a fire ripped through the top floor of 2910 Wallace Ave. in The Bronx, Jan. 14, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Ved Parkash had 10 properties put in a city housing agency program to track temperatures in chronically cold apartments. One just caught fire, leaving more than 250 homeless.
This article originally appeared in The City.
BRONX - The landlord whose Bronx building burned in a five-alarm fire Friday fought the city’s housing agency in court last year in an unsuccessful bid to exit a city program that requires monitoring for landlords with chronic heat complaints.
Landlord Ved Parkash owns 2910 Wallace Avenue, a now burnt-out 98-unit apartment building in the Allerton neighborhood of The Bronx, just east of the New York Botanical Garden.
That apartment building, along with nine others owned by Parkash, is one of 50 currently assigned to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s Heat Sensors Program, which requires landlords with the most violations and complaints to put monitors in each apartment that automatically send temperature data.
Landlords of buildings in the program must notify all tenants of the monitoring and give them an opportunity to opt out. Landlords must also report the heat sensors’ locations and readings to HPD, which is required to conduct heat-related inspections of the buildings at least once every two weeks.
Failure to install the sensors in each apartment or provide them with adequate heat could result in penalties of thousands of dollars for the landlords, depending on the type and amount of violations.
While the FDNY is still investigating the blaze’s cause, displaced residents said some tenants used space heaters and stoves to keep their apartments warm, a potential fire risk. The Red Cross is providing temporary shelter to 87 households consisting of 252 residents, including 58 children.
Nearby, in an adjacent Parkash building also enrolled in HPD’s program, residents said they also contend with inconsistent heat.
“We struggle with heat a lot. We don’t got no hot water right now. Yesterday, we had no heat; the day before, we had no heat,” said one tenant, Shaquille Cassanova. “The water been going out since winter started. Every now and then you get hot water.”
Cassanova, 28, said he wasn’t aware of a heat sensor in the apartment he shared with his mother. Another tenant, who declined to provide their name, said they did have a sensor installed.
The Wallace Ave. building had one still-open HPD heat violation as of Dec. 16, and 11 total since the start of 2022, city records show.
The adjacent Parkash building, 2911 Barnes Avenue, has two open violations, and 11 total since 2022.
‘Important Public Safety Concern’
In September 2024, Parkash and several associated LLCs sued HPD to challenge his buildings’ inclusion in the program, alleging the agency failed to “sufficiently inform” him why they’d been selected and therefore did not “satisfy minimum due process necessary.” The lawsuit stated he could face initial civil penalties as much as $2.9 million plus an additional $5.1 million for each day out of compliance.
By November, a judge denied Parkash’s petition and ordered him to comply with the Heat Sensors Program by this Wednesday. The fire at 2910 Wallace took place five days before that deadline.
“The costs imposed are directly tied to ensuring that tenants receive adequate heat during the winter months, a legitimate and important public safety concern,” Judge Raymond Fernandez wrote in his decision.
According to HPD, Parkash submitted some of the necessary documentation last Thursday, the day before the fire, showing progress toward compliance.
A Parkash Management spokesperson said in a statement that all buildings in its portfolio had been outfitted with heat sensors prior to HPD implementing the program, and that the company is “committed to meeting our obligations as affordable housing providers in some of the most underserved communities in The Bronx.”
Parkash is well known to tenant organizers in The Bronx. The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and Community Action for Safe Apartments have been working with residents of the landlord’s buildings for more than a decade, including on heat outages.
“Issues like rodent infestations and other safety, health hazards are increasingly a higher priority in Parkash buildings,” said Edward Garcia, organizing co-director of the coalition. “Heat is such a seasonal issue it’s harder for people to stake an organizing campaign around, but we’ve had issues with sufficient heat and hot water.”
Parkash, who topped the Public Advocate’s office “worst landlords” list in 2015 for the sheer number of housing code violations in his properties, has been the subject of multiple lawsuits filed by tenants over the years. In 2023, tenants in Jamaica, Queens, sued for repairs, in a case that is still ongoing. That same year, tenants in The Bronx alleged he harassed them and subleased rent-stabilized apartments to charge more than the legal rent, which resulted in a restraining order against Parkash and his associates.
Struggling for Solutions
Space heaters have proved deadly in recent incidents. Just three days before the fire at 2910 Wallace Ave, one person died in a Washington Heights fire that originated with space heaters plugged into extension cords, according to the FDNY.
A malfunctioning space heater was the source of the devastating Twin Parks fire in early 2022, which killed 17 people. After that catastrophe, Rep. Ritchie Torres and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a bill to require federally assisted rental apartments to install temperature sensors, but it did not advance.
In 2023, a report from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander found that the Northwest Bronx led the city in heat complaints. The report recommended scaling up the Heat Sensors Program, among other actions, to prevent potentially dangerous situations from desperate tenants using space heaters or stoves to warm their homes.
The program was created through legislation introduced in 2018 by Torres, then a City Council member, at the request of then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who’d previously partnered with a nonprofit called Heat Seek NYC to pilot its sensors.
“The heat sensors program is a necessary but insufficient condition for holding the worst landlords like Ved Parkash accountable,” Torres said in a statement on Monday. “There is a need for federal legislation that makes the installation of heat sensors in buildings like 2910 Wallace Avenue a condition of receiving federal funds from programs like Section 8. Without a robust enforcement mechanism, heat sensors on their own will only take us so far.”
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