494 West 158th Street, Manhattan, NY 10032

494 West 158th Street is a 6-story New Law Tenement building constructed in 1904, containing 24 units and currently owned by Maria Brito. The building has experienced recurring issues with cooking gas infrastructure, with multiple emergency complaints filed between July and October 2022, though investigations were often unable to gain access for inspection. More recently, serious structural and maintenance concerns have emerged, with four open violations as of November 2023 related to the 6th-story bulkhead walls, including roof leaks, defective fire retardant materials, and requirements for proper painting under the Administrative Code.

Additionally, there is a currently open violation regarding the building's heating system key notice requirement on the 1st story. The building has maintained a consistent record of passing rodent inspections since 2016, with the most recent inspection in October 2024 showing no issues. There have been no documented bedbug infestations in the past seven years, as evidenced by regular reporting showing zero infested units. Historical records from 2018-2019 indicate significant concerns about an unpermitted laundry room installation in the basement, including illegal plumbing work and inadequate sprinkler systems, resulting in multiple Environmental Control Board (ECB) violations with associated fines.

While some of these violations were subsequently resolved or dismissed, at least one plumbing-related ECB violation remains active as of 2021. The building also experienced a mold-related complaint in 2019 that was inspected but resulted in no violations being issued. More recently, from 2022 through 2023, there have been multiple complaints regarding electric/gas range appliances and general cooking gas issues, though these were typically marked as duplicates of other tenant complaints or closed due to inspection access issues. The property has demonstrated compliance with regular rodent inspections since 2016, with only one instance of rat activity noted in 2016, and has maintained a clean record regarding bedbugs, with no reported infestations in the past eight monitoring periods.