The "affordable housing" development of death

Documented 

On April 6, Holger Molina, a 46-year-old immigrant from Ecuador, was removing plywood as part of his job in the construction of a 17 story tower. It is slated to become the tallest building in the area bordering Ridgewood, Queens and Bushwick, Brooklyn. It was raining when, at 3 p.m., Molina slipped and fell from the first-floor stairwell approximately 20 feet through a hole into the basement. He was rushed to Wyckoff Hospital and the next day was declared dead from the injuries sustained in his fall, according to the safety incident report filed by his employer.

After the accident, a Department of Buildings inspector visited the construction site and “observed no safety measures to safeguard workers,” according to the violation report, which considered the incident an aggravated offense level two, the most serious violation from the agency. The judge of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings in New York upheld the violation and slapped the contractor, AB Capstone Builders Corp, with the maximum penalty — a $25,000 fine. For that single incident, the Department of Buildings would issue additional violations for penalties worth $55,000 in total. 

The penalties were imposed after the project, slated to be called Myrtle Point — a mixed-use complex with four floors of commercial space and 133 residential units, of which 30 percent would be an “affordable component” — had been fully suspended on three instances since 2021. As of today, the Department of Buildings has issued five full-stop work orders after considering that the work on any of the 90,000-square-foot property was unsafe for workers. 

That’s an inordinate number of stop-work orders for a construction project. For example, the 47-story office tower at 425 Park Avenue scheduled to be completed next year — a complex renovation project that added 75% new construction to the old building’s structure, costing more than $900 million — has over 90 safety violations, according to Department of Buildings records. However, this agency has never issued a stop-work order for that renovation project, which started in 2016.