Guinevere Sandy stood outside her apartment door at 6 Studio Lane in Woodstock, her infant daughter Naliyah gazing up at the ceiling from her hip. A sign on the wall read “you are loved,” but the apartment that spring day told a different story.
“I’m very nervous that my daughter is breathing moldy air,” Sandy said.
What residents said began as a quiet arrangement between tenants and a hands-off landlord deteriorated over years into what they described as a slum: unheated rooms, collapsing infrastructure, toxic black mold that fouled the cramped air, and a property manager who ignored repeated pleas for repairs. Years of town inspection records buttress their stories.
The toilet in Sandy’s apartment had begun to fall through the floor. In the kitchen, water pooled beneath the stove and the sink was clogged again. Open cereal boxes next to piled dishes; mouse droppings lined the baseboards. A stained mattress leaned against the bedroom wall, and the refrigerator barely kept food cold.
Sandy, 22, and her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Dash, 56, sat quietly, folding clothes into garbage bags in anticipation of their eventual eviction. Sandy’s boyfriend was at work at a restaurant in town. Elizabeth’s disabled husband, Adair, rested in the back bedroom.
They had lived there for roughly four years. Five people, sometimes six, in three rooms. No working stove. Barely hot water. No lease. According to Dash, they had stopped paying rent after June 2023.
“Why would we pay to live in danger?” Sandy said.
Declan Feehan, 57, the building’s day-to-day landlord, rejects that account. In an interview in May, he said he manages 6 Studio Lane as “property manager” for longtime owner Robert Simon who lives in Florida. He said he has worked on the property since 1999, when, he recalled, “we replaced all the windows, put vinyl siding on the building.”
From his perspective, the story of 6 Studio Lane is not about disrepair but about tenants taking advantage of the Covid-era eviction moratorium, which protected tenants from eviction during the pandemic and was in effect from September 2021, through January 2022.
“All the non-payments were due to Covid and the eviction ban. All of them,” he said. “They collected unemployment. They collected the $600 extra weekly Covid payment. They didn’t pay their rent because they were told by the government they didn’t have to.”
Still, the conditions tenants described stand in stark contrast to state housing law. New York law guarantees all tenants a right to live in conditions that do not endanger health or safety. 6 Studio Lane is a study in the difficulty of enforcing that guarantee—and in the Town of Woodstock’s failure, over many years, to protect tenants on the fringes of its housing market.
The Town of Woodstock has since brought a series of code violations against Feehan, citing unsafe structures and unsanitary conditions at 6 Studio Lane. Court records show he was granted an adjournment this month and is due back in Woodstock Town Court on Dec. 3 at 3 p.m. William Spencer, Woodstock’s municipal code-enforcer and fire inspector, said Feehan is currently working on bringing the building “into a habitable shape.”
“I’m going to clean it back up because all the tenants in that building were filthy and disgusting,” Feehan said in an interview. “It’s going to have to get painted and renovated, and then I’ll put them back up for rent.”
Built a century ago, 6 Studio Lane was originally a dormitory for the Art Students League’s summer program—an early experiment in communal, creative and stoic living. Young painters shared rooms and bathed in cold-water tubs.
Now, the 5-unit rental stood in disrepair.
Down the hall from Sandy’s apartment, Breanna Jacob’s kitchen sink hadn’t worked properly in years. Her second stove had broken months ago. Breanna, 31, moved to 6 Studio Lane in 2019 with her mother, Jessica, 52, and her young daughter, who stayed with them on weekends. Jessica’s three other children would sometimes stay as well.
The six shared the apartment despite years of mounting maintenance issues. The family was on their third refrigerator, now a mini-fridge too small to hold more than a few meals. Both the bathtub and kitchen sink leaked. Cockroaches would sometimes scatter.
“I went to work thinking everything was okay. Then I got the call. We had 24 hours to get everything out,” Breanna paused. “Better get the hell out.”
They initially paid $1,500 a month in cash to Feehan, who Jessica said asked them to complete an application during the Covid pandemic to qualify for the emergency rental assistance program.
They were often short, but Feehan continued accepting partial payments, Breanna said. The arrangement unraveled in early 2024, when the kitchen sink stopped working, the oven failed and the refrigerator burned out.
“The only reason we stopped paying was because nothing worked,” Breanna said.
Breanna and her mother were evicted in April. They bounced between hotels for two months until the money ran out. Now, Breanna and her mother are staying with a family friend near Kingston while continuing their search for a more permanent home. It has not gone well.
Many rentals, she said, require at least a 670, or “good,” credit score and proof of $70,000 in annual income—thresholds the family doesn’t meet. Jessica has been unable to work since falling at a local supermarket in August 2024 and losing her job, but she finds ways to help her daughter amid the housing uncertainty.
On May 15, a sheriff’s deputy oversaw the eviction of the final two families at 6 Studio Lane.
In the driveway, Feehan stood with his arms crossed. “It’s just an eviction,” he said. “Nonpayment.”
Steven Smith, another tenant, smoked a cigarette and cracked open a Twisted Tea as garbage bags accumulated on the porch.
“I moved in here and I wasn’t even supposed to pay rent. I was supposed to fix things, which I did,” said Smith, 48, a contractor who claims to have invested tens of thousands of dollars in labor into a unit. “Now they’re trying to evict me for $42,000.”
Feehan said the arrangement with Smith and his brother had been limited and one-sided. In the interview, he said one tenant had agreed to renovate an empty apartment in exchange for a year’s rent but “never finished the job” and never paid rent. Smith, he said, moved into a downstairs unit “without asking me” and promised to do repairs but did almost nothing.
“He installed a hot water heater in one of the other apartments, so he gets, like, $100 credit for that,” Feehan said. But roughly “$35,000 or $40,000” is what he said Smith owed in back rent.
Feehan was asked about tenant reports of black mold and sewage leaks. He shrugged.
“Steven says he found some, but I’ve yet to see it,” he said. “He posted something on the wall—I took it off. It looked like something just printed off the computer.”
He said he had never been told of mold by town officials. “Most mold I’ve dealt with cleaning up before is something you can do with bleach, water, and a product called Concrobium, which is a non-toxic mold killer. And it’s very effective,” Feehan said. “But if there’s any mold, it’s probably from their own uncleanliness, because every one of the tenants in there were absolutely filthy.”
Federal guidance generally states that bleach is not recommended or effective for addressing black mold, particularly on porous surfaces.
Feehan said he planned to repaint the walls, replace the toilets and rent out 6 Studio Lane again. “It’s just a matter of putting a coat of paint on it and cleaning it up,” he said at the eviction.
In his view, the tenants were to blame. “They were filthy,” he said. “If there’s mold, it’s because of them.”
When the conversation outside 6 Studio Lane turned to town records and past complaints, Feehan told The Overlook to get off his property.
“This is his property,” the nearby deputy said. “If he’s telling you to leave, I would say that you probably should go.”
The legal ownership of 6 Studio Lane remains with Simon, a longtime landowner who acquired the building in the 1980s and, according to Feehan, now lives in Florida. Feehan said he has worked for Simon “since I was a kid,” doing yard work, construction and other jobs before taking over management of 6 Studio Lane.
Feehan has acquired at least six parcels in the Town of Shandaken, most through public tax foreclosure sales. Property records show he paid as little as $3,700 for some sites, many of which had previously been seized for unpaid taxes. In several cases, Feehan appears to have lost properties to foreclosure and reacquired them at auction.
In 2014, the Catskill Watershed Corporation sued Feehan and his company, Irish Jack Enterprises, over a defaulted $61,512 mortgage. The court awarded a $55,141 judgment, which was satisfied a year later.
In the interview, Feehan said he is also pursuing evictions against two tenants in a rental property in Phoenicia “for non-payment,” which he likewise attributed to “Covid.”
On Nov. 4, Feehan was slated to appear in Woodstock Justice Court over the building and zoning case relating to 6 Studio Lane and requested an adjournment, which was granted.
He owns Phoenicia Wine & Liquor and manages multiple residential, commercial and seasonal parcels.
“Even if a judge agrees with you, you can still lose your home”
New York law guarantees all tenants a “warranty of habitability,” a right to live in conditions that do not endanger health or safety. That protection applies regardless of whether tenants have a lease.
At 6 Studio Lane, no one did. Asked whether any tenants had written leases, Feehan replied, “No.” When asked why not, he said, “I just don’t do them. Don’t need to. It’s not not a requirement to have a written lease. I just do month-to-month.”
“If there are conditions that rise to the level of code violations, tenants can withhold rent or sue,” said Ben Surface, supervising attorney at the Hudson Valley Justice Center. “But enforcing that right comes with significant risk.”
Tenants who stop paying rent often end up in eviction court. There, they must prove that conditions were so severe the apartment was unfit for habitation. If successful, the court may reduce the amount of rent owed, but the tenant must still pay that remaining balance to halt eviction.
“Even if a judge agrees with you, you have to pay what’s left, fast, or you can still lose your home,” Surface said.
In 2024, a long-standing housing law in New York City known as Article 7-D expanded statewide, giving tenants a new legal tool. Tenants throughout New York can now sue their landlords under Article 7-D and request a court order for repairs. If the court issues such an order and the landlord fails to comply, they can be held in contempt of court.
“We’re advising tenants to keep paying rent and file under 7-D,” Surface said. “It puts you on offense instead of defense.”
Jenna Goldstein, Ulster County organizer with the housing justice group For the Many, said the new law could have made a difference at 6 Studio Lane—if tenants had known about it.
“I operate the tenant hotline,” she said. “If they had called, they would have known to keep the rent in escrow and how to assert their rights in court.”
Tenants in unregulated apartments face steep challenges and often don’t posses the legal knowledge necessary to made educated decesions, Goldstein said. Without leases or official rent histories, they often lack documentation to use in court. And landlords, she said, routinely exploit that gap.
“Eviction can only be ordered by a judge,” Goldstein said. “But if you show up without the money, no matter why you withheld, it doesn’t end well.”
A June 11 judgment from the Woodstock Town Court ordered Elizabeth and Adair Dash to pay $67,800 in unpaid rent and authorized their eviction. The judgment makes the debt legally enforceable, though whether the landlord will ever recover the full amount is uncertain; in New York, collecting on such judgments typically requires separate steps like wage garnishment or bank seizures, and many low-income tenants lack assets that can be collected against.
A separate judgment issued the same day ordered former tenant Jessica Jacob to pay $15,000 in back rent and authorized her eviction from 6 Studio Lane. The case, brought by property owners Robert Simon, and his wife Rosalie, resulted in a stipulated settlement entered on June 11. The judgment gives the landlord the legal right to pursue collection, though—as with the other tenants—recovering the money would require additional enforcement steps and may prove difficult if the tenant lacks collectible assets.
Meanwhile, Woodstock blocked Feehan’s goal of repainting and re-renting 6 Studio Lane.
The town slapped a stop-work order on the property July 1. A few weeks later a man who did not speak English arrived in a truck, his young son in the back seat. Since then, work has stopped at the property.
Violations yet few consequences
Public records obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request reveal that the conditions at 6 Studio Lane were more than a decade in the making: code violations, sanitation complaints, mechanical failures and ignored fire inspections—many of which, on paper, appear never to have been fully resolved.
Town records show that from 2002 to 2016, fire inspections were repeatedly requested and never scheduled. More than a dozen written notices by neighbor Michael Veitch, co-chair of Woodstock’s Tree Committee, were ignored.
A 2016 Order to Remedy cited unsafe occupancy, exposed wiring and failure to correct safety issues like hallway lighting and exterior hazards. Additional reports described garbage accumulation, broken plumbing and hazardous electrical wiring.
From 2013 to 2016, sanitation violations mounted. Town records cited persistent trash piles, discarded furniture and clutter throughout the property.
Central Hudson Gas & Electric once warned tenants of shutoffs because their landlord hadn’t paid utility bills. It advised tenants to pay themselves and deduct the cost from their rent.
Health hazards were also documented. One complaint noted mold and basement flooding. Another described wastewater leaking between units and inoperable toilets and heaters — violations of Ulster County sanitary codes.
Tenants reported heating failures, failed plumbing and having to use buckets of water to flush. In 2016, officials cited a refrigerator left rotting in the yard. Exterior inspections routinely documented clutter, rotting furniture and general disrepair.
The Woodstock Building Department issued multiple violations against the property.
Still, the town’s enforcement options are limited. 6 Studio Lane is a pre-existing structure, built before building permits were required. As a result, it is governed by the 2020 Existing Building Code of New York State, which allows such properties to continue operating unless they are deemed imminently dangerous.
Feehan said the town’s fire and building inspectors have been through the building regularly and would have flagged any serious health issues.
“The fire inspector, the building inspector were there,” he said. “They inspect it. The tenants never said anything about mold. They never said anything about leaking pipes.”
Asked whether the building had a valid certificate of occupancy, he replied, “I believe so. If not, they, the town probably wouldn’t have let me rent it out.”
That framework, that back-and-forth, advocates say, places most of the burden on tenants to go to court—a process that is slow, risky and often stacked against them.
Goldstein believes legal reform is urgently needed. “Housing is a human right,” she said. “I don’t care how dirty you are—everyone deserves a clean, safe place to live.”
She pointed to the REST Act, a proposed state bill that would expand rent stabilization beyond New York City, modernize the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, and create a formal process for documenting rent histories and code violations. Without those tools, she said, landlords operate with impunity.
The families who cycled through 6 Studio Lane, have already been scattered across hotel rooms, borrowed couches, and long commutes, casualties of a housing system that offered few protections and even fewer places to go. “We’ll figure it out,” Sandy said while finding something on Netflix for her family to watch as they packed their belongings planning for eviction in the spring. ‘We always do. Anything is better than here.”
Noah Eckstein is the editor-in-chief of The Overlook. Send correspondence to noah@theoverlooknews.com.