Kathy Clown's senior day care donor money laundering circus

 Anti-fraud Club

Governor Kathy Hochul’s campaign received $55,000 from social adult daycare centers in Flushing, the New York City neighborhood where Nick Shirley investigated alleged fraud. This month, the New York Post reviewed donation records, visited the two largest donors, and found both centers empty of patients during business hours. Nick had found the same situation there about a month earlier.

There are nearly 400 of these centers in New York City, but only nine donated more than $5,000 to Hochul’s first campaign for governor in 2022. Those nine centers billed Medicaid about $49 million that year. In July, Nick’s investigation described Flushing as a place where billing no longer matched the population it was meant to serve. The Post’s donor list comes from this same small group of operators.

Nearly half of the donations came from two men. Baoli Zhang, gave $10,000 himself and another $5,000 through his business, Bao Kang Adult Day Care, according to financial records reviewed by the Post. Since 2018, Zhang’s businesses have claimed at least $32 million from Medicaid for tens of thousands of listed patients. He also owns Confucius Social Daycare Center in Manhattan’s Chinatown, which billed $15.7 million during the same time.

The other major donor is Jiemin Shang, who runs Livingwell Day Care. Livingwell gave Hochul $5,000 in 2022 and billed Medicaid $5.8 million that year. Another $5,000 donation came from Finest Adult Day Care, which Shang also manages. Livingwell’s Medicaid billing grew from $114,000 in 2018 to $8.05 million by 2024. Bao Kang’s billing rose from $1.5 million to $7.22 million in the same period. Overall, monthly daycare revenue in Flushing has almost doubled since before the pandemic.

At Bao Kang, a worker told Post reporters the center serves between one hundred and two hundred people each day, but then checked a security monitor and saw the common areas were empty. In July, a staff member at another Flushing center told Nick on camera that the thousands of names on its records were not actually present in the building. None of the centers mentioned in the Post’s report have been charged with a crime.

An industry source told the Post that these centers were struggling during COVID until someone helped them out, describing the situation as “Take care of me, I’ll take care of you.” This is just one anonymous person’s opinion about why the donations began, not a proven fact. There is no public evidence that Hochul or her campaign gave anything in return. Political donations from business owners are legal. The Post’s reporting shows that the centers donating to the governor are the same ones billing Medicaid at levels their facilities cannot explain.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating this type of spending throughout the summer. On August 4, the Justice Department’s Fraud Division charged 19 people in Medicaid home care schemes and expanded its Northeast Health Care Fraud Strike Force. The department links this work to the fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, who visited Flushing with Nick in July, said in the announcement that the agency is creating safeguards to spot criminal activity before any money is paid out.

 

de Blasio holds self-promotion opening at Citifield site and runs out of vaccines, leaving elderly people hanging.

 NY Post

 Citi Field finally opened as a COVID-19 vaccination site on Wednesday but demand far outstripped the meager supply — with dozens of desperate elderly locals showing up with no appointment, only to go home disappointed

“I’ve been waiting here for over two hours in the cold. I have been trying to get an appointment for four weeks, but can’t and nobody here is helping us,” said Maria Fernandez, 77, outside of the home turf of the Mets.

“There are so many reporters, photographers here, but there are no vaccines,” she said. “What are we supposed to do?”

The stadium officially opened for coronavirus vaccinations at 10 a.m. Wednesday following weeks of delays due to a shortage of the coveted shots. The site is supposed to serve borough residents as well as taxi drivers and restaurant workers.

But officials this week admitted that it would only have around 800 shots for the rest of the week. During a visit Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised that would be upped to 4,000 doses a week by next week.

 He also vowed that anyone who shows up without an appointment will be given help to make one for a future date.

“There’s no such thing as walk-up and get a vaccination anywhere,” Hizzoner said. “We do not want long lines. We do not want people congregating anywhere.”

However, following the press conference, Annabel Palma, the chief equity officer for the city’s COVID-19 Test and Trace Corps, was seen telling a group of about eight people hoping to get inoculated that future appointments could not be made for them at the moment.

“We can’t register you because there aren’t vaccines,” Palma told the group in Spanish. “We aren’t going to give you an appointment if we don’t know for sure.”

Longtime Queens resident Felix Hojas, 69, then interjected that “the mayor is a liar or you are betraying us again.”

“Nobody is betraying you. Nobody is betraying the community,” Palma said before leaving.

 These poor people should be thrilled to know that Bill's tax boondoggle wife got inoculated the day before.

Douglaston is getting a homeless shelter for senior women?

 

  

Patch 

  A homeless shelter for senior women will open late next year in Douglaston, according to city officials.

The 75-bed shelter will be located at 243-02 Northern Blvd., previously occupied by Pride of Judea Community Services, and will be run by the nonprofit Samaritan Village.

It is the first homeless shelter in the Northeast Queens district overseen by Community Board 11, according to the NYC Department of Social Services, which oversees the Department of Homeless Services.

"New Yorkers from every community across the five boroughs have experienced and continue to experience homelessness, so we need every community to come together to address homelessness – now more than ever, in the midst of this unprecedented crisis," Associate Press Secretary Neha Sharma wrote in an emailed statement.

"This new high-quality facility will be the first traditional shelter in this Community District, offering 75 senior women experiencing homelessness the opportunity to get back on their feet safely and closer to their anchors of life, like jobs, healthcare, family, and houses of worship."

QC:  First shelter I’ve heard of for senior women. But then again this CB is special.

It’s ok, SV will F it up anyway.

 

JQ:  They made 76 million dollars this year in city contracts. Pandemic has been quite lucrative for these non-profits. City would save probably 3/4 of that if they made this supportive housing instead.

Department of the Aging is starving the aging

 

Politico

 Marnee May, 75, was told by the city she’d be getting shipments of weekly meals in late March. She lives in Lower Manhattan and was getting the “grab-and-go” meals from the senior center in her building.

Toward the end of last month, as the coronavirus tore through the city, the center was shuttered. 

Weeks have since gone by and her meals haven’t arrived.

“Why weren’t we set up for this? That’s what I don’t understand,” May said during a phone interview Thursday afternoon. “What happened to the food? And where is that food? Where is it?”
 
The coronavirus pandemic that has seized New York City has created an almost impossible situation for its older residents. With that population particularly vulnerable to the disease and much of the city on lockdown, their families and friends have been officially warned against visiting. That leaves precious few options for elderly New Yorkers to get meals.
 
New York City’s massive effort to deliver food directly to the homes of the elderly, spearheaded by the Department for the Aging, has left many behind, according to interviews with seniors, advocates and government officials. Throughout the city, many of its most vulnerable residents are trapped at home, wondering when their next meal will come.
 
“I could say funeral homes weren’t prepared for this, but Jesus, the city should have been prepared to give people meals,” May told POLITICO.
 

Senior citizens left to rot by your city

Dear Crappy,

In recent days we have been made aware of a large number of seniors in desperate need of food. As more and more local stores and delis shut down, seniors have to travel further and further to find a grocery store, and even when one is open, there is a long line waiting outside. My husband runs a food pantry in Queens, and in normal (non-covid) times, only opens once a month. His pantry is on the 311 Emergency Food Provider list for our area (Elmhurst), and this past week he has been inundated with calls from agencies/social workers trying to find help for their clients, as well as desperate ppl calling for themselves because they have nowhere else to turn. Today my husband walked a shopping cart full of food to a 94-yr-old homebound lady 30 blocks away. My question, what is the city doing to try to help people in need of food, especially vulnerable seniors? At this point, Senior Services workers are calling volunteer once-monthly food pantries looking for help. Attached is a photo from 311’s web site. Should the seniors start waiting outside public school cafeterias for their pb&j or cheese sandwich?

 

NYC nursing homes also lack adequate medical supplies to prevent COVID-19 contagion

THE CITY

Nursing homes have emerged as a second major front in New York’s battle to stem the coronavirus crisis — with their residents accounting for 15% of COVID-19 deaths in the state, the state Department of Health revealed Sunday.

Like staffers at many city hospitals, nursing home industry officials say they’re suffering from shortages of protective equipment and testing kits — even as they’re caring for a population with the highest risk of succumbing to the virus.

“I’m not getting the equipment I need to properly protect my staff and to properly protect my patients — and that is my absolute biggest concern,” said Scott LaRue, CEO of ArchCare, a network of five nursing homes with 1,700 beds in the city and upstate that’s affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York.

LaRue, who confirmed residents in his network have tested positive for COVID-19, said he spent Sunday delivering thousands of items of protective equipment to his facilities — but that it was barely enough for one day.

He said his workers don’t have enough surgical gowns and face shields to keep them safe when caring for symptomatic patients.

“We’ve been buying rain ponchos and beautician gowns off of Amazon,” said LaRue.

Senior Center in Astoria can't thrive because of city budget cuts

PIX News

 City Councilmember Costa Constantinides says he received a call from the Mayor’s office earlier week that made him angry.

Constantinides says he fought for the Astoria Houses Senior Center to receive half a million dollars in 2014 for renovations. Five years later, construction is still ongoing. But, instead of a grand reopening, Constantinides says the city plans to shut down the senior center over the summer.

“Now, Instead of celebrating what should be a fully renovated space for them, we're being told that it's going to close,” the councilman told PIX11's Monica Morales.

The reason given for the upcoming closure? Constantinides was told attendance is down.

“We have hundreds of seniors here who come by. We have a lunch program, they come and they do arts and crafts. [Sometimes] it's their only lunch,” said Joanne Parks, the director of the center.
Seniors like Brenda Pope were finding out about the plan to close the center for the first time Thursday.

“We look forward to [coming] to this center, because we have different activities. Most are come just to eat lunch, you know, because they are on a fixed income,” said Pope.

Constantinides says he fears more senior centers across the city will close, saying 3.1 million dollars is being cut from NYCHA in the mayor’s executive budget. A total of 12 senior centers could be impacted, according to the councilman.

“We're talking about a little more than three million dollars. The council has come in year after year to save this money. I know that I’m tired of the budget dance on this issue,” said Constantinides.

Allegations of special favors in CD 19 race

From the Queens Chronicle:

A separate matter involving the race — the Vallone campaign’s usage of the Four Twos taxi service — has also been a bone of contention between the hopefuls.

According to a spokeswoman for the Campaign Finance Board, the dates listed for expenditure filings are supposed to be the day that the money was paid on. Vallone’s campaign paid the Four Twos taxi service to provide rides to polling sites for voters on primary day.

But the filings listed for the councilman’s re-election campaign on the website are for Sept. 6 and 15, neither of which was the day of the primary.

The Vallone campaign did not return a request for comment about the filing dates.

According to Graziano — who has submitted a complaint to the CFB about the issue — the service gave “dozens” of rides to voters.

The payments to the taxi company — which also received city funding to give rides for a senior transportation program organized by Vallone’s office earlier this year, and will do so again for a slightly different version of the initiative that will kick off later this month — are only $58.65 and $78.25.

Saying that those payments would not cover the number of rides that he said the company gave to voters, Graziano is claiming that the business gave the councilman a “freebie.”

A manager for Four Twos named Jim — he declined to give the Chronicle his last name — said that the claim was “150 percent false. ... Vallone got nothing for free.”

Keeping with agency policy, the CFB declined to comment on Graziano’s complaint.

Residents protest taxes on co-ops and condos

From the Queens Tribune:

Residents of Bellerose’s Parkwood Estates condominium complex and members of the organization Politics Reborn turned out on Friday to protest city property taxes on condos and co-ops in front of Assemblyman David Weprin’s (D-Fresh Meadows) office.

The protesters accused the assemblyman and city of lagging on a bill aimed at capping co-op and condo assessments.

“He’s the one dragging his feet,” Alice Christy, a Parkwood Estates resident and member of Politics Reborn, said of Weprin.

Christy noted that Weprin is one of the sponsors of bill A00354A, which would cap co-op and condo assessments at 8 percent in any one year and 30 percent in any five years. The bill’s author is Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside). It is identical to a bill in the state Senate sponsored by state Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Flushing).

“[The bill] just languishes there,” said Christy.

She added that 30 percent is still a big increase, “but it’s better than what we would have. Our community is middle-middle class. We can’t afford homes in the area, yet we have too much money for affordable housing. We need this to pass. The city commissioner of finance is just kicking this down the road. I’m not giving up. I’m a tiger.”

The condominium has a large senior population. Christy, who is a senior, said that with property taxes rising, her fees have risen as well. She added that the funds seniors receive from the city’s STAR program have not increased.

Christy and fellow organizers at Friday’s protest went door to door, persuading residents of the condominium to sign more than 250 letters urging Weprin to push the legislation.

Elderly and infirm residents are trapped in their building

From PIX11:

Imagine you have no elevator service for a month and you're a senior citizen or have serious health issues.

That's what dozens of residents in a Kew Gardens apartment building are coping with.

"We do the best we can," Sidney Tesher, an 87-year-old tenant of the Austin Street building, told PIX11. "Excuse me for being out of breath."

PIX11 News reached out to the building's management company, PSRS Realty Group, for comment, but has not received a response.

Nobody was working on the elevator when PIX11 was there. The realty group told residents in a sign in the building that elevator service will be restored on Jan. 18.

City planning thinks seniors don't drive

From the Times Ledger:

Borough community board heads were outraged over the potential loss of parking spaces Tuesday at the city’s Department of City Planning presentation on the proposed zoning text amendments needed to push forward the mayor’s affordable housing plan for seniors.

City Planning requires changes to zoning regulations in order to meet the goals of the mayor’s affordable housing plan. The presentation on zoning for quality and affordability and mandatory inclusionary housing focused on new senior housing across the borough.

But in those changes, parking space in Queens, the transit wasteland, would disappear from city-owned affordable housing for seniors.

“I want you to drive through the Liberty Avenue corridor late at night and tell me if there is a need for parking or not,” Elizabeth Braton, chairwoman of Community Board 10, said.

The board pointed out the lack of transit hubs across the borough and the difficulties seniors face during the winter. Board members said for seniors having their own vehicle gave them a sense of independence and it was cruel to take that away.

“You don’t have to go far. Why don’t you just try parking outside of Borough Hall tonight?” George Stamatiades, vice chairman of Community Board 1, asked the City Planning officials.

Mayor's budget is no good, but the council will pass it anyway

From the Observer:

Despite promises that the “budget dance” is over, City Council members today said that the mayor’s proposed city budget would mean waiting lists for seniors services and library program cuts—while other agencies like the NYPD rack up big overtime bills.

“Let me be clear, the days of the budget dance are over, and as Finance Chair I reject any notion of the budget dance,” Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras said today, insisting this year’s fight was different from previous tangles over closing firehouses and libraries. “However, the administration has failed to reflect in the executive budget funding for many of the Council’s priorities, such as senior services and youth programs.”

Excuse me, but why is "the budget dance over" if there are objectionable things in the mayor's budget? Why do we have such a lazy and spineless city council?

Was elderly woman's death a gang hit?

From WPIX:

“I have no words for the person who did this,” [Benny] Webb said, referring to Leta Webb, a grandmother and parent to several biological as well as adoptive children.

The 70-year-old was gunned down at 1:40 a.m. Tuesday after answering the door to her family’s home at 119th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens.

One member of the NYPD informed PIX11 News that this particular vicinity of 119th Avenue and 153rd Street is not one that required much focus by the patrol lights of the NYPD. However, a few yards from where Webb was killed, the challenges of the neighborhood are evident.

Gang signs have been covered up on one wall. Clear tags show through on others signaling the potential gang component expressed by the family.

Assisted living residents asked to return Sandy aid money

From CBS New York:

Several assisted living residents in Queens received a shock recently after FEMA asked for reimbursement on aid given out following Superstorm Sandy.

Residents of the Belle Harbor Manor assisted living center in the city’s Rockaway Peninsula spent four months after Superstorm Sandy moving through a series of emergency shelters due to flooding at the facility.

Now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency wants at least a dozen of those disabled, elderly and mostly poor residents to return thousands of dollars in disaster aid.

“We’re on a fixed income. I don’t have that kind of money!” said 61-year-old Robert Rosenberg, who suffers from a spinal disability and other chronic health problems.

FEMA said the money should never have been paid out since it was meant for temporary housing and instead the residents were moved from one state-funded shelter to another.

Following the storm, residents were forced to move to a huge evacuation center set up inside a Brooklyn armory, then live four-to-a-room at a hotel in a crime-plagued neighborhood, then to a halfway house on the grounds of a partly abandoned psychiatric hospital in Queens, where they bunked on cots and were barred from having visitors in their rooms.

Goldfeder wants online food stamp purchases authorized

From The Forum:

Grocery shopping is very different for shoppers using food stamps in the Bronx.

There, a select number of zip codes have the option of ordering groceries online, which has served as a lifeline especially for senior citizens. State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder (D-Rockaway Park) called out the United States Department of Agriculture this week, asking why the same did not apply to southern Queens.

“Buying groceries should not be a nightmare for seniors with limited mobility,” Goldfeder said. “No senior should have to rely on friends and family when technology allows for an easier option.”

The assemblyman fired off a letter to USDA head and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, calling on the agency to use its power administering food stamp benefits at the national level to provide online grocery delivery services to zip codes in southern Queens and Rockaway. The service has been part of a pilot program the USDA launched this year to allow for online purchases of groceries using Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, which shoppers use to make purchases with their SNAP benefits – or food stamps. Goldfeder’s letter said southern Queens and Rockaway were home to a large senior population, and allowing residents to use their EBT cards to order groceries online would be a great relief to seniors unable to make it to the supermarket.

St. Albans Civic protests variance for oversized housing

From the Queens Chronicle:

Moments before leaving for Albany on Tuesday evening, state Sen. James Sanders Jr. (D-South Ozone Park) offered to help mediate the ongoing dispute between the Presbyterian Church of St. Albans and neighbors over a proposed 5-story senior housing complex that the church wants to build on Farmers Boulevard.

He should have stayed another 20 minutes, as the meeting, hosted by the St. Albans Civic Association, erupted into a nearly five-minute shouting match before about 30 church members walked out of the Guy R. Brewer Democratic Club.

The land in question is at 118-27/47 Farmers Blvd. in a neighborhood containing mostly one- and two-family houses.

The church wants the 67 units to house senior citizens who are being forced by circumstances to raise their grandchildren. There also would be space for a community center and some of the church’s social service programs.

Residents fear that 67 units could bring into a small plot of land more than 200 new residents, who they believe could overwhelm area schools, parking availability, infrastructure and services.

Under city zoning regulations, the church could build 22 units in three stories or fewer with about 26 parking spaces. But developers sought and received variances for height, allowable floor space and parking from Community Board 12 in November.

The final approval now must come from the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals. Harrigan said no hearing is yet on the BSA’s calendar, but that he wants to bring at least 25 residents to speak in opposition when a hearing does take place.

Tax cut proposed for burger joints that allow seniors to linger (not an early April Fool's joke)

From the Times Ledger:

State Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) has proposed a new tax credit for restaurants that allow seniors to hang out in their establishments.

The new tax credit is an attempt to tackle a fight between business owners and seniors who sit socializing in their restaurants for hours on end.

The issue was highlighted when a group of Korean seniors were kicked out of a Flushing McDonald’s by police after spending hours sitting in the franchise after only buying a $1.09 cup of coffee each.

News of the controversy spread quickly all the way to Korea and prompted Kim to broker a compromise between the two groups that would have the McDonald’s extend its maximum sitting times during non-lunch hours, which the seniors agreed to respect. Kim said the spat was indicative of a larger problem that seniors do not have enough public spaces where they want to congregate.

“Older adults don’t want to be confined to one place. Instead of telling them where they have to go, we’ll go to them,” Kim said. “This is one of the possible solutions than can help alleviate the problem.”

A couple weeks after the controversy in Flushing, a group of predominantly Guyanese seniors were kicked out of a Burger King in Richmond Hill for staying too long.

Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Fresh Meadows), whose district includes the Burger King, is setting up a summit so that the Guyanese seniors and the owner of the burger joint can reach a compromise similar to Kim’s.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum, folks.

Adult day care centers feel like cruise ships

From the NY Times:

Scores of elderly Russian immigrants played bingo under the chandeliers of a former funeral parlor in Brooklyn on a recent Monday, with a free dinner and door-to-door transportation from anywhere in the city.

Zhang Di Hua, 69, playing table tennis at Centre Street Adult Day Care in Chinatown, which receives money for serving impaired or disabled Medicaid recipients.

Nearby, older people speaking Chinese filled a supermarket-size storefront with vigorous games of table tennis, billiards and mah-jongg, and ordered free lunch from a takeout menu featuring minced pork, beef and salty fish.

In Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, at the new R G Social Adult Day Care Center, known locally among elderly immigrants for luring clients with cash and grocery vouchers, most people there for lunch did not stay to eat. Instead, many walked briskly toward the subway carrying bags stuffed with takeout containers, and two elderly men rode away on bicycles with the free food.

Not a wheelchair or walker was in sight at these so-called social adult day care centers. Yet the cost of attendance was indirectly being paid by Medicaid, under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s sweeping redesign of $2 billion in spending on long-term care meant for the impaired elderly and those with disabilities.

Such centers have mushroomed, from storefronts and basements to a new development in the Bronx that recently figured in a corruption scandal. With little regulation and less oversight, they grew in two years from eight tiny programs for people with dementia to at least 192 businesses across the city.

Managed care companies, financed by Medicaid, pay the centers to provide services to members. But the door swings both ways: Centers also refer new clients to the companies.

With the largest Medicaid budget in the country, $54 billion, New York is trying not only to rein in runaway spending, but also to “rebalance” it, away from costly institutional care, like nursing homes and medical models known for overbilling, to inexpensive supports that keep people safely in their communities.

In that context, Jason Helgerson, the state’s Medicaid chief, defended the rapid expansion of social-model adult day care, saying that without a chance to socialize and connect with others, Medicaid clients would suffer a decline in health that would add costs. But when a reporter described some of the practices observed at centers, he expressed surprise and anger.

Damaged homes causing illness

From NBC:

Patrick Zoda has been working nonstop for a month, trying to save his Staten Island home after it was badly damaged by Sandy. As he works, the debris cloud filling his house has also been filling his lungs.

“I feel totally drained, tired," Zoda told NBC 4 New York. "Every morning I wake up coughing."

Dr. Brahim Ardolic, chairman of Emergency Medicine at Staten Island University Hospital, says he has seen a greater number of patients with respiratory issues in recent weeks, mostly in people with pre-existing conditions. The combination of flu season and Sandy cleanup -- which has brought unhygienic conditions, dirty water and mold into homes -- is a perfect storm for sickness, he says.

"Which of these factors actually cause these people to come in is very difficult to say, but clearly, there is an increase in the number of people that are coming in with these conditions," Ardolic said.

Zoda, who lives in Midland Beach, says this cough is different from anything he's had before.

“It is a very dry cough that I have. It's not a normal cough,” Zoda said.

And doctors say it’s not just mold that could irritate residents, but also dust and insulation.



From Eyewitness News:

Volunteers on the front lines of the recovery in the Rockaways see a health threat spreading through hundreds of water-soaked homes.

"We have senior citizens in their homes who are sick in their homes and can't get out."

Like so many homes in the Rockaways, Calvin Turney's home from the outside shows little damage. It's inside where Sandy's surge has left its mark. He says the first floor is filled with mold. The Turneys are also living without heat, electricity and water.

"No heat is a problem. How much can a body take," Turney said.

The mold and cold nights have taken a toll on Mr. Turney's wife, who days ago was diagnosed with bronchitis and given powerful inhalers to help her breathing.

The Health Department says it has no guidelines as to how bad the mold problem must be before considering evacuation.

And one month since Sandy, neither the city, the state, nor FEMA has a concrete plan for alternative housing for those displaced by mold, lack of heat, or a myriad of other problems making homes inhabitable.

Meanwhile, NYC claims it is fixing 300 homes a day.

Senior housing project more costly than anticipated

From the Queens Courier:

A senior housing development currently under construction needs more funding to fix its failing façade.

Senator Joseph Addabbo and Assemblymember Phil Goldfeder recently sent a letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo asking him for an additional $500,000 from the Port Authority’s Regional Funds Account to repair the Senior Housing Development in Howard Beach.

The project, which is being developed by Catholic Charities Progress of Peoples Development Corporation (CCPOP), the affordable housing development division of Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens (CCBQ), has received millions in funding and grants, but the cost to fix the façade and rooftop parapet are much higher than originally anticipated.

“There was a lot of façade work that was done improperly in the original construction and they didn’t use the proper ties to place the brick structure,” said Monsignor Alfred LoPinto, Vicar for Human Services for CCBQ. “This is such an important project and at this point we’re just hoping to ensure that the building we developed will be secure and water tight, so we do not run into problems in the future that will be much more costly.”

“Thanks to Monsignor LoPinto and the great team at Catholic Charities the budget for this project has been stretched thin but unexpected damage to the facade needs to be corrected immediately in order to ensure quality senior housing,” said Goldfeder.

Located at 155-55 Cross Bay Boulevard, construction on the housing development began this January and is expected to finish at the end of 2014.