ALBANY - Gil Teva says the city is giving his property a bad name.

His two-story building at the corner of Second Avenue and Moore Street is not vacant and he wants Albany to get rid of the white-and-red "X" placard -- a sort of scarlet letter synonymous with urban blight -- affixed to the building.

The commercially-zoned building, which is surrounded by residential homes and across the street from a busy grocery store, no longer has boarded up windows. The city will often affix the "X" signs on buildings with boarded windows.

And Teva says he has made repairs to the front steps of the building as requested by the city Fire Department, which hung the sign on the building to alert emergency workers that the building at 185 Second Ave. was potentially unsafe to enter.

But in order to remove the controversial sign, Albany officials want Teva to allow them to inspect the interior of the structure. Teva is not interested in having a visit.

“It is my right to keep my privacy and not show to others my house from inside, and I think that they make an elephant out of a fly,” Teva wrote in an email to the Times Union.

Recent updates to the city code now give officials the authority to request an interior inspection when owners register a property as vacant. It allows the city to assess the building’s condition.

Teva is one of over 200 property owners who refuse to register their properties as vacant. But unlike Teva, many owners of buildings affixed with the "X" placard do not bother to respond to the city's action. There are 401 buildings with the placard, and 193 of those properties have been registered as vacant, according to city figures.

Albany building director Rick LaJoy said this is the first time he has experienced someone actively fight compliance.

“He’s an anomaly in the sense that the people who don’t comply, we never hear from,” LaJoy said. “I’m thinking he’s trying to rehab it and do something with it, but he’s just been relentless with not wanting to comply.”

Teva purchased the building at auction in October 2012. He says the city's demand to inspect the inside of the building is an infringement on his Constitutional rights, primarily the Fourth Amendment, which protects a person’s right against unreasonable search and seizures without a warrant and probable cause.

“They cannot ask for something that is against the Constitution,” he said during a phone interview Thursday. “If they want the proof, they need to prove that I’m guilty. You are not responsible to prove you are innocent.”

While it is rare for property owners in Albany to fight code enforcement and inspections on Constitutional grounds, some prior court rulings have sided with the property owner.

In the 1967 case of Camara vs. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco, the U.S. Supreme Court established the ability of a resident to deny entry to a building inspector without a warrant.

Teva would not say why he bought the Second Avenue property but noted that many people have more than one home. He said he and other family members stay there on occasion throughout the year, but acknowledged it is not occupied most of the year.

Neighborhood residents say they rarely see anyone coming in or out of the building. Knocks on the building's three separate doors went unanswered Thursday.

The Second Avenue building hit the city’s radar in 2017, when it was cited as not being registered as a vacant building, LaJoy said. The city asked Teva to provide an engineer’s report that the building was up to code, but he never responded, he said.

In September 2018, inspectors again cited the property for being vacant and asked Teva to ensure that all windows and doors were weather-tight. The windows were boarded up, the doors were padlocked and there was overgrowth, LaJoy said. Unable to get inside the building to assess its condition, city officials placarded it.

It was not until March of this year that Teva reached out to city officials, LaJoy said. Teva had applied for a permit to build the stairs after the fact, but with open violations the city could not approve the permit, LaJoy said. The citations against Teva are now in court, the building director added.

“As soon as he is ready to comply, we’ll help him work through the process,” LaJoy said.