de Blasio is setting up a new deal for the city to buy cluster buildings from another slumlord

 NY Daily News

Ashley Taliercio and her two children have been in their Harlem apartment for three months, but it feels like years.

Each day they’re forced to walk a gauntlet of squalor: caved-in ceilings, used condoms, cigarette butts lining the stairways and constant cold inside their claustrophobic studio.

All of it has begun to numb the 30-year-old mother.

“There’s roaches, there’s fighting. There’s people doing drugs in the hallway,” she told the Daily News, her son crying in her arms, her daughter sitting stone-faced on the bed they share. “It’s not safe. But it is what it is.”

Taliercio lives at 148 W. 124 St., one of 14 buildings in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx the city is planning to buy from Mark Irgang, a landlord who already earns money from the city by housing homeless people in emergency “cluster-site” housing.

The land deal, which the city has treated as a closely guarded secret since announcing it in November, is the second part of its plan to phase out cluster housing by buying it and converting it into permanent affordable apartments.

The practice of housing people in cluster, or scatter-site, apartments has come under fire because the units cost the city a fortune to rent, and are often in a terrible state of disrepair.

Buying the Irgang’s 14 apartment buildings outright will also cost the city, however. Property records show the buildings are worth at least $41 million.

And it won’t just cost in terms of taxpayer money. Buying property from shady landlords does not happen without at least some political fallout. The purchase price in phase one of Mayor de Blasio’s cluster site conversion plan was a major headache for him both before and after the deal’s completion.

He came under fire earlier this year when The News revealed the city would be buying 17 buildings from notorious landlords, Jay and Stuart Podolsky. That was phase one of the plan. The brothers ultimately ended up making $173 million on the deal — despite one city appraisal that valued the properties at just $49 million. The city comptroller launched a probe into the appraisal process, which is ongoing.

Further complicating matters in phase two is that the controversial Acacia Network manages some of the Irgang properties.

NYC Department Of Environmental Protection debuted new sewer infrastructure in Southeast Queens a few days before South Ozone Park homes got deluged with dung water

QNS


After breaking ground in the community of Brookville in southeast Queens earlier this year marking the beginning of an $84 million infrastructure upgrade project, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced on Nov. 26 the installation of new storm box sewers to help alleviate flooding. 

DEP Commissioner Vincent Sapienza joined with the Department of Design and Construction’s (DDC) Deputy Commissioner for Infrastructure Eric Macfarlane and Councilman Donovan Richards to review the progress of the project that includes the installation of 9-foot-by-5-foot storm box sewers. 

“To date, 1,650 feet of storm sewers, 2,500 feet of sanitary sewers and 11,800 feet of water mains have been installed,” the DDC said in a statement to QNS. “Additionally, 25 hydrants were replaced and seven additional fire hydrants were installed as well.” 

The project, which is funded by DEP and managed by DDC, is anticipated to be completed in the summer 2021. The large box sewer will form one of the major spines for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $1.9 billion buildout of the drainage system throughout southeast Queens. 
It was a much-needed development for the area which has historically flooded even with the slightest bit of rain, Richards said. 

“This is one of 55 projects that are slated for southeast Queens over the course of the next decade or two, and these are projects that have been on the books for a very long time, like many other projects in southeast Queens,” said Richards, former chairman of the Environmental Protection Committee, who lobbied for infrastructure investment in the community. 

Going by what happened on Thanksgiving weekend, it looks like this upgrade didn't make it to South Ozone Park yet.

South Ozone Park sewage claims clinic hearing tommorow

Happy Birthday! Queens Crap is thirteen years old!

City Council gets to hear it from South Ozone Park residents about city's shitty response to sewage overflow

Jamaica Patch


In the basement of Laron Harmon's South Ozone Park home, no space went to waste. It was fully furnished, and Harmon kept all his clothing down there. It's where his daughter, who was back home from college for Thanksgiving, had put her clothes into the washing machine. His 10-year-old son's toys and bicycle were there too.

About 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 30, that basement started filling with waste. Harmon had gotten used to sewage and flooding issues in the three decades he'd lived there, and he cleaned out the sewer trap in his basement twice a year. But he had never seen anything like this.

"By nine o'clock in the morning, I had close to four feet of sewage in my basement," he said.

Harmon was one of four South Ozone Park residents who recounted tales of raw sewage flooding their homes that morning as part of a City Council oversight hearing Wednesday on how city officials dealt with the crisis, which affected an estimated 74 homes.

"I'm one of those families that had to sleep in their car, in my driveway with my children," Harmon said in his testimony.

 Nearly two weeks later, residents like Harmon continue to grapple with the aftermath of the sewage that devastated their homes. Harmon said he still hasn't gone back home, where there's no heat or hot water. Instead, he's living in a hotel.

"I've never seen nothing like this before," he said. "This was a disaster."

City Council representatives lambasted the Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the city's wastewater plants and sewer system, for being slow to respond to the crisis and promoting a narrative that blamed the backup on residents pouring grease down their drains.

"They certainly didn't deserve to be publicly shamed in the midst of a tragedy," City Council Member Adrienne Adams said.

Adams said her constituents' calls to 311, the city's emergency hotline, went unaddressed for hours and that it took the Department of Environmental Protection hours to arrive at the scene and start fixing the issue.

Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Vincent Sapienza said crews had arrived that morning, hours before Adams claimed, but acknowledged that issues communicating with 311 representatives meant they were slow to realize all the flooding complaints were connected.

Queens Eagle 

 Some lost prized possessions, like clothes, toys and furniture. Others said they waded through knee-deep muck to try to stem the tide of raw sewage. One man questioned how he would ever get the stench of human waste out of his basement, where the wastewater rose more than four feet.

Inside the City Council chambers on Wednesday, South Ozone Park homeowners took turns describing the impact of the sewer backup that flooded dozens of basements during Thanksgiving weekend.

The wastewater affected about 80 houses in the early morning hours of Nov. 30, destroyed belongings and filling home with a lingering odor.

“It was almost like I was in a horror movie,” said Kari White, president of the 149 Street South Ozone Park Civic Association. White described moving from house to house in his neighborhood as wastewater filled neighbors’ basements. He said he refused to even enter one house because it was the stench was so foul.

Comptroller Scott Stringer, who is tasked for making sure these residents get compensated for their destroyed belongings, did not show up at the hearing.