Bayside house still in bad shape

From the Queens Chronicle:

It was the house that time and Eric Miller forgot.

Care of the now vacant one-family property at 215-43 40th Ave. became Miller’s responsibility when its sole occupant, his mother Louise, lost all interest in the routine maintenance of the home she had purchased more than four decades earlier. While the reclusive Mrs. Miller mourned the loss of her husband Eugene, a firefighter killed while on duty in 1968, her son occasionally mowed the front lawn, littered with sand and plywood, but failed to prune the trees crowding the lot’s southwestern corner.

Now that the octogenarian resident has been relocated to a nursing facility, the building stands empty and decrepit. All doors and windows on the ground floor were cemented over in January, when the Department of Buildings found the structure open and unguarded. Shattered windows on the second floor have admitted raccoons, squirrels and birds as new occupants. Since the Queens Chronicle reported on its neglect in late March, the building’s status has remained unchanged, except for the spray painting of a bright green symbol on its concrete façade to indicate its vacancy in case of a fire.