‘From Snob Hill to Slob Hill’: Tenants say conditions at once luxurious apartments forced them to sue owner

Nob Hill Apartments, a four-building apartment complex in Syracuse with around 785 units, was once known as a lavish option for Syracuse University students to live. Several residents and tenant advocates who spoke to Central Current for this story remember it by its nickname. 

“They called it ‘Snob Hill,’ that was prestigious,” said Bruce Hare, a professor emeritus of sociology at Syracuse University, who has twice lived at the apartments in the past decade. 

The complex lays on a sprawling campus on LaFayette Road that once-featured premium amenities like dozens of individual garages, a pool, playground facilities, a clubhouse, recreation rooms, and community spaces for residents to assemble outside. Some of those amenities, tenants say, are either closed now or not usable.

Some tenants say that years of mismanagement led to decaying building infrastructure, and the complex is now a shadow of what it once was. Poor housing conditions reached a boiling point late last year when residents faced the frigid Syracuse winter with no heat and hot water.

A lack of basic heating fixtures, the malfunction of most elevators around the complex, hallways and public areas full of trash, and unsafe entrances to buildings sent tenants, city officials, and property management consultants on a now eight month-mission to stabilize the building. 

That journey comes at a time when Syracuse is facing a shortage of safe and affordable housing options for tenants, with hundreds of apartments sitting empty due to unlivable property conditions.

Some issues like a lack of hot water have been addressed by a management consultant hired by ownership in March to return the building to its former glory. While consultants say there are more repairs and improvements to come, like the hiring of a new management company in October, tenants say basic repairs to some key features have gone unaddressed for far too long. 

Syracuse sues Nob Hill Apartments ownership, citing failure to address code violations

City officials and tenant leaders in the complex say Destra Multifamily, the firm hired by ownership, have laid out a multi-million dollar plan to correct the remaining issues with the property.  Ownership has committed around $2.4 million since last fall to rescue the properties, according to Joe Labita, an executive at Destra.

To bring Nob Hill back to its heyday, Labita asks for patience. 

“We are working through a list,” he said. “It does take time. Nob Hill is a big ship and big ships turn slowly. The people here, we’re not going to rest until the ship is back on course.”

But some tenants say that while some repairs have been made, elementary safety features like secured doors to enter the building, proper lighting around the complex, and landscaping around the entrances to some buildings are still a concern.

“You have this master plan to do these amazing things and turn this property around, but in the meantime, we want the basics of habitability,” said Kona Mahu, a resident of Nob Hill and a leading tenant organizer at the complex. “My question remains: what is taking so long?”

Mahu is one of the Nob Hill residents who, after having lived in the complex for less than a year, created the tenants association last December after city officials inspected Nob Hill. She said she was initially appalled by the state of the landscaping and the presence of overflowing garbage across the complex last summer.

“I had never seen anything quite this bad, ever,” Mahu said.

The poor housing conditions broke tenants over time. They spent the majority of the year organizing to compel Nob Hill to fix scores of property code violations. 

Half of the tenants have signed a petition that outlines  10 complex-wide repairs they would like to see. Mahu said the petition has been signed by 213 signatories, all of whom have pledged to not accept any rent increases if the issues have not been addressed by Oct. 1.

To address individual concerns from residents, the tenants association and CNY Fair Housing organizers have also helped several Nob Hill residents, through individual lawsuits, halt rent payments until the problems in their apartments — which include unsafe, ill-fitting doors and black water filling kitchen sinks, in addition to other complaints levied by the city — are fixed. 

“We’ve heard the story for months, but because these basic things have not been taken care of in a timely manner,” Mahu said, “we are insisting that they be taken care of.”

The city has also attempted to rein in the disrepair at Nob Hill, sending inspectors from the Division of Code Enforcement to the buildings throughout the year and citing ownership for failing to keep the building in compliance. 

Inaction from management in the spring prompted the city to sue Nob Hill in April, seeking millions in fines from the complex’s parent company to address issues with the building’s habitability. 

Tenants see these legal actions as their best course of action toward securing repairs. 

“We’re not unreasonable,” Mahu said. “We understand that things go through a process and they are expensive, but we’re paying top dollar to live here.”

Luxury to lawsuits

At least three of the six tenants Central Current spoke to say they ended up at Nob Hill in part because of the building’s reputation as a stable and reliable housing option with comforting amenities. 

Tieasha Muhammad first visited Nob Hill almost 20 years ago. She remembers visits to her mother’s apartment at Nob Hill with awe: the manicured lawns, the decorations during the holidays, walking past the long glass windows looking into the community room. Her mother never had any complaints, she said, because maintenance was prompt in addressing needed repairs. 

“You walked into the lobby, it was just like a hotel. It was just so pretty,” she said. “There were these lush couches, and … the tapestry, the curtains.”

When she last visited the area in 2018, she said the building retained its beauty. Muhammaad described it as a seemingly enduring beauty and sense of peace so captivating that it made her apply for an apartment at the complex through the Section 8 rental assistance program in April 2024.

Having recently closed her business to focus on learning how to live with lupus, an autoimmune disease, Muhammad arrived at Nob Hill expecting her new home to be an affordable, safe and stress-free environment for her and her senior service dog Tucker. Once her new unit passed a housing inspection required for Section 8 units, Muhammad was allowed to move in by the end of July.

But problems with the unit arose even before she moved in. Muhammad claims management showed her a different unit in April than the one she eventually leased out, and continually pushed back the move-in date because they told her the apartment was not ready.  

The weekend she was permitted to move in, she claims, the apartment was still not ready. She couldn’t get into her apartment for hours, and when she finally entered, she claims there was a large burn on her kitchen counter. 

“This is when I started to realize how bad it was up there,” Muhammad said.

Muhammad’s issues at the complex continued to persist. Since then, she has dealt with water leaks, water damage and mold issues, many of which remain unfixed, she said. 

For Muhammad, the most grave concern has been the lack of elevator service. She lives on the sixth floor and said going up so many flights of stairs aggravates the symptoms of her condition. 

The worsening conditions in Muhammad’s apartment and at the complex, and tenant organizing spearheaded by other residents and advocates from CNY Fair Housing, led to 10 tenants, including Muhammad, filing “7D” petitions seeking repairs.

Tenants can fill out that form to appear in front of a judge to request repairs from their landlord, as well as seek relief from owed rent and/or future rent until their housing concerns are addressed. 

At an Aug. 14 hearing, Syracuse City Court Judge Shadia Tadros, who presides over all “7D” cases in Syracuse City Court, abated owed rent and future for four Nob Hill tenants, including Muhammad.

Tadros noted that she will consolidate all cases and scheduled a hearing date of Sept. 19 for the 10 tenants who filed “7D “petitions due to the known complex-wide issues documented by both tenants and in the lawsuit filed by the city in Onondaga County Supreme Court back in April. 

Residents say they hope those legal filings return their apartments to a baseline of dignified housing that measures up to the rent they pay every month.

The tenants’ door-to-door petition, which tenants say has gathered 213 signatures, highlights 10 demands that would bring the complex to a standard level of habitability. 

These include: an effective maintenance system, two working elevators per building, secure entry doors to the buildings, reliable heat and air conditioning, functional parking garages, emergency lighting in common areas and stairwells, consistent trash removal and pest control, and security cameras. 

On top of the issues highlighted in the petition signed by tenants, there are 48 open code violations at Nob Hill as of today, according to the city’s open data portal. They range from inadequate or non-existent fire safety features, vermin infestations, and windows and doors not being airtight or in disrepair.

Labita, who is managing the building’s turnaround, said Destra has already addressed some issues like the lack of hot water, and has also fixed seven of eight elevators across the complex. Those elevators, city officials said, are still pending safety certification. The missing elevator, Labita said, could be fixed in the next two months. 

But some other problems like a lack of secure entrances to buildings and security systems remain.

Labita said the security issues have to be fixed in a particular order based on their plan to address issues in the building. First, he said, entrances have to be secured. Then the company plans to add missing lighting safety features. The company would then address surveillance systems after that.

“What may seem like rapid improvement from my timeline appears not as rapid to them, and the best I can do is assure them that we are making the progress that we say we’re going to make,” Labita said. “We’re doing things in the order that we have to do them in order to ensure these are lasting and enduring improvements for everyone.”

For some tenants, repairs are not happening fast enough and ownership and management have been unresponsive. 

“If it’s a code violation, it needs to be fixed,” Mahu said. “We are not asking for luxury. We are asking for safety, we are asking for habitability.”

Bruce Hare, another tenant who filed a 7D petition and chose to move to Nob Hill because of the building’s good standing in the city’s housing market, said he has silently handled the issues with his apartment and with the complex overall for the past five years. 

He said he did not want to bring the issues into the public eye.

Hare dealt with a leaky ceiling and a faulty tub. Both issues were eventually addressed, but Hare said his bathtub remains unwieldy and that fixtures like his towel rod and soap dish were missing after contractors addressed the problems with the bathtub.

Now, complex-wide issues have Hare questioning his faith in Nob Hill being able to be the place he once enjoyed living in.

“No one has gotten back to me about the repairs I need,” he said. 

As tenants wait for the city’s case against Nob Hill, as well as their own individual petitions, to continue advancing through the court, residents want the public and local elected officials to apply pressure. The next court appearance in the city’s case will take place Sept. 24.

The Nob Hill Tenants Association will host a press conference Wednesday outside the Onondaga County Courthouse to further pressure ownership to make repairs. 

“Now they call it ‘Slob Hill,’” Muhammad said.