Mayor Adams and the Department of Social Services covered up violations at shelters housing migrant families arrivals and fires official who tried to warn them

  

NBC New York

Several sources tell News 4 that staff at the Department of Social Services, including the agency's legal team, were angry after being instructed to hold off on telling City Hall, and not promptly notify the Legal Aid Society, as has been past protocol.

City officials acknowledge there was a delay in disclosing the violations, but they say top officials at the Department of Social Services including the Commissioner were unaware that they are legally obligated not to house families overnight in their intake office. This, despite the fact that a report is sent out each morning at 4am to notify social services managers of any violations.

The chief spokesperson for New York City's Department of Homeless Services was fired Friday after pushing back against alleged lies and omissions by her boss regarding illegal conditions in the city's homeless shelter system, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Email and text messages provided to the News 4 I-Team suggest that the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Julia Savel had resisted efforts by Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins to conceal crowded conditions in the city's homeless shelter system from his superiors at City Hall, from the media and from the public.

In one text message dated July 20, Savel indicated to a City Hall spokeswoman that she was planning to inquire about moving to a different agency, saying "Just can't work for a commish who is ok with covering up something illegal."

Staff at the Department of Homeless Services say they learned on July 18 that families with children had been forced to stay overnight in the city's homeless intake office in the Bronx, known as PATH  — a practice that is prohibited under a 2008 court settlement between the City and the Legal Aid Society, which represents people living in shelter.

The text messages imply that Savel gave City Hall a heads up the next day, on July 19. That same day, Mayor Adams announced NYC needed federal funding to help with a surge of 2,800 asylum seekers who had entered the shelter system in recent weeks. But the mayor did not specifically mention any legal violations or families sleeping in the intake office.

Later that week Adams said he did not learn the city had violated its "right to shelter mandate" until July 20.

Several sources tell News 4 that staff at the Department of Social Services, including the agency's legal team, were angry after being instructed to hold off on telling City Hall, and not promptly notify the Legal Aid Society, as has been past protocol.

City officials acknowledge there was a delay in disclosing the violations, but they say top officials at the Department of Social Services including the Commissioner were unaware that they are legally obligated not to house families overnight in their intake office. This, despite the fact that a report is sent out each morning at 4am to notify social services managers of any violations. 

 Suddenly, Stephen Banks doesn't look that bad now.

Tenants want overseer for torched building

From DNA Info:

Tenants of an apartment building destroyed in a five-alarm fire are going to court to force the appointment of an independent official to oversee rebuilding, saying letting the owners do it would be like the “fox guarding the hen house” after a contractor was arrested for starting the blaze.

More than a third of the tenants of the Martinique Plaza, at 56-11 94th St., have signed on to the suit, which will be filed in housing court this week by Legal Aid.

The petition asks that a judge appoint an independent administrator to oversee all capital improvements to the 111-unit building, which was destroyed on April 11.

While the fire scorched the sixth floor, the more than 100 apartments below were flooded as firefighters battled the fire.

And the now-homeless tenants say they don't trust management — and fear they'll be priced out of their units, which are below the median rent for the area.

“We don’t want someone like that in charge to fix this building up," Sateesh Nori, the Legal Aid lawyer representing the tenants, said.

“The fox is guarding the hen house. Someone is responsible for a fire, you don’t want them then responsible for repairing the damage to the fire."

Tenants — who met with city officials at a meeting on Tuesday in Elmhurst to discuss their options — said the management company has been reaching out to select tenants promising them a new apartment if they don't take any legal action against them, they said.

They also said the building's superintendent changed his story since the evening of the fire, when he said there wasn't any work being done on the roof, to the time the fire marshals came out with its cause.