'They're coming through the wall': Dobbs Ferry tenants decry unlivable rental conditions

Tyler King was sitting in her graduate-level nutrition class on Valentine's Day in 2023 when she received the text message from her partner.

"All of a sudden, he texts me and he says, 'They're coming through the wall,'" King recalled. "My heart drops."

Merely days into the couple's new tenancy at an apartment building on 2 Main St. in Dobbs Ferry, King says they started to hear unusual noises that appeared to emanate from the walls. King quickly alerted one of the landlords. At the time, November 2022, King didn't know what could have been making the noise. Perhaps it was mice?

King received a text back from a co-landlord, Margaret Tong: "This is the time of the year the squirrels are set up [to] nest for winter hibernation." She added that the noise "may settle down later."

King was shocked. Months went by, and they continued to hear squirrels scratching around inside the walls, with no apparent action from Tong or her husband, Dickon Tong, the main landlord.

"It was just like, emotionally, I couldn't sit in the living room, because I just never knew when the squirrel was going to break through the wall," King said.

And on Valentine's Day, that's exactly what happened. King's partner witnessed a squirrel busting through the living room wall.

Dickon Tong soon brought a wildlife trapper to evaluate the apartment. King and her partner were reassured that their squirrel-ridden nightmare might soon be over.

But King says she soon saw Tong climbing up the side of the house himself, apparently trying to fix the situation. She contacted the trapper, who texted back he "didn't get approval" from the Tongs to do the necessary work.

The squirrels continued to chew through the walls, King recalled, and her partner had to manually patch up the holes himself. "I never thought I would live like this," she said.

Numerous issues with Tong's apartment building were discovered through court records, public records and interviews — providing an inside look at one landlord-tenant dispute and how difficult it can be for tenants to enforce their rights even when animals are chewing through walls, or when other issues arise that make an apartment unlivable.

The building still has seven open violations with the Dobby Ferry Building Department. A judge has chastised Tong for making "gross misrepresentations" in court and fined the Tongs for failing to provide heat during winter.

In an interview with The Journal News/lohud, Dickon Tong rejected King's characterization of events and said he acted swiftly once the squirrel problem was brought to his attention. He claims to have installed traps in December and to have hired an exterminator in February who resolved the infestation. Tong initially agreed to provide an invoice proving work was done to remediate this issue, but later said he no longer had access to the invoice.

The squirrel infestation resolved itself, according to King, when the weather became warmer and the squirrels migrated outside. But, she said, the debacle was emblematic of numerous defects with the apartment complex that the Tongs were slow to remedy, if they did at all.

Balconies condemned, ceiling collapses

One day when King returned home, she found out that the balconies in the apartment building were being condemned by the village.

And in August 2023, King and her partner returned home to discover that part of the ceiling in their bedroom had collapsed onto the floor.

The fire department was called, and they diagnosed the issue as water damage from the upstairs unit's air conditioner. But instead of repairing the ceiling, the Tongs told King that it was her upstairs neighbor's responsibility to fix the damage, wiping their hands of it entirely.

"As indicated in our lease agreement, landlord is not liable for damages, loss, or expenses to any person or property, unless due to landlord's negligence," they wrote King in an email. "You may contact [the upstairs tenants] directly... for damage claims including repairs."

Dickon Tong would not repair the ceiling until after King and her partner vacated the unit in October 2023, according to court records.

In the interview, Tong argued the upstairs tenant was responsible for repairs. "You don't rush into it and fix it yourself," he said.

Kerri-Lynn Quinn, who occupied the unit above King, tells similar tales about dilapidated conditions at 2 Main St. She and King, once they met, quickly bonded over their complaints about the building and frustration with the Tongs.

When Quinn moved into the unit with her two kids (alongside her best friend and her best friend's daughter) in October 2021, "the bathroom was in terrible shape."

She noticed water leaking from the toilet and "a big piece of duct tape" underneath the toilet bowl, patching a leak. When she used the toilet, the water would drip onto her feet, she said.

"I got an infection on my feet because it was, you know, toilet water," Quinn said. "They did repair that. It took them some time because they kept trying to fix it rather than just replace it."

Quinn said there was a really strong smell of mold or mildew in the apartment and there were black spots in the bathroom indicating mold.

Dickon Tong called Quinn's allegations of a mold problem "suspicious" and said mold doesn't appear "if you keep cleaning it."

'Deductible fees' to make repairs

But these types of issues cropped up repeatedly. And when Quinn attempted to get the Tongs to repair defective fixtures and appliances, they insisted on charging her a $40 "deductible" before they would do so, a provision written into her lease agreement (as well as King's).

When the bathtub stopped draining properly, the Tongs told Quinn to "clear up the outstanding service fees (deductible) first."

Cindy Brown, a senior attorney at Tilem & Associates, based in White Plains, said that while landlords may be able to force tenants to pay for regular repairs in the lease, they cannot sue to recover these fees in housing court, which is exactly what the Tongs would do later on.

Things came to a head when Quinn started putting in complaints with the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal in August 2023.

Unexpectedly, the Tongs told her they would not renew her lease, which was set to expire that month. Quinn was late with the September rent, but her apartment was covered by the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, commonly known as rent stabilization. In New York, rent-stabilized tenants are entitled to lease renewal.

The Tongs demanded that Quinn pay outstanding fees to fix broken appliances, threatening to sue if she did not.

Things only got worse from there.

One night, Quinn got a text from her roommate telling her that the power, heat and hot water in their apartment were not working. Though the power was quickly restored, complaints to the Tongs about the lack of heat and hot water fell on deaf ears.

The village of Dobbs Ferry conducted a heat and hot water inspection of the unit in November and found that it failed to meet the standards set forth in the village code. The temperature was measured at 62 degrees in each room in the apartment when the inspector arrived, and there was no hot water in the kitchen or bathroom.

Quinn's roommate pleaded with the Tongs, writing that they were "mothers with children and legal human rights."

Tenants called 'illegal' holdovers

These complaints were quickly rebuffed. The Tongs wrote to them, "you do not have rights when trespassing in our property," suggesting they were occupying the unit as illegal holdover tenants.

"Maintenance repairs cost money," they wrote, further demanding that Quinn herself pay for a repairman to fix the boiler.

Brown, the landlord-tenant attorney, said a landlord is "absolutely not" allowed to disable heat and hot water services, regardless of any dispute with the tenant.

"Heat and hot water are basic necessities," she said. "That's absolutely the landlord's responsibility, even if you're in the middle of a case."

Quinn and her co-tenants suffered through part of November and December without heat or hot water.

"The fact that he did turn our heat and hot water off is just insane to me. He knows we have children," Quinn said. "The really cold days, we would have space heaters, or we would have to stay out of the house."

Asked about the heat and hot water violation, Dickon Tong insisted he did not disable these services. He said the heat and hot water fell into disrepair on their own and that Quinn had "to pay an initial repair cost in order to get things moving."

Eventually, the myriad disputes regarding Quinn's and King's apartments wound their way into village court. Dickon Tong sued them to recoup payments he claims he was owed, and to evict Quinn and her co-tenants from their unit.

Judge: Tong makes 'gross misrepresentations' in court

The judge in both cases, David Koenigsberg, handed down a pair of decisions excoriating Dickon Tong and his management of the apartments.

Koenigsberg found that Tong had been illegally overcharging King during the entire duration of her lease, because that apartment was rent stabilized as well, and observed that Tong had "denied under oath that the building was rent stabilized," despite the fact that it was. The judge also recounted Tong's "history of making 'gross misrepresentations' in court."

Koenigsberg credited King with multiple rent reductions due to Tong's months-long failure to repair the ceiling, until King and her partner moved out at the end of their lease.

When factoring in the squirrel infestation, Koenigsberg found that King didn't actually owe the Tongs any money. In fact, he said, the Tongs owed her a refund of the security deposit.

Quinn's case was also largely resolved in her favor. Koenigsberg ruled that because Tong could not prove he ever offered Quinn a mandatory renewal notice, Quinn was entitled to a lease renewal and was lawfully occupying the unit.

Koenigsberg found that Tong sent Quinn a termination letter "in retaliation for" her filing complaints with the Division of Housing and Community Renewal and also retaliated against Quinn by failing to provide heat and hot water to the apartment, which "clearly manifests retaliatory animus."

He also said Tong repeatedly harassed Quinn's co-tenant, "chasing her from the building" and calling her a "yellow skinned woman with black hair."

In the interview, Tong repeatedly mischaracterized the judge's rulings and claimed Koenigsberg was "biased" against him. He said the rent he charged was in line with the rent stabilization law and denied making any harassing remarks towards Quinn's co-tenant. He said he would appeal Koenigsberg's decision.

Koenigsberg gave Quinn a rent abatement for the weeks her apartment was uninhabitable, in addition to other credits for broken fixtures. All told, Quinn was instructed to pay Tong only $3,487 for missing rental payments, a far cry from the $8,165 that had been calculated.

These two cases are not the Tongs' only encounters with housing court. In 2017, Greenburgh Town Justice Bonnie Orden wrote a scathing opinion against Dickon Tong, calling out his "deliberate attempts to mislead the court." Orden then struck down a 5% late fee in Tong's standard lease agreement, calling it "unconscionable, excessive, punitive in nature, and grossly disproportionate." Nevertheless, that 5% late fee remains in lease agreements that the Tongs require of new tenants.

The village of Dobbs Ferry ultimately prosecuted the Tongs' company, Bonham Strand, for failing to provide heat and hot water to Quinn and her family in the wintertime, a violation of the village code.

Prosecutors introduced into evidence an email from the Tongs admitting that they were "not spending more $ on maintenance/repairs" of the broken boiler.

"Trespassers [have] no rights to file a complaint," they wrote.

Koenigsberg disagreed. He found Bonham Strand guilty and fined the company $1,000.

Asher Stockler is a reporter for The Journal News and the USA Today Network New York. You can send him an email at astockler@lohud.com. Reach him securely: asher.stockler@protonmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Dobbs Ferry NY tenants blame landlord for squirrels, loss of heat