Judgement day coming for the City Of Yes

 

Queens Chronicle 

 

Queens residents and presidents of local civic associations gathered with activist Paul Graziano outside the office of Councilwoman Nantasha Williams (D-St. Albans) on Monday to protest next Thursday’s City of Yes vote and announce their intentions to sue the city should it go through.

The City Council is expected to vote on Dec. 5 to approve the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity text amendment, the last third of the City of Yes agenda. The amendment would ease regulations to allow accessory dwelling units, more high-density housing, greater building heights and much more, detailed in the 1,400 pages of text.

Warren Schreiber, the president of the Queens Civic Congress, told the Queens Chronicle that the civic associations would file an Article 78 class action lawsuit against the city to stop it from implementing the rezoning program on the basis that the action would be “arbitrary and capricious.”

“An Article 78 [is] what you bring against a government entity when you think that they’ve made a wrong decision,” Schreiber said.

Schreiber added that the opponents have yet to decide who would be the plaintiffs, although the Queens Civic Congress would certainly be one, and they have yet to contact a lawyer. When asked how it would be funded, he said they were looking at a GoFundMe. Schreiber said they would at least be looking for the judge to issue an injunction while the suit plays out.

“Everybody seems to understand the importance and they understand that it’s urgent that we move forward as soon as possible,” Schreiber said.

During Monday’s rally, Schreiber and others took shots at city officials for making supposed backroom deals to get the City of Yes through the Council.

“When the City Council plays ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ they do it behind closed doors, in secret,” Schreiber joked.

“Speaker [Adrienne] Adams and [Chair of the City Planning Commission] Dan Garodnick, both attended the Somos lobbyist convention in Puerto Rico and they met behind closed doors,” Schreiber added, referring to the tropical getaway attended by many in the New York political scene every year. “Nobody knows what they said to each other.”

Claudia Valentino, a magazine editor and Forest Hills resident of 40 years, told the Queens Chronicle that overdevelopment that could happen under City of Yes would do “nothing but cause damage and take community review away.”

“The moment you start digging up driveways to try to put ADUs in backyards, garages and so on, you will endanger the foundations of the houses,” Valentino said. “It will cause a whole world of problems with our ancient sewer and electrical grid.”

For Aracelia Cook, the president of the 149th South Ozone Park Civic Association, infrastructure was also a top concern, citing the catastrophic 2019 Southeast Queens sewer pipe collapse.

“Now all of a sudden they throw in, ‘Oh, we’re going to give X amount of billions of dollars for infrastructure,’” Cook said. “Where did that come from? You should give that to people anyway, regardless of whether they are going to vote for the City of Yes or not.”

Graziano, an urban planning consultant who has been making his rounds across the city rallying against the City of Yes, compared the newest amendments to the housing opportunity section of the program to treating a gunshot patient.

“When you have a patient that’s been shot by six bullets — it doesn’t matter if they got shot by five, the patient is still gonna die,” Graziano said, referring to the Council’s modifications to the bill.

Graziano was particularly peeved by the $5 billion City for All budget, which has been set aside “to address the city’s housing crisis,” according to City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica).

“This is not $5 billion in a bank account that they’re waiting to tap to give to all of these things,” Graziano said. “This is our tax dollars.”

 

 QNS

As the City Council’s voting deadline on the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity steadily approaches, residents, civic groups, and local elected officials throughout Queens have voiced their stance on the monumental rezoning proposal. 

The City Council is expected to hold a final vote on Dec. 5 regarding the City of Yes, which was approved with modifications by two influential council committees on Nov. 21 following a hearing. 

The changes included modifying the proposed elimination of parking mandates for new residential developments and adding restrictions on where accessory dwelling units can be built. Additionally, Mayor Adams’ administration announced a $5 billion commitment to fund the City Council’s housing plan, City for All, earlier this month. 

The City for All Housing Plan’s points include mandating affordable housing in large transit-oriented and town-centered developments, allocating increased funding to the city’s housing programs, and increasing support for tenants’ rights.

In Southeast Queens, a steady coalition of residents and civic leaders have protested for months against the rezoning initiative, which aims to bring a little more housing in every neighborhood. 

The organizing against the plan started earlier this year. In May, Alicia Spears, a Cambria Heights homeowner, held a packed town hall meeting at Cambria Heights Library. More than 500 Southeast Queens residents came together, voicing concerns that their single-family and two-family zoned neighborhoods would become unrecognizable in the near future if higher-density housing developments—as well as accessory dwelling units—are permitted. 

Other vocal nay-sayers include Paul Graziano, a Flushing resident and urban planner who has long opposed the City of Yes for Housing initiative, and Reverend Carlene Thorbs, Chair of Community Board 12 and organizer of recent ‘Say No to City of Yes’ rallies held in South Jamaica. Two weeks ago, Graziano, Thorbs, and Spears hosted another rally in St. Albans, urging their elected officials to vote no this December.

The organizers led their most recent rally on Monday, Nov. 25, in front of Council Member Nantasha William’s office, located at 172-12 Linden Blvd.  Much of Monday’s rally centered around homeowners reiterating concerns about the City of Yes.

Graziano and Warren Schreiber, president of the Queens Civic Congress, said that if the plan passes on Dec. 5, they would pursue legal action. ” We will be filing a lawsuit… it’s happening,” Graziano said.

Schreiber expanded more, sharing that they would file the lawsuit under Article 78, which allows citizens to appeal decisions made by government agencies or officials to the New York State Supreme Court. “The first step would be an injunction until the Article 78, the lawsuit, could be heard,” Schreiber said.  Schreiber said that he wants to ask the court for an injunction as soon as possible. “We’re still working on its logistics and how it’s going to be funded,” Schreiber said.

 

Veterans Nursing Home releases names of residents who succumbed to COVID-19 in defiance to Cuomo's Health Department death counts

THE CITY

Workers at a 250-bed state-run veterans nursing home in Queens are circulating a list naming nearly 50 residents who died during the coronavirus crisis — an act of defiance and remembrance ahead of Memorial Day.

The list identifies 48 veterans or spouses of veterans who passed away between March 27 and April 29 at the New York State Veterans Home in St. Albans, one of five veterans nursing homes operated directly by the state Department of Health.

Staff members, who served many of the fallen veterans for years, have been critical of facility administrators for their handling of the outbreak — and accuse them of failing to publicly account for the full scope of fatalities.

“In memory of our beloved veterans,” reads the one-page list. “These veterans deserve justice!!”

 THE CITY

A Queens veterans nursing home run by the state Department of Health has been violating protocols set by the department itself that are intended to keep patients and staff safe from coronavirus, multiple staffers told THE CITY.

This includes not separating roommates when only one was suspected of having COVID-19, and failing to isolate those infected in a separate section of the facility with a dedicated team of staff members.

And like their counterparts at private nursing homes, workers at the 250-bed New York State Veterans’ Home in St. Albans say protective gear has been in short supply and at times absent — with recommended N95 masks handed out just once in late March and expected to last for weeks.

Only last week were supplies replenished, they said.

Meanwhile, the staffers say, the home had suffered resident deaths totaling at least twice or even three times the official tally of 19 that was publicly reported through May 1— essentially by the state Department of Health to itself.

“There was just no effort to try to even maintain any kind of minimizing transmission or anything,” said one staffer. “Nobody took it seriously.”

State Department of Health officials countered that the home has been a “leader in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic” — and that the agency is ensuring all of its coronavirus guidelines are followed.

On Tuesday, the health department released new and more detailed statistics on coronavirus fatalities in individual nursing homes across the state. They showed nine confirmed COVID fatalities at the Queens veterans’ home and another 24 presumed to be caused by the virus.

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.”

Civic punishes anti-Machine candidate

From the Times Ledger:

Oster Bryan, the former candidate who ran for an Assembly seat in southeast Queens against incumbent Clyde Vanel (D-Queens Village) in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary was asked to resign from his post as the president of the St. Albans Improvement Association.

Bryan believes that an $8,000 grant sent to the civic association before the Sept. 13 primary by Vanel was at the heart of the decision of him getting booted from organization.

“They are trying to remove as president, and they are saying it’s because I ran for public office, but that makes no sense to me,” said Bryan. “There is no such rule on our books that says I can’t.”

The eight-page bylaws from the civic association did not indicate a member or leader of the organization could not run for office; however, a letter sent to the former candidate said that he knew of the funds that were sent to the civic association before he decided to run and put the needs of the nonprofit at risk.

“It appears that you had no interest nor respect for the welfare of this organization and its members. Instead you choose to join the race for the Assembly seat after already knowing Assemblyman Clyde Vanel gave the Civic a grant,” said the letter that was sent out by the organization’s Vice President Martha Oliver.

Vanel implied he had nothing to do with Bryan being asked to resign and that funds were sent to the civic association long before the primary race; however, he did not have records on hand as to when exactly he offered the grant as of Wednesday night.

"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." - 1 Timothy 6:10

St. Albans comfort station renovation delayed

From the Times Ledger:

On the eve of LL Cool J’s 14th annual basketball camp in St. Albans, elected officials from southeast Queens and Comptroller Scott Stringer blasted the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation at a news conference for failing to fix a comfort station for three years.

“It’s time to wake up and get your act together,” Stringer said. “The kids should be running through the sprinkler and they should be able to use the bathroom in the safest way possible.”

According to officials from LL Cool J’s free basketball camp, nearly 200 campers are expected to attend the camp every weekend in August.

The comfort station, which is located on Daniel O’Connell Playground at 113-01 196th St., received nearly $1.2 million from former Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) and was expected to break ground in August 2015, with the project’s estimated completion time August 2016, according to officials at the Aug. 3 news conference.

“I’m disappointed to be back here on the same issue,” said Comrie, now a state senator. “LL Cool J, who grew up in this community and played in this park – this is his 14th year providing a free program for an entire month for young people in the community — and we have to give them port-a-potties that are not maintained.”

The updated comfort station was supposed to be fully renovated and include ADA-compliant bathrooms, energy-efficient light fixtures, and a slate roof, according to the officials. Instead, there were problems with the vendor hired to do the upgrades in 2016, and in 2017 the contractor had been removed after more than $400,000 of the original contract was spent. According to NYC Park’s Capital Project Tracker, money was spent on designing a new comfort station, procuring materials and doing 38 percent of construction work.

101-year old man swindled out of home

From the Forum:

A Queens man who took advantage of his friendship with a 101-year-old neighbor is facing up to 15 years in prison for tricking the centenarian into signing over the deed to his home.

Authorities say Ricardo Bentham, 58, of 118th Avenue, has been charged with grand larceny and other crimes for allegedly conning a neighborhood friend into transferring the deed of his long-time home into the defendant’s name in October of 2017.

According to the criminal complaint, the defendant submitted a quitclaim deed to be filed with the city on October 5, 2017. The document stated that 101 year-old Woodrow Washington was transferring ownership of his 143rd Street home which has a value in excess of $50,000 to the defendant for a sale price of $0. The victim realized something was wrong when he received a letter from the Department of Finance stating that the deed to his home had been transferred to Bentham. An inquiry was conducted and revealed the document that was filed bears the signature of the Mr. Washington along with a notary stamp and signature of a notary.

Mr. Washington stated that the signature on the form is his, however, he is adamant that he never signed any documents in front of a notary.

Mr. Theodore White, the 93-year-old notary, acknowledged knowing Bentham and would often sign documents for him because he trusted him. The document bearing his signature was missing the notary seal, which White always added to a document.

Mr. Washington identified the defendant as a neighborhood friend who offered to help him collect rent from tenants. He recalled signing documents that the defendant brought to his residence and that some were blank.

LIRR discounts for some Queens residents

From the Times Ledger:

The MTA will temporarily offer discounted rates with a pilot program for commuters traveling between Brooklyn and Queens from Atlantic Terminal on the Long Island Rail Road to experiment how offering lower fares will affect ridership.

The study, called Atlantic Ticket, will offer lower rates to LIRR riders who commute through the Brooklyn hub in an attempt to fill seats on these trains, which have greater capacity than those traveling to and from Penn Station.

The stations in Queens where commuters can take advantage of $5 rates at all hours are in Hollis, Jamaica, Laurelton, Locust Manor, Queens Village, Rosedale and St. Albans.

The $5 fare will represent a 51 percent reduction in price from the peak hour charge of $10.25 and a 33 percent decrease from the off-peak $7.50, the MTA said.

The MTA said this would make up for the $2.75 a customer would have to pay for a transfer to the subway.

St. Albans doesn't want shelters either

From PIX11:

ST. ALBANS - The Department head of Homeless Services Steven Banks and Mayor de Blasio jointly addressed a crowd filled with disgruntled residents concerned with the city's use of homeless hotels.

PIX11 has covered extensively the city's growing reliance on these hotels, lack of social services, overspending to book those rooms and absence of security.

Residents as of late have been vocalizing their worries over the hotels and on Wednesday, de Blasio heard more of the same.

"I'm terrified of these people who are going to live in these hotels," one woman said. "So I ask you Mayor de Blasio how can you help me and my community address these issues and stop the building of these hotels."

The number of hotels popping up and rezoning changes are on Blasio's list of proposals to the city council in an effort to address those concerns, according to the mayor.

"I think on the larger issue of how we plan the community [is] to make sure the scaling of things is right, etc. is something we want to do more changes to in the city council," de Blasio said.

Meanwhile, the mayor's team is actively booking hotels that are appearing all over the city in order to house the homeless.

All this as the homeless population in the city is on the verge of reaching 60,000.

(The funny thing is that the people that attend these town halls are pre-screened so as to avoid the mayor having to answer embarrassing questions. And I guess black folks value their quality of life and integrity of their communities as much as whites do.)

St. Albans getting a shelter, too?

From NY YIMBY:

Roslyn, N.Y.-based Bama Associates has filed applications for a two-story, 74-bed co-ed community residential facility at 118-36 Merrick Boulevard, located on the corner of 119th Avenue in St. Albans, Queens. The new building will measure 9,596 square feet. It’s unknown what exactly the facility will be used for, but indications are that it will be some form of shelter, temporary housing, or recovery program.

Funny how just a few years ago, there was an alleged Queens hotel boom but now it's a shelter boom thanks to the poverty pimps at city hall. Who knew that there was so much money to be made off poor people?

Housing inspector illegally converted his cellar

From the DNA Info:

A housing inspector endangered the lives of his tenants by violating the same building codes the city employed him to enforce, the Queens District Attorney’s office announced Tuesday.

Derrick Allen, 58, a Brooklyn inspector for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development who owns two buildings in Queens, was charged Tuesday with illegally converting the cellar space in his Rosedale and St. Albans properties into dangerous living quarters, according to the DA’s office.

The units — hooked up to illegal gas and water lines — lacked adequate exits and natural light, which District Attorney Richard Brown noted made the residencies dangerous not only for tenants, but emergency responders as well.

“Such conversions jeopardize the lives of not only the buildings’ residents but firefighters and other personnel who in responding to an emergency are confronted by a maze of rooms with no way out,” said Brown in a statement.

“As a code enforcement inspector himself, the defendant should have known better.”

The Housing Department first became aware of Allen’s practices as a landlord on Aug. 18 when an illegal tenant in his Rosedale building called 311 to complain about building maintenance, according to the DA.

Housing inspectors arrived one week later to find four illegal single-room residencies in the basement with access to only one exit, as well as a shared kitchen with an illegal gas stove and a bathroom with a hole in the ground where a toilet once stood, the DA said.

Tenants were ordered to vacate the premises immediately due to the unsafe circumstances, the DA said.

Assembly Member Barbara Clark has died

From the Times Ledger:

State Assemblywoman Barbara Clark (D-Queens Village), who represented parts of southeast Queens, died at the age of 76 Monday night, a representative from her district office said. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Clark had been serving the 33rd Assembly District since 1986. The district includes Cambria Heights, St. Albans, Queens Village, Hollis and Bellerose.

She played a key role in converting Andrew Jackson HS into four small magnet high schools and served as a primary sponsor of the 1996 New York City Governance Law, which mandated parental involvement in school policy decision-making.

Clark also supported the plaintiff in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity vs. State of New York lawsuit, which resulted in a $5.5 billion increase in funding for city public schools and authored a bill to establish the age of 6 as the statutory age for full-time attendance in school.

"Summer All Out" campaign will target high crime areas

From the Daily News:

Hundreds of cops will flood city streets beginning Monday as part of an aggressive NYPD initiative called “Summer All Out” to stanch the rise in murders and shootings.

More than 330 new police officers will take to some of the city’s grittiest blocks and precincts in an effort to bring this year’s homicide statistics back in line with last year’s historic lows.

The officers taking part in the crimefighting program will be assigned to work peak crime shifts — 4 p.m. to midnight and midnight to 8 a.m. — in areas like the 75th Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn (11 homicides through May 31), the 67th Precinct in East Flatbush, Brooklyn (seven homicides), and the 113th Precinct in St. Albans and Hollis, Queens (seven homicides).

They will also concentrate on public housing developments with the highest crimes rates.

St. Albans life captured in photos

From the NY Times:

Mr. Williams began photographing life in the southeastern Queens neighborhood of St. Albans, where he grew up, after the foreclosure crisis wrecked much of the largely black and middle-class community.

St. Albans covers about three square miles, with Tudor houses and leafy streets that are home to more than 34,000 residents who take pride in their community’s roots. Most of the residents are African-American or African-Caribbean, although in recent years buyers of distressed properties have added a growing Latino and South Asian population.

The result of Mr. Williams’s work is a growing collection of portraiture, documentary and street photography that shows legacy and pride.

“There’s a whole bunch of stories to tell from the people who lived there,” he said. “I feel there are too many photos of black people who struggle in America and there’s not much else.”

There is a quietness in Mr. Williams’s photos, but also the steady strength of day-to-day life. The photos are images of what makes a community home.

Report actually shows that Queens is in pretty good shape

This came from a press release:

New data released the day before the State of the City reveals a “tale of two children” in Queens. When it comes to economic security, housing stability, educational development, healthcare, and family environment, Queens kids who live just blocks apart have radically different outcomes, and Queens communities rank both the lowest and highest across the city in terms of risks to child well-being.

The new report is a “Community Risk Ranking” from Citizens’ Committee for Children, which ranks the city’s 59 community districts from lowest to highest concentration of risk to the well-being of children. How did Queens stack up? Here are the highlights:

· Bayside is in the top 10 lowest-risk communities in the city (#4); Rego Park/Forest Hills, Sunnyside/Woodside, and Fresh Meadows/Briarwood also rated among the lowest risk.
· Jamaica/St. Albans, Elmhurst/Corona and Jackson Heights are the highest-risk communities in the borough.
· Queens Village and Jamaica/St. Albans are two of the highest-risk communities when it comes to health outcomes and healthcare environment for children.

These findings suggest that, as the Mayor shapes his funding priorities in the Preliminary Budget, resources must be diverted to high-risk Queens communities.

How about giving financial incentives for not having kids instead of the opposite?

Queens cops save 2 people that OD'ed on heroin

From PIX11:

NYPD officers were able to save two people who overdosed on heroin in separate incidents in Queens.

Officers Brett Devine and Lieutenant David Goldstein reported to a second-floor St. Albans apartment on Dunkirk Street just before 5 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.

While there, they found a 51-year-old man lying on his back in bed, losing consciousness and barely breathing. A female friend of the man said he had just snorted heroin and quickly became unresponsive.

Officer Devine immediately recognized the overdose symptoms including pin-point pupils unaffected by light and blue lips and fingertips.

The officers immediately administered a single lifesaving dose of naloxone nasal spray. Moments later, the man regained consciousness and his breathing was nearly at full-strength. He spoke coherently and opted to walk down the stairs where he was able to step into an ambulance.

The man was transported to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in stable condition.

Hours later, Officers Kevin Mooney and Matilde Leonardi reported to a building on 71st Avenue in Pomonok, where a woman told cops her 18-year-old daughter fell unconscious after taking heroin.

The teen was completely unresponsive, not breathing, turning blue and had no pulse. The officers quickly administered the naloxone spray and minutes later, she regained consciousness and stong breathing.

She was able to walk to a waiting ambulance from her second-floor apartment. She was transported to Queens Hospital Center in stable condition.

Kids die due to adult carelessness

From the Queens Courier:

Two young brothers were killed in a St. Albans fire Monday night after candles were left unattended in their home, according to authorities.

The fire, at a two-story residence at 188-19 Tioga Dr., broke out around 7:10 p.m. in the living room on the first floor, engulfing the home, the FDNY said. It took about 45 minutes to bring the blaze under control.

Fire officials found a candle melted on the floor near the sofa, where the flames ignited. Witnesses said the family used candles, which were found throughout the home, in prayer ceremonies, according to the FDNY. There were no smoke detectors on the first and second floors of the home. Smoke detectors in the basement failed to go off.

Two boys, Andrew Kavanagh, 6, and John Kavanagh, 11, were discovered on the second floor and taken to Queens Hospital Center, where they died, police said.

From the NY Times:

While the firefighters were bringing the fire under control, a man jumped out of a third-floor attic to escape the flames, fire officials said, adding that he survived the fall. It was not immediately known whether he was related to the brothers. A family of three lived in the first two floors of the home, officials said, and two men lived in the basement.

From NY1:

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro had strong words Tuesday for parents who do not have smoke detectors in the house.

"I'm not sure how they look at themselves in the mirror each day," he said. "How dangerous that is, and once again, it's pointed out to us today. No working smoke detectors in the home, unattended candles, the tragic loss of two young children."

Sources say the children were alone in the apartment.

They also say a 33-year-old man who was renting out the attic jumped from a window and suffered minor injuries.

Let's recap:

No smoke detectors.

Unattended candles.

Unattended children.

Documented illegal conversion of both the attic and cellar of a 1-family house.
(No media outlet reported this fact.)

2 dead children.

Disgusting.

BSA grants St. Albans variance

From the Times Ledger:

The community opposition was not enough to prevent developers, which includes the church that owns the land, from erecting an affordable housing five-story building on Farmers Boulevard in St. Albans.

The city Board of Standards and Appeals approved Tuesday the zoning variances the developers were seeking to build the complex that will also house a community center in the ground floor.

The project had three votes in favor and one abstention. The board member who abstained explained she did not know enough about the proposed plan.

“The board seemed to be supportive of the plan,” said a source familiar with the BSA hearings about the construction plans.

“I believe this is wrong,” said Karen Plummer, president of the St. Albans Civic Improvement Association. “Too many people will move in and the neighborhood can’t sustain it.”

The developers, including the St. Albans Presbyterian Church, needed variances involving maximum building height, maximum dwelling unit and minimum parking.

The project consists of a 67-unit structure of one- and two-bedroom apartments that will be built in two empty lots located on Farmers Boulevard between 118th and 119th avenues.

“This is just too much for us,” Plummer said.

Once the decision becomes public, the people in the community who opposes the project will have 30 days to appeal.

The final round of skeeter spraying?

From the Queens Courier:

Another round of West Nile spraying is set for parts of Queens this week.

The spraying will take place on Thursday, Sept. 18, between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 6 a.m. the next morning. In case of bad weather, the application will be delayed until Monday, Sept. 22 during the same hours.

The following neighborhoods are being treated to help reduce the mosquito population and the risk of the disease, according to the city’s Health Department:

Parts of Arverne, Bays Water, Edgemere, Far Rockaway, Hammels and Somerville (Bordered by Jamaica Bay to the north; Cross Bay Parkway to the west; Atlantic Ocean to the south; and Nassau County Boundary to the east).

Parts of Cambria Heights, Laurelton, Saint Albans and Springfield Gardens (Bordered by 119th Avenue to the north; Farmers Boulevard to the west; Merrick Boulevard to the south; and Belt Parkway and Nassau County Line to the east).

Affordable housing project requires unpopular variance

From the Times Ledger:

The city Board of Standards and Appeals is in the final stages of reviewing the application presented by the St. Albans Presbyterian Church and a Westchester-based developer to erect an affordable housing building on Farmers Boulevard.

During a review session Aug. 19, one of the board members questioned the parking demand study forwarded by the developer, an analysis concluding that “31 percent of the residents of the area commute by subway, but there is no subway in the vicinity.”

She added that “I don’t have a good idea what transportation alternatives are in the area.”

Sharon Johnson, of the St. Albans Civic Improvement Association, said the project “is not compatible with the zoning regulations in the area.”

To begin construction, the church is seeking zoning variances involving maximum building height, maximum dwelling unit and minimum parking. The project involves building a 67-unit structure of one- and two-bedroom apartments as well as a community center at ground level.

The plan calls for an affordable housing, five-story building construction on two empty lots on Farmers Boulevard between 118th and 119th avenues.

The area is zoned for low-residential units, and it is characterized by having one- and two-story homes along Farmers Boulevard as well as local stores.

Mike Pope, who lives approximately 400 feet from the site and opposes the project, said that if the developer and the church are serious about affordable housing, “they can build 23 units in two-story buildings within zoning regulations.”

Pope added that the “current zoning regulations should not be altered to allow for this monstrosity in the middle of Farmers Boulevard.”

Some eyesore homes belong to NYCHA

From the NY Post:

For 15 years, New York’s low-income Housing Authority has owned a home in St. Albans, Queens. No one lives there. The windows are broken and the grass is overgrown.

The 120th Avenue house was so ignored that, in 2007, a dog-fighting ring moved into it right under the city’s nose. Neighbors are forced to shovel snow, clean up and nail doors shut.

“I’ve lived next door to this monstrosity … and pulled down all the weeds and done so much like it’s mine,” fumed Kathleen Gittens-Baptiste, who has desperately tried to buy the building.

But this isn’t the only home the New York City Housing Authority has left to rot.

In the midst of a housing crisis, NYCHA owns at least 80 homes that it has left to decay, in some cases for decades, The Post has learned
.
The city obtained the homes in the late 1970s from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. After tenants moved or passed away, NYCHA kept the buildings empty.

The Housing Authority now says it plans to dispose of the houses — many of them in Jamaica — because they “represent an inefficient allocation of housing resources,” according to a draft 2015 fiscal year plan filed with HUD.