CBS catches up with illegal airbnbs in houses at Arvene on the Sea

 CBS New York

 A controversy over property rentals is heating up in a beachfront community in The Rockaways.

Some homeowners are being accused of taking advantage of a city program to cash in on a major tax break, CBS2's Lisa Rozner reported Wednesday.

It's prime waterfront property: several homeowner communities made up of around 1,500 homes known as "Arverne by the Sea" in the Rockaway peninsula were built in the early 2000s as part of an urban renewal project.

The city designated it an "urban development action area project," which means homeowners would get a huge break on their taxes.

"We were also first-time homebuyers, so that was helpful," homeowner Adam Linet said. "Our tax rates are probably around 25 percent of what they would normally be."

It was a great deal, which is why the Department of Housing Preservation and Development required every homeowner make it their primary residence.

"One of the same zip codes that has among the deepest pockets of poverty in the entire city of New York. So, this was a real opportunity for folks who had been stuck in generational poverty," Assemblyman Khaleel Anderson said.

In February, a Department of Investigation report uncovered at least 15 homeowners violating the primary residence requirement, receiving in total more than $1 million in tax exemptions. Seventy properties had tax bills mailed outside of the development and one couple even turned its home into a fully licensed bed and breakfast.

Three months after the findings, Inn Your Element is available on reservation web sites. CBS2 also found on Airbnb entire homes available for $350 a night, another for $288, so residents believe there are many more homeowners violating the policy.

"I don't feel safe when so many people are coming in and out of a house," one woman said. "There are addresses that have been turned into three rental units rather than two."

"We have trash issues. We have quality-of-life issues with noise complaints," Linet added.

Finance records show one man who is a real estate investor according to LinkedIn owns at least three properties and also has an address at a luxury high-rise rental building in Manhattan.

Emails and calls to him and other alleged absentee homeowners were not returned.

CBS New York also caught up with yours truly who did a story and synopsis about this continuing scandal on Impunity City back in March. Looks like Mayor Adams and his HPD Dept are not going to do anything about this. Bunch of lily-livered scalliwags.

Avarice by the sea

 

Queens Eagle

A group of more than a dozen Arverne by the Sea homeowners are under investigation for  illegally renting out their homes while collecting approximately $1 million in tax exemptions, the Department of Investigation said this week.

A Department of Investigation report, issued Feb. 8, includes 11 recommendations to expand city oversight and prevent violations following the investigation into a 2018 complaint.

The DOI found that there were 15 homeowners in violation of the primary residence requirement; eight used the properties as rentals or investment properties — one as a hotel that was registered with the city to collect occupancy tax — and four who each owned one property and used them as rentals instead of living there.

There were 11 homeowners with multiple Arverne by the Sea deeds.

According to the DOI, they “were in violation of primary residence requirements by illegally renting their properties while being unjustly enriched by tax exemptions meant for owner-occupied homes.”

The apartments were designated in the early 2000’s as an Housing Preservation and Development Urban Development Action Area Project with a 20-year property tax exemption to homeowners requiring they maintain the homes as their primary residences.

Impunity City 

You wouldn’t think if you looked at them on first impression, but these beautiful beach front houses are actually government sanctioned public housing…

 These Arverne homes are actually impeccably designed, a bulk of them even have patios on the top floors which resemble something like penthouse condos like on Miami and Venice Beaches  with gorgeous views of the Atlantic Ocean and somewhat pleasant views of Jamaica Bay and the poorer parts of Rockaway Beach, where there at least three public housing projects in the same neighborhood.

 You don’t have to be much of a detective to figure out why these 15 motherfuckers took advantage of a government housing program and made millions off it while getting tax breaks and write-offs for nearly a decade. It doesn’t take much sleuthing to figure out why these homes were easily poached for illegal renting and airbnb lodging and why some nefarious scumbags would conspire to take advantage of this government housing program and try to make massive profits from it.All it took was a casual bike ride around this sunny oasis of pirated housing equity, it’s gets real plain to see why some nefarious scumbags would try to take advantage of this government housing program and try to make massive profits from it. Bookending this HUD financed utopian village are two massive vacant lots, one of which is still a landfill.

 

The doors of safety perception

THE CITY 

 Four years before the conflagration that claimed the lives of 17 New Yorkers at the Twin Parks apartments in The Bronx, a devastating blaze tore through another building in the borough under remarkably similar circumstances.

On a frigid night shortly after Christmas 2017, fire broke out in the kitchen of a first floor apartment at 2363 Prospect Ave. in Belmont. Within minutes, thick black smoke spread throughout the building, and when it was over, 13 tenants had perished, including an infant. Six firefighters were injured.

In both the Twin Parks and Prospect Avenue fires, the death toll was magnified by a simple but deadly flaw: smoke and flame caused by a fire in a single apartment rocketed throughout both buildings after doors remained open.

An open door also fanned the flames in a blaze that consumed a Jackson Heights apartment building, leaving dozens of families homeless.

Today despite a repeated cycle of outrage and reform — including tougher penalties against landlords following the Belmont tragedy — thousands of self-closing doors that do not function properly still fill New York City, fully known to housing and fire officials.

Those malfunctioning doors are especially prevalent in lower-income neighborhoods dense with apartment buildings, an analysis by THE CITY of city records has found.

Thousands of violations remain unresolved for either non-functioning or non-existent self-closing doors across New York City, code violation records kept by the city Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) show.

Examining every door violation filed by inspectors from Jan. 1, 2019 through the end of 2021, THE CITY found 18,305 open violations remained in 10,610 buildings as of Jan. 11, 2022.

More than 4,800 of those open citations are at least two years old, dating back to inspections that took place in 2019.

“Those statistics show what I’ve been saying repeatedly, which is we need strong housing laws,” said Coumcilmember Oswald Feliz (D-The Bronx), chair of the Council’s newly formed Fire Prevention Task Force. “We also need a system that promptly detects violations and a system that takes quick action to make sure that violations once detected are quickly cured.”

Overall, including violations since certified as fixed, inspectors wrote up 74,448 citations across all five boroughs during the three-year period.

Any residential building with three or more units must have spring-loaded doors that close automatically, under state law and city codes.

Many of the buildings with doors in violation for lacking self-closing mechanisms are located near those that burned in The Bronx and Queens,

THE CITY found 378 open violations for non-functioning or non-existent self-closing doors in 233 buildings as of Jan. 11 in ZIP code 10458 — where the Prospect Avenue fire took place.

That includes a 48-unit rental building across the street from the fire with two open violations, both dating back to October 2021, and one open violation, also dating to October, at a 160-unit building around the corner on Southern Boulevard.

As of last July, thanks to a reform that followed the 2017 Belmont fire, all such violations get cited as “immediately hazardous,” the most severe class of housing code violation.

A 47-unit building at 246 E. 199th St. had 10 open citations for self-closing door violations as of last week, some of which date back to 2019.

HPD notified the landlord months ago, but as of Friday none had been resolved. All but one of the citations were classified as an “immediate hazard.”

Luxury public housing lottery is open for Long Island City spooning tower

 

 

 Queens Post

The NYC Housing Preservation & Development has launched a lottery for 288 income-restricted units in a 71-story luxury building in the Queens Plaza section of Long Island City.

The development, called Sven, is located adjacent to the historic Clock Tower at 29-59 Northern Blvd., and features income-restricted units that range in price from $2,189 for a studio to $3,843 for a three-bedroom unit.

All of the income-restricted units are for prospective tenants who earn up to 130 percent of the area median income. For instance, the most inexpensive studio—at $2,189 per month—is for individuals who make up to $75,052. Meanwhile, the income limit for a family of 7 seeking a three-bedroom unit is $192,400.

The lottery is for 50 studios; 188 one-bedroom units; 41 two-bedroom units; and 9 three-bedroom units.

 The building consists of 928 units, with 670 being market rate units. Leasing has already begun for the market rate units. The Durst Organization, which is the developer of the building, is handling the leasing of the market rate units in-house.

 

The NYC Luxury Public Housing Connection

 

Impunity City 

 With a month to go until the eviction moratorium expires on January 15th (Martin Luther King’s birthday, SMDFH), hundreds of thousands of city residents will either repay their debts to their landlords or probably get evicted from their apartment aka homes. As this crisis gets closer with each passing second and as the weather gets colder, the other and brighter side of life in New York Fucking City should not got unacknowledged…

Good news every tenant in New York City, THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH AGAIN!. Truly a monumental event and a sign that the recovery for all of us that Mayor de Blasio has been repetitively been talking about is about to come to fruition, at least for those that count. Meaning those that are able to count what little savings they have. Because if the rents are going up again, surely this trend will trickle down to the perpetually housing insecure via the city’s Housing New York program to build and preserve affordable housing for the city’s desperate and downtrodden who pay 1/3 of their check in rent right?

Of course not. As I pointed out last year of an apartment building in west Soho (which is called Hudson Square now to make it even nichier), The Blaz’s affordable housing program is a fucking ruse and a hoax. And now after 8 years of “affordable housing”development usually sprouting in establish gentrification colonizer Brooklyn nabes like Williamsburg, Bushwick and Greenpoint and even in Queens enclaves like Astoria, Rockaway, Long Island City and quasi/pseudo-Brooklyn nabe Ridgewood, this inequitable farce and impossible to win lottery city program has sprouted in the most unlikeliest of towns in Southside Queens, Ozone Park.

When the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the debut and opened the lottery for this building this year in March, it was quite a surprised to see it still looked like this three months later.

 

 

Now why would the owners and management of this “affordable housing” building advertise it with an private agency contact when it’s on the city government’s Housing Connect website? And what’s more outlandishly egregious is why it’s being advertised as “Luxury” which is not only misleading but wholly antithetical to de Blasio’s and his housing and preservation department lackeys intent to bring housing equity to the long suffering housing insecure, homeless, rent burdened citizens and gentrification refugees of New York City?

But since this is so eye catching, lets take a look at what kind of luxury the developers are peddling here with this.

Nothing defines luxury than a balcony, even if there is barely room for two people to stand on.

 Now I’m not an architect, but placing these HVAC’s on the pavement really looks like a massive shit idea and makes me wonder what the developers were thinking when they gave this the o.k. or even if they were in the board room when this was designed. I also wonder if the LLC even visited this site or even this state or country as this was being built.

 

Predatory slumlord swindled city housing agencies for 8 years

QNS 

A Far Rockaway man was charged for defrauding government rental assistance programs by renting out dilapidated apartments he did not own to families in need, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Paul Fishbein, 47, faces wire and mail fraud charges for allegedly falsely claiming to be the owner and landlord of 20 rental properties, mostly in the Bronx, while collecting government subsidies and evicting tenants over the course of eight years, according to the Southern District of New York.

“As alleged, Paul Fishbein not only took advantage of New Yorkers in need, he also defrauded city and federal government programs designed to help these very people,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said. “Fishbein allegedly lied about ownership of residential properties, fraudulently took rent subsidies and other benefits from those government housing programs, and often evicted tenants without cause from housing that was substandard in any event. Now Paul Fishbein is in custody and facing serious federal charges for his alleged fraud and exploitation.”

According to a complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court Tuesday, Fishbein allegedly lied about owning the properties beginning in 2013 based on forged deeds. He then allegedly rented the properties to homeless and low- to moderate-income families through rental assistance programs operated by three city agencies — NYCHA, the Human Resources Administration and Housing Preservation & Development — and collected money, including federal funds, as the purported owner and landlord of the properties.

The complaint estimates Fishbein defrauded the three city agencies out of about $1.5 million, including more than $270,000 in federal funds. In addition to taking payments, Fishbein allegedly faked using a broker to rent out the properties and kept certain broker’s fees for himself that the HRA issued as payment.

Fishbein is also accused of faking financial eligibility for Medicaid since at least 2014, the complaint says. He allegedly told the HRA he worked at a company where his total income was about $150 a week — or $600 a month — when he in actuality made hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Prosecutors allege Fishbein received nearly $50,000 in Medicaid benefits to which he was not entitled to as part of his scheme.

NYC Housing announces new affordable luxury apartments in Long Island City are available for lottery applications

 

 

Queens Post

More than three dozen “affordable” apartments in a newly constructed building in Long Island City are up for grabs through the city’s affordable housing lottery.

The building, called “The Cove,” is located at 43-12 Hunter St. and 37 “affordable” housing units are available for those who earn at least $68,000 a year.

The Cove, developed by Rockrose, is 18 stories and consist of 123 units, with 86 being market rate.

Applications for the “affordable” units are now open and applicants are required to apply on the NYC Housing Connect website. The lottery is open until Dec. 4.

There is a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom “affordable” units on offer.

There are 19 studio apartments available for $1,990 a month to households of one or two people who earn between $68,229 and $118,300 combined annually.

Additionally, there are 13 one-bedroom units on offer for $2,345 a month to households of one to three people who make between $80,400 and $133,120 combined annually.

Five two-bedroom units are available for $3,072 a month to households of two to five people who make between $105,326 and $159,640 combined annually.

  

Queens Post

The affordable housing lottery has opened for TF Cornerstone’s two-tower development that is part of the Hunters Point South 5,000-unit mega plan.

TF Cornerstone announced today that applications are now being accepted for 185 of the 719 affordable units that are being built. Applicants are required to apply on the NYC Housing Connect website and the lottery is open until Nov. 23.

The 185 units will be in the south tower of the development that is going up at 52-41 Center Boulevard.

There are 80 units at 50 percent Area Median Income up for grabs, as well as 65 units at 130 percent Area Median Income and 40 units at 165 AMI (see chart below).

The units are going to be in demand.

In 2014 when the lottery was held for 925 affordable units as part of Phase 1 of the Hunters Point South development 93,000 people applied. The apartments were built by Related Companies on what’s known as Parcels A and B of the seven-parcel HPS development.

 

 

REBNY and the City wants to turn your neighborhood hotel into a cheap substitute for "affordable housing"...

...but probably not this one

THE CITY

 City officials are looking to capitalize on a distressed tourism industry by converting commercial hotels into affordable housing — including creating single room occupancy units known as SROs.

The exploration of cheaper alternatives for affordable housing and supportive housing — offering health care and social services for people with mental illness or substance abuse disorders — comes as the city struggles to overcome a fiscal crisis prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The effort, which also comes as thousands of homeless people are staying in hotels, highlights just how hard a near-halt in business travel and tourism is slamming New York City.

“Unfortunately, we’re seeing a tremendous hit to our hotels because of the reduction in tourism, because of the lack of travel — and hopefully most of that will come back. But some of it may not,” Vicki Been, deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said this week during an online roundtable on economic development hosted by the Real Estate Board of New York and the law firm Greenberg Traurig. 

...and probably (and definitely) not this one either

 

“So we’ve been looking hard at — are there hotels that we could acquire to turn into supportive housing rather than having to build from ground up?” she added. “We’re looking both at, are there assets that we own that we can make available to affordable housing or other needs — and are there private market buildings that we could acquire to convert into affordable housing at a cheaper cost.”

Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Louise Carroll, who also participated in the event, said hotels are also under consideration for a shared housing model — which includes SRO-like units that have common areas for residents.

The agency has been testing shared and co-living spaces as affordable housing since 2018.

“Maybe hotels are good for rehab in that way,” Carroll said of SROs.

Mayor de Blasio defunds affordable housing

The Real Deal

  City Council members are fighting Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposed cuts to the city’s capital budget, saying it will mean a loss of 21,000 affordable apartments over the next few years.

Based on an analysis by the New York Housing Conference, officials estimate that the mayor’s proposed $2.3 billion reduction in the city’s capital budget will delay financing for 5,000 new affordable units and 15,000 affordable and supportive housing units that would have been preserved.

Under the mayor’s proposal, $583 million would be slashed from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s capital budget in fiscal year 2020 and $457 million in fiscal year 2021, a nearly 40 percent reduction.

“While the subsequent three years are projected to offset these losses, they are beyond the term of the de Blasio administration,” Council members Vanessa Gibson and Brad Lander wrote in a report released Monday.

The mayor proposed the cuts to help balance the city budget, due July 1, after the pandemic wiped out what is now estimated as $9 billion in city revenue over two years.

But the report calls the planned capital budget cuts a “misguided application of austerity economics” that have “little benefit for immediate budget savings.” According to the report, proposed cuts will also result in the loss of more than 9,000 construction jobs.

During a press conference Monday, Gibson noted that demand for supportive housing is only going to increase in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

“Housing has to be prioritized,” she said, adding that minority communities have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic. “They have felt this pandemic the most, and they are going to feel this capital budget the most.”

HUD apartment building's LLC landlord is putting elderly tenants at risk of contracting coronavirus

AM New York

Some residents of Astoria’s Bridgeview II Co Apartments were left without hot water and heat for more than 55 hours over the weekend, one tenant’s son told QNS.

Although the hot water went back on for a few hours on Monday, March 16, it is off again as of Tuesday morning, according to Dannelly Rodriguez, a student at CUNY Law and a community activist who’s mother lives in the building. He said the heat never went back on.

“On Saturday at like 8:30 a.m., there was no hot water or heat, and the day before there was brown water,” Rodriguez said. “This is especially problematic because a lot of the tenants are elders who are most susceptible to COVID-19, so I felt like something needed to be done immediately.”

Rodriguez’s mother, who he says has serious health conditions and receives Section 8, is one of those tenants. When he went to visit her on the eighth floor, he realized the issue and that a number of other people in the building also didn’t have hot water and heat. He then started encouraging neighbors to file complaints with management and call 311.

Bridgeview II Apartments, located at 26-45 9th Street, is a low income, HUD apartment building with 110 units. It is currently managed by Axion Management LLC, according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) website.

Rodriguez, a former tenant of the building, said this is not an “isolated incident.” He recalls filing a lawsuit a few years prior in order to have the building fix his mother’s leaking roof.

“They have had these kinds of incidents in the past, including boiler, heat, mold issues, broken appliances and windows issues,” Rodriguez said. “The building has a host of violations. The culture of this building is that they’re actively negligent and fail to make repairs for the people who live there. Having this boiler issue now is a manifestation of everything that’s happened throughout the years.”

An HPD spokesperson told QNS that inspectors assessed the building on Monday, and found the hot water and heat were “adequate.” They said heat was at 68 degrees (the high yesterday was 45 degrees) and the hot water was 120 degrees, OSHA’s recommended temperature for domestic hot water.

Rodriguez said the hot water was working after complaints were filed, but the heat still wasn’t working as of Monday — for several apartment units, not just his mother’s apartment.
HPD said they will work directly with tenants who need hot water and heat.

Over the weekend, Rodriguez took to Twitter to document what was going on — knowing that he’d get more responses that way.

My mother’s who has serious health issues & many other tenants at 26-45 9th St. Astoria Queens are without hot water for 24 hrs due to the negligence of Wavecrest Management. How is this acceptable in the 21st century & amidst this Corona virus pandemic? @NYCHousing @HealthNYGov

— Dannelly Rodriguez (@DR0DRIGUEZ) March 15, 2020

NYC Housing official brazenly applied for job with developer while their building was under review

Daily News

A finance director for the city’s Housing Preservation and Development Department interviewed for and accepted a job with a politically-connected Brooklyn non-profit while considering a development application submitted to the city by the same entity.

Jonathan Beuttler was serving as HPD’s director of Mixed Income Programs in its New Construction Finance Division in 2016 and 2017 when he sat on a review committee for a Queens development that Riseboro Community Partnership sought to win, the city Conflicts of Interest Board revealed Tuesday.

Beuttler failed to recuse himself despite the fact that he was in talks with to Riseboro about a job as its director of real estate development.

He began discussing a job with the non-profit in February 2017, continued those discussions over his HPD email address and a month later accepted an offer.

The application in question, for a development in Hunter’s Point South, came from Gotham Organization, which listed Riseboro Community Partnership as a member of its team.

As part of an agreement with the conflicts board, Beuttler admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay a $4,000 fine.

4,000 bucks, the cost of networking yourself while serving taxpaying citizens.

de Blasio draws up tax break for landlords following state overhaul of rent regulations

The Real Deal

 
Landlords are finally getting some love from the de Blasio administration.
The city is preparing a proposal to overhaul a tax break program, in part to make it more appealing to owners of apartment buildings.


Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Louise Carroll said the J-51 tax break needs to be “right sized” because the incentive hasn’t kept up with the market.

“We’re looking at the program holistically, both as to what would be an appropriate reimbursement for the work done, what would be an appropriate tax exemption to incentivize people to take it and what would be the right tax abatement so that the program works,” she said during a Crain’s event Wednesday.

It’s not clear what the city agency wants to change, but state legislation would be required. A representative for HPD said the proposal will aim to make the benefits “more targeted and cost-effective” for owners while making sure tenant protections are as strong as possible. The agency expects to deliver its proposal to the state Assembly at the start of the next legislative session.

The tax break, which is set to expire next year, is provided to landlords who renovate apartment buildings in exchange for their keeping units rent-stabilized for the duration of the benefit, which can be from 14 to 34 years. In a bill signed by the governor in July, state officials expanded the types of condo and co-op properties eligible for the benefit and extended the J-51 program through June 2020.

Undocumented immigrants are allowed to participate in de Blasio's "affordable" housing program

NY1

The de Blasio administration is easing requirements to enter the city's lotteries for affordable housing. With the changes, many more undocumented immigrants will be eligible to land one of the hard-to-get apartments, which are subsidized by city taxpayers.

• Every adult member of a household needs to enter their Social Security number or tax ID number for a family to enter the affordable housing lottery. Now, you won't need either for any member of your family
• This is being done to eliminate the need for a credit check and, according to the de Blasio administration, make entering the lottery more fair
• City officials consider the opening up of the lottery to so many undocumented immigrants an additional benefit

"It completely opens the floodgates," says Ana Nuñez, of Churches United For Fair Housing, a nonprofit organization.

 New Yorkers entered the city's affordable housing lotteries 4,654,603 times last year. Only 7,857 "won" the right to an apartment with below-market rent.

But now the de Blasio administration is dropping its requirement that applicants have a Social Security or a TIN, a Tax Identification Number. The city says the numbers are no longer needed because it is eliminating credit checks. The change will have the effect of opening the lottery to many more undocumented immigrants, who do not have Social Security numbers and are reluctant to apply for a tax ID number.

Nuñez is a housing ambassador, helping people apply for the affordable housing lottery.

Undocumented immigrants, she says, "confide in me. They don't have a social security number or a TIN … They may fear that if they apply especially with this administration they might face some repercussion … so that is now a huge barrier that has been eliminated."

 The de Blasio administration says President Trump's get-tough policies toward the undocumented are a major reason for the change.

\"The Trump Administration has created a chilling effect," says Margy Brown, the associate commissioner of housing opportunity and program services, in the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

What a cynical reason to make applying for this bullshit program much harder. Bad enough that it's very difficult to even qualify for them if you aren't in the right income range. There are already 60,000 homeless people who are American citizens, most of them families. How long will they have to bunch up with their relatives or forced to live in hotels? Which is still going on because de Blasio's shelter program is taking too long. As expected from Mayor Big Slow

NY Post 

New Yorkers with family members in the country illegally will be able to more easily apply for the city’s highly competitive affordable housing lotteries as part of broader rules changes announced by City Hall on Wednesday, which are meant to expand eligibility.
The new rules will allow applicants to provide proof they pay their rent on time instead of submitting for a formal credit check, which required prospective tenants to put down their Social Security or taxpayer identification numbers.
“For too long, families without access to credit have faced barriers to the affordable housing they need,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio in a statement. “By allowing New Yorkers to submit rental history instead of credit checks, we are creating a fairer system for all New Yorkers.”

 "It’s just the latest idiotic idea to come out of this administration,” said Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Queens). “The mayor is setting up people to fail and is doing a disservice to New Yorkers who desperately need affordable housing."

One question that has not been brought up at all about this "program" and the impossibility to get in and it came from social media; Why is there a lottery for something one needs to survive: housing?

Citywide Administrative Services office worker plans to convert her Rockaway Beach home into an SRO shelter.

The Wave

When Manhattan resident Mimi Fuhrman placed a winning bid of approximately $550,000 in a public auction to purchase a dilapidated 1-family home at 174 Beach 120th Street back in 2017, local homeowner John Karalis could only guess if the winning bidder would end up making the edifice a permanent residence or turn it into her summer home.

But what he later discovered was equal parts perplexing and disheartening.

 “I don’t mind renovating it; I don’t want it to be a 12-room shelter,” said Karalis at The Wave’s recent visit to the outside of the 3-story structure in question.

According to applications unearthed by Karalis and Maureen Walsh of Walsh Properties, the current proprietor of the 40’ x 100’ lot is looking to gain approval from the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for a Certificate of No Harassment (CNH).

 The document — according to www1.nyc.gov — is what’s required by the NYC Department of Buildings before the buyer can attain a permit to alter, demolish or change the shape or layout of single room occupancy (SRO) dwelling.

Two of Fuhrman’s attempts to get the necessary approval were denied, with the city’s most recent objection occuring on May 15.

While the home was once an SRO, as per Democratic District Leader Lew Simon, it previously served as a summer facility. A year-round site, he states, won’t get the city’s endorsement.

When contacted by The Wave, Fuhrman — herself a city employee, who works as a senior lease negotiator for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) — insisted that her plans for the abandoned home are still in the preliminary stages. She further related that she has no intentions of doing anything that would compromise the safety of the neighborhood.

She claimed that she originally viewed her purchase as an opportunity to open a beachside bed-and-breakfast getaway given her educational background in hotel and restaurant management.

Those projections, however, were quickly dashed when the longtime real estate professional realized she couldn’t afford the expenses involved with being a homeowner of the 12-room residence.

“I’m working with somebody else who’s going to help me with the project. They’re going to own more of it than me of course. But I’m not relinquishing any say. I’m going to make sure things are nice,” said Fuhrman when asked about her partnership with Steven Kates, a noted landlord and real estate investor.

Phantom landlord terrorizes tenants by weaponizing construction

CBS NY

An apartment battle in the Brooklyn between rent-stabilized tenants and their landlord is getting heated.

Residents claim they’re being forced out with a construction nightmare and now they’re fighting back.

CBS2 first told you about the tenants at 97 and 99 Clay Street last week. They claim their landlord is using construction to harass them in an effort to drive them from their rent-stabilized apartments.

They add they’ve enduring leaking ceilings, construction debris, and the threat of rats in their building. Now they’re rallying for their rights.

 The owners are sidestepping accountability,” tenant George Manatos said.

The property is run by a company called “Perfect Management,” under LJC Towers LLC, but the address leads to this shipping store filled with non-descript mailboxes.

“You can’t talk to a mailbox, there’s no one to talk to and they don’t want you talking to them, they don’t even want you know who they are,” Williamsburg resident Phil Smrek explained.

Smrek says he endured the same kind of abuse and knows the game landlords play all too well; especially when it comes to construction violations.

“I’ve seen them pay the fines like parking tickets, $5,000, $10,000… when you’re talking about $20 million  properties, a $5,000 fine is nothing so there has to be actual prosecution and prison time for these landlords.

CBS2 reached out to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development which investigates tenant harassment. The agency said it rejects “mail drop addresses” like this location.

“Many times they have the buildings listed under DOB with one owner and under HPD with a different owner. They drop letters in their last names, they change their spelling, it’s very shrouded, they’re under LLC’s.

CBS2 checked the address for LJC Towers LLC on the HPD website; it’s not at Lee Avenue where they claim, but a building on Manhattan Avenue that says Perfect Management on the door.

CBS2’s Valerie Castro rang their buzzer to ask some questions, but while she was waiting they turned the lights out.

 This is where I got my internet handle from.

Judge rules in favor of Brooklyn homeowners against city's government program TPT plunder scheme.

Kings County Politics

In a sweeping decision, Kings County Supreme Court Judge Mark Partnow yesterday ruled that the City of New York violated the U. S. Consitution in the seizure of six central Brooklyn properties, and ordered the city to give them back to their owners, restoring millions of dollars of intergenerational wealth in the black and Latino community.

The city attempted to take all the properties under the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s (HPD) Third Party Transfer (TPT) program, and in which KCP has been doing an ongoing investigative series. 

Under the TPT program, the city seizes properties they deem “distressed,” and give them to the public/private non-profit Neighborhood Restore, who in turn give the property for a nominal fee to a qualified non-profit or for-profit developer. The program was created in the late 1970s, when the city had a large number of abandoned and neglected buildings.

However, with gentrification, these properties, and others in the same program, are now worth millions of dollars in market value. Almost all were completely paid for with no mortgage and located in traditionally black and brown neighborhoods, which are becoming increasingly gentrified.

When the city takes property under TPT, they give no equity to the property owners, who in many of the cases paid thousands of dollars in back taxes and water bills to the Department of Finance, which was never registered as being paid.

Much of the properties taken by the Third Party Transfer (TPT) program are located in rapidly gentrifyingng neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

Partnow rulings were on six separate property cases that came before his court. Two of the properties – 25 McDonough Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant and 19 Kingsland Avenue in Williamsburg/Bushwick were the subject of several of the KCP stories. The other properties Partnow ruled on were 1055 Bergen Street in Crown Heights, 972 Rutland Road on the Brownsville/Crown Heights border, 315 Harman Street in Bushwick and 463 Classon Avenue in Clinton Hill.

“The City has particularly targeted properties that are owned by minorities. The court recognizes that home ownership is an important means for families to build intergenerational wealth. While the Third Party Transfer Program was intended to be a beneficial program, an overly broad and improper application of it that results in the unfair divestiture of equity in one’s property cannot be permitted,” wrote Partnow in his ruling.

Partnow found several problems with the taking of all these properties including a lack of process in serving property owners that their property was being taken, and that the properties in questions never met the definition of being distressed.
But time and again, in each of the cases Partnow noted the city took properties worth millions of dollars without giving any equity/compensation to the owners.

“The transfer of the Kingsland property to Neighborhood Restore is also unconscionable and shocking in the conscience of the court based on the amount of the City’s lien versus the substantial value of the Kingsland property. In addition, since the Kingsland property is not a distressed property, the taking of it through the Third Party Transfer program would constitute an unlawful taking of private property without just compensation in violation of Kingsland’s HDFC’s constitutional rights under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Consitution and article 1, section 7, of the New York State Constitution,” he wrote.

Anyone seen the former HPD director Alicia Glen lately? Because her dirty vampire calimari hands are all over this. 


Admin note: if anyone is not familiar with her background, she previously worked at Goldman Sachs in their Urban Investment Group dept., which this neighborhood would certainly meet it's qualification for "urban" and it's gentrification as "investment". As for my description, she sardonically replied in a Vanity Fair article about Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi's description of GS as a Great Vampire Squid by saying that her former employer are actually nice little calimari.

Long story short, this woman should be indicted and arraigned on punitive charges for what she did to these homeowners while running HPD.