- A landlord who owned a condo at 165 Henry Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side is facing up to $144,750 in fines for illegally renting out nine micro-apartments built inside one condo.
- On Wednesday, NYC's Department of Buildings sent inspectors to the condo after a 311 complaint that alleged the landlord had erected additional apartments between the fourth and fifth floor.
- The landlord had split the condo horizontally to build nine illegal single-occupancy rooms with 4.5 to 6-foot ceilings.
- The situation that investigators stumbled upon is being compared to a scene from the 1999 indie film "Being John Malkovich,"
- During the investigation, another landlord was discovered to have built a similar schematic on the top floor of the building, for which fines of up to $139,750 are being pursued.
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The situation investigators from the NYC Department of Buildings (DOB) stumbled upon at 165 Henry Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side resembled a scene from the 1996 indie film "Being John Malkovich," Manhattan Councilman Ben Kallos said, according to The Daily Mail.
Two Manhattan landlords appeared to have constructed and rented out illegal sub-units in two properties in the same building until Wednesday, when DOB personnel responded to a 311 call about the situation, a spokesperson for the Department of Buildings told INSIDER.
The caller complained that a landlord, later found to be Xue Ping Ni, had erected illegal subdivisions in an apartment between the building's fourth and fifth floors. Investigators discovered that Ni had divided the existing 634-square-foot unit horizontally to construct nine single-occupancy rooms attached with an illegal staircase, according to the Daily Mail.
The nine illegal units had no windows, sprinklers, or fire safety systems, and posed an immediate risk to its tenants.
The New York Post reported that the units had been rented out to 11 tenants, and as one unnamed tenant left with suitcase in hand, he said he was charged $600 in rent for each month for the last two months he lived in the space.
The resulting ceilings were between 4.5 and 6 feet tall, with short door frames that inspectors had to crouch down on their knees to access. In addition to illegal structural work, the DOB told INSIDER that Ni had performed un-permitted electrical and plumbing work in the condo.
The low ceilings of the units located between two of the building's floors were compared to a scene in "Being John Malkovich," in which John Cusack's character has a job interview at an office on the fictional 7th 1/2 floor of a building, and needs to crouch down in order to enter a short door frame into an equally squat office space.
"This is like the room out of the movie 'Being John Malkovich,'" Kallos said, according to the Daily Mail. "It was funny in fiction, but a horror story in real life."
The DOB issued Ni 11 violations, one for each room, one for work without a permit, and one for failure to maintain the building. He is facing up to $144,750 in fines, with additional daily penalties of $1,000 a room for up to 45 days until the conditions are fixed.
"Every New Yorker deserves a safe and legal place to live, which is why we're committed to routing out dangerous firetraps and ordering the landlords to make these apartments safe," a statement from the DOB provided to INSIDER said.
"Tenants living in truncated windowless dwelling units like this poses an extreme hazard to their safety, as well as the safety of their neighbors, and first responders. Dangerous living conditions like this cannot be tolerated in our city, and we are holding these landlords accountable for their egregious failure to keep the building safe and livable for tenants."
The Daily Mail reported that both condo units, with Ni's being unit no. 601, and another landlord, Jin Ya Lin, owning unit no. 701, had been discovered because stacked air conditioning units were observable from the street below.
Lin faces 10 violations and fines up to $139,750 for nine similarly structured units that posed immediate risks to tenants.
All the tenants from both condo units were evacuated with assistance from the American Red Cross.
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