JustFix.nyc maps Brooklyn’s worst-kept buildings

One of the city's worst offenders, in Bushwick.

A new map lets you check the biggest offenders to New York's housing codes.

Mine is that the lightbulbs in my apartment’s hallway went out. Well, first one went out and it was dim for a few months and then the second went out and then for days it was just dark and no one did anything about it. So finally I told my landlord I was going to buy new bulbs and the landlord, Dorothea, said, OK, but make sure they’re the new light bulbs (LED or CFL rather than incandescent) and I said, Sure, and she said I should deduct the cost from my rent check and staple the receipt to the check, which seemed like a lot of fuss, but I did it.

Two days after I paid my rent less light bulbs ($12 at the hardware store for two heavy-duty bulbs) my landlord called me and said that there’s no way the light bulbs cost that much and demanded to know what I’d done with the rest of the money. I was dumbstruck and we fought about it, which got heated. Dorothea said that she had gone to the the hardware store and asked to look at their receipt history, which is kept in a marble notebook, and saw a similar charge for hardhat on the day I bought the lightbulbs. She insisted I’d bought a hardhat with her money and fleeced her. I asked why I would want a hardhat and she noted, shrewdly, that I bike to work and might use it as a helmet. Well played, Dorothea.