Does the NY Housing Department always help the tenants? Can we get rid of trouble making tenants?

My family has owned this apartment building ever since I was born so about 19 years now. However, when we moved in, there were already two families living in the apartments. I think they have lived there way before my family moved in. However, there's this one family that is causing a lot of trouble. We do not charge them a lot of rent. Its roughly $600 for a month in NY. They keep calling the housing department about ridiculous things. For instance, they wanted us to fix a leak in the ceiling and we were supposed to fix it the next day, except it was raining and the tenant said that he understood it couldn't be fixed until it stopped. Then the next time we asked to fix it, he said he was busy. The next thing I know is that he called the housing department saying that we refused to fix it. In addition to that, our building is a lot warmer than normal buildings because we have the heat on for 3 hours 3 times a day which is more than enough for 50 degree weather (It is ridiculously hot in the building, my friends are always complaining about the heat cus we always have to open the heat.). However, they still call the housing department on us saying we do not open the heat. This one time we noticed that when we went upstairs to check the leak, that family had all their windows open and the whole family was wearing short sleeved t-shirts. Is there anyway to get rid of these tenants. We tried offering them some money to leave but they told us that they wouldn't leave unless we paid them $10,000 which is ridiculous for a apartment that's only 1BR, 1BR, 1KITCHEN. P.S They have one daughter that's physically ill that doesn't live with them anymore. The husband is unemployed, the wife works, and the other daughter is just horrible. She did time for trying to sell drugs to an undercover cop and things of that sort. So basically only the mother is working. We have to charge them the rent that high because the other family that lives in the building is all unemployed and the mother is really old and her two middle aged daughter and son just really wore her out with their problems over the years so we only charge them $310 a month. However, the do not cause any problems and will vouch for us that we have gone beyond the duties of a landlord/super to help the tenants out.

3 weeks ago - 1 answers