From NY1:Earlier this week, NY1's Susan Jhun filed a report on a two-family home in Bushwick illegally operating as a halfway house. Since the beginning of NY1 for You's investigation, we have learned that this problem is not uncommon.
After our first conversation with Angel Tarrats, we learned that his next door neighbor on Hancock Street was not the only residential home that had been converted into a boarding house.
It's just one of at least eight houses in Brooklyn run by Miracle House Incorporated.
All of the houses are certified with the Department of Buildings as two or three family homes. NY1 called the fire department and the next day they were denied access to a house on Milford Street, but made it in to a home on Gates Avenue. An FDNY spokesman says both had previously received vacate orders for significant safety concerns.
The Coalition for the Homeless claims homes like these wouldn't be proper halfway houses even if they didn't violate building codes.
5 comments:
All of Queens have become like this housing 15 people in a 2 bedroom - 15 unrelated people - not unusual but the norm. The city allowed archittects to self certify interior renovations that catered to illegally transforming a single family home to a family - it a DOB inspector were to visit the property they would find the the architect falsified the egress, hall sizes and windows that would never meet basic standards of a safe 2 family. Worse, is that these 2 families are carved out to accomadate cramming 3x the number of a basic nuclear family of say 4 people. So in essense 9 unrelated folks live in a cellar apartment self-certified as a apartment with a gas stove. A gas stove found in the same dwelling prior to self-certification was found to be illegal by code because of the ceiling heights (7.5') that did not change after the conversion. Needless to say the self-certified apartment incorporate the garage (yes folks) as living quarters. In many instances it servers as the primary entranceway to the apartment. If your from Queens - you know this is going on and the owners of these building are all absentee landlords who heartlessly prey on thier own countryman whom are typically illegal and work as endentured slaves for buisnesses of the landlord.
Someone, with the obvious agreement of those living in protected landmarked districts (cause they are the only communities with the resources to stop what is going on) has decided that for the vast majority of communities in NYC are to be changed.
They are to be converted from homes and owner occupied dwellings to human warehouses making money for absentee landlords.
Its no accident that the folks living in the designated communities work for banks, the real estate industry, and are landlords.
Besides, they need nannies and gardeners and cheap waitstaff.
If people wo lived in illegal conversions knew they didn't have to pay rent and how hard it is to evict them,well...............
You can thank our leadrers of our city and state for turning a blind eye to all of this. Hell the "BLOOMING IDIOT OF A MAYOR" can't see them from his house!!!
It can be quite easy to evict them. I've heard of people being given 3 hours notice to move. Also, if people are illegal they will not want to mess with authorities.
While working with the census department for the test census of Western Queens a few years ago, we came across subdivided utility rooms.
Not only were there more people than intended, but no one was ever meant to live in such space conveniently located next to carbon-monoxide spewing boilers.
This type of housing is claiming lives. A school friend's brother died when he made the mistake of moving into an attic apartment in the summer. He was literally roasted alive by the heat.
Post a Comment