Parking garage oppressing women's livelihoods

de Blasio missed the cut again, Trump gets to run his golf course

 

NY Post

Donald Trump is back in the Bronx.

A state Supreme Court judge ruled Friday that the city did not have the right to cancel Trump’s contract to run the Ferry Point Golf Course. Mayor Bill de Blasio had nixed the deal after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, arguing that Trump would not be able to attract golf tournaments.

In her decision and order filed on Friday, Justice Debra James said there was nothing in the contract that required a tournament — only that the city would share in any proceeds. That means either Trump gets to continue to run the course, or the city needs to pay him to leave. Trump’s son Eric said they’ll stay.

“The judge didn’t buy their nonsense and this is a well-reasoned and appropriate decision and we look forward to running the best golf course for years to come,” Eric Trump said.

De Blasio tried to freeze Trump out of all city contracts. The Parks Department had reassigned Ferry Point to an out-of-state operator, Bobby Jones Links, causing Trump to file an Article 78 to appeal that city move. It’s unclear how much it will cost the city to cancel the Bobby Jones contract.

James granted a temporary restraining order last fall, allowing the organization to continue its operations, and has now sent the matter back to the Parks Department.

“De Blasio did this for his own political theater,” Eric Trump said. “He wasted tremendous amounts of time and city resources on his own vendetta. He is a disgrace to New York and everyone is glad he is gone.”

 

Ex-TransAlt CEO presents scooters for the handicapped

 

Bronx Times

It’s electric!

On Thursday, e-scooter company Bird launched a program that can make wheelchairs electric.

People who use wheelchairs and live in the east Bronx neighborhoods included in the city’s e-scooter pilot can now receive a free attachment for the duration of the City Council-mandated program, which began in August 2021 and will run up to two years.

The three companies participating in the pilot: Bird, Lime and Veo are all offering options for people with disabilities, as required by the city as part of the pilot. But Bird’s newly launched program is unique because it offers free devices that users can hold on to for the rest of the pilot period.

Bird has been offering four-wheeled electric power chairs that can be rented through the company’s app for 1-14 day intervals at $10 per day and can be picked up or delivered for a fee depending on the location.

Lime has been offering a similarly structured program, but for free, with a $5 refundable deposit. The company’s three-wheeled seated scooters can be reserved in advance online or through the app 24 hours to 7 days in advance, and be used for 24-hour periods, with free delivery.

Veo offers free adaptive wheelchair attachments — like the ones Bird is now offering — by reservation for up to a week with free delivery, and customers arrange everything through Veo customer service.

Bird’s new program will offer 350-watt motor lightweight removable li-ion battery-powered attachments that are compatible with most wheelchair models, according to the company.

Residents in the phase one e-scooter pilot area — which includes the northeast Bronx, spanning from Woodlawn to Eastchester down to Van Nest and Pelham Bay — can utilize the program. When the second phase begins this summer, residents in the phase two area, which spans from Parkchester to Country Club down to Clason Point and Throggs Neck

The motors can make wheelchairs go up to 12 mph, according to a Bird spokesperson.

 People who use wheelchairs will be able to navigate hills, inclines and long distance trips throughout the city, according to Bird.

12 mph is about the average speed a bike rider can go. This attachment kind of turns a wheel chair into a makeshift ATV. Can't wait to see gangs on these things rolling on the streets like the motorcross and ATV gangs do.

Caption Adams At An Italian Open Restaurant

 

Tell NYC Council how you feel about the shanties and your former parking spaces.

A sign of mindless D.O.T. incompetence

  

NY Post

The Bronx got burned by a Department of Transportation mistake that listed the name of a Queens official on a welcome sign, sparking a jokey inter-borough beef.

A newly installed “Welcome to the Bronx” sign on the Hutchinson River Parkway coming off the Whitestone Bridge wrongly listed Queens Borough President Donovan Richards instead of the Bronx’s BP Vanessa Gibson.

Gibson, who just took office this month, tweeted “we’re trying” at the DOT Wednesday.

“I know it’s been a rough couple of weeks in the Bronx, but y’all didn’t have to get rid of me already,” she said.

Richards then jumped on the error, using the opportunity to flash some Queens swagger over the Boogie Down.

“Being the BP of by far the best borough in NYC comes with an understanding that everyone always has #Queens on their mind. It’s natural,” Richards posted in response to a NY1 reporter who tweeted about the typo. “But the Bronx and @bronxbp @Vanessalgibson deserve their due as well so I’ll happily cede this space and work with DOT to ensure that happens.”

The doors of safety perception

THE CITY 

 Four years before the conflagration that claimed the lives of 17 New Yorkers at the Twin Parks apartments in The Bronx, a devastating blaze tore through another building in the borough under remarkably similar circumstances.

On a frigid night shortly after Christmas 2017, fire broke out in the kitchen of a first floor apartment at 2363 Prospect Ave. in Belmont. Within minutes, thick black smoke spread throughout the building, and when it was over, 13 tenants had perished, including an infant. Six firefighters were injured.

In both the Twin Parks and Prospect Avenue fires, the death toll was magnified by a simple but deadly flaw: smoke and flame caused by a fire in a single apartment rocketed throughout both buildings after doors remained open.

An open door also fanned the flames in a blaze that consumed a Jackson Heights apartment building, leaving dozens of families homeless.

Today despite a repeated cycle of outrage and reform — including tougher penalties against landlords following the Belmont tragedy — thousands of self-closing doors that do not function properly still fill New York City, fully known to housing and fire officials.

Those malfunctioning doors are especially prevalent in lower-income neighborhoods dense with apartment buildings, an analysis by THE CITY of city records has found.

Thousands of violations remain unresolved for either non-functioning or non-existent self-closing doors across New York City, code violation records kept by the city Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) show.

Examining every door violation filed by inspectors from Jan. 1, 2019 through the end of 2021, THE CITY found 18,305 open violations remained in 10,610 buildings as of Jan. 11, 2022.

More than 4,800 of those open citations are at least two years old, dating back to inspections that took place in 2019.

“Those statistics show what I’ve been saying repeatedly, which is we need strong housing laws,” said Coumcilmember Oswald Feliz (D-The Bronx), chair of the Council’s newly formed Fire Prevention Task Force. “We also need a system that promptly detects violations and a system that takes quick action to make sure that violations once detected are quickly cured.”

Overall, including violations since certified as fixed, inspectors wrote up 74,448 citations across all five boroughs during the three-year period.

Any residential building with three or more units must have spring-loaded doors that close automatically, under state law and city codes.

Many of the buildings with doors in violation for lacking self-closing mechanisms are located near those that burned in The Bronx and Queens,

THE CITY found 378 open violations for non-functioning or non-existent self-closing doors in 233 buildings as of Jan. 11 in ZIP code 10458 — where the Prospect Avenue fire took place.

That includes a 48-unit rental building across the street from the fire with two open violations, both dating back to October 2021, and one open violation, also dating to October, at a 160-unit building around the corner on Southern Boulevard.

As of last July, thanks to a reform that followed the 2017 Belmont fire, all such violations get cited as “immediately hazardous,” the most severe class of housing code violation.

A 47-unit building at 246 E. 199th St. had 10 open citations for self-closing door violations as of last week, some of which date back to 2019.

HPD notified the landlord months ago, but as of Friday none had been resolved. All but one of the citations were classified as an “immediate hazard.”

Investor slumlord negligence turned Bronx Mitchell-Lama apartment building into a deathtrap

Reuters 

 

NY Post 

The Bronx building where at least 19 people died in a massive blaze Sunday was cited for more than two dozen violations and complaints — despite $25 million in state loans for repairs.

The citations, including for vermin infestation and faulty elevators, came after the 2013 infusion of state cash — and before the building was sold to an investment group two years ago, records reviewed by The Post show.

The 19-story, 120-unit building has been hit with complaints and violations since 2014.

Part of a complex initially known as Twin Parks, the building went up in 1972 as an urban renewal project constructed by the state UrbaDevelopment Corporation — the present-day Empire State Development Corporation.

The building was owned by Cammeby’s International Group, whose principal is real estate mogul Rubin Schron, until it was sold to a consortium of three investor groups in December 2019.

But not before Schron, a pal of onetime state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, got nearly $25 million in state loans to make repairs and upgrades at the building.

Since 2014, one year after Schron got the state loans, the building amassed more than two dozen complaints and violations, none related to fire hazards or potential lapses in safety standards, city records show.

A message left for Schron Sunday was not returned.

The 2019 sale of the building was part of a $166 million deal for eight rent-regulated buildings in the Bronx, according to Real Estate In-Depth.

Rick Gropper, the co-founder of one of the three firms, Camber Property Group, was a member of the housing committee for the mayoral transition team of Eric Adams, sources said. 

The other two investment firms with ownership of the building are LIHC Investment Group and Belveron Partners.

“We are devastated by the unimaginable loss of life caused by this profound tragedy,” the owners said in a statement.

“We are cooperating fully with the Fire Department and other city agencies as they investigate its cause, and we are doing all we can to assist our residents.”

Reuters

New York authorities said on Monday the city was investigating a possible "maintenance issue" with a door that failed to close when devastating fire erupted in a Bronx apartment building a day earlier, killing 17 people, including eight children.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, just over a week into the job, said at a briefing that the city's medical examiner determined the fire had claimed two fewer victims than the 19 announced on Sunday.

The blaze broke out on Sunday morning in the 19-floor Twin Parks North West building, which provided affordable housing units for low-income New Yorkers. Many of the residents were from the large Gambian community that lived in the neighborhood.

"This is a global tragedy as The Bronx and New York City is representative of the ethnicities and cultures across the globe," Adams said during a briefing in front of the building. "This is an evolving crisis. An unspeakable tragedy."

Adams said he spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden, who pledged that the White House will provide "whatever" New York City needs to address the aftermath of the fire.

The catastrophe was likely to stir questions on safety standards in low-income city housing. It was the second major fire in a residential complex in the United States this week after 12 people, including eight children, were killed early on Wednesday when flames swept through a public housing apartment building in Philadelphia.

Earlier in the day on "Good Morning America," Adams said smoke from the fire was able to spread due to a door being open. Doors in apartment houses are required to close automatically to prevent fires from spreading through the building.

"There may have been a maintenance issue with this door and that is going to be part of the ongoing investigation," Adams said. "This is all going to come out during the investigation."

Addressing the revised death toll, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said patients had been taken to seven different hospitals in the city, which led to “a bit of a double count,” adding that many remain in care still fighting for their lives.

Investigators are looking into the possibility that a door from 15th floor to stairway was not functioning as it should, Nigro said, adding that residents would have been safer if they stayed in their apartments rather than exiting down stairways.

Some 60 people were injured in the blaze and 32 people had been hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, officials said on Sunday.

Fire marshals determined through physical evidence and accounts from residents the fire started in a portable electric heater in the apartment's bedroom. The heat had been on in the apartment building and the portable heater had been supplementing that heating, they said.

Some 200 firefighters helped put out the blaze.

This is deBlastopia

 

 Impunity City

 The Blaz era is finally and mercifully over but his contribution to the New Bad Days will go down in history as the greatest regression of New York City in 50 years and will surely continue to plague this town for years to come.

 

AOC is MIA from her district offices

 

NY Post

Guess this self-proclaimed woman of the people thinks they are best served from afar.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s New York City district offices are still only open for in-person constituent services on Mondays and Wednesdays — even as municipal workers and school kids have been back at their desks full time for months.

The other three weekdays, AOC’s district office appointments are held virtually.

It’s a sharp contrast to the 14 New York congressional members out of 29 whose offices are open Monday through Friday — and comes after Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on her constituents.

“Her staff should be here more often, especially for people affected by Ida. There’s no excuse,” said retired school social worker Martha Grubman.

The storm flooded the basement of the 66-year-old retiree’s co-op and knocked out the elevators. Grubman, who’s disabled, was stuck in her home for days. 

“I would like to see them here three days at least, to hear what her constituents want and need,” Grubman said of Ocasio-Cortez’s local staff.

“I don’t know what other commitments they have. Maybe they’re helping her get ready to run for Senate, helping her get on the covers of more magazines,” Grubman conjectured.

Homeless service provider forms LLC to take over Trump golf course

 

 THE CITY 

 While Donald Trump battles Bill de Blasio over the mayor’s decision to dump the former president as operator of a Bronx golf course, the city is playing through — proposing a new firm to run the Ferry Point links.

A notice published Monday shows a company called Ferry Point Links LLC is set to be awarded a 13-year Parks Department deal to take over the Jack Nicklaus-designed 18-hole course at the foot of the Bronx-Whitestone bridge.

A firm incorporated under that name in late August, state corporation records indicate — sharing both an executive’s name and address with one of the city’s biggest homeless shelter operators, CORE Community Services.

An attorney for the former president vowed to fight the city — and the proposed new golf course operators — for control of the links, charging Trump is a victim of “political retaliation.”

A spokesperson for the city Department of Parks and Recreation said that CORE will be teaming up with Bobby Jones Links, an Atlanta company that will be “managing the operation of the concession.” CORE Community Services did not respond to requests for comment Monday, and Bobby Jones Links was not immediately reachable.

According to the notice posted in Monday’s City Record, Ferry Point Links, LLC will pay a minimum of $300,000 a year to the city — or a share starting at 7% of the gross proceeds and gradually escalating to 10% by year 13, whichever is higher.

Those terms are slightly more favorable to the operator than those granted to Trump in 2012, in a 20-year deal struck to salvage a troubled project. Trump also committed $10 million to build a clubhouse.

Caption Blaz the Damaja

    

Such a cancelable face.

The Blaz cowardly avoids Commissioner Shea's press briefing after a cop got shot

 

NY Post

Where was Bill?

Mayor de Blasio was a no-show at the NYPD’s early-morning Saturday news conference about the shooting of a police lieutenant in the Bronx, and City Hall did not offer an explanation for his absence.

“That’s typical of him,” grumbled one police source of Hizzoner. “He never has cared about police officers. So it’s not surprising he’s showing his true colors with only a few months left.”

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea briefed the media outside Jacobi Medical Center around 4 a.m. Saturday on the status of the wounded lieutenant, who was shot late Friday night in the Bronx while wrestling with accused gunman and documented gang member Jerome Roman, 26.

Roman was taken to the hospital following the episode, and his arraignment was pending Saturday in Bronx Criminal Court, cops said. The officer was treated at a hospital and released after being shot in the ankle. 

Caption these Sucker M.C.'s

           The Blaz decided to use city tax dollars to have a shirt and kangol recognizing the Boogie Down designed with the Mets colors. You know, because he hates the Yankees so much. 

Such an obnoxious and petty troll.

New Bad Days: The Boroughs Are Bleeding

 

Impunity City

 New Yorkers are vaccinated in record numbers. The Summer of NYC is here; there’s no better time to visit, and we’ll continue to cheer on our city’s recovery”

                                                        Deputy Press Secretary for Bill de Blasio, Mitch Schwartz

Here we go again, Mitch. Stupid asshole.

 In Mount Eden, a man chased another man with a gun on the sidewalk in a gang related attack. While being goaded by his fellow gangbangers to slay him in broad daylight, the gunman’s target ran directly into a 13-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy as they were about to enter a bodega to buy candy as he tried to find a place to hide and then he fell on top of them, causing them to fall on the pavement with him. Then the gunman circled around and stood over the man and the two kids and shot at him 12 times while trying to shoot around the children as if he was doing heart surgery. Then he ran away and got on the back of a scooter and rode away with an accomplice after he emptied his clip. The gangbanger managed to hit his target on both legs and plugged him on the back. The victim was brought to a hospital by his allies in a stolen car with temp plates.

 

In Times Square, a man with a gun ran down the sidewalk and shot at a group of men and missed, causing the bullet to ricochet off a building wall and hit a man in the arm who was standing outside of a hotel with his wife and relatives.

Because the unwitting victim is a Marine and the son of a retired military officer/intelligence official and being that it was the second shooting incident in less than a month in the Square, The Blaz and Chief Harrison wasted no time and decided to “flood the zone” with another deployment of 50 cops in the biggest and most precious tourist attraction in the world. 

Despite the bigger and redundant police presence, tourists are cognizant of the predominant crime wave and even more wary of walking on the streets in the vicinity. Although if there’s any consolation for the Blaz, some tourists seem to find the disturbing rise of violent criminal activity as a new novelty attraction.

 

New Bad Days 83: The Ides Of March bring more violent hate towards Asians and gun, gang and subway violence to NYC

  

Impunity City

 Has de Blasio, Speaker Cojo and the NY Council fauxgressive cronies ever given the thought that the reason Rikers is making C.O.’s work triple shifts is because solitary confinement has been cancelled and the only way to tamp down violence and keep order is to keep C.O.’s on duty for every minute and second that way they can justify these new supposed progressive policies? Even though it’s clearly not working? Even Jeff Bezos lets his Amazon FFC employees go home.

And while this FUBAR management is going on at Rikers, where is the NYC Jails Commissioner? Whose conspicuous absence after de Blasio put her on medical leave following the release of a fugitive killer that’s still on the loose has made her virtually unobtainable for comment?

10,000 again in corrected tally by the city of coronavirus caused deaths in the five boroughs

NY Daily News

More than 10,000 people have died in New York City due to coronavirus, under a revised count that factors in “probable” cases that were previously excluded from the grim toll, the Health Department revealed Tuesday.

The new count includes 6,589 deaths of people who had tested positive for COVID-19, along with 3,778 individuals whose death certificates listed the virus as their cause of death even though there was no known test for them — making a total of 10,367 deaths as of Monday.

The mayor’s office did not immediately answer a request for comment about the revised numbers, which came as the city has struggled to disseminate vital information about the outbreak.

At a Tuesday morning press conference, Mayor de Blasio said some newly available data suggested potential improvement in the devastating outbreak.

City hospitals admitted 326 patients with suspected coronavirus symptoms on Sunday, down from 383 the day before, de Blasio said.

But there was a slight uptick in people sent to intensive care, and a higher percentage of people tested positive for the dreaded virus — 59.6% of those tested got positive results on Sunday, up from 58.1% on Saturday.

“Every day, we have to win that battle to prove that we can reduce the spread of this virus, get those indicators to go down in unison over a longer period of time,” de Blasio told reporters. “And then we'll be in a position to talk about our next steps.”

de Blasio's crack coronavirus squad put out another vague contagion map

The zip codes with the most cases are colored deep purple and there is a big window of the amount of cases and the tabulations don't even start at the following number (112 should be 113 and so on). Even during a crisis, the city still can't help being easily subjected to ridicule.

Update: The NY Post corrected the glaring errors and confirmed the effects the pandemic has had on lower income working class residents.

 

A new city map showing confirmed coronavirus cases based on patient address by ZIP code suggests the poorest New Yorkers are being hardest hit by the pandemic.


Wealthier parts of the city, including much of Manhattan, waterfront sections of Queens and brownstone Brooklyn, have the fewest number of coronavirus cases, according to the map released by the city Department of Health.


A stark example of the wealth gap is the Rockaway section of Queens. The richest part of the peninsula that incorporates Belle Harbor where homes sell for over $1 million has at least 112 cases while Far Rockaway with its public housing complexes has up to 947 cases.


Data scientist Michael Donnelly, who’s been crunching the city’s coronavirus numbers since the start of the outbreak, noted the new map tracks with earlier MTA turnstile data.


Those maps showed ridership plummeting in Manhattan stations in mid-March, while New Yorkers from the outer reaches of the outer boroughs continued commuting.


“Over time we start to see the effect of the fact that Manhattan and the inner zip codes of Queens and Brooklyn have a lower positive rate because they were able to bend the curve before the outer boroughs,” Donnelly said.


Neighborhoods with fewer than 200 cases — like Park Slope, Brooklyn and Greenwich Village in Manhattan — count many white-collar professionals who can telecommute as residents.


“I think the clear next step there, is if that’s true, then there’s a real socio-economic inequality, inequity in the fact that these ZIP codes, which also tend to skew lower socio-economic, are also going to be the ones who are harder hit by this pandemic,” Donnelly said.

 “Broad strokes, those tend to be the wage workers, emergency service workers that are exposing themselves more and more over time,” Donnelly said.


Many front-line workers, from grocery store clerks to EMTs, live in the outer boroughs. Their jobs require them to use the subways while the majority of New Yorkers stay home.

Looks like there might be a need for a general strike to stop this contagion from spreading even more.

And at this moment as I am typing this, de Blasio's Department of Health still hasn't fixed those numerical errors.

Coronavirus map shows the poorest New Yorkers are getting infected the most

NY Daily News

A city map suggests what many New Yorkers already suspected: Coronavirus is hitting the poorest neighborhoods hardest.

The map shows the biggest share of people testing positive for the deadly virus are in a swathe of the city’s poorer neighborhoods, which stretches in a boomerang shape from central Brooklyn through Queens and out to the Rockaways.

A chunk of the South Bronx is also being slammed with more than half the patients testing positive.

Well-heeled neighborhoods like Riverdale, Bayside, Bay Ridge and most of Manhattan are faring relatively much better, with less than 40% testing positive for COVID-19.

Anti-poverty advocates say that the findings likely reflect the fact that poor and working-class people have been far less able to abide by social-distancing rules.

They are also less likely to have jobs that allow them to work remotely like better-off New Yorkers.

The five borough map of COVID-19 positive patients is out, and it's still hazardously vague

Patch

 Residents of United Hospital Fund Neighborhood zone 408 who tested positive for COVID-19 make up between 51.26 and 65.41 percent of the region's population to receive tests.
Get it? Yeah, neither do we.

The Health Department released Friday a difficult-to-interpret map of novel coronavirus cases in New York City, one day after a Wall Street Journal reporter called out Mayor Bill de Blasio for a lack of transparency.

"You have to release more detailed data on cases and deaths," Katie Honan told de Blasio. "It's negligent that you're not ... please, everyone has to get this data."

De Blasio lashed back at Honan, "If you believe it's your role to editorialize in the middle of your question, that's your right as an American."

"I don't believe that not only is it not negligent," he said. "I would say to you it's the exact opposite."

Yet less than 24 hours later, a new map appeared on the Department of Health's COVID-19 that tracks the percentage of patients testing positive by neighborhood.

Neighborhoods are designated by numbers instead of name — 408 is Jamaica, Queens, by the way — and the percentages are not connected to population data but to those tested.

The number of people tested per zone? Not included.

The population for zone? Not included.

Some New Yorkers were baffled.

"Anyone from NYC area who can parse this heat map of Covid-19?" asked Twitter user @_mzishi_.
Others were not.

"Map is pretty clear," tweeted Devin Balkind. "It's showing that the administration has no interest in transparency."

Since my role is also to editorialize, as an American I would like to say again that Bill de Blasio is a bastard. 

de Blasio needle exchange and sanitation program in the South Bronx is an abysmal failure

PIX News

  If we’ve learned nothing else about the heroin epidemic in the South Bronx, it’s that there’s a seemingly endless supply of the opiate on the street, especially near the bustling intersection known officially as “The Hub” and unofficially as “The Hub of Heroin”.

That means plenty of temptation for recovering addicts like 53-year-old Enrique Santiago.

"They throw the needles on the floor and stuff like that," said Santiago. Santiago's spent the better part of the last two decades trying to stay clean. "I've been on methadone for a year."

He takes the synthetic drug once a day, six days a week to help ward off cravings for the real thing. And he admits that seventh day without any help  is hard.

It was just last month PIX11’s reporting forced the de Blasio Administration to address residents’ concerns over hundreds of dirty needles found in city garbage cans, and on the street, tossed by the heroin addicts who are getting their fix in broad daylight.

"They be in the buildings, sleeping, urinating, feces and also, they just have so many needles. It's everywhere," said Bronx building porter Michael Dawson.

But in the wake of our reports, residents like building porter Michael Dawson and former heroin addict Vincent Almojera both question whether one of the city’s solutions — needle exchange programs — have only made the addiction crisis worse.

Vincent believes a neighborhood already playing host to a number of methadone clinics could use a few more without the bad rap that comes with visiting them.

"The methadone clinic is not the problem, the methadone clinic is one of the solutions," said Almojera. "The problem is handing out free needles, handing out free needles and the stigma that comes with treatment. People look down on you when you go into treatment and that's the problem."