Midtown residents paying $3,200 a month for one-bedroom apartments say they share their buildings with squatters and people using drugs in communal spaces, and their landlord isn’t doing anything about it.
Tenants in at least eight apartment buildings on 49th Street, a block from the tourist trappings of Times Square, say they’ve made frequent complaints to their landlord, police and the district attorney’s office about the illegal activity. Still, they say, the problems persist because the neighborhood is overrun with visible drug use and the landlord hasn’t made what they call simple fixes to building security.
In the last three months, these buildings and the area around them have been the locations of at least one homicide , a fire and multiple drug and trespassing arrests, according to police. Residents describe a street of lawlessness in one of the priciest zip codes in the world. They say the problems include missing locks and windows, broken buzzers and infestations…