Wheels are coming off in Northeast Queens crime wave

Bayside Patch

  A borough-wide spike in tire and rim thefts is hitting northeast Queens hard, according to the police.
The NYPD's 111th precinct, which covers a region of northeast Queens that includes Bayside and 

Douglaston, has gotten reports of 37 such thefts so far this year, up from 16 last year.
In 2017, there were 43 thefts by this time of the year, precinct officers say.

 
The spike prompted the precinct to add staff to its midnight shift, police wrote in a Facebook post

Bigoted graffiti found on sidewalks, fences and trees in Lindenwood

 

NY Post


A hateful vandal scrawled “F–K WHITE PEOPLE” in front of a Queens home and defaced nearby trees and fences with other profane messages, police said Friday.
The spray-painted graffiti, written in black and underlined with red, was discovered on the sidewalk in front of a home on 151st Avenue near 81st Street in the neighborhood of Lindenwood on Thanksgiving morning, cops said.
Found on nearby trees were spray-painted messages reading “F–K WHITE,” and simply, “F–K,” police and witnesses told The Post.
The messages were discovered at around 4 a.m. and reported to police at around 10 a.m., according to authorities.
Nearby fences were also found defaced with graffiti that read: “I NEED P—Y ASAP,” and “ONE DAY I WILL COME BACK TO THIS AND SEE HOW SUCCESSFUL I AM!”
“It’s not safe. We’re afraid,” said Lina Bachour, 38, who lives at the home where the “F–K WHITE PEOPLE” graffiti was scrawled in front of.
It was not yet clear if Bachour or anyone else was specifically targeted.
Another neighbor, Barry Rachnowitz, 70, said that his part of his fence was spray-painted in red graffiti.
“This is horrible,” he said. “There are no words to share my disgust right now. It is definitely a hate-crime, especially what they wrote on the [sidewalk].”
Rachowitz added: “I can’t understand how someone can have so much hate in their heart towards a stranger … Hopefully the person will be caught and punished.”
Resident Anthony Carecchia, 20, said the vandalism was “very surprising to see.”
“You don’t expect something like this in this neighborhood,” he said, noting, “It’s a pretty diverse neighborhood, so I’m really surprised.”

Happy Thanksgiving

 Here's an obligatory picture of a turkey

  And less appetizing turkeys:

Class action lawsuit filed against city for shithole Hunters Point librarys' lack of ADA accessibility

 

 NY Post

The new $41.5 million Queens Public Library branch at Hunters Point, where design flaws have made it a target of critics since opening in September, could get even more expensive thanks to a new lawsuit demanding improvements to help disabled patrons.

In a class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court, disabilities advocates say that Queens Public Library violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to ensure that disabled patrons will have equal access to all parts of the new branch.

When the branch opened, a three-tiered fiction section only had a single staircase leading up to it and was unreachable by the building’s single elevator.

The plaintiffs, the Center for the Independence of the Disabled and a Queens woman with mobility issues, say disabled people are also unable to reach the branch’s rooftop terrace and a reading space on the children’s floor.

The plaintiffs are calling on the library to “swiftly” execute plans to remove barriers to equal access to areas within the Hunters Point branch.

The suit was filed just two months after the 32,000-square foot library was opened to the public — at which point library officials hailed it as a “stunning architectural marvel” and a “beacon of learning, literacy and culture.”

“The newly-built Hunters Point Library was designed and built with a total disregard for adults and children with mobility disabilities and in flagrant contempt of the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” the 21-page lawsuit states.

City council passes law to curb placard abuse

NY Post

City Council members overwhelmingly backed Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s plan to rein in widespread abuse of city-issued parking permits, approving all nine of his bills he put forward to crack down on placard abuse.

“Placard abuse is corruption,” Johnson told reporters ahead of the Council’s Tuesday vote. “We’ve tolerated it for years as one of those unchangeable facts in New York City, but those days are hopefully over.”

The package of bills would up the fine for illegal placard use — a rampant practice among city employees — from $250 to $500. It would require city employees to apply for placards and explain why they should be granted the permit.

The NYPD would also be required to conduct 50 targeted placard enforcement sweeps each week under the supervision of the city’s Department of Investigation.

Furthermore, city police would be tasked with maintaining an electronic database of all placards in circulation and tracking progress towards eliminating improper use of city parking permits.

Critics frequently complain the NYPD fails to crack down on placard abuse since cops are frequently spotted misusing them, but Johnson told reporters DOI’s involvement ensures NYPD will take the issue seriously.

“We wanted an outside check,” Johnson said. “Traffic enforcement agents who are supposed to be writing the summonses and tickets … don’t always do it because they are afraid of policing the police.”

Looks like someone missed a sweep on Queens Blvd on the night of the new legislation. Speaking of outside checks, how about compensating George the Atheist for his recent expose'.

 

NYPD fraternity group parks their cars on the sidewalk adjacent to bike lane.

George The Atheist


Who:  The Columbia Association of the NYPD.
Where:  In Elmhurst on the Queens Boulevard south service road between the new Georgia Diner and Grand Avenue.
When:  Tuesday evening, November 26, 2019.
What:  Columbia Association police membership needs convenient and difficult to find on-street parking.
Why:  It seems that this membership has parking privileges that the rest of the citizenry does not.  

If the Queens Boulevard bike lanes are kept clear, as seen in these photos, why can't all drivers then park on the sidewalk like these off-duty cops?



No standing, unless you're privileged

OK Oligarch

Politico

Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday he is running for president, bringing a narrow following but boundless bank account to the crowded Democratic primary.

The 77-year-old former New York City mayor, positioning himself as a centrist alternative to Joe Biden, launched his candidacy in an online video that is part personal story, part attack on President Donald Trump. 

Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday he is running for president, bringing a narrow following but boundless bank account to the crowded Democratic primary.

The 77-year-old former New York City mayor, positioning himself as a centrist alternative to Joe Biden, launched his candidacy in an online video that is part personal story, part attack on President Donald Trump.

“I’m running for president to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America. We cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions. He represents an existential threat to our country and our values,” Bloomberg declared in a statement Sunday. “If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage.”

 The former mayor, who is worth an estimated $54.1 billion, plans to forgo competing in early voting states and instead focus his resources on Super Tuesday, when 15 states head to the polls March 3. His aides believe the strategy will help him lay claim to delegate-rich territory that has been somewhat overlooked as the top-tier candidates focus their energies in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. 

Bloomberg's presidential quest is a hedge for his business.

 And to his campaign rivals, this is an extension of his "philanthropy"

Huffington Post

In a memo to staff, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News told the newsroom that the publication will continue its “tradition of not investigating” its CEO and namesake, Michael Bloomberg, or his family and foundations after he declared his candidacy for president on Sunday.

The head of Bloomberg News, John Micklethwait, said the policy not to investigate will be extended to other candidates in the Democratic primary.

Carranza, de Blasio and wife are focus of Department of Education coverup

NY Post

Hands off.

An explosive whistleblower complaint sent to three city councilmen claims the agency charged with investigating wrongdoing in city schools has blocked probes of Mayor Bill de Blasio, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and their allies, The Post has learned.

The Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI) for city schools is sitting on nine cases of waste, fraud and corruption involving the upper echelons of City Hall and the Department of Education, according to a type-written, four-page letter that catalogues the wrongdoing in detail.

One of cases cited involves first lady Chirlane McCray’s embattled $850 million mental health program, Thrive, which has a large school component.

The insider document blames Special Commissioner Anastasia Coleman, who was appointed in 

February 2018, after prevailing in a power struggle with former Department of Investigations Commissioner Mark Peters, an aggressive prober of the mayor’s administration and city agencies.
“Under Coleman, SCI is continuing to hold or redirect investigations into City Hall, Chancellor Richard Carranza and de Blasio allies with business or that are connected to the DOE to protect de Blasio’s image while he runs for president,” says the anonymous Aug. 20 letter signed by “SCI Investigative Staff.”

De Blasio dropped out of the presidential campaign on Sept. 20.

Other mothballed cases included a probe of possible mayoral interference in an investigation of Orthodox Jewish yeshivas that get city funds but skimp on required secular education; contract spending on de Blasio’s aborted “Renewal” program for failing schools; and allegations about Carranza and his top aides.

“SCI investigators assigned to investigations involving executives at the DOE and City Hall, including the Mayor, have been directed to instead focus on matters not related to the mayoral administration, his allies, etc,” the letter says.

SCI agents, it adds, “have been denied support in conducting these investigations and their independence in pursuing leads . . . that point towards City Hall and top-level executives at the DOE.”

In response, SCI said that Coleman “is aware of the anonymous complaint as well as its recipients,” adding that the letter was forwarded “to the appropriate agency for review” — referring to the city Department of Investigation.

Assemblyman Hevesi demands accountability from city's homeless provider non-profit groups

NY Daily News

 A Queens lawmaker wants the state comptroller to take a look at the books of the city’s top homeless shelter providers.

Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi is asking Thomas DiNapoli to audit 12 nonprofits responsible for housing and helping homeless New Yorkers and probe whether taxpayer money is being spent efficiently as homelessness rates continue to climb.

Hevesi, the chair of his chamber’s social services committee, said he’s witnessed a multitude of problems plaguing shelters in recent years, including exorbitant salaries for top executives and facilities with major safety and maintenance concerns.

“While some providers use all of their resources appropriately and provide exemplary services, it is also clear that many providers are failing to achieve their mission. In fact, the overall average length of shelter stays has increased, as has the rate of clients subsequently returning after leaving,” the Democrat wrote to the comptroller in a letter obtained by the Daily News.

In January, Coalition for the Homeless found that a record number of people — nearly 64,000 — were living in city shelters. The total has fluctuated since, but as of September, there were 62,391 homeless, including 14,962 families with 22,083 children, according to the advocacy group.

More than 114,000 students in city public and charter schools — one out of every ten — was homeless during the 2018-2019 school year, according to a survey released last month by the education nonprofit Advocates for Children.

As the number of people relying on city shelters has grown, so too has the amount of issues at the facilities, Hevesi said.

“There are several providers whose services strip the dignity of their clients and put clients in dangerous situations and that shouldn’t be occurring with these huge sums of taxpayer money that we’re putting into this industry,” the lawmaker told The News.

One less hospital, one more alleged affordable housing development

The Real Deal


The Chetrit Group has landed $200 million in construction refinancing for its planned multifamily redevelopment at Jamaica’s Mary Immaculate Hospital site, according to sources familiar with the deal.

The funding comes from Square Mile Capital in a deal that was brokered by Henry Bodek of Galaxy Capital Group. The project will be a four-building, 324-unit complex at 150-13 89th Avenue in Queens.

Bodek declined to comment on the deal. Square Mile Capital and Chetrit did not respond to requests for comment.

de Blasio needle exchange and sanitation program in the South Bronx is an abysmal failure

PIX News

  If we’ve learned nothing else about the heroin epidemic in the South Bronx, it’s that there’s a seemingly endless supply of the opiate on the street, especially near the bustling intersection known officially as “The Hub” and unofficially as “The Hub of Heroin”.

That means plenty of temptation for recovering addicts like 53-year-old Enrique Santiago.

"They throw the needles on the floor and stuff like that," said Santiago. Santiago's spent the better part of the last two decades trying to stay clean. "I've been on methadone for a year."

He takes the synthetic drug once a day, six days a week to help ward off cravings for the real thing. And he admits that seventh day without any help  is hard.

It was just last month PIX11’s reporting forced the de Blasio Administration to address residents’ concerns over hundreds of dirty needles found in city garbage cans, and on the street, tossed by the heroin addicts who are getting their fix in broad daylight.

"They be in the buildings, sleeping, urinating, feces and also, they just have so many needles. It's everywhere," said Bronx building porter Michael Dawson.

But in the wake of our reports, residents like building porter Michael Dawson and former heroin addict Vincent Almojera both question whether one of the city’s solutions — needle exchange programs — have only made the addiction crisis worse.

Vincent believes a neighborhood already playing host to a number of methadone clinics could use a few more without the bad rap that comes with visiting them.

"The methadone clinic is not the problem, the methadone clinic is one of the solutions," said Almojera. "The problem is handing out free needles, handing out free needles and the stigma that comes with treatment. People look down on you when you go into treatment and that's the problem."

Three homeless men perish in abandoned house fire

 

NY Daily News

Three people died when a two-alarm fire tore through an abandoned Queens house late Thursday night, officials said.

The fire broke out at about 11:50 p.m. at a building on Farmers Blvd. at 110th Road in St. Albans.

It quickly went to two alarms.

 The three victims are believed to be squatters, police and fire sources said. City Buildings Department records show complaints about squatters living in the house since at least 2016.

NY Times

For years, residents in Queens had been concerned about an abandoned house in their neighborhood, telling officials the property was unsafe and had become a home for squatters.

Late Thursday, their fears were realized, after a fire ripped through the building in the St. Albans neighborhood, killing three men believed to be squatting there, police and fire officials said.

“That house was boarded up for a while,” said Assistant Chief Joseph Jardin of the Fire Department. “So I can only assume that they were living there as squatters.”

More than 100 firefighters were called to fight the blaze, which started just before midnight in the house’s basement.

While working to bring the fire under control, firefighters found all three men unconscious and unresponsive. The victims, who Chief Jardin said were between 35 and 40 years old, were pronounced dead at the scene. They have not yet been identified.

Four firefighters also suffered minor injuries, including one who fell through the house’s first floor into the basement, officials said.

The fire and a series of deaths of homeless people brought renewed attention to the worsening homelessness crisis in New York City, which has led the city to increase efforts to identify people living on the streets and steer them to shelters.

Barbra Thomas, 45, a subway station supervisor who lives in the area, said that homelessness in St. Albans had become a bigger problem over the past two years, but that she did not consider these men a nuisance.


Neighbors in St. Albans, a middle-class neighborhood, said the house had been a regular stopover for homeless people and squatters for quite some time.

“For years, it’s just been in and out, in and out,” Sulaiman Lamont, 52, said.
Linda Dey, who has lived adjacent to the burned home for 26 years, said that she had complained to city officials “several times” that the squatters next door were selling drugs.

On Thursday night, Ms. Dey had her son call 911 when they began to smell smoke.

As she and her daughter were taking photos of the damage, Ms. Dey said, “We didn’t wish bad, but we knew something bad was going to happen because no one was listening.”

LLC slumlords lets Far Rockaway building rot

CBS NY

Cuomoleaks

Times Union

  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was allegedly briefed on the details of a closed-door vote by the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics last January, around the time the panel voted on whether to investigate Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to the governor.

The allegation — that someone in JCOPE may have illegally informed the governor or his staff about the voting breakdown of the panel’s non-public decision — was secretly investigated by the state inspector general’s office between January and Oct. 4, when the inspector general sent a letter to JCOPE stating its investigation had been unable to substantiate the complaint.

The apparent breach of JCOPE’s bylaws was revealed when Cuomo allegedly contacted Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie almost immediately following the commission’s January meeting and expressed concerns about the votes of the speaker’s appointees to JCOPE.

Julie A. Garcia, a Warren County attorney who had been appointed to JCOPE by Heastie in August 2018, said she cannot discuss any matters related to the commission’s discussions or votes in executive sessions.

But without disclosing what the vote related to, Garcia confirmed that she complained to former JCOPE Executive Director Seth Agata last January that someone from Heastie’s staff had contacted her shortly after a commission meeting in January and informed her about Cuomo’s alleged conversation with the legislative leader.


NY Post


The state’s embattled ethics agency refused Tuesday to release the whistleblower complaint that prompted the state’s Inspector General to open a probe into leaks involving Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

The Joint Commission on Public Ethics met behind closed doors for almost four hours in Albany and then suddenly adjourned, refusing to cast a vote on releasing the complaint or to answer questions from reporters about it.

The complaint alleges that Gov. Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Heastie spoke in Jan. 2019 about JCOPE’s confidential deliberations around a possible probe of Joe Percoco, Cuomo’s former top aide and fixer — who now sits in federal prison following a 2016 corruption conviction.

State Inspector General Letizia Tagliafierro — a Cuomo appointee, who said she recused herself from the leak probe — sent a letter on Oct. 4 saying her office couldn’t substantiate the claim.
The entire affair is cloaked in mystery.

JCOPE refuses to comment on Percoco or any possible investigation. And Tagliafierro’s office refuses to say whether or not Cuomo or Heastie were interviewed as part of the probe.
“Consistent with other investigative bodies, this agency cannot discuss the particulars of investigative methods or procedures – particularly in matters that are unsubstantiated,” Tagliafierro’s spokesman Lee Park told The Post, adding the letter is subject state freedom of information laws.

Heeerrrrrrrrrrre's Hiram!

Gothamist


Hiram Monserrate, the Queens Democrat who was expelled from the State Senate for assaulting his girlfriend and later jailed for stealing public funds, is plotting another comeback.
Monserrate, now a Democratic district leader, filed on Tuesday to run against Queens 
 Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry, a fellow Democrat and one of the highest-ranking lawmakers in the chamber. A source close to Monserrate said the politician has not made a final decision on whether to run but is strongly considering the possibility.

“Hiram is considering a run. He hasn’t made a decision yet,” said the source. “He opened the committee, he’s trying to raise money and see what happens.”

Two years ago, Monserrate ran unsuccessfully for City Council against Francisco Moya, a former assemblymember. Though Moya had the strong support of the Democratic establishment and the city’s major labor unions, Monserrate still managed to garner 44 percent of the vote. Monserrate had held the City Council seat, based in East Elmhurst and Corona, in the early 2000s before he was elected to the State Senate in 2008.

In 2010, Monserrate’s colleagues voted overwhelmingly to expel him the chamber after he was charged with beating and slashing his then-girlfriend, Karla Giraldo. Security camera footage showed Monserrate dragging her by her hair through the lobby of their building, and doctors later said Giraldo needed 40 stitches.

In 2012, Monserrate was sentenced to two years in prison after he plead guilty to misappropriating $109,000 in city grants when he was a member of the City Council.
Were he to run, Monserrate would be competitive. He is a district leader in Aubry’s district, which overlaps with Moya’s Council seat, and maintains a base of support there. Aubry did not immediately return a request for comment.

Broadway Stages is suing the state to block probe into donations to de Blasio's corrupted CONY fund

NY Post


A major donor to Mayor de Blasio’s since-shuttered nonprofit is suing to block a state probe of its $60,000 in contributions.

Broadway Stages claims that the Joint Commission on Public Ethics exceeded its authority by slapping the TV and film production company with an Aug. 19 subpoena.

The subpoena seeks copies of “all communications” between Broadway Stages and de Blasio, his defunct Campaign for One New York charity and lobbyist James Capalino, according to the lawsuit filed in state Supreme Court in Albany.

Broadway Stages — whose CEO and president, Gina Argento, raised more than $110,000 for de Blasio’s 2013 campaign and transition, making her Hizzoner’s No. 2 bundler — claims that state law allows JCOPE to investigate only officials who receive gifts, and not those who give them.

Its lawsuit, filed Thursday, also denies that the company donated to CONY “at the direction of the Mayor (or any other public official).”

Saving to buy a house in NYC will take as long as a Rip Van Winkle nap

Patch

All it takes for the average New Yorker to buy a city home is a dream and 100 or more years of saving, according to a new real estate analysis.

The average New Yorker would need to save for 122 years to buy a Greenwich Village house, 104 years to buy a Midtown condo and 44 years to buy a coop in SoHo, according to a PropertyClub analysis released Monday.

"Homeownership is one of those classic American dreams," the analysis reads. "Though in recent years it's become just that — a dream."

ProportyClub's analysts crunched the numbers to find out how long it would take a household earning $64,000 a year — the city's median income in 2018 — to save up for a 20 percent down payment for a house, condo and coop.

While Manhattan took first place with its 122 wait for the Greenwich Village house, Brooklyn claimed four of the top five spots with a 116 years to save for a Brooklyn Heights house, 83 years saving for a Cobble Hill house, 63 years saving for a Park Slope house and 57 years waiting for a Boerum Hill House.

House-hunters without a century to spare might try Middle Village, Maspeth and Jamaica Hills in Queens or Marine Park in Brooklyn, all of which would require 14 years saving, according to the analysis.

Crime infested homeless shelters discourages people that need them to use them

THE CITY

The night Jeffrey Wolford came in off the frigid sidewalk seeking warmth in Manhattan’s 30th Street Men’s Shelter last winter, it was too late to get a bed.

He was assigned a plastic chair, alongside 20 other men already dozing in the city’s biggest shelter, a major intake center for homeless people.

Just as he was nodding off, he looked down and saw a man rifling through his backpack, trying to steal his phone.

The two were wrestling on the floor when a shelter supervisor intervened. Wolford says he explained the attempted phone theft. But the supervisor told the thief to take a seat — and ordered Wolford back out into the cold.

Disgusted, he grabbed his belongings and ventured back out into the pre-dawn Arctic chill.

“Sleeping in the streets is preferable to that,” said Wolford, 33.

City Hall’s last official count in January found more than 3,500 homeless people on sidewalks or in the subways on a night when the temperature plummeted to 28 degrees.

 Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to train 18,000 city workers to call 311 when they see a homeless person to get more folks into city shelters, which house about 60,000 New Yorkers.

“The problem here is not (that) we don’t have a place to get someone that’s safe and where we can get them mental health services and substance misuse services, we have that,” he said. “It’s getting people to come in.”

But as winter approaches, homeless people living on the streets, in interview after interview, told THE CITY they’d rather take their chances on trains or sidewalks.

The myriad dangers facing them are underscored by a recent spate of killings of homeless people. That includes the Oct. 5 beating deaths of four men sleeping on the streets of Chinatown — allegedly by a man twice arrested for committing crimes inside city shelters.

On Nov. 5, a homeless man allegedly fatally stabbed another homeless man outside an East Elmhurst, Queens, shelter. Four days later, a similar killing took place inside an Upper West Side shelter.

 Amid this violent landscape, THE CITY zeroed in on the shelter where Wolford says he was accosted and is often cited by homeless people as a place to avoid: the 30th Street Men’s Shelter in Kips Bay.

Our review of nearly 3,000 pages of internal records of dangerous and criminal activity inside 30th Street in 2017 and 2018 found:

• Serious incidents — such as assaults, death threats and possession of significant quantities of drugs — won’t necessarily get someone arrested or even kicked out.

• Violations of shelter rules often go without punishment.

• Repeat offenders have no trouble bedding down for the night in a shelter, even after multiple incidents in various city-run facilities. That was the case with the man accused of the Chinatown killings.

Bill de Blasio's latest plan for homeless crisis will involve 18,000 city workers as monitors

NY Times

New York City will direct more than 18,000 of its municipal workers to use 311 to give social service workers real-time information to help them steer the almost 4,000 people who live on the streets into shelters.

The effort, known as Outreach NYC, is the latest attempt from Mayor Bill de Blasio to tackle perhaps the most intractable problem his administration has faced: street homelessness. The problem was highlighted in October when a homeless man, Randy Santos, allegedly bludgeoned four other homeless men to death in Chinatown.

Workers from the departments of parks, sanitation, buildings, fire and health and mental hygiene will be trained to use 311 apps to send detailed service requests to the new homeless services joint command center.

The information will help outreach workers identify the street homeless and begin the delicate and complicated work of convincing them to accept services and shelter.

The mayor has also committed $19 million to hire almost 200 new homeless outreach workers, bringing the total to close to 600.

City officials said Mr. de Blasio was committed to the strategy as a way to reduce the number of unsheltered people as he enters the last two years of his administration. Leading the effort will be Dr. Raul Perea-Henze, who will be announced on Thursday as the new deputy mayor to oversee health and human services.

“We cannot attempt to address this issue in a vacuum,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement. “Outreach NYC is our all-hands-on-deck approach to bring even more people in off the streets.”

Mr. de Blasio has dealt with record homelessness during his six-year tenure. The approximately 4,000 street homeless represent 5 percent of the 79,000 total homeless people in the city, most of whom are in shelters. As of Tuesday, there were 60,479 people in the city’s primary shelter system, including almost 22,000 children. 

 Part of the issue is that many of the persistent street homeless may suffer from mental illness; Mr. de Blasio has faced regular criticism over the failure of ThriveNYC, the $1 billion plan to tackle mental health launched by his wife, Chirlane McCray, to help the most seriously mentally ill.

There are also new concerns about overpolicing of the poor, minorities and the homeless after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced plans to hire 500 new police officers to help deal with homelessness and crime in the subways.

Ms. Routhier said the increase in police officers and the new outreach program would add “more points of contacts without solutions.”

“This looks like mass surveillance of homeless people,” she said.

That's because it is. The Outreach NYC program is basically de Blasio's Homeless Gestapo.

9-year-old girl asks Mayor de Blasio why he can't do his job right

     

NY Post

A precocious 9-year-old and the aunt of a teen killed by a stray bullet grilled Mayor Bill de Blasio about crime, homelessness and public transit at a Queens town hall Wednesday.

Amaryllis Greene, 9, drew applause and laughter from the audience of over 400 people assembled at Austin Martin High School in Jamaica, Queens, when she asked the mayor a list of questions including, “Why is the MTA never on time?”

The fourth-grader, who attends a Montessori school, also quizzed Hizzoner about delays on the Q43 bus line, homelessness on the trains and NYPD leadership.

“With all due respect, why was Mr. Benjamin Tucker not selected as police commissioner,” Greene asked about the NYPD’s first deputy commissioner who was passed over for the job in favor of his colleague, Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea.

De Blasio complimented the youngster, asking if he could call her “future council member,” then answered her questions.

He reminded her that the state, not the city, controls the MTA but promised improvements with funding from congestion pricing. He pledged to address vagrants on the subways by putting more outreach workers underground and explained that he “made the decision that Chief Shea was the right person to lead” the NYPD.

Outside the event, Greene told reporters she was unimpressed with the mayor’s answers and that she wanted to hear more about how he’d help get homeless people back on their feet.

I really, and I mean REALLY liked how that brilliant little girl used that line "with all due respect", because that line is only used when respect is obligatory than when it's actually deserved.

I also really like how this kid knows more about how to run a city and serve its citizens than that corrupt doofus does.

 

George The Atheist's long awaited Steinway Mansion update...and it's strictly commercial

George The Atheist

We asked 14 months ago - HERE - what was to become of the parcel of land immediately adjacent south of the Steinway Mansion.

 Answer:

 

Photo 1. Schematic of  a 2-story manufacturing building

 with cellar designed by Gerald Caliendo and owned by 

Philip Loria (1839LorLLC) and Sal Lucchese (1839 LuccLLC).

 Photo 2.  Looking east across the extremely narrow 41st Street

at 18-39, the former property of the late owner Armin Urban.

 

 Photo 3.  All's quiet at night as bulldozer "sleeps" for

the next day's foundation excavation work.

 

 Photo 4.  Steinway Mansion to be further hemmed in by additional proximate development.

 

Photo 5.  It's official.  Who's who.  What's what. And where and when.

Evening construction noise too much for Google guy

 

PIX News

Screeching metal.

Walls crumbling.

That isn’t exactly the most soothing way to go to sleep; after hours construction noise – particularly in Manhattan.

This news segment actually plays like an ad for Google in the beginning. Too bad there is no skip ad option like on youtube.

Night construction has being going on for decades here so now it gets attention because a trillion dollar tech corporation is mad about it. I wonder how and what times their "campus" in west Soho (now called "Hudson Square") is going to get built?

Hyper-development swticheroo for Long Island City abandoned warehouse property

This is from last year:

 City Realty

 And this is from this week:

Commercial Observer 

So it went from a multifamily residential project to a purely commercial one? Quite a switch.

No "affordable housing". Not even 20%?

911 will continue to be a joke for another two years

 

NY Post

 
New York’s new 911 text messaging system will finally arrive next summer, two years late and millions over budget, city officials admitted Tuesday.

Eusebio Formoso, the interim commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, testified to city council members that his agency is “moving ahead” with the project to phase texting into the city’s existing 1980s-era analog 911 system by June 2020.
Officials initially promised to have the system online by “early 2018.”

The program is part of a larger $28 million contract awarded to Motorola subsidiary Vesta Solutions in 2017, which has ballooned to $41 million as the delays built.

The improved technology will help domestic violence victims by allowing battered women and children to get help quietly, without tipping off their attackers.

It would also be welcomed by 208,000 city residents who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, as well as the speech-impaired, who can’t call 911.

The long-overdue option — part of the city’s larger “Next Generation 911” project — is already available in 2,000-plus municipalities and counties across the country.

“Since this interim system is being built to handle the highest 911 call volume in the US, getting the system right is a matter of life and death,” said Formoso.

He added that DoITT “would certainly like to be further along than where we are” but blamed the delays on the “complexity” of the project.

Councilman Robert Holden, who chairs the technology committee, wasn’t buying the excuses.
“Nine New York state counties — including neighboring Rockland and Dutchess counties — have all had text-to-911 since as early as 2013, so it’s kind of weird that New York City doesn’t have [911 texting], considering we have the largest population of people with disabilities,” he said.

Holden also said he’s “puzzled” that the city hasn’t even implemented a “Smart 911” system similar to the one now being used in Nassau County.

School bus driver physically ejects an unusual passenger from his bus on Jamaica Avenue

Twitter

 Twitter

The ending is utterly amazing.

 Tell the kids to be very aware of their surroundings

Melinda Katz makes her Pavillion dream come true

 

Queens Eagle

The Parks Department is continuing to rehab the old 1964 World’s Fair structures at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, breaking ground on the reconstruction of the New York State Pavilion Observation Towers last week.

“The work we are breaking ground on today will go a long way toward restoring the iconic New York State Pavilion to its former glory,” Queens Borough President Melinda Katz said in a statement. 

“This work will enable future generations to continue to enjoy the Pavilion’s distinctive Space Age architecture and be reminded about the important role the 1964-65 World’s Fair played in Queens history.”

The structures in the World’s Fair area, most notably the Unisphere, have become Queens landmarks. The $24 million project, funded by Katz, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Councilmember Franciso Moya, will see the towers’ bases waterproofed, electrical upgrades, structural preservation measures and stair replacement.

Soccer at Willets Point?

Queens Eagle

A brand new professional soccer club will kick off at York College in 2021, the team owners announced Tuesday — thirteen months after the Eagle first reported on the team’s likely arrival.

Queensboro FC will compete in the United Soccer League Championship division, a tier below Major League Soccer in the hierarchy of U.S. soccer leagues. The ownership group includes businessman Jonathan Krane, the CEO of KraneShares, and legendary Spanish striker David Villa.

"I lived and played in New York for four years. I know what a special place Queens is," said Villa, who played for NYCFC after starring for Valencia, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid at club level and winning the 2010 World Cup with Spain. "I love the cultures, the food, the people and their passion for life and, of course, soccer.”

“It's a dream to help build this football club in Queens and I couldn't choose a better location," he added.

The club will play its home games at York College, with a few matches taking place at Citi Field, the team said in a statement.

Councilmember Francisco Moya called the new club “exciting” and welcomed its arrival. In September 2018, Moya met with Villa and Borough President Melinda Katz at Borough Hall to discuss the team, and a potential new venue for the club.

The trio discussed a proposal “to build a 10,000 to 25,000-seat soccer stadium in the Willets Point redevelopment area that would serve as home for the Queensboro Football Club, a proposed new team that would play in the United Soccer League, a second division professional league,” read a statement provided by Katz’s office.

Apparently, now there's a Queens soccer team. Which could mean the City proceeds with a soccer stadium at Willets Point. (Could this be the reason for rumors of Mayor de Blasio stopping at Willets Point on Nov. 18th?)

Acacia Network's poverty profiteering off the city's homeless population

Sludge


Annie was already retired when she lost her apartment. With no source of income save for her Social Security work benefits, it wasn’t long before she ended up in the New York City shelter system. That’s where she would learn the name Acacia Network. 

Acacia is the largest provider of homeless housing in New York’s metropolitan area, but it is not just a shelter operator. Over the decades, Acacia has built a small empire with connections running up the ladder of city government. It has amassed a web of interconnected nonprofits and for-profits that offer shelter, affordable housing, addiction and medical services, and security. According to the city’s Department of Homeless Services website, Acacia manages “750 individual family units and four buildings for approximately 550 homeless adults.”

Annie, whose name has been changed for this article, has been living in one of these for the last several years. But right away, she knew things were askew—and it wasn’t just that another resident had threatened to murder her. She would soon come to realize that the problem was multi-tiered: a pattern of mismanagement that left the shelter understaffed, undersupplied, and dangerous for its residents. 

“No nurse practitioner is ever there to give out the medication. The staff has to give out the medication,” Annie tells Sludge, noting that this leaves residents frequently out of sync with their individual treatment regimens with some dire consequences. Every other day, she sighs, “the ambulance seems to be there for one reason or another.” 

Compounding the issue, she says, is a lack of adequate security—something online reviews of the establishment have touched on. One reviewer says they never “felt safe” while living there.

“They’re supposed to have a guard on every floor,” Annie explains. “That rarely happens because people are always calling out. So one guard usually has to do two floors or sometimes three.”

On one occasion, Annie tells us someone at the shelter was hit over the head with a lead pipe smuggled in from a nearby construction site. Another time, she says, someone got hot water thrown on them in the dining room. 

There are other issues caused by Acacia not sufficiently treating residents, Annie says. This past summer, she explains, there was a string of toilet backups due to people flushing entire rolls and other objects.

Frustrated, Annie notes that the shelter tends to respond to these incidents in ways that hurt residents. After the hot water attack, for example, management removed hot water for tea and coffee from the dining room altogether. To address the toilet problems, the shelter’s cleaning staff stopped stocking rooms with toilet paper as soon as the facility’s annual “Callahan” inspection—named for the 1981 court case that established the “right to shelter” in New York City—had completed. 

“When you need toilet paper you have to go down to the front desk and they give you a wad…and you have to ration,” she laments.

What Annie describes is a complete culture of neglect, which doesn’t square with the large amount of money Acacia rakes in from the city. In the 2019 fiscal year alone (July 2018 through June 2019), it received $259 million in contracts from the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), which accounted for 18.5% of the department’s contracts that year. Acacia gets additional funding from the Department of Social Services and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Since the 2011 fiscal year, it has received over $1.1 billion worth of city contracts. 

 Acacia has seen its funding increase since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office. As luxury condominium developments rose and more of the city’s available housing stock was left empty, de Blasio found himself facing a simultaneous rise in homelessness. In response, he set out to increase the number of homeless shelters in the city. In 2017, he announced a plan, called “Turning the Tide on 
Homelessness in New York City,” to close unsafe and expensive cluster-site and hotel shelters and build 90 new shelters over five years.

Acacia and its multiple linked entities have been the biggest beneficiaries. In total, 10 Acacia entities have received roughly $1.17 billion in city funding since 2010.

Bronx landlord menaced and is now evicting tenant for trying to report uninhabitable conditions at her apartment

NY Daily News

Keep your mouth shut, and you can stay put.

That’s the loud-and-clear message a social services provider sent to a Bronx mother of three when it made her promise to stop calling the city’s 311 help line with gripes about her heat-less, rodent-filled subsidized apartment.

Iesha Poindexter told the Daily News that since she moved into her 4453 White Plains Rd. unit in 2013, it’s been one nightmare after another, with spotty heat and hot water and a near-constant sprinkling of rodent droppings on her family’s clothing.

When management failed to remedy the issues, she complained to 311 — which irked staffers so much, they told her to stop calling, or go.

In August, Poindexter was presented with a form that stipulated she must stop contacting the city helpline with complaints, or she’d get the boot. The form said she must “refrain from calling 311 in regard to any complaints or repair work that needs to be completed in your apartment or on any of Five Stars Management property.”

Poindexter, afraid she’d find herself on the street with her three sons — and the two kittens she adopted as a form of rodent control — reluctantly signed.

But now, she told The News, management is going to kick her out anyway when her lease expires in March.

“They just gave me a lease ... but said there’s no way they’re renewing it,” she said. “They evil.”

The building she lives in, Poindexter said, houses tenants who receive a mix of rent subsidies, including supportive housing and welfare money, which she receives, as well as other sources of funding like Section 8 vouchers and veterans assistance.

She pays rent out of her own pocket through supportive housing subsidies from the Acacia Network — the entity that provides social services in the building and whose letterhead appears on the form she signed — and with welfare money she gets through the city Department of Homeless Services, she said. All of it goes to the building’s property manager, Five Stars Management.

Ah, that scalliwag Acacia Network, which all you long-time Crapper readers should be familiar with.

Developers who donated to de Blasio's corrupt CONY and presidential PACs are first to get air rights for building towers by public housing

NY Daily News

It may not be a bridge, but the city has something to sell you in Brooklyn — and donors to Mayor de Blasio are first in line to benefit.

In what appears to be a textbook “pay-to-play” move, the city is selling NYCHA development rights to builders who gave de Blasio’s campaigns more than $20,000.

Air rights at the Ingersoll Houses near Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn are being sold for $25 million to Maddd Equities, whose chief Jorge Madruga gave $10,000 to Hizzoner’s scandal-plagued Campaign for One New York, plus another $5,350 for his mayoral runs, according to filings. Joy Construction, whose employees gave de Blasio’s mayoral campaigns $5,200, is co-developer on the deal.

The companies plan to build two apartment buildings of about 31 and 33 stories each right next to the New York City Housing Authority buildings in Downtown Brooklyn.

“It absolutely looks terrible,” Susan Lerner, executive director of good government group Common Cause, said. “It definitely violates the spirit if not the letter of our campaign finance law and it removes public assets from public control without public input"

By buying 91,000 square feet of the Ingersoll House’s unused air rights - vertical space available under zoning laws - Maddd Equities and Joy Construction will be able to build about 10 stories higher than their original plans for the lots.

The city and the builders say the deal is a win-win.

The $25 million check will go toward a variety of repairs at the 75-year-old Ingersoll Houses, which will need about $300 million in repairs and maintenance work over the next nine years, according to the city.

The de Blasio administration hopes to raise $1 billion for NYCHA repairs through the sale of unused air rights, that can only be used for properties adjacent to public housing.

“It’s not about taking all of the green space and converting it to buildings at all,” said Jonathan Gouveia, NYCHA’s senior vice president of real estate. “We’re trying to be very strategic in how we insert some buildings so that you’re adding some density and generating some proceeds but at the same time, not dramatically changing the overall feel of the neighborhood.”

The developers plan to set aside 25% of their new towers’ roughly 400 units as “affordable housing.” Households earning 60% of the area’s median income would qualify. The developers say they will work with the local community board to help Ingersoll residents apply for those units.