DeBlasio criticized for downplaying NYCHA heat issues

From the Daily News:

On WNYC, de Blasio was asked how NYCHA was handling its pervasive heating glitches, and downplayed the issue.

“As the problems have been occurring, we've been getting the heat back on in each development. There are still a few, for sure, that we have more work to do,” he said.

The mayor conceded there were “some developments right now that need heat restored,” but that usually NYCHA can fix the problem in a few hours.

But over the holiday weekend and throughout the frigid week, entire developments across the city found themselves without heat, some for days at a time.

Queensboro Hill veterans getting runaround from DOB

From NY1:

The group of veterans at the VFW post says it has tried to correct the violations, but do not receive proper guidance from building officials to clear the liens. They say the bureaucratic red is putting its post in jeopardy of closure.

Stuck in bureaucratic red tape, a group of veterans say they're being unfairly fined for building violations. So much so that their community center is in jeopardy of closing. During a press conference Monday, veterans at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 34-27 in Flushing say they feel like bureaucrats are attacking their post. The post has been dealing with building code violations for more than two years.

​"There is a lawless war being perpetrated against the veterans of new York city. And this post being fined out of existence is evidence of that war," says Marvin Jeffcoat, Sergeant First Class, U.S Army (Retired).

Building code violation fines have mounted against the VFW Post to the tune of $13,000.

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.

Beware of developers that call themselves "Bad Ass"

From the Daily News:

A dozen first-time homeowners say a developer known as the Bad Ass Group steered them into purchasing shoddily-built homes that the city had not even cleared for permanent occupancy.

The group filed an $18 million class-action lawsuit in Bronx Supreme Court Friday against at least six companies — including real estate agents, attorneys, an architect and a builder — that collectively did business as an umbrella entity called the Bad Ass Group.

“Our American Dream has been stolen,” said one homeowner, Johanny De La Cruz, during a rally in front of the courthouse Friday, after they filed the court papers that sought damages for a litany of alleged offenses including breach of contract, fraud, conspiracy, negligence and attorney malpractice.

The residents complained they were rushed into buying the properties, and began having problems with heat, black mold, sewage backups, plumbing, leaky roofs and faulty boilers almost as soon as they moved in.

Another homeowner, Martha Diaz, sounded a similar tune.

“When it rained, the water came inside of the house,” said Diaz, a mother of seven who purchased her two-family house for $618,0000 in 2006.

On top of that, the plaintiffs said, the developer never obtained permanent certificates of occupancy for the houses of horror, which put the homeowners on the line for thousands in fines from the city.

When homeowners complained, they said the Bad Ass Group referred them to lawyers they now believe were in cahoots with the schemers, who did nothing to resolve the approvals or stop the city fines from accruing, said Andre Ramon Soleil, the homeowners’ attorney.

The group is also suing the city, charging that the Department of Buildings was negligent in issuing temporary approvals before the properties were inspected — a policy that has since changed.

Beware of shoddy Rapid Repairs work

From Eyewitness News:

A licensed plumbing inspector says he was fired by Rapid Repairs after confronting his boss about unsafe installation of heating systems.

"I was fixing heating contractors mistakes left and right, things that would get people killed," the whistle blowing plumber said.

In talking to Eyewitness News, he requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

While at Rapid Repairs he documented what he says is shoddy and potentially deadly work such as this faulty boiler flue.

What to do?

From the NY Times:

I spent several days walking the Rockaways with Mr. Gair; Mathew W. Wambua, the city’s housing commissioner; and Marc Jahr, the president of the city’s Housing Development Corporation, for whom I worked as a tenant organizer in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, in the early 1980s.

Theirs is a complicated task, made more difficult by a judgment day that will arrive this summer, when the federal government sets new flood standards. If a home sits in Zone A — and much of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens; Coney Island and Red Hook in Brooklyn; and Staten Island will — homeowners’ insurance rates could jump crazily, to perhaps $10,000 a year from less than $500. There is a deceptively simple way to sidestep this increase: homeowners can raise homes on stilts, and some have set out to do this. But the cost is great, extending into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for some homes.

At Dayton Towers, the chief executive, Jeff Goldstein, had installed new boilers, elevators, lobbies and laundry rooms. His tab ran into the millions of dollars. Then Hurricane Sandy blew in. Swells washed across the shore road and turned his boiler room into a briny aquarium.

Mr. Goldstein’s men restored electricity and heat within two weeks. And now? Commissioner Wambua stood in the well of Dayton Towers, yelling against the roar of the boilers. “Where do you put these?” he asked. “On the roof?”

You could encapsulate the boilers, making the basement watertight, much as a battleship safeguards its engine room, but the cost is terrific.

For many decades, the federal government rebuilt Southern cities lashed by storms. Now Congressional Republicans want to change course. Talk of storms intensified by global warming sounds suspiciously like science; they insist that New York and New Jersey not use a lot of federal money to armor their coastlines.

New York has traveled this road alone before. In the early 2000s, a developer built Arverne by the Sea, a middle-income housing development in the Rockaways.

City officials told him to take account of rising seas levels. So he trucked in landfill, raising the entire development above flood level. He buried electrical lines and put in catch basins, dunes and black pines. In late October, this neighborhood was one of the few in the area that did not flood.

The trick is to extend that sleight of hand to miles and miles of coastline, and so preserve a necklace of neighborhoods.

FDNY inspector accused of faking Queens boiler checks

Jonathan Lemire
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

An FDNY Fire Prevention inspector was arrested yesterday for falsely claiming he inspected the boilers of 17 Queens homes, officials said.

Robert Stewart, 40, was charged with 38 counts of falsifying records after investigators determined that he simply sat in his car and filled out inspection certificates for the buildings on 154th and 162nd Sts. in Whitestone.

Stewart, who lives in Queens, was suspended without pay, FDNY officials said.

The FDNY will reinspect the boilers in question, officials said.

Jackson Heights Fire Ruled Accidental

NEW YORK (AP) -- Fire marshals say a malfunctioning boiler caused a weekend fire that ravaged a row of businesses in Queens.

The Fire Department said Tuesday that the blaze, which started in a furniture store, had been declared accidental.

Dozens of residents also were evacuated from a nearby apartment building during Saturday's fire in Jackson Heights.