In October 2001, infamous landlords Thomas Iveli and Bob Sigmund of Baychester Shopping Center West, Inc. and 400 W. 22 St. Corp. were found guilty of multiple counts of tenant harassment in nine buildings in New York along the two blocks of West 22d Street between Eighth and Tenth Avenues. They had owned ten buildings there: 327, 329, 331, 337, 400, 402, 406, 410, 412 and 442 West 22d. It had been a three-year lawsuit. They were subsequently barred from owning property in New York City following the case, originally filed by the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal in 1998. They have since moved to San Francisco where Iveli owns and Sigmund manages a number of buildings through Norcal Ventures, Inc., Norcal Holdings, LLC and the 406-10-12 Realty Corp. They have treated their tenants horrendously, as the displayed Yelp reviews attest to.
They have also Ellis Acted 15 units in three properties:
Sigmund is listed as Property Manager for many buildings that Iveli owns.
Previously, in 1997, Sigmund served a 60-day sentence arising from an incident in which he is accused of striking a photographer invited by tenants to take pictures of conditions in their apartments.
In 1994 Sigmund entered the apartment of a tenant who had died from AIDS before his family arrived and stole three bags of property and was arrested. Richard Hanson of the Chelsea Coalition on Housing, a tenant-advocacy group, said Mr. Sigmund exploits AIDS programs by housing patients in inferior dwellings at high rents. Kernan Huttick, who also had AIDS and lived at 406 West 22d saw Mr. Sigmund break into the dead man's apartment and emerge with three stuffed bags. Huttick explained that then, when the brother of the deceased man came after the man had died, he was found crying on the bed, saying, 'There's nothing here -- what happened to my brother's stuff?”
In 1993, Sigmund and Iveli, paid $42,000 in fines for illegally converting an S.R.O. into apartments as well as for construction without a permit, illegal occupancy and nuisance violations in the mid-1980's at 334-6 West 22d Street. State Supreme Court Justice Bruce Wright wrote, "The various devices, tricks and ploys invoked and invented by the defendants to avoid judgment are patently transparent efforts to deter, delay and hinder due process."
The following organizations were involved in the case against Sigmund and Iveli in New York:
In addition to owning the three buildings that they’ve Ellis Acted, they own the following:
LLC address is at 58 Maiden Ln., San Francisco, CA 94108
Phone: (415) 863-6128
Thomas Iveli / Rental Solutions
PO BOX 424129 San Francisco, CA