The Bronx District Attorney’s Office is launching an investigation into the landlord of the building where two young sisters died tragically after a radiator spewed scalding steam into their enclosed bedroom, officials said Thursday.
The probe by DA Darcel Clark will target landlord Moshe Piller and his property at 720 Hunts Point Ave., where the Ambrose siblings perished — and where the city had placed them and four other homeless families despite Piller’s spotty track record.
The Brooklyn-based landlord owns 62 buildings that have 2,991 open violations — a ratio of roughly one violation per unit that Housing Commissioner Vicki Been said “is not unusually high.”
Piller had previously landed twice on the city’s worst landlord list compiled by Public Advocate Letitia James — making the top 10 in 2014 and 2015 based on total violation count.
The Post identified at least three other Bronx buildings owned by Piller with a significant number of violations where the city has been placing the homeless, a practice that’s questioned by lawyers who have dealt with the landlord.
“Our position is that the city shouldn’t be housing families in buildings where there’s hundreds of violations or where landlords are being sued repeatedly,” said Carolyn Norton of Bronx Legal Services, which represents tenants at two rent-stabilized buildings that have sued Piller within the last year.
At one of the buildings, tenants went without cooking gas for seven months, according to Norton.
“Our experience is that he doesn’t maintain his buildings. and what happened yesterday is the worst possible representation of that,” she said.
City officials didn’t respond when asked whether those homeless families would be moved out.
Piller’s three other Bronx buildings had 297 open violations — 53 of them high priority — as of Oct. 31, according to Department of Homeless Services data.
In one building, as of late October, 132 violations, including 25 deemed high priority, were still open — with grievances including a cracked radiator, no heat, no hot water and broken pipes.
At least four other Piller-owned properties receive thousands of dollars each year in federal subsidies to house the poor, city records state.
A call to Piller went unanswered.
