Former Giants defensive lineman Chris Canty is facing serious accusations that claim he bullied a tenant by subjecting him to inhumane conditions.
Here’s the New York Post with more about Canty’s battle with his tenant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan:
[Canty] has been accused of unnecessary roughness as he tries to oust the last remaining resident of a five-story, $5.2 million townhouse Canty owns, according to court records.
The 6-foot-7-inch, 380-pound defensive end wants to transform the nine-unit West 89th Street building into his own luxury townhouse — but 5-foot-6 data analyst Stuart Kalmenson stands in his way.
“I had the choice of either getting bullied, or fighting the good fight,” Kalmenson said.
Kalmenson, 59, has lived in his two-bedroom apartment just steps from Central Park for 19 years, paying $2,600 a month rent when Canty, who works out of NYC for ESPN and has a home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, bought the building.
But his longtime home has become a house of horrors.
Kalmenson has spent more than two years without utilities, made it through the winter without heat or hot water; and lives with floors so rotted and chewed through by mice he’s been force “to ‘block off’ about one-third of the living room for safety reasons,” he claimed in court filings.
He kept warm with a space heater and washes his clothes in the bathtub, alleged Kalmenson, who told the court the condition of his home was “truly appalling and unsafe,” records show.
“He just wants to destroy me,” Kalmenson, who has traded multiple legal blows with Canty, told The Post.
The rest of the tenants moved out as their leases expired, about three months after the 2011 Super Bowl winner bought the building in March 2020, Canty said in court papers.
Around the same time, Kalmenson — who had lost his job during the pandemic — had planned to move into a friend’s basement, but the arrangement fell through at the last minute, he said.
After that, he negotiated with Canty’s real estate management company and became a month-to-month tenant, invoices provided by Kalmenson showed.
But by July 2020, Canty filed in housing court to give Kalmenson the boot. The proceeding is ongoing.
Then in November 2020, a construction crew started work, stripping the halls and other units to the studs with Kalmenson and his Spaniel, Charles, inside.
Canty denied wrongdoing.
Which is what you’d expect Canty to do.
But the Post also noted that Canty “was fined $20,000 by the city Buildings Department in 2021 for falsely claiming the building was empty when the work began, and not having a ‘tenant protection plan’ in place for Kalmenson, according to DOB records.”
It’ll be interesting to see how much that violation works against Canty’s mission to oust his last remaining tenant.
Canty played in the NFL from 2005-15 and started 128 games, including 45 starts (and nine of his 22.5 career sacks) with the Giants from 2009-12. He won a Super Bowl ring with them in 2011, when he had a career-best four sacks.
After Canty retired, he caught on with ESPN Radio’s New York affiliate as a talk show host. He now works nationally for ESPN Radio and appears on its morning show, “UnSportsmanLike,” which is based in New York.
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Darryl Slater may be reached atdslater@njadvancemedia.com.