"Living Under a Bushwick Slumlord" by Janine Rizak

Heaps of black garbage bags are in the corner of Dana Zakharov’s Bushwick apartment for a good reason. This way the bedbugs won’t get into her clothes again. But she still has to frequently change the bags, just in case some do manage to sneak in and lay eggs. They’re not just in her clothes; they find their way on top of her computer and on her walls, and she even finds them in her notebooks.

Zakharov has lived in her rent-stabilized apartment since 2000. She explains that things have never been easy living there, but she got used to it and realized it’s best to simply not ask her landlord for anything. Over the summer she started to find itchy, red marks on her body and assumed they were from mosquitoes. When her roommate started to get the same marks and suggested it was bedbugs, she was right.

This is usually the type of thing your landlord would take care of with an effortless call to the exterminator. Zakharov knew she had certain rights after her roommate told her to read “Warrant of Habitability” from a booklet put out by the Attorney General’s office called the “Tenant’s Rights Guide.” The first line reads “Tenants are entitled to a livable, safe and sanitary apartment.”

Zakharov realized after reading it that her landlord, Aziz Ackmese had certain obligations, and therefore decided it was her right to live without bugs. Instead, Ackmese has replied to her crying by threatening to kick her out and even telling her to “Watch that big stupid mouth.”

“I live very much like early 1930's immigrants,” Zakharov said, living in an apartment that is “vermin ridden” and “freezing,” where she is “spoken to poorly and disrespectfully.”

The advice Ackmese kept giving Zakharov was to “squish them.” An exterminator was never provided, and when Zakharov kept asking for results, Ackmese eventually said he would take care of the problem himself in a “natural way,” as he called it, which meant incasing Zakharov’s apartment in plastic and throwing out most of her furniture.

“As far as I remember, there was never an exterminator coming in, or a yearly obligatory inspection done in the past six years.” Zakharov said.

Since she threw her mattress out, Zakharov was told her only other option was the couch, which Ackmese covered in a yellow, plastic tape. Zakharov noticed that immediately after the couch was covered with the tape, bugs started coming out through gaps. When she pointed it out to Ackmese, he simply added another piece of tape.

Bennette Baumer of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, a city-wide tenants’ rights organization, said that it is definitely Ackmese’s responsibility to take care of Zakharov’s bedbugs.

“Under the building maintenance code a landlord is obligated to cure any infestation of bedbugs or other vermin,” Baumer said.

Zakharov placed a 311 complaint and started getting sudden visits from Ackmese. He came to her apartment repeatedly to offer her roommate the lease to their apartment. During these sudden visits, Ackmese would talk behind Zakharov’s back while she was in the bathroom or out of hearing range.

“He has degraded my character to her, saying I had an ‘argumentative and aggressive nature’ and that nobody liked me, and that I complained too much.”

Many landlords balk or ignore the bedbug problem because of the extermination costs involved,” Baumer said. “Bedbugs are difficult to get rid of.”

Baumer suggests that Zakharov should take Ackmese to court where the judge can force Ackmese to “fix the problem.” She did take him to court but he never showed up, instead making a sudden trip to Turkey.

“The court issued a ‘notice of violation’ and now, at the end of 30 day grace period, he will accrue a fine if he does not fix the violations,” Zakharov said.

Recently, Ackmese went into Zakharov’s apartment during her absence and left a termination notice. The termination notice included a number of almost comical claims, one in particular which accuses Zakharov of “regularly pacing back and forth through public halls and stairs with heavy footstep on the bare-wood floors, banging the front entrance door.” If Zakharov wasn’t a petite young woman of under 120 pounds, it would be more believable.

The termination notice also accuses Zakharov of letting her “pets” roam the apartment and soil the floors and creating a “health hazard.” She doesn’t own any pets.

When Ackmese left the termination notice on the outside of Zakharov’s apartment door, he tore off posters and flyers that were important causes to her, including breast cancer awareness and feminist flyers.

Ackmese couldn’t be reached for a comment on the case.

Until justice can be found, Zakharov continues to live in unfair, horrid conditions. Bugs are falling out of crevices in the walls and ceiling, which look like they’re about to collapse.

“We still live on bags, with bugs,” Zakharov said.