Syracuse seeks to push out convicted ‘slumlord’ who leaves trail of bad houses and unpaid taxes

Syracuse, N.Y. – Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh has city attorneys pursuing multiple legal strategies to crack down on an out-of-town landlord who was once criminally convicted for property neglect.

A year before Walsh took office, Onondaga County brought its first criminal prosecution for lead paint neglect. It was against Brooklyn resident Mendy Kletzky. Six years later, Kletzky remains a prolific violator of Syracuse city codes and a property tax scofflaw.

The city is now seeking court orders to demolish deteriorating houses owned by Kletzky, who once pleaded guilty to criminally neglecting lead hazards in one of his rental homes.

Walsh also believes Kletzky is a perfect candidate for a court order banning him from being a landlord, something that happened as recently as July when a judge ruled that Troy Green could no longer own or manage affordable housing in New York state following years of neglected code violations in Syracuse. That decision came in a lawsuit brought by State Attorney General Letitia James.

Walsh said he’s directed the city’s legal staff to see if a similar outcome is possible with Kletzky.

“When you look up ‘slumlord’ in the dictionary, you’re going to see Mendy Kletzky’s name,” Walsh told syracuse.com. “My only desire is that he be a responsible property owner, but he has proven to be anything but that.”

The city filed two petitions last month in state Supreme Court in Onondaga County against Kletzky seeking permission to demolish vacant houses. A home Kletzky has owned since 2014 at 102 Elmhurst Ave. on the city’s South Side has been neglected for years and poses a health and safety threat to the neighborhood, city officials said in one of their filings. Another house, at 1027 Midland Ave., was damaged in a fire in 2017 before Kletzky purchased it in 2020, but no work to restore the house has taken place.

In addition to those actions, the city vacated several judgments it had secured against Kletzky for past code violations and notified the Internal Revenue Service, a step that could force him to pay income taxes on the cancelled debt.

City officials said Kletzky still owns at least 19 Syracuse rental properties despite pleading guilty in 2018 after the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office charged him a year earlier with willfully violating health laws. The DA prosecuted Kletzky for repeated refusals to correct lead paint problems at a house he rented out on Kellogg Street. As part of plea deal, Kletzky avoided jail time or financial penalties as long as he fixed lead problems at his local properties.

The DA’s office said Kletzky was doing some remediation work in the year following the conviction. But five years later, Kletzky’s properties are again being cited for lead paint violations and a host of other issues, according to the city’s code enforcement records. As of late December, 12 properties that Kletzky owns have dozens of open city code violations against them. That includes two properties cited for the presence of lead paint dust inside and five cited for having peeling exterior lead paint.

With new efforts to pursue demolition orders, city officials said Kletzky has left two long-vacant properties to rot, prompting the recent efforts to get them torn down.

The city of Syracuse has filed a lawsuit seeking court approval to demolish the house at 102 Elmhurst Ave., which is owned by Brooklyn resident Mendy Kletzky. Jeremy Boyer I JBoyer@syracuse.comJeremy Boyer I JBoyer@syracuse.com

Every window of the single-family home at the corner of Elmhurst and Hunt avenues is either boarded up or broken open. The front porch stairs are missing. The yard is filled with weeds and overgrown brush. There is no electrical service to the two-story structure. Court records state the house has not had a water supply since at least 2017. Kletzky paid $10,213 for the property in 2014.

The city said Kletzky ignored repeated city code citations and warnings for the house. After an exterior inspection in September, the city began the process to order a demolition.

“This badly deteriorating property is a very big problem for this area,” the inspector’s handwritten notes said. “No work has been done to fix its issues and the city has been cutting and cleaning this vacant property for years. Recommend demolition.”

Following that inspection, the city held a hearing offering Kletzky an opportunity to respond to the recommendation, but neither he nor a representative showed up. They ordered Kletzky to demolish it, which he did not do. That paved the way for the city’s lawsuit, which seeks a court authorizing for the city to have the house demolished and charge Kletzky for the costs.

A similar pattern played out over the past year for the house at Midland Avenue. Kletzky did not respond or take any action despite several notices from the city’s code enforcement, and he did not show up for a demolition order hearing.

That house was badly damaged in a 2017 fire and was never fixed. Kletzky purchased it in 2020 for $3,500. That house’s second-story windows are broken open while the first story is a mix of boarded-up windows and some that have remained intact. A large portion of a front portion ceiling has collapsed.

Kletzky house — Syracuse is seeking a court order to demolish a fire-damaged house at 1027 Midland Ave. that's owned by Mendy Kletzky. Jeremy Boyer I JBoyer@syracuse.comJeremy Boyer I JBoyer@syracuse.com

In addition to failing to maintain many Syracuse rental properties, Kletzky owes back taxes on 19 of them, according to the city’s assessment office. As of December, he owed a combined $350,000 in property taxes. Only the house on Elmhurst Avenue is owned under Kletzky’s name; the rest are owned by limited liability corporations that share Kletzky’s Brooklyn home addresses.

The back taxes include $20,630 owed for the house targeted for demolition on Elmhurst Avenue and $6,445 for the fire-damaged Midland Avenue house.

The city’s pursuit of demolition orders on those properties “is a response to public health, safety and welfare concerns; it does not impede the city from pursuing foreclosure in the future,” mayor’s office spokesperson Brooke Schneider said.

Reached by phone, Kletzky said he was not aware of the litigation but that he’s trying to get the properties he owns in Syracuse fixed. When asked about his failure to pay property taxes in Syracuse, Kletzky said that was a personal matter and abruptly ended the call.

The city successfully pursued a demolition order for one of Kletzky’s former properties on Williams Street in 2015. It later secured a $21,647 judgment against him for the cost of that work, and finalized tax foreclosure on the property in 2019.

That judgment was one of five that the city cancelled in filings made with the court and IRS in the last week of December. The other four judgments were secured between 2009 and 2011 for a combined total of $197,892. Kletzky may now have to treat the cancelled debt as taxable income.

Schneider said filing the satisfactions was a strategic step taken because Kletzky was unlikely to ever pay. Attempting to collect the money owed “has burdened the city with pursuing payment without success while the properties have continued to decline,” she said.

For Walsh, the biggest negative impact Kletzky has had on the city is not financial, but on the lives of people who have rented from him and neighbors of his neglected properties. Derelict landlords exacerbate problems stemming the city’s shortage of safe affordable housing.

“People are desperate,” Walsh said. “And he is taking advantage of that desperation.”

City reporter Jeremy Boyer can be reached at jboyer@syracuse.com, (315) 657-5673, Twitter or Facebook.