de Blasio's mobile Covid testing sites reported missing

 

Queens Eagle

The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation said it would set up sorely needed mobile COVID testing sites this week in Jackson Heights and Corona. Residents there are still waiting.

Despite four-hour lines at COVID testing sites across Queens, HHC did not set up the testing locations as scheduled. A site that was supposed to administer tests Monday through Friday at Travers Park in Jackson Heights never opened due to inclement and severely cold weather, an HHC spokesperson said. HHC said the location will open Friday. 

To make matters worse, the testing site location is listed incorrectly on the HHC website, which says Travers Park is in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.

The Eagle learned about the missing test site when a reader reached out to say they had tried to visit three times. Another sent a photo of the place where the test site was supposed to be Thursday.

State Sen. Jessica Ramos was on her way to get a COVID test at Elmhurst Hospital when contacted to see if she knew about the missing site. Minutes later, she said she contacted city officials and learned that the Travers Park testing site was closed “due to weather” despite the sunny skies Thursday.

Another mobile testing site in Corona has also yet to open, said Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, who reached out to officials after the Eagle contacted her about the Jackson Heights location. She blasted Mayor Bill de Blasio and city agencies for failing to inform local leaders and communities about the closed test sites.

“The failure to inform the local elected officials and community that these sites would be closed during cold weather is yet one more example of Mayor de Blasio’s complete incompetence,” Cruz said. 

“It is incredibly frustrating to hear him announce seemingly great initiatives meant to save lives, that once again fail to deliver,” she said. “These are matters of life and death for my community.”

The 7-day COVID test positivity rate in Corona’s zip code 11368 reached nearly 6 percent Monday, according to the most recent Health Department data. Jackson Heights’ zip code 11372, where Travers Park is located, reached 2.82 percent. Both neighborhoods were among the hardest hit communities in New York City during the pandemic’s peak.

Explosion in number of homeless shelters in Queens

Well folks, you couldn't have come to this site over the last week or so and not have been informed that there is a shelter proposed for the Holiday Inn in Maspeth and a meeting about it was held last night. I am still sorting through all the videos and photos that were sent to me so I can report on this correctly instead of the way the media did. I can say that Maspeth did a GREAT job in standing up for themselves. So please bear with me.

In the meantime it has been brought to my attention that 3 more are opening or have opened around the borough (and that's just the ones I found out about)...


From the Daily News:

Meanwhile, the city has quietly moved 37 homeless families into a nearby Quality Inn in Woodside — despite Mayor de Blasio’s vow to phase out the use of hotel rooms to house homeless families.

The 37 families have been there since June, officials confirmed, and the city is providing full-time security and services for the families.

Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens) said local officials were never notified of the move — and he was particularly upset to be left in the dark because he’s worked with the city to welcome other shelters in the neighborhood and avoid protests.

"It’s outrageous that they would move the families in without even notifying anybody," he said.
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"Since this opened earlier this year, the unemployed residents are seen wondering aimlessly around the streets and hanging out on the steps of the buildings at all hours. An assortment of shabby looking women are regularly seen hanging around the complex.

We asked for affordable housing and services for our seniors, but, DeBlasio ignored the pleas of the locals who voted for him and saddled us with more homeless housing."

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It sounds like "supportive housing" is the new name fauxgressives have chosen for "homeless shelter".

HHC deep in the hole

From the Daily News:

The city's cash-strapped public hospital system will have to bring in hundreds of thousands more patients to overcome its dire financial troubles, Health and Hospitals Corp. President Ram Raju said Tuesday.

In a speech to hundreds of hospital workers, Raju pledged to increase the number of patients using the system’s 11 hospitals and other facilities to 2 million annually by 2020 from the current 1.4 million. And he said the hospitals corporation would double the number of people enrolled in its MetroPlus health insurance plan to 1 million during the same period.

The hospital system has been bleeding cash for years, and faces a $753 million deficit next year, which will balloon to $1.5 billion by 2019.

And because of Obamacare, the agency faces deep cuts to federal aid traditionally funneled to hospitals that care for large numbers of uninsured patients. Under that law, the Health and Hospitals Corp. expects to lose $180 million in 2017, and a total of $3 billion by 2024.

At the same time, hospital officials expect they’ll still have to care for many people who can’t get insurance despite Obamacare, particularly undocumented immigrants.

Bringing in more patients who have insurance or can pay for care will help offset those cuts, Raju said.

Still no plans for Neponsit Health Care Center

From The Wave:

Waiting might be the new pastime in Rockaway. Residents wait for sand replenishment, for Build It Back to get started, for a new boardwalk, insurance payments, building permits, and so on. With all this waiting, it’s easy to overlook a soaring symbol of idleness – the Neponsit Health Care Center, closed since 1998.

Nearly sixteen years after it was abruptly closed on orders from the Giuliani administration, the beachfront property sits unused and decaying but costing the city plenty.

The Neponsit property, located at 149-25 Rockaway Beach Boulevard, is maintained by the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), and it pays a lot of money for it to sit idly. The various buildings aren’t being used but HHC says it pays $266,000 annually for security and basic repairs to the property. When asked about Sandy damage, HHC made no mention of flood damage but said that “the property sustained significant damage to the guard booth and fencing as a result of Hurricane Sandy.” The cost for repairs: $139,000.

Even though it is has been pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars every year into the crumbling eyesore, HHC says it has “no plans for a new structure or new use of the property.”

A covenant in the deed for the land says that it can only be used for a park or a public health facility and this can only be changed by an act of the state legislature.

Many ideas for the land have been presented at various meetings. A hearing was held in November 2006 as HHC wanted public comment on a plan to turn over the facility to the City of New York and opening the site to the development of single family homes. This idea received mixed reviews. Some community members offered alternative suggestions such as a hotel, a school and a rehabilitation center for “Wounded Warriors.” Following the hearing, the HHC vote to turn the property over to the City was postponed indefinitely and the buildings continue to go unused. The carrying costs continue as well.

The land can only be used as a park or health facility, so naturally, the city wanted to develop it into homes.

HHC has gigantic budget gap

From Capital New York:

The city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation is facing a $430 million budget gap for fiscal year 2015, its president told the City Council’s health committee on Monday.

That gap is expected to triple to nearly $1.4 billion by 2018, said H.H.C. president Alan Aviles, who will soon be leaving the nation’s largest municipal hospital system.

The deficits can be attributed to damage from Hurricane Sandy as well as skyrocketing pension costs, but the most basic challenge is that H.H.C. treats hundreds of thousands of patients who can’t pay for the full costs of their care.

H.H.C. provides about $700 million in uncompensated care each year, and 80 percent of its patients are either on Medicaid or uninsured.

Easier said than done

From the NY Post:

The city’s hospital system has promised to empty Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island within two years to make way for the new graduate engineering campus envisioned by Mayor Bloomberg — and now it’s scrambling to find places for more than 500 long-term patients.

The race against the clock began when Cornell University and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology were selected last week as the winners of a worldwide competition to build a $2 billion applied-sciences school on Roosevelt Island, heralded by the mayor as a “game changer” intended to make New York a worthy competitor to Silicon Valley.

Cornell immediately announced that it intends to open the first phase of its 11-acre facility, encompassing 300,000 square feet, in 2017.

But that schedule is dependent on Goldwater being emptied by the end of 2013, an aggressive plan that would also allow the mayor to stage a ceremony heralding its demolition before he leaves office. Cornell hopes to start construction in 2015.

Officials of the Health and Hospitals Corp. insist they’ll meet the tight deadline.

One person involved in the process said that would require a herculean effort.

“It seems unlikely,” said the source. “At the least, this is a really ambitious target date given how far they’ve gotten so far.”

We're all paying for city lawsuits

From the NY Post:

It's a city where every measly pothole and shaky monkey bar can mean a megabucks legal payout -- with taxpayers footing the multibillion-dollar bill.

The city was socked with an astronomical $6 billion in judgments and settlements paid to plaintiffs between fiscal years 2000 and 2010 -- including a slew based on outrageous, costly claims, according to a Post analysis of city comptroller records.

The mind-boggling payout figure is a product of state tort laws that are some of the most lax in the country, along with the larger societal instinct to sue at the drop of a hat, according to critics.

Last year alone, the city shelled out $520.6 million in claims -- the bulk forked over in cases against the NYPD, the Health and Hospitals Corp. and the Department of Transportation, according to a biannual report released by City Comptroller John Liu in June.

Personal-injury claims accounted for 99 percent of the payouts for tort cases -- an umbrella term for civil disputes involving personal or property negligence.

HHC head is in the money

From the Daily News:

The head of city hospitals got a 20% raise last year just a few months before Mayor Bloomberg signed off on a nearly $1.3 billion bailout for the cash-strapped system.

Alan Aviles, president of the Health and Hospitals Corp., earns $351,062 annually under a three-year contract the system's board approved in January 2010.

That makes him Bloomberg's highest-paid appointee, dwarfing the $250,000 salary of Schools Chancellor Cathie Black and the pay for top cop Raymond Kelly, whose salary was bumped to $205,180 last year.

The HHC, which controls 11 hospitals, four nursing homes and dozens of community clinics, argues it is a public corporation that can't be compared with city agencies.

It also says private-sector hospital presidents earn far more than Aviles, pointing out that the head of New York-Presbyterian Hospital makes more than $9 million a year.