Tenant gets his property thrown out of his apartment in a tenement building owned by Barabara Corcoran and Alex Rodriguez while he was hospitalized with COVID

NBC New York 

 

The absurd thing about this savagery is that the piano and turtle remained because the people they hired surely thought they were to heavy to move and a bunch of goons moving a turtle on the street would have easily got filmed and lots of play on social media. Of course Corcoran and ARod won't be charged for illegally evicting a tentant from his apartment during a pandemic. And looting his belongings.

Landlord of explosion site finally arrested

From the NY Post:

Two building owners and three contractors were arrested Thursday morning on charges including manslaughter​, assault and criminally negligent homicide​ over the East Village blast that destroyed three buildings and killed two people nearly a year ago.

Petty corner-cutting and blatant greed caused the blast, officials said.

Sharing the blame, officials ​accused, are a penny​-​pinching building landlord, ​her son, ​her contractor, and the contractor’s unlicensed plumber, who installed a tangle of dangerous and illegal gas connections that they hid from Con Ed behind a locked basement door.

And check out this case from Michigan:

Federal officials charged a suburban Detroit restaurant owner and his wife Friday with harboring immigrants who were in the U.S. without legal permission after a fire at a house he owned killed five employees about two weeks earlier.

Roger Tam, 55, was arrested Thursday and appeared Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit. His wife, Ada Lei, 48, also has been charged, but has not been arrested because she is hospitalized for an undisclosed reason.

Five Mexican nationals lived in the basement of the home owned by Tam in an upper middle-class neighborhood in Novi, northwest of Detroit, while working at Tam's restaurant, Kim's Garden. The Jan. 31 fire has been ruled accidental and possibly caused by smoking; a smoke detector in the basement had been disabled. The basement had stairs to the first floor but windows made of glass block, which would prevent any escape in an emergency.

The charge that Tam and Lei face carries a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

Illegal conversions and illegal gas hookups kill. It's time to throw the book at these people.

The whole East Village is illegally converted

From the Wall Street Journal:

City inspections of more than 50 buildings in the East Village following the fatal March 26 explosion and fire at 121 Second Ave. have turned up violations related to gas lines, fire safety and illegal construction, city records show.

The blast, which leveled three buildings and killed two people, is being treated as a case of suspected gas diversion, officials have said. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating to determine if any criminal charges are warranted.

Two weeks after the blast, area residents remain concerned that problems that bedeviled 121 Second Ave. leading up to the explosion—a record of unlicensed construction work and building and housing violations—could be mirrored in their own buildings, some of which have records of complaints and violations going back years.

At one building across the street from the blast, gas has been shut off after inspections revealed construction without a permit and potentially illegal gas siphoning, records and interviews show. At another, Department of Buildings records show a violation for an improperly placed gas meter and new complaints alleging illegal boiler work, among other concerns.

Since March 26, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development has issued violations at a number of buildings on the block, ranging from faulty locks, doors, handrails and windows to blocked fire escapes, lack of gas and failure to register as a multiple family dwelling with the department. One building was cited by the department for illegal use of the cellar as residential space, records show.

Recent complaints to the Department of Buildings for buildings on the block show concerns about unlicensed construction, fire hazards, and illegal conversion of space for bedrooms.

It's criminal

From the Daily News:

The heartbreaking farewell came as detectives looking into allegations that the explosion was caused by workers illegally tapping into the gas line were preparing to bring criminally negligent homicide charges against whoever was responsible.

“This is likely going to end up a homicide case,” a high-ranking police source told the Daily News. “The DA will probably bring it to the grand jury.”

The focus of the criminal investigation is building owner Maria Hrynenko and contractor Dilber Kukic, sources have said.

Both are suspected of tapping into a gas main meant to serve only a first-floor sushi restaurant to provide heat to Hrynenko’s tenants on upper floors. Kukic is no stranger to the law. He was arrested in October for allegedly trying to give a city inspector a $600 cash bribe to make two violations on buildings he owns on W. 173rd St. in Manhattan go away.

“No one's going to be charged for doing sloppy work, but if it can be proved that someone was told to do this, then it's a criminally negligent homicide,” the source said.

Everyone from Hrynenko and Kukic to the plumber who had been working at 121 Second Ave. at the time of the blast has been grilled.

“All of them got lawyers and they're all pointing fingers at each other,” the high-ranking source said.

Stairs collapse, fire escape unstable, FDNY evacuates kids from roof

From Daily News

From CBS New York:

An early-morning rooftop party in the East Village ended Sunday morning after a stairwell collapsed, sending a man falling at least two stories.

More than 30 college-aged students at the party were trapped on the roof after the accident that occurred around 1 a.m., an FDNY spokesman said. Firefirghters used a ladder and cherry-picker basket to rescue them from the top of the seven-story building at 159 Second Ave., near East 10th Street.

“They also tried to get everyone off the fire escape, but the fire escape is not deemed to code,” a partygoer who lives in the building told WCBS 880′s Monica Miller reported. “So when they were actually trying to get people off, some of the rings were breaking. So that’s why they were bucketing people because there was literally no access in and out of that building, and the elevator wasn’t working either.”

The man who fell was admitted to Bellevue Hospital. He injured his leg and suffered broken ribs and a collapsed lung, 1010 WINS’ Glenn Schuck reported. The man was apparently jumping up and down on the landing.

Graffiti appears at controversial demo site

From the NY Post:

Actor David Schwimmer may have a tough time making friends when he moves into his new East Village town house.

Instead of rolling out the welcome mat, neighbors have taken to leaving the “Friends” star not-so-subtle notes about his nearly completed, six-story digs on East Sixth Street.

“Ross is not cool,” read one message emblazoned across a construction board this week — referring to the name of his quirky sitcom character.

The graffiti work — which was scrubbed away by workers soon after photos were posted on the East Village blog evgrieve.com Monday — is the latest in a series of local protests against Schwimmer and his luxe, 9,000-square-foot manse.

Schwimmer bought the property, a five-story 1852 town house described as “one of the finest homes in the East Village,” for $4.1 million in 2010 — and then reduced it to rubble just months after the city notified him that the building could get landmark status by the end of 2012.

The actor’s architect then produced plans for a massive new home to rise in its place, replete with elevator and roof terrace.

Outraged neighbors and preservationists called Schwimmer’s swift demolition underhanded.

Schwimmer not a "Friend" of preservation