City seeks to protect tenants from sewage

From the Daily News:

Tenants of a rent-stabilized Jamaica building plagued by everything from vermin and mold to little or no running water may have thought they'd seen it all.

They were wrong.

Raw sewage has been piling up in the building's basement since mid-February and spewing into an alleyway, tenants said.

City Department of Housing Preservation and Development officials were refused entry by the superintendent into the building at 88-22 Parsons Blvd. on Tuesday to make emergency repairs. And a Department of Buildings inspector was barred yesterday.

Now, HPD plans to go to court to get a warrant allowing the agency on the property, officials said.

The property has about two dozen open DOB violations and 147 open HPD violations, officials said.