376 8th Avenue, Manhattan, NY 10001

376 8th Avenue is a 4-story, 3-unit Old Law Tenement building located in Chelsea and built in 1920, currently owned by Albert Valetutti. The building has documented ongoing issues with compliance to the Housing Maintenance Code (HMC), specifically regarding annual bedbug report filings, with violations recorded in 2021, 2022, 2023, and most recently in April 2024. More significantly, in 2019, the building faced serious safety concerns when illegal transient use was discovered in Apartments 2 and 3, leading to multiple Environmental Control Board (ECB) violations including inadequate means of egress, lack of required sprinkler systems, missing fire alarm systems, and obstruction of interior staircases.

The building's Certificate of Occupancy specifically designates it as a 2-family dwelling, making the discovered transient use illegal. While most of the 2019 ECB violations were resolved with various penalties, one remains active concerning obstructed interior staircases, for which the penalty was $250. Additionally, there were violations related to failure to certify corrections on immediately hazardous (Class 1) ECB violations in August 2019, though these were later downgraded and dismissed in October 2019.

Prior to these issues, the building underwent regular rodent inspections in 2010, 2011, and 2012, all of which passed. A complaint about illegal hotel rooms was filed in April 2019 and resulted in an Oath Violation being served in May 2019. The persistent bedbug report violation notices from 2021 through 2024 indicate ongoing challenges with compliance of basic housing maintenance requirements.