Rockaway hotel housing sex offenders

Danny Ruschillo.  Photo from Daily News

From the Daily News:

ROCKAWAY civic leaders are livid that sex offenders have moved into a troubled SRO on Beach 116th St. after the owner promised to upgrade the property.

Danny Ruscillo, the president of the 100 Precinct Commnity Council, said he spotted notifications that two registered sex offenders recently moved into the building, which served as a halfway house before it was damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The community successfully blocked efforts by a tenant of the building owner, Jay Deutchman, to turn it into a homeless shelter last year.

Ruscillo said Deutchman pledged in meetings he would put something there to benefit the community, so long as it paid his mortgage.

“Once again our community was misled,” said Ruscillo. “It will adversely affect the Beach 116th St. corridor and make it potentially an unsafe condition for the residents, especially the children, businesses and shoppers.”

Deutchman, however, said he had no idea that sex offenders were living in the building. One of the individuals was classified as a potential high risk to the community.

“It doesn’t necessarily please me, but I don’t have children (living) in the building,” he said. “It’s just an SRO and we are only renting to working people.”

Deutchman noted that he renovated the dilapidated front of the former hotel. He said he would like to overhaul the site, and has only been allowing short-term leases.

“We’ve been in talks with politicians and we’re open to be a part of any development that goes on over there,” he said.

SRO sold to hostel owner

From DNA Info:

A notorious SRO hotel with hundreds of building violations that sits blocks from the waterfront has been sold to a former hostel owner who is considering demolishing the building, DNAinfo New York has learned.

The Greenpoint Hotel — an SRO with more than 200 units of affordable housing for formerly homeless men — has been in a state of severe disrepair for years, said residents and their lawyers, who have sued longtime landlord Jay Deutchman over its condition.

But last month Deutchman sold the Manhattan Avenue building to Gal Sela, whose former Harlem hostel was shuttered by the city for overcrowding and improper zoning in 2010. Sela said he plans to clean up the beleaguered Brooklyn structure to get it up to the city's necessary code before either demolishing it or changing its use next year.

"I may knock it down and build another building," said Sela, who spent $6 million for the deed and $26 million for control over all the tenants' leases, according to property records. "We're keeping the tenants there now...but if they want to be bought out, we want to do that."

Sela said he "obviously" thought the property — which sits across the street from popular cafes Milk and Roses and Champion Coffee — was extremely valuable, but noted he would not decide his ultimate plan for the spot until spring, after he had fixed up and cleaned the building.

Nasty living in Greenpoint

From the Daily News:

The rent is so damn low in a Greenpoint flophouse that residents - many who pay under $300 a month - refuse to leave despite an infestation of rats, bedbugs, and even silverfish.

Nearly three dozens tenants of the Greenpoint Hotel on Manhattan Ave. are suing landlord Jay Deutchman citing disgusting living conditions such as vermin, collapsing ceilings, and shared flooded hallway bathrooms replete with a nauseating odor.

“It’s the only thing I got,” said Anthony Mirabal, 45, who pays nothing to live in the single-room-occupancy (SRO) building in squalor.

Mirabel, a retired U.S. customs agent, said he won a case against the building’s previous owner receiving a six-year rent credit and is now taking Deutchman to court because the place has become inhabitable.

Department of Housing Preservation and Development records showed 514 open violations connected to the various addresses of the Greenpoint Hotel - 66 Clay St. and 1109 - 113 Manhattan Ave.

And things are so bad that the agency is also suing Deutchman.

Tenants’ advocates said Deutchman - who took over the building in 2009 - is purposely letting the place rot hoping to push out the poor occupants and hike up the rents.

This slumlord has quite a rep in Rockaway as well.