Judge calls NYCHA a criminal landlord...then he vanished

  

 

NY Daily News

That was the message from a Queens Housing Court judge outraged by the agency’s failure to provide hot water to as many as 300 tenants in a Rockaway apartment building since November, the Daily News has learned.

“If this was a private small landlord he [the landlord] would be in jail by now,” Judge Kimon Thermos said during a Jan. 20 hearing. “He would have been in jail by now and the fines would have been $500 per day, per apartment. So he would have been in jail and he would have been losing his building too.”

As a city-run agency, the New York City Housing Authority is not eligible for the same penalties as a private landlord who neglects its properties and tenants.

“Why is your crime shielded this way?” Thermos asked a NYCHA lawyer. “NYCHA is dropping the ball big time here.”

Tenants in Carleton Manor say NYCHA did little for months to fix the water problem that makes taking a shower a major undertaking. Dozens of tenants have filed a petition in Housing Court seeking to force NYCHA to make repairs at the 174-unit building on Beach Channel Dr. and Beach 74th St. in Arverne.

“This is the dead of winter,” said Alisha Robinson, 42. “We need this corrected. We need some attention on fixing this.”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said. “I have to go to a hotel to take a decent shower.”

 

The legal fight began Nov. 29, when one tenant, Shaniya Callender, filed a petition to get the water problem fixed. That yielded no progress, so on Dec. 28, 45 tenants signed a petition threatening housing court action if no repairs were made by Jan. 10.

That deadline came and went, so the tenants took NYCHA to court. At the Jan. 20 hearing, Judge Thermos was outraged that NYCHA’s work on the building was being overseen by an unlicensed plumber.

The judge said he was considering issuing a subpoena demanding NYCHA Chairman Gregory Russ appear in court. But before he could, Thermos was replaced on the case by a different judge, for unclear reasons.

 

It's a gas!

 

 NY Daily News

Federal researchers will release nontoxic particles and gases into the New York City subway this month as a part of a study on airborne terrorism threats, officials announced Sunday.

Researchers from the Homeland Security Department and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology aim to find “actionable data for emergency preparedness authorities,” according to an advisory from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The particles and gases that will be used in the study are designed to imitate biological and chemical agents, authorities said. The scientists will set up air testing devices at dozens of locations across the subway from Oct. 18-29 to conduct the study.

The Homeland Security Department did an environmental assessment of the gases and particles to be released to ensure they’re safe, officials said.

It’s not the first time the feds have used the city’s subway system as a testing ground for potential airborne attacks.

This month’s research is part of the Urban Threat Dispersion project, which in 2016 conducted similar experiments in the subway.

But U.S. officials haven’t always notified straphangers they’re involved in the test.

The Army in 1966 sprayed a bacteria officials said was harmless directly onto city subway riders as part of an experiment made public in 1980. The subway riders — accustomed to wild experiences underground — did not notice the test, which Army officials said made the system a prime target for a covert attack.

MTA officials promise the latest airborne tests will be much more transparent.

 Just forget about COVID-19 and the Delta Variant for a few more weeks

Slumlord NYCHA deprives tenants of gas. Again.

 

 

Queens Chronicle

Annie CottonMorris, who heads the tenants association at the 71-year-old Woodside Houses, lives just a block from the nearest deli but it takes her two hours to buy a newspaper these days.

“That’s how many people stop me now to talk about what’s wrong with their apartments,” she told an outdoor rally of angry Woodside Houses residents Tuesday.

The latest complaint sweeping the city-owned housing complex is a utility outage that has left 12 apartments without gas.

Some tenants have been cooking on hot plates since last November, CottonMorris said.

Six units were fixed last week, said the New York City Housing Authority, which manages the 1,350-unit complex.

Six other apartments are due for repairs starting this weekend, a NYCHA spokesman said.

“While we understand gas service interruptions are inconvenient, we also want to ensure our residents’ safety as we work to restore service as quickly as possible,” the agency said in an emailed statement.

The complex of 20 six-story buildings straddles Broadway between 49th and 51st streets and has had its fair share of problems.

At the height of last month’s snowstorm, the heat and hot water failed throughout the 22-acre complex for several hours.

Some 40 tenants — joined by an equal number of residents of other NYCHA projects, many with similar breakdowns — called the rally to dramatize what they said were other, more longstanding deficiencies.

“I’ve lived here for 30 years,” said Marie Richardson. “When I moved here, it was a paradise. Now, I pay $2,000 a month rent and I have no gas.”

Other tenants complained of water being turned off late at night, mold, broken doors and bathroom fixtures, mounting trash and vermin.

“You can see the mice play tag on the scaffolding,” said one angry tenant.

“This is an ongoing situation,” Tomasina Reyes, another resident, told the rally. “It just doesn’t stop.”

Astoria Houses residents can cook hot meals again after 3 month outage

 

 Queens Eagle

Cooking gas was finally restored for residents of the Astoria Houses Thursday, after a nearly three-month outage left them unable to use their stoves or ovens. 

Nearly 50 units in the NYCHA apartment complex were left without gas beginning September 23, forcing them to rely on hot plates, takeout or support from the local community.

State Sen. Michael Gianaris introduced legislation in October to reduce the rent for public housing tenants who lose their utilities, including gas. 

“While I am pleased these residents now have service restored, this whole episode represents an unacceptable failure from NYCHA. Rent-paying tenants deserve better,” Gianaris said.

NYCHA said workers cut the main gas valve due to a leak. The repair process took weeks to complete because it required multiple steps further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a NYCHA spokesperson told the Eagle in October. 

Gas outage continues at Astoria Houses

Astoria Houses residents outraged at NYCHA's slow response to fix gas leak

 

 Queens Eagle

 For 25 days, residents of one building in Astoria Houses have been unable to cook a hot meal. 

Their building has a gas outage, and residents of the 48 affected apartments say they have received very little information from the New York City Housing Authority, despite their appeals for a repair timeline.

Instead, they’ve received one electric hot plate per household. 

“The only thing you can cook on that hot plate is coffee and water,” said Rebecca Ford, an 87-year-old who has lived in Astoria Houses with her grandson for five years. 

Over the past three weeks, Ford has had to dip into her rent money to purchase meals she would have normally cooked at home.

The 400,000 New Yorkers who live in public housing are no stranger to extended gas outages. This past year, there have been outages at NYCHA’s 303 Vernon, Marlboro Houses and Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn. In the case of the Marlboro outage, which began nearly a year ago, residents’ stoves were unusable for weeks and still cold on Thanksgiving night. 

Residents of the Astoria Houses fear this outage will last into this year’s holiday season. 

“It’s terrible because the holidays are coming up. I go to my daughter’s for Thanksgiving; but for Christmas, I usually have my family here and I don’t think my stove will be working by then. Do you know how long it took them to fix my bathroom? Over a year,” Ford said.

Ford said the broken stove is the most recent addition to a long list of issues with her apartment. She said she has frequently reminded management about peeling paint, holes in the interior and exterior walls, unsanitary hallways and broken elevators. 

Local leaders say NYCHA needs to spend money to correct the gas outage immediately, especially as multi-billion dollar proposals in adjacent communities illustrate the city’s vast socioeconomic disparities.

“Our city was willing to build a deck over Sunnyside Yards for billions of dollars. Why is the money always found for things like that and not for people who deserve a decent place to live?” said Evie Hantzopoulos, a Queens Community Board 1 member and a candidate for City Council. 

Very Oniony hoax article concerning greenpoint pipeline