Kelly Kreth was living the Manhattan dream. Ten years ago, she lucked into a rent-stabilized apartment in a concierge elevator building in Yorkville. Her current rent is only $2,105.42 per month.
In its 1964 white-brick building, comparable market-rate apartments rent in the mid-$3,000s. Her house – decorated in black, white and red – was as immaculate as she was.
Last fall, the dream was shattered.
Kreth is incapacitated by Lyme disease, and her neurological symptoms — fatigue, tinnitus, neuropathy, dizziness, numbness, burning pain — flared up, she told The Post. It turns out that in the winter, testing revealed mold in both her urine and her apartment.
Last month, Kreth filed two lawsuits against its owner, Solil Management. It is one of the city’s largest and wealthiest landlords, founded by the late real estate tycoon Sol Goldman and currently controlled by his daughter Jane Goldman.
Legal documents allege the landlord refuses to properly remediate the mold or provide alternative accommodation.
Kreth — a veteran self-employed publicist and freelance writer — had the PTAC heating and cooling units replaced and the mold in her unit thoroughly cleaned by a licensed mold remediator. She found the response from the owner, Solil Management, inadequate, according to court documents.
An email from property manager Samuel Mahabir said the management’s mold assessor found slightly high readings in the bathroom and the landlord would deep clean the bathroom and perform “standard maintenance and cleaning” of PTAC units, as seen by Post office.
The parties repeatedly disagreed on how extensive the work should be.
“Since March, we have acted quickly to address Ms. Kreth’s concerns about the conditions in her apartment,” Solil Management said in a statement to The Post.
“We hired a licensed mold inspection company, offered to clean her PTAC units and bathroom, replace floor tiles, replace PTAC units, and offered an appropriate rent reduction. Despite multiple attempts to assign a time for this work, Ms. Kreth refused access to replace the PTAC units until July 25th, when Ms. Kreth has not yet given us access to perform the other repairs.”
The repairs the landlord is asking to make are inadequate, Kreth said. “Initially, the landlord refused anything other than using unlicensed construction personnel to remediate the mold. I requested a full repair several times and was denied. They offered nothing for property damage or medical compensation. They have presented no plan and provided me with no expert to tell me how to take care of my contaminated property.”
Furthermore, requests for access and repairs often came at short notice or on unacceptable terms. “They say they’ll only make things right if I confess all my grievances and don’t sue,” Kreth said in reference to an email reviewed by The Post.
As for the rent reduction, the property manager initially offered $70 a day, Kreth said — but yesterday, the landlord’s lawyer, Kunal Yadav, emailed her and her lawyer saying there was never any agreement on a reduction such. “You are responsible for the rent,” he wrote in the first email from The Post and asked for proof of escrow rent payments.
In late June, the heating and cooling units broke down. For Kreth, it was a “great flood”; to management, it was a “minor leak”.
The apartment smelled swampy and rotten, Kreth said. As her symptoms worsened, she says she was forced to stay elsewhere — a combination of hotels and friends’ couches — sometimes sending her dachshund, Biggie, to expensive boarding or daycare.
The owner’s attorney, Yadav, called Krethi’s demands “unreasonable,” writing that “your furniture is not dilapidated or damaged” and the heating and cooling units “are fully functional,” as seen in an email reviewed by The Post.
Legal documents claim Kreth’s heating and cooling units showed “17 types of toxic mold, some at levels 1,000 times safe for a healthy person.” She requested a “full and licensed mold remediation.”
The owner said Kreth collected her own mold samples instead of using a specialist. The owner further said his mold results were confidential and declined to share them with The Post.
Yadav wrote to Krethi that, before making repairs and addressing the mold concerns, the landlord would require her to drop all complaints with “any court and/or enforcement agency,” the message said.
Dr. Exposure to mold “exacerbates her disabling illness,” he wrote, and “immediate sanitation, while she lives in a space free of visible water damage or mold, is a medical necessity.”
Kreth’s invisible condition causes “severe sensory disturbances,” said Galland, who specializes in immune disorders. “Her things may have been infected with mold. Some things may be impossible to clean. It’s not a trivial problem.”
Kreth receives periodic infusions of gamma globulin immunotherapy. Her insurance covers the expensive treatment only if it is administered by a home nurse who monitors her vital signs. The owner’s actions, she said, “have threatened my health and life-sustaining medical care.”
Certain levels of mold and mycotoxins — the poisonous byproducts of mold — are not harmful to people with healthy immune systems, said Kreth’s personal injury attorney, Richard Hershman. “But Kelly has special immune conditions that make her more susceptible than other people. Kelly has lost her entire life. The apartment is uninhabitable.”
Solil — which owns multiple apartment buildings in Manhattan — has also refused to move him to a comparable unit, Hershman said. (Representatives for Solil did not respond when asked for comment.)
“I have been dealing with molds for over 30 years. This is one of the worst I have seen. People are suffering terribly.”
Kreth, 54 — who writes for her local site East Side Feed — was bitten by a tick 13 years ago in Montauk, she said, and later developed the classic bullseye rash. She moved to her Yorkville building because she had trouble climbing the stairs in her previous Hell’s Kitchen building.
“I can’t carry things, so the elevator is not a luxury for me,” she said. “It is a necessity. I thought this was my forever home. I’m losing everything I have.”
In the city’s brutal housing market, the apartments she can afford tend to be walk-up high-rises or otherwise substandard.
An unsafe home has long-term consequences, Kreth said. “The owner has the power to destroy someone’s life. I am physically sick and financially ruined. I am mad with worry.”
City records show violations in her unit for less than 10 square feet of visible mold, which under city law “may not be such an essential condition,” said real estate attorney Stewart Wurtzel of Tane Waterman & Wurtzel, who is not involved in the case.
Typically, a judge relies on the city inspector’s report, which “may not do the greatest job in the world,” he said. “The tenant has the right to prove that there are conditions over and above what the inspector reported.”
The case becomes “a battle of the experts,” he said. “The tenant would hire her own mold expert and the landlord would bring in his own and say it’s not that bad, and the court has to determine who to believe.”
A tenant with a disability has a right to a reasonable accommodation. Such accommodation “is very fact-intensive,” Wurtzel said. “The city’s Human Rights Commission seeks a cooperative dialogue between the two parties. Just because the condition is rare doesn’t mean the owner can ignore it.”
For less than 10 square meters of mold, a building can correct itself.
“While I understand the law says that under 10 feet of mold does not require full remediation, reasonable accommodation for my disability does,” Kreth said.
Proper remediation is a big job, requiring raising the floor and baseboards, using humidifiers and air cleaners and treating surfaces with biocides, said mold inspector Thomas Madigan of Pristine Inspection Associates, who also is not included in this case.
“Long-term exposure is bad,” he said. “I keep a respirator in my car.”
A separate mold lawsuit was filed by a former tenant who moved out last winter, citing complaints to the super that the heating and cooling system “was infested with mold due to lack of proper cleaning and maintenance.”
Last week, in an effort to save some possessions, Kreth tried to hire a moving company to move some items into storage.
The company sent an appraiser but was reluctant to take the job. “After spending 10-15 minutes at your house, he started having a headache and was feeling bad,” the foreman wrote to Kreti.
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