Jackson Heights fire victims about to be kicked to the curb

So where are the elected officials who represent this area? Out on the campaign trail pimping for progressive candidates instead of helping their constituents? I can't help but notice the absence of Danny Dromm in this piece. Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas gets a temporary pass because she's in Albany. Jessica Ramos showed up and said she was heartbroken but that's about it. How about tapping into Mutual Aid and BLM funds? After all, all that money was raised "for the community!" (/end sarcasm)

JQ LLC: Danny Dromm has been more concerned with turning the avenue that charred building is on into a "linear park". Even after the inferno displaced hundreds of tenants.

Also absent in de Blasio's HPD's sadistic treatment of these people is his buddy and upper class Windsor Terrace neighbor Stephen Banks of the Department of Social Services, which is still using hotels to shelter people who are mentally ill or just came out of prison, but for some reason the D.S.S. doesn't seem to think hotels cannot be utilized for people who have been disenfranchised from their homes and community by fire.

 

Legislation is being drawn to suspend evictions for the rest of the year

Gothamist

 Responding to dire predictions that thousands of New Yorkers, unable to make rent because of COVID-19, could soon wind up on the street, a group of state lawmakers want to block landlords from evicting tenants until the end of the year.

The new legislation would extend Governor Andrew Cuomo's moratorium on evictions, which is set to expire on June 18th, for an additional six months from when the State of Emergency is declared over.

"That moratorium, while welcome, is not enough," Manhattan Senator Brad Hoylman, who introduced the legislation on Tuesday, told Gothamist. "We have to create this safe harbor to give tenants time to get back on their feet."

The bill would ensure tenants cannot be removed from their homes for unpaid rent for the duration of the public health crisis. It would not suspend rent altogether, as other state lawmakers have proposed, and would still allow landlords to sue delinquent tenants for monetary judgements.

But housing attorneys said the bill is a critical first step in addressing a looming evictions crisis that Cuomo has largely waved off.

"Without any state action, there are going to be New Yorkers across the state who will be unable to pay their rent, and very soon the courts are going to reopen and the cases will start piling up," said Ellen Davidson, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society. "This is a step in the right direction to ensure we don't end up with hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in the street at a moment when coronavirus is wreaking havoc on the homeless population."

Expert predict that as many as 40 percent of New York tenants may be forced to skip April rent payments, as COVID-19 containment measures have pushed unemployment to historic levels. Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who introduced a companion bill in the State Assembly, said that tenants who'd lost income during the pandemic were now facing "a ticking time bomb."

For his part, Cuomo has repeatedly insisted the "rent issue" was solved through the three-month eviction moratorium. He has declined to support a bill with bipartisan support that would cancel rent payments and provide relief to landlords as well.

No city for old people

 
City Limits 

Florina, 62, and her husband, who is 63, haven’t paid rent on their rent-regulated Bronx apartment in months.

The husband has not been able to work in 16 years and is blind. Florina does sporadic cleaning work to bring in extra income but is otherwise retired. Neither receives any kind of disability or Social Security benefit, due to their immigration status.

In January of 2019, Florina received a notice saying that her rent would go up by 30 percent, an amount the family couldn’t pay.

The couple are one of a few dozen residents of a building in the Bronx who are now on a rent strike. 

The couple, along with their children and grandchildren, with whom they live, are protesting a Major Capital Improvement – a rent hike on regulated units intended to fund building-wide repairs that they said raises their rent beyond what they can pay. The hike was approved prior to last summer’s rent reforms, which curtailed the practice. They are also protesting deteriorating conditions in their home.

In response, their landlord took the couple to court in an attempt to evict the family. Their hearing has been postponed until March, thanks to the intervention of a lawyer. But Florina and her husband still fear they will be evicted, along with their working age children and young grandchild.

Florina is fortunate, she says, that she lives with children – her son, 39, works at a bakery and her daughter, 30, is a home-health aide. While their combined income does not pay for the increased rent on their apartment, being partially supported by a younger generation is not something all elder New Yorkers have.

Many elder New Yorkers without such family ties and with little retirement savings end up displaced, segregated to an adult home, or worse, shuffled into the city’s homeless shelter system when they become ill.

“Sadly a lot of older, disabled people believe ‘they can’t throw me out into the street’,” says Justin La Mort, a housing lawyer with the group Mobilization for Justice who works with elders. “The bad news is, in fact, they can. It’s just a matter of time.”

The city uses a patchwork of social services and subsidies to keep elders aging in place, but they can be difficult to qualify for and their funds are limited. For those without savings or income from work, federal programs—SSI, SSDI or social security—can come too late and, when they do arrive, may not meet the high cost of rent in New York City. The result is a permanent sense of precarity among the city’s most vulnerable, sometimes culminating in homelessness or displacement.

A lack of retirement savings compounds the problem. According to the commissioner of the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs, half of New Yorkers 55 and older have no money in traditional retirement accounts. 40 percent of New Yorkers between 50 and 64 have less than $10,000 saved in such accounts. Nationally, 29 percent of adults above 55 have neither a pension nor retirement savings, according to the Government Accountability Office.

This lack of assets can have material effects when older adults face hardships: a recent study from the non-profit Robin Hood looked at material hardship, spurred by housing insecurity, job loss or illness. The study found that 53 percent of New Yorkers experienced such hardship for at least one year in the survey’s four year timespan.

According to the same report, 23 percent of respondents experienced poor health between 2012-2018. The study also found housing subsidies and rent regulations had reduced the poverty rate by 5 percent.

Elders who become disabled suddenly can find themselves in a grey area where social services can’t help them. Awaiting disability benefits, for which they may be rejected, they could find themselves in arrears and face evicted for unpaid rent. Still others who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) may be surprised to learn that their income is less than what they owe in rent but too much to qualify for a city or state subsidies to prevent homelessness. 

As City Limits has reported, the percentage of older adults in New York City’s shelter population is increasing. There is no way to determine how many elders become homeless each day through eviction, as eviction data made public by the city does not include age as a data point. While the number of adults in city shelters who are age 65 and above increased 300 percent between 2004 and 2017, older adults who are evicted don’t always enter shelter. And seniors don’t have to be formally evicted to be displaced by the threat of eviction; if they move out ahead of being uprooted by a marshal, or take a buyout, the result can be the same. Few elders are fortunate enough to find more affordable housing in the city, and some are forced to relocate to other states.

Evictions have been decreasing overall across New York City, thanks to a raft of pro-tenant legislation that closed loopholes for regulated apartments and provide access to counsel. Evictions executed by city marshals decreased 25 percent between January 2019 and January 2020. But for tenants who can no longer gain any income from work because they are elderly or disabled, eviction or displacement are more difficult to put off.

Another tragic fire in an illegal conversion

This is the new normal in Queens and other parts of the City. Read it and weep.

Willets Point businesses evicted from Queens now evicted from the Bronx

On September 21, 2017, video producer Robert LoScalzo attended a press conference of Sunrise Cooperative, a group of Willets Point automotive businesses, held at the Bronx site where they intended to relocate. They announced their pending eviction from the Bronx site, and requested that Mayor Bill de Blasio intervene. LoScalzo published this brief video synopsis. (c) 2017 LoScalzo Media Design LLC.

Giving low income tenants a right to counsel

From the Daily News:

Mayor de Blasio and the City Council will announce a new initiative Sunday giving low-income tenants in housing court access to an attorney, according to sources.

Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan), among others, has been fighting for a so-called “Right to Counsel” bill that would provide New Yorkers facing eviction with legal representation since 2014.

The movement hopes to lessen the chances that those unable to afford an attorney will end up in the homeless shelter system.

Landlords given subsidies are eviction leaders

From DNA Info:

Much of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing plan hinges on the preservation of existing affordable units.

But advocates worry that some landlords who get city subsidies to preserve affordable housing are the very same landlords who have the highest rates attempting to evict tenants from rent stabilized homes — and are therefore contributing to the loss of affordable housing.

One of the prime examples, they say, is A&E Real Estate Holdings.

A&E, which is believed to be the fifth biggest landlord in the city, inked a $201 million deal in 2015 to buy Harlem’s Riverton complex and pledged to keep its nearly 1,000 units affordable over the next 30-plus years in exchange for $100 million worth of tax breaks and incentives from the city, according to reports.

James Patchett, the incoming head of the city’s Economic Development Corporation who previously served as chief of staff to Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, the mayor's point person for affordable housing, recently highlighted that deal, which he brokered, as a source of pride in reaching the administration’s housing goals.

But A&E was also responsible for filing more than 2,230 evictions cases between January 2013 and June 2015, according to an analysis by Rentlogic, a rental listings platform that aims to empower tenants by using open source data to grade landlords on things like vermin infestations, mold problems and construction violations.

2-family house illegally converted into 8-family

From Brooklyn Reporter:

A Dyker Heights home has been issued a full vacate order after Department of Buildings (DOB) officials found that it had been illegally converted from a two-family home to an eight-family home, housing just over two dozen people.

An initial complaint, logged onto the DOB database on Tuesday, January 3, stated that the home – located at 1178 65th Street – was a “two family house, turned into a six family house with 30 people living there.” However, upon inspection by the Building Marshals Office two days later, the residence was found to have “illegal gas and electrical work at the location, and [it was] determined that the two-family home was illegally converted into an eight-family residence,” according to a DOB spokesperson.

President of the Brooklyn Housing Preservation Alliance Bob Cassara says that the vigilant actions of neighbors and concerned residents who continue to file complaints with the DOB, local officials and a recently started Agency Task Force, aid the city in combating illegal conversions.

“The fact that credible information is being supplied from the community is the reason we’re able to get a lot of this done,” said Cassara who, in 2015, helped form the Agency Task Force – which focuses on combating the proliferation of illegal home conversions in Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge. “[Residents] are making these complaints to DOB, and sending us complaints or going to a councilmember or community board and if the information that’s being supplied is credible, [DOB] acts on it.”

DHS ok with making people homeless in order to house other homeless

From the Daily News:

A faith-based Queens nonprofit is trying to boot low-income renters into the street in the midst of the holiday season — in the hopes of converting their building into a homeless shelter, residents told the Daily News.

The New York School of Urban Ministries in Astoria wants tenants out of the 46th St. building as soon as possible and has been using underhanded methods to speed up the process, residents say.

Pastor Peter DeArruda, the executive vice president of the ministry, sent notices out last month informing tenants they must vacate the building by Dec. 31.

City officials said they were approached about using the site as a shelter but scuttled any plans when they realized that there were long-term tenants in the building.

“We’re absolutely, positively not using this place,” said Department of Homeless Services spokesman David Neustadt.

This DHS is something else. They lured a young couple to NYC with the promise of free lodging under "right-to-shelter" and ended up killing their young children. Now they're ok with evicting low income tenants so that they can stash their homeless there instead - until they get a phone call from a newspaper.

Willets Point businesses may get evicted from the Bronx

From NY1:

An 80,000-square-foot warehouse in the South Bronx was just renovated.

It was supposed to house a collection of 45 auto-repair businesses, but it stands empty. There is not a car in sight.

For years, the 45 businesses operated in the shadow of Shea Stadium, and then Citi Field, in Willets Point, Queens. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration wanted them out to make way for a $3 billion residential and retail development. The city paid them $7.6 million to move to the South Bronx, but their money ran out before their new home - that warehouse - was completed.

The 45 businesses operate as the Sunrise Cooperative. Their money gone, the businesses face eviction by the owner of the warehouse, but they have filed for bankruptcy hoping to prevent that. They want the city's Economic Development Corporation to provide $3 million more so they can pay their bills and finish construction.

And the auto workers aren't asking for a handout. They are willing to pay the city back to simply complete the project.

But the EDC tells NY1 the businesses should look elsewhere to borrow money.

Salamanca says it's the city's responsibility to help these mostly immigrant businesses.

"These businesses didn't ask to be put in this position," he said.

Deed fraud scammer gets a year in the pen

From the Daily News:

An ex-con who stole an elderly woman’s Queens home now has a new place to crash — in the big house.

Darrell Beatty, 51, was sentenced to one year behind bars for his cunning con in which he used a phony deed to move into Jennifer Merin’s Laurelton home.

Merin, 72, said the ordeal — which required she jump through a slew of bureaucratic hoops before getting Beatty evicted — had caused her so much stress she had a heart attack in August.

"This crime has ripped my heart out, squashed my spirit, and left me in financial ruins. It has turned my life upside down I am 72 years old, and I am forced to begin building my life again,” she said before Beatty was sentenced.

“(My) home has been desecrated. It no longer exists, and I am bereft, heart broken, devastated. I am afraid to go on the property ... I have been in a constant state of inescapable and overwhelming fear, anguish, depression, and the daunting stress of financial duress.”

Beatty, who showed up late for his sentencing, did not address the court. His attorney declined comment.

Justice Michael Aloise, who recommended Beatty not be eligible for parole, called Merin’s statement “one of the most sincere and compelling I've ever heard.”

Help Me Howard enters house the Baileys left

From PIX11:

So Byrne has her home back. It will need work from the damage done: things like holes in a door and another door off its hinges. And she’ll have to check out the plumbing and electrical work.

But the Bailey’s are out. Now, Byrne says she’s going to sell the place.

Jamaica Estates squatters are finally out

From WPIX:

Ex-NYPD cop Winston Bailey and his family finally got the boot from the Jamaica Estates home where they’d been living for more than two years without paying rent.

...On Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 16, the clock finally struck midnight. Time ran out for the Baileys. A city marshal and five NYPD cops showed up to get them out. They were evicted.

Byrne is grateful, but .. there’s always a “but” with these people.

The Baileys went back to court the next day. And according to Byrne, civil court Judge Louis Vilella gave them one hour a day for a week to get the rest of their belongings out of Byrne's house.

Judge Vilella will consult with the judge handling the federal bankruptcy action to make sure he’s not missing anything. And then he’s due to issue a ruling on Feb. 29, presumably a final ruling.

Woman scores eviction against deadbeat ex-cop tenant

From PIX11:

Aida has had to leave her ailing husband and fly up from Miami for court hearing after court hearing trying to get the Bailey’s out. Civil court, housing court, bankruptcy court.

Finally, she has an order telling them to get out. But because the Bailey’s filed for bankruptcy she may not get a penny of the money she says she’s owed.

We’ve been trying to help by getting to the bottom of this.

But you really have to watch the video to see the Bailey’s reaction when we came by. This is what Aida’s had to deal with.

The Bailey’s are supposed to be out by Jan. 15. We’ll see what happens and show you what the home looks like when they presumably depart.

She can't get them out

From PIX11:

Aida Byrne is in a bind. She and her husband moved out of a beautiful house in Jamaica Estates. They settled in Miami and were hoping to enjoy life in Florida. But her husband, Dr. Rodolfo Byrne, now is battling cancer. And the people to whom they rented their Queens home, Winston and Elaine Bailey, haven’t paid rent in almost two years. TWO YEARS!

Aida says the rent is 38-hundred dollars per month. And after two years she says she’s owed almost 100-thousand dollars in back rent and expenses. She’s been to court more times than she can count! She got a default judgment to evict the Bailey’s. But somehow the system fails her.

Here’s why. Every time Aida turns around, someone in the Bailey family seems to be declaring bankruptcy. And that can stop eviction proceedings even though Aida has a default judgment against the Bailey’s.

First it was the Bailey’s, themselves. Now it’s their daughter who isn’t on any lease. Aida can’t believe it.

Willets Point business owners got nothing but broken promises

Photo from WilletsPoint.org

From the Times Ledger:

A group of auto-shop owners in Willets Point led an unsuccessful hunger strike protesting the eviction.

The strike ended on June 5, just four days after almost a dozen auto shop owners swore off food. The strike was led by the coop’s president Marco Neira. Since then, Molina and others in the area are being barraged with tickets for working on cars on the street that they cannot pay for as the city increases pressure for the mechanics to leave the area.

In March, the city gave the group about $5.8 million to relocate their operations from Willets Point to the Hunts Point Section in the Bronx.

But according to Neira, the 17-auto repair shops were supposed to have been fully constructed in Hunts Point by July 1, but so far nothing has been built. According to the city Department of Buildings, construction has not started because the Sunrise Coop has not filled out the necessary paperwork to get things moving.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. at a meeting of editors for Community News Group, parent of the TimesLedger, said the Bronx could not proceed with the Hunts Point project until Queens completed the certificate of occupancy application and other requirements.

But none of this really matters – or makes any sense – for the dozens of auto shop owners who were forced to close down their businesses June 5.

The agreement specified that the EDC would pay $4.8 million and the Queens Development Group, the site developers, would provide $960,000. The Sunrise Co-op was expected to contribute $143,000 and the group would have to leave the site by June 1.

“The group got a raw deal,” Diaz said. “The city should have given them more resources—sizable subsidies.”

Now members of the Sunrise Coop will move to Hunts Point early next year, according to Neira but for the time being, the mechanics have nowhere to go nor do they have any place to store their hefty equipment.

Astoria landlord accused of tenant harassment

From the Queens Courier:

Some residents of one rent-stabilized Astoria apartment building say they are tired of having to fight for what should be their basic rights as tenants.

Sally Aponte has been living at 28-28 35th St. since 1995 and said she started having issues with the building’s landlord, Peter Hiotis of P & T Management CO LLC, when it came to getting repairs completed within her apartment.

At first, Aponte decided to verbally ask her landlord for help with regard to these repairs, such as fixing a kitchen stove or repairing broken bathroom tiles, but after receiving what she calls “patchwork repairs,” she decided to finally file a formal complaint to 311 in 2007.

“He tends to always blame the tenants whenever you ask for repairs and I think he uses that to discourage you to ask for repairs,” Aponte said.

During this time, an attorney for the landlord also sent Aponte a letter advising her that if she made any further complaints, Hiotis would have to pursue eviction because she was allegedly violating the “rent stabilization code.”

Aponte added that the stove was fixed because Hiotis was fined by the FDNY but the rest of the problems in her home remained ignored until an inspector from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) went to the home.

The inspector found nine violations within the home, such as exposed and sparking electrical wiring, defective and broken plastered surfaces on walls and ceilings, and a defective smoke detector.

And although some of the repairs have since been completed, albeit improperly, Aponte is facing eviction.

According to court documents, Aponte is facing eviction because she is being accused of withholding rent, harassing other tenants, and defacing vehicles of her landlord and other tenants. However, Aponte says she has evidence proving all those accusations as false and believes the eviction comes as a form of retaliation for reporting past and present neglected repairs.

Slumlord busted for tenant harassment

From the Daily News:

A Brooklyn landlord has become the first person arrested under a new city-state campaign to go after property owners who threaten and harass rent-stabilized tenants, Mayor de Blasio and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Wednesday.

Daniel Melamed, 39, was indicted on charges of unlawful eviction, child endangerment and filing false documents in harassment of rent-protected tenants at the Crown Heights building he owns.

The mayor and Schneiderman formed a task force to go after landlords who illegally force out rent-stabilized tenants so they can jack up the rent.

The charges involve a Melamed building on Union St. where he began illegal construction and demolition last year.

The indictment alleges he knocked down interior walls and destroyed common spaces, and illegally shut off heat to rent-stabilized tenants as temperatures plummeted in December.

He also exposed tenants -- including a 6-year-old -- to toxic lead paint dust. In some apartments the dust tested at 80 times above acceptable levels, the indictment alleges.

Gas siphoning restaurant tossed out

From NBC:

A restaurant directly across the street from the site of the deadly March 26 gas explosion in the East Village was evicted Monday after its landlord discovered illegal tampering with the gas line and meters there, NBC 4 New York's I-Team has learned.

Stage Restaurant, at 128 Second Avenue, has until the end of the month to vacate the premises, a lawyer for the restaurant’s landlord said Tuesday. He said it is an odd coincidence that the restaurant is accused in a gas siphoning scheme similar to the one authorities are investigating as the cause of the explosion that killed two people and injured nearly two dozen last month.

Con Edison confirmed the restaurant's gas line had been inappropriately accessed. The restaurant's owners declined comment on the eviction, which was first reported by WNYC, an NBC 4 New York partner.

You can't do that

From the Queens Courier:

Two Forest Hills men have been charged with burglary for illegally evicting a Richmond Hill homeowner from his home after the two had won the house in a foreclosure auction, according to authorities.

Semyon (aka Sam) Muratov, 34, and Yuriy (aka Erick) Munarov, 31, were each arraigned in Queens Criminal Court Monday night on charges of second-degree burglary, third-degree criminal mischief, second-degree criminal trespass and unlawful eviction, according to the Queens district attorney,

According to the charges, Muratov placed a $25,000 down payment on a home located on 111th Street in Richmond Hill during a foreclosure sale on Jan. 9 but the sale had not yet gone to closing.

On the same day, Muratov and Munarov reportedly went to the property and told the 59-year-old homeowner that he had to vacate the home because they had bought the house at an auction.

When the homeowner asked for a proof of sale, according to Brown, the men refused to supply evidence and instead told the homeowner he had to hand over the keys and that they would be back in a couple of days to make sure he had left.

Muratov and Munarov then allegedly returned to the property on Jan. 12 and when they couldn’t get into the home, they broke the doorframe and deadbolt lock, and pushed in the front door. They then told the homeowner he could take a few things and when the homeowner said he had nowhere to go, the men gave him $200 in cash to find a place to stay.

The homeowner left the property with some important documents and when he later returned he found all the first-floor doors and windows had been boarded up and chains were on the door lock areas of the front door.