‘Deplorable’ conditions at Mon View Heights described

Charges were dropped against one of the three defendants as a preliminary hearing began Friday.

A court heard detailed testimony regarding Mon View Heights Apartments in West Mifflin in an hours-long preliminary hearing Friday.

Charges were filed in Allegheny County relating to the alleged theft of rent and federal funds meant to provide upkeep for the 326-unit subsidized apartment complex.

Jonathan Liani attended the hearing in front of Magisterial District Judge Richard D. Olasz Jr. in person, while Moshe Silber and Frederick Schulman attended virtually.

Charges against Silber, of New York, include theft, receiving stolen property and dealing in the proceeds of illegal activity related to the conditions and finances of MonView Heights.

Silber owned the property from around December 2022 — buying it with Schulman for $17 million — to around September 2024.

Liani, the accountant for the property at one time, was withdrawn as a defendant by the district attorney’s office during the preliminary hearing and his charges were dropped. Schulman waived the hearing, was named a cooperative commonwealth witness and is also set to testify.

“(Liani’s) signature appeared on nearly every check that came out of the MonView account, and he is on the bank account,” Deputy District Attorney John Pittman said. “He is just an accountant, and I did not know that until I interviewed him.”

Liani was an off-site, backend bookkeeper following emailed orders for when to issue checks, his defense attorney Fred Rabner told The Tribune Review.

“My client is beyond relieved that this ordeal is over,” he said. “I said at the beginning he would be vindicated as soon as this saw the light of day.”

MON VIEW HEIGHTS •A4

“We found units with holes in the floors and the walls, raw sewage, lots of raccoons and roaches.”

MAUREEN CASSLEY

WINNCOMPANIES Silber and Shulman are awaiting sentencing in a separate federal mortgage fraud case. Both men are linked to 11 other alleged nuisance properties in this area.

A public nuisance charge for “life-threatening” conditions was filed by Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.’s office against the ownership group. Authorities said they failed a federal inspection late last year.

In a statement last week, Zappala implied that Westmoreland County could be looking into properties owned by the same group.

Mon View is one of many local properties linked to New Jersey-based NB Affordable. The properties are privately owned, but receive a federal subsidy to house low-income tenants.

They include Valley Royal Court in New Kensington, Palisades Manor in Rankin, Bethesda Wilkinsburg Apartments and Gallatin Apartments in Uniontown as well as Bedford Hill Apartments, Central Hill Apartments, Elhome Apartments, Kelly Hamilton Apartments and Hill Com I and II — all in Pittsburgh.

Testifying Friday were West Mifflin Police Chief Gregory McCulloch, Homeville Fire Chief Ronald Lowe, Code Enforcement Officer Jeff Youkers, Maureen Cassley of WinnCompanies and Liani.

Liani said he and Silber had a vendor and client relationship, adding that he was aware that every check has his signature on it because he is an authorized signer and his contract was signed by Silber.

Schulman was also on the MonView, LLC account with Silber and Liani. According to Liani, Silber owes him around $250,000.

McCulloch allegedly was the original complainant of the property, alleging that starting in 2023 trash pickup was no longer happening and that the property wasn’t being maintained. He cited broken windows not replaced, rodent and predator problems, raw sewage issues where sewage was flowing into the parking lot and more. A child allegedly fell into a hole in the floor of a residence as well.

McCulloch added that in his years of police work and living in the area, the apartment complex had never gotten that bad until-mid 2023. He made calls to the health department and more stating they did the best they could to remedy the situation, but he realized it was too big for his department.

“There was raw sewage, tampons, children waiting at bus stops, raccoons, rats in people’s dwellings, and for a whole weekend, there was no water for over 400 residents. This was horrendous,” Phil DiLucente, solicitor for West Mifflin Borough, told our news partners at WTAE.

Miller argued that the owners paid around $737,175 between April 2023 to June 2024 for water and sewage for the property. She also stated that MonView paid companies $23,000 for pest removal from August 2023 to March 2024.

Crime has allegedly increased in the area as well, as McCulloch or another member of the department would have to attend with anyone visiting the property. Police have made routine checks of the property every day.

“I would make phone calls and nothing would get taken care of,” McCulloch said. “I would speak to the onsite manager, and she even had my personal cell phone number. She would just tell me at the time there was no funds to work on the property. Then we had an incident where they went a whole weekend without water. I wasn’t notified until Monday that there was no water for the entire complex.”

According to Youkers, the initial inspection of the property was conducted in January 2023 with the owners given six months to take care of items on the inspection and follow up with a reinspection of every unit. He inspected around 129 units and has been to the property several times.

He testified that he received a forwarded email from the NAACP of Pittsburgh branch stating that the whole property had been without water for three days, which they were unaware of at that time, around March 2024. The owners allegedly did not attend other hearings filed by the borough.

Lowe added that there were also fire hydrant issues and a lack of working smoke detectors.

“This property was purchased by the new owners in February of 2023 and we are now in April of 2024 and they still haven’t fixed the problems to get an occupancy permit,” Pittman said. “The fire hydrants are still not fixed and no one has paid any of the fines or appealed any of the citations that have already been adjudicated.”

Other witnesses agreed with officials that the property is in deplorable condition, including Cassley, who said she has never seen anything like it in her 25 years with her company.

The landscaping was out of control in addition to raw sewage between buildings, unoccupied and occupied unit windows boarded up and Cassley said a rat ran across her feet in the management office.

She added that her company worked with MonView for less than a month before dropping the apartment complex. However, they stayed on with the complex for six months because they could not find anyone to take their management position. The property is not salvageable, according to Cassley.

“There are many units that have inoperable furnaces. Some were even missing furnaces. We found units with holes in the floors and the walls, raw sewage, lots of raccoons and roaches,” she said. “This is not acceptable at any level, and what the residents had to experience or not experience, you wouldn’t ask your worst enemy to live that way.”

There are three more witnesses left to testify when the preliminary continues at 8:15 a.m. March 28.