Illegal conversion vacated in Brooklyn

From Brooklyn Reporter:

A number of people have been displaced after city officials issued an immediate vacate order on an illegally converted home in Dyker Heights on Thursday evening, June 22.

The property – 1317 73rd Street – was one of four sites initially reported by local residents that were visited Thursday evening by the city’s illegal conversions task force which, sources say, were able to gain access to the building and deem its living conditions an “immediately hazardous situation.”

According to a source who was at the scene, the property’s basement “was all chopped up [to create living quarters for its residents] with the exit from the basement in the front of the house sealed off.” In addition, the source said, the property’s driveway was lined with buckets, presumably being used by residents to relieve themselves as the basement had only two bathrooms.

Upon arrival, a spokesperson for the Department of Buildings (DOB) told this paper, inspectors observed an illegally constructed apartment in the cellar of the property with its own unpermitted gas and plumbing lines. The agency issued a vacate order “due to a lack of two means of egress, the illegal gas lines and insufficient ventilation in the apartment.”

According to DOB officials, five people were determined to be living in the basement unit of the building, all of whom were offered relocation assistance by the American Red Cross. The apartments on the first or second floor of the building did not need vacating.

Not a basement - an obvious cellar. When is the illegal conversions task force coming to Queens?

A vacate 6 years in the making

From DNA Info:

The city removed more than two-dozen people from apartments inside a home that's been cited for illegal subdivisions dating back to 2000 — an address authorities ordered to be shuttered six years ago by the Department of Buildings, officials said.

There were 27 residents from eight families — including 13 children — living inside the two-story stucco home at 33-34 103rd St. when the building was evacuated on Sept. 26 by officials from the FDNY, the DOB and the Department of Education, according to officials.

The Red Cross provided temporary shelter for the families, and P.S. 92 was also opened as a temporary shelter site, according to Red Cross and DOE officials.

A spokesman for the Department of Buildings said it was illegal for anyone to be living in the building after Feb. 25, 2009, when inspectors ordered it vacated upon finding evidence of "illegal conversion" — which can mean adding additional walls, bathrooms or other subdivisions that violate the legal occupancy rates.

The apartments were ordered vacated as they lacked a second exit and sprinklers, DOB records show.

The house has been cited 11 times since 2000 for illegal subdivisions, including turning the basement from a storage area to an apartment, adding an additional bathroom to create a third apartment on the first floor and for carving out more than four additional apartments at the house, records show.

Owners Lizz Mendoza and Ana Mena have paid a total of $35,000 in fines, according to DOB records. However, they yet were able to continue renting the place out, and in fact still had an "For Rent" sign on the building on Monday.

Red Cross workers living large

From the Huffington Post:

The American Red Cross has come under fire for its slow response to certain areas hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, and now critics have a new complaint against the relief organization: It’s paying $181,000 for volunteers to stay at a swanky downtown Manhattan hotel.

The Red Cross, which has raised $131 million in Sandy relief as of Tuesday, recently fired back at critics, calling its disaster response effort “near flawless.” But struggling Sandy survivors allege Red Cross volunteers aren’t visible in their towns, and many have said they don’t understand where the organization's dollars could be going.

The nonprofit revealed to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that one big-ticket Sandy relief item is hotel stays for volunteers. Since New York City is packed with tourists and facing a housing crisis, the Red Cross has taken 45 rooms at the upscale Soho Grand Hotel –- at a discounted rate -- which will end up costing $181,000, spokeswoman Laura Howe told the Journal.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has also taken three rooms at the Soho Grand since Sandy hit, according to the paper.

What life is like in the Rockaways

Agencies doing a bang-up job providing help

While the politicians are praising each other and the agencies they oversee, I thought you might like to see what's really happening out there:

Things getting heated in Broad Channel

From the Village Voice:

Two days after Hurricane Sandy, the situation in the storm-stricken Rockaways and other southern Queens neighborhoods is getting worse in terms of the need for basic supplies and aid. Anger is growing that the government relief agencies have been slow to deal with the problems.

Tonight, in Broad Channel, a sliver of land on Jamaica Bay which was hammered by the hurricane, there was a near riot when 280 people arrived for a much anticipated meeting with FEMA representatives, but the reps didn't show up. That caused already frayed tempers to boil over, and residents blocked traffic to vent their anger.

"It's fair to say there's a very high level of frustration," says Dan Mundy, a longtime resident of Broad Channel and a battalion chief with the FDNY. "It got ugly for a couple of minutes. People blocking traffic. We had the meeting in a pitch black parking lot and were able to calm them down."

There's a growing sentiment in Broad Channel and the Rockaways that the National Guard, FEMA and the city Office of Emergency Management should have been on the ground much faster than they have been with supplies, ready to provide aid. Some people are concerned that OEM is turning to nonprofits to supply aid, which is seen as slowing the process.

"People are saying, there's no National Guard, no Red Cross, no FEMA, they were elsewhere, but they weren't here," Mundy says. "This is a long term thing. They say 4 to 5 days for the power, but I think it'll be 7 to 10, and then you have to check it's safe, and then deal with the oil burners and the structural damage. Right now, we need a FEMA tent, food, hot showers."

Calls are flowing in to elected officials, who are hardly equipped to solve problems and at pains to supply answers until the big relief agencies get in gear.

And people in Old Howard Beach are wondering why they weren't told to evacuate.

Photo from the Times Ledger

Hipsters kicked out of illegal trailer park

From Metro:

Twenty residents of a Bushwick trailer park were pushed out of their Meserole Street warehouse- and put into the care of the Red Cross.

“First they evicted us, now they’re vacating us- we’re being persecuted,” said Chris Van Doren, 27, a Brooklyn College graduate student.

Van Doren is part of the Brooklyn Project for the Arts, a collective of artists who had lived in trailers behind the warehouse for over a year.

Last month, Long Island Railroad officials ordered their eviction, towing their trailers from the illegally rented lot behind the warehouse.

When the collective moved into the warehouse, the FDNY issued an immediate vacate order citing “conditions imminently perilous to life.”

The NYPD and FDNY were on the scene today to enforce the vacate order and
confiscated several space heaters.