It is significant to recognize that the building residents who appeared as witnesses for the tenant, though testifying credibly that tenant’s presence in the building created no problems for them, did not directly controvert the landlord’s persuasive evidence on any of the serious nuisance allegations outlined above, including the evidence relating to the tenant’s use of a knife during the November 2001 incident. Nor was such evidence otherwise refuted by the tenant, whose failure to testify in his own behalf in defense of the holdover petition allows the court to draw “the strongest inference [against him] that the opposing evidence permits” (Matter of Nassau County Dept. of Social Servs. [Dante M.] v Denise J., 87 NY2d 73, 79 [1995]). To the extent that the testimony offered by tenant when called by landlord as a rebuttal witness in connection with the tenant’s (baseless) retaliatory eviction and discrimination defenses can be viewed, as the trial court styled it, as “a denial of claims regarding the alleged vandalizing of apartment doors and playing of loud music,” we need emphasize that nowhere in his rebuttal testimony did tenant deny or offer any exculpatory explanation for the other ongoing nuisance conditions firmly established by landlord.