A sharp-eyed downtown Hudson resident forwarded this link to a Chelsea Now article about a meeting of Community Board 4 in Manhattan, which includes the following report:
[District Manager Bob Benfatto] noted that a recent tour of the Lantern Group’s holdings near Hudson Yards revealed that their building on West 51st Street was in poor condition, with vermin and bedbug infestations, crumbling stairwells and sloping floors.
That article was published just a few months ago. Lantern would appear to have purchased the 144-unit building at about that time for $8.6 million. It’s not clear if they had a prior relationship managing it or not.
But as noted here previously, a CBS News investigation in 2008 of buildings managed by Eric Galloway’s Lantern Group on the Upper West Side found similarly grim conditions:
“When you go inside and you see how they actually maintain these buildings you realize they're not there to necessarily help this vulnerable population, they're there to make a profit,” said Ime Nsa Imeh of Manhattan Legal Services. [... R]esidents also share their rooms with rats, mice, roaches, bedbugs and, as this building inspection shows, dangerously toxic black mold. [73-year-old resident Rolande Cutner] says it wasn’t always so—just since The Lantern Group took over.