Reporter captures food pantry debacle

Great job by the Queens Chronicle's Ryan Brady in following up on our original story:

A Queens Crap blog post from last month featured a complaint from an anonymous person about the crowds that come when the synagogue gives out food and block the entrance to a nearby community driveway.

Nisanov said that people who come to the food pantry are encouraged to avoid blocking the community driveway.

“Whenever there’s cars coming by, we always ask the people to move,” he said. “Even when there is no car coming by, we always tell people, ‘Please, it’s a driveway; we don’t want anyone to get hurt.’”

But when the Chronicle went to the location on Wednesday morning during the time of the food pantry’s operation, an entrance to the community driveway was blocked by a number of people waiting in line.

The rabbi added that the synagogue being in the area has benefited it in other ways.

“A house of worship and especially a synagogue in the neighborhood has raised the values of homes tremendously,” he said.

The Board of Standards and Appeals issued a variance for the building to be a synagogue with an accessory apartment for the rabbi in 2007 on the condition that it get a new certificate of occupancy reflecting the usage, according to the agency’s executive director, Ryan Singer. The certificate was necessary for the variance to legalize the building’s usage as a synagogue. The building did not have one by 2011, the deadline to do so under the conditional variance.

Rabbi turns house into illegal synagogue

From the Queens Courier:

A Bayside homeowner is being accused of using his home as an illegal synagogue, according to city records.

The Department of Buildings received a complaint that Jacob Hasis, a rabbi, is using his 26th Avenue residence as a house of worship, in violation of its certificate of occupancy as a residence, a spokesman said.

“This property has many past issues so we take the complaints very seriously,” the DOB spokesman said.

Hasis acknowledged that residents complained to him about loud noise coming from his home. But he said that people mistake his large family of 12 and a couple of friends who come over for religious reasons as a synagogue.

“My family is 12 people and maybe another three or four of my friends come over to pray,” he said. “I don’t know why they were complaining.”

But in a flier that Hasis made, he invites “the whole community” to “Rabbi Yaakov’s shul for the high holidays service,” although the flier does say there is “limited space available” in the single-family home.

Hasis has a history of constructing additions to his home “illegally” and has paid $1,200 in fines to the city in regard to the property, according to the DOB spokesman.

The home also has three open violations relating to construction without the proper work permits. This construction includes creating entry doors for the cellar, two of which the DOB has deemed “immediately hazardous.”

The front yard of the house is filled with bricks, wheel barrels for cement and an abundance of wood.

Oy vey!

I think it might be time for a photo caption. Knock yourselves out.