More than 60 of the hundreds of tenants displaced after a massive fire at a Jackson Heights apartment building in April are now suing the property’s owners and management, as well as city agencies.
They’re demanding that the building’s owners repair their homes so they may return — and let them back in soon to retrieve possessions from the still heavily damaged and inaccessible block-long complex.
The building remains surrounded by scaffolding and caution tape, with many windows boarded up. The eight-alarm blaze crumbled ceilings and destroyed interior walls, exposing wooden beams in their place.
Tenants allege that in the five months since the fire, Kedex Properties and city officials have provided little sense of when repairs will be completed, if any belongings can be salvaged and when residents might be able to return to their apartments.
Access to the building has been “unreasonable and severely limited,” according to the complaint filed Sept. 10 in Queens Housing Court targeting the owner, along with the city Department of Buildings and Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Several dozen tenants in one wing of the two-address, 133-unit building have been allowed scheduled visits to retrieve personal items. but former residents of more than 60 apartments in the other wing have not been granted that same privilege, said Andrew Sokolof-Diaz, the building’s tenant association president and a plaintiff in the suit.
“We have exercised our rights as displaced rent stabilized tenants to bring this lawsuit forth after so many delays and denial of access to our own belongings,” he added. “Our goals remain the same: to mitigate our displacement from home in Jackson Heights and to protect what salvageable belongings we have left inside while ensuring we have a dignified and sensible timeline for repairs until we are able to return.”
Legal Aid attorney Amee Master, who is representing the tenants, said the landlord is required under state law to repair the building promptly.
“Kedex Properties can no longer ignore its obligation to undergo the necessary work to ensure the building is safe, habitable, and up to code for the residents to return,” Master said.
Kedex Properties declined to comment.
1 comment:
Sue baby sue.
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