Predatory slumlord is still at it even during a pandemic

QNS

In 2019, Queens native Arlene Moskowitz was embroiled in an ongoing dispute with her landlord. In 2020, not much has changed.

Moskowitz has lived in her rent-controlled apartment in Rego Park since the early 1980s. The co-op unit is owned by Mew Hills LLC, a corporation operated by David and Amy Weber, which acquired the unit in 2002.

Moskowitz’s son, Howie Moskowitz, claims that the landlord is trying to push his mother out so they can raise the rent.

“If she were to move tomorrow, [the landlord] could double or triple the rent,” Howie said.

Howie said that in 2011, Arlene’s apartment took some damage due to a leak from an air conditioner in the bedroom. Though the Moskowitzes alerted the landlord about the leak, they say it took them months to go out there and check it out. Since then, there have been a number of issues with the apartment that the landlords have not fixed, or took weeks and months to address, including significant leaks, warped floors, and a faulty stove and refrigerator.

“A couple of years ago, we could smell gas in the apartment. We opened the window and got my mom out and called the fire department,” said Howie. “Thank god for them. They turned off the gas and deemed the stove defective. They found the leak below the apartment in the oil-gas conversion device. When the landlord sent someone to look at the stove, they wanted us to turn on the gas, which is illegal. We had to wait six weeks without a stove.”

Since November 2017, Moskowitz’s apartment has racked up 32 open violations, according to the Housing and Preservation Department website.

“It eventually led to court litigation,” said Howie. “The landlord doesn’t want the repairs done; he just wants to harass her and get her out. But that’s not going to happen.”

Isaias kicks Con Ed's ass

QNS

As Tropical Storm Isaias ravages the East Coast, the rain and high winds have caused an estimated 33,000 Con Edison customers to experience power outages in Queens on Tuesday, Aug. 4.

Con Edison Vice President of Emergency Preparedness Matthew Sniffen reported that Isaias has brought with it the third most outages to the company’s customers in its history. Only Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Sandy caused more outages.

Large swaths of customers in College Point, Auburndale, Middle Village, Jamaica, Ozone Park, South Ozone Park and Springfield Gardens experienced outages on Tuesday.

“We think the impact of the storm is pretty much over,” Sniffen said Tuesday afternoon. “Meaning the storm has passed with significant winds and rain.”

High gusts of wind have been tumbling trees and branches toward power lines, resulting in a loss of power. Trees have a heightened possibility of tipping due to the rain that has fallen in the last 24 hours. The company cautions people to stay clear from downed wires.

According to Notify NYC, forestry crews and emergency personnel are working to tend to the damages in parks and trees across the city.

Skipped tracers

New York Times

It was only a few weeks into the rollout of New York City’s much-heralded contact-tracing program, a vital initiative in the effort to contain the coronavirus and to reopen the local economy. But in private messaging channels, the newly hired contact tracers were already expressing growing misgivings about their work.

One said the city was “putting out propaganda” about the program’s effectiveness.

Another wrote, “I don’t think this is the type of job we should just ‘wing it,’ and that’s the sense I’ve been getting sometimes.”

A third tracer said, “The lack of communication and organization is crazy.”

The authorities around the world — especially in East Asia and Western Europe — have rapidly enacted contact-tracing programs, which are used to identify and then isolate groups of people who may be infected with the coronavirus.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that the city’s new Test and Trace Corps, which has hired about 3,000 contact tracers, case monitors and others, will make a difference in curbing the virus now that the outbreak that devastated New York in the spring has waned.

But contact-tracing programs have presented an array of challenges to government officials everywhere, including difficulties hiring many workers, privacy issues and faulty technology, like apps. And New York City’s seems to have been especially plagued by problems.

The de Blasio administration acknowledged that the program, which began on June 1, had gotten off to a troubled start, but said that improvements had been made.

“All signs indicate that the program has been effective in helping the city avoid the resurgence we’re seeing in other states,” Avery Cohen, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said.

Still, some contact tracers described the program’s first six weeks as poorly run and disorganized, leaving them frustrated and fearful that their work would not have much of an impact.

They spoke of a confusing training regimen and priorities, and of newly hired supervisors who were unable to provide guidance. They said computer problems had sometimes caused patient records to disappear. And they said their performances were being tracked by call-center-style “adherence scores” that monitor the length of coffee breaks but did not account for how well tracers were building trust with clients.

Some also bristled at what they described as crackdowns on workers talking to one another.

The New York Times developed a portrait of the program through interviews with several current and former workers, as well as through an examination of internal documents. Further information was obtained from screenshots of Slack messaging channels used by tracers, which featured numerous conversations about workplace conditions.

“It reminds me of an Amazon warehouse or something, where we are judged more on call volume or case volume than the quality of conversations,” one newly hired contact tracer, a public health graduate student, said in an interview.

“To me, it seems like they hired all of us just to say we have 3,000 contact tracers so we can start opening up again, and they don’t really care about the program metrics or whether it’s a successful program,” she said.

Most of the current workers interviewed for this article spoke only on the condition of anonymity, saying that they feared losing their jobs if they spoke out publicly.