Rat urine and feces scattered across an infant’s crib. Plumes of black mold blooming over bathroom ceilings. Cockroaches crawling up the drains.
These are just a few of the hundreds of complaints contained in a half-dozen lawsuits filed against La Mesa Verde apartments in Jackson Heights. A group of 75 tenants are collectively suing the landlord, A&E Real Estate, to try to force repairs.
“They don't care what we're living through. They don't care what we're experiencing. They just want to charge us rent,” said Diana Gaviria Muñoz, who’s lived at Mesa Verde since 2021.
Tenants rallying outside the Mesa Verde apartments in November, 2025.
Muñoz said the mold and rat urine in her apartment is making her two young children sick. She said she’s moved them into her in-laws' basement while her husband stays and fights for repairs. “This isn’t right,” she said in an interview.
Muñoz and the other tenants argue A&E Real Estate’s systemic neglect of the buildings constitutes harassment and are demanding the company address open code violations, pay outstanding fines to the city and recoup the tenants’ legal costs.
City data shows there are currently about 1,450 open violations at La Mesa Verde, a rent-stabilized apartment building with more than 300 units.
A&E Real Estate is one of the largest landlords in the city, with a portfolio of nearly 180 buildings, representing nearly 16,000 apartments. Its founder is also a major political donor: A&E Executive Chair Douglas Eisenberg gave a super PAC supporting former Gov. Andrew Cuomo $125,000 during the recent mayoral election.
The ceiling over the shower in one Mesa Verde apartment November 2025.
In a statement, a representative for A&E Real Estate said the company has cleared more than 1,000 violations since taking over the property in 2016.
“It’s night and day compared to what it was a decade ago, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t face challenges with some of its older systems,” the statement reads. “We’re working hard to continue improving the property but for some of these underlying issues, there are no quick fixes.”
In the meantime, tenants say they’re left in conditions that are squalid and unsafe.
José Luis Rico, 53, said there’s a cockroach infestation in his sixth-floor apartment. No matter how many poison traps he lays out, they just keep coming back, he said.
“The pipes, I can see them coming up inside the pipes,” he said. “In the night, when you turn on the light, you can see the roaches.”
Elena Martínez, 70, said she has to carry her laundry and groceries up and down six flights of stairs because the elevators have been out since March.
A dead rat found in one Mesa Verde apartment in June.
“It’s very painful,” she said in an interview. “My shoulders hurt and I can’t sleep at night.”
Martínez said she gets no response from the management company when she reaches out to complain. “We call and they don’t answer,” she said.
In the statement to Gothamist, a representative from A&E Real Estate said the company had recently hired a repair company, and one of the two broken elevators will be back online Monday.
The other elevator needs a $400,000 rehab and several months of work, according to A&E Real Estate.
The tenants’ attorneys are due back in Queens housing court on Dec. 3.
“We hope to God that the judge will support us,” Martínez said. “Because we really need an elevator and we really need the apartments fixed so we can live with dignity.”
