Kensington Landlord With 113 Open Violations Loses Building to Fire

HPD ordered the entire 24-unit building at 717 Avenue C in Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood vacated on September 17 after fire damage, city records show. The property’s owner of record, 707S Associates LLC, with agent Leah Klein listed on the HPD registration, was already carrying 113 open Housing Maintenance Code violations against the building before the fire.

Why it matters

Losing an entire building to a vacate order displaces every household inside at once, and 717 Avenue C’s violation history shows the fire hit a property HPD had already flagged as hazardous on a broad scale: 71 of the 113 open violations are Class C, the code’s most severe tier, more than at the Bronx building HPD vacated five days later at 1773 Vyse Avenue. For a landlord entity like 707S Associates LLC, a violation count this size ahead of a total loss is the kind of record that invites HPD’s Alternative Enforcement Program, a housing-court 7A administrator, or a forced sale, and it puts every other property tied to the same ownership group on notice for the next inspection cycle.

The numbers

HPD’s violation log shows a September 8 inspection, nine days before the vacate order, that cited apartment D2 on the fourth floor for fire damage at the ceiling, walls and floor, windows broken and sealed with plywood, in the same visit that found the unit had no working hot water, cold water, gas service to the kitchen range, or safe electric service to its outlets and switches. Of the building’s 113 total open violations, 10 are Class A, 30 are Class B and 71 are Class C, according to HPD’s Housing Maintenance Code Violations dataset queried against the building’s block and lot. The property last recorded a document in ACRIS in August 2023, a roughly $32,100 mortgage, well short of the capital a full rebuild would require.

What’s next

HPD’s registration lists Leah Klein as agent, head officer and shareholder for 707S Associates LLC, with a Brooklyn mailing address on East 19th Street. Every one of the 24 displaced households now depends on either a rapid HPD-approved repair plan or a sale of the property, since the building cannot legally be reoccupied while the vacate order and the bulk of its Class C violations stand. Whether the owner moves to rehab the structure or lists it distressed is the open question for New York investors watching Kensington’s aging walkup stock, which mirrors the pattern in the Bronx vacate at 1773 Vyse Avenue the same week: chronic violations, then a fire that forces the outcome the violation record was already pointing toward.