Tenants displaced by apartment building fire gets temporary housing from the landlord they are suing

 

 Queens Post

A breakthrough was reached just days after tenants of a Sunnyside apartment complex filed a lawsuit against their building’s landlord stemming from their displacement following a 5-alarm fire in December.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and A&E Real Estate, the landlord, announced a plan Monday to provide 22 tenants of 43-09 47th Ave. who were forced out of their apartments on Dec. 20 due to fire damage with an additional round of six-month temporary housing agreements.

After the fire, which was determined to have been caused by a contractor using an unregulated blowtorch, A&E offered the tenants the option of signing a temporary relocation license agreement for “up to six months if needed,” allowing them to rent apartments at other A&E properties at the same monthly rate they had paid at their Sunnyside building. Those original agreements were set to expire on Tuesday, July 2.

“Through no fault of their own, our neighbors tragically lost their homes and their possessions in the heart of the holiday season,” Richards said. “I’m thankful to A&E Real Estate for its partnership and for its support of these families by offering additional temporary lease agreements. Going forward my office will work tirelessly with our partners in city government to ensure those displaced by the fire have continuous access to stable and affordable housing.”

A spokesperson for A&E Real Estate said the agreement was with 22 households that are still in A&E temporary housing as of Monday.

“Borough President Richards picked up the phone and asked how we could work together to do more for residents. Working through the weekend, we found a path forward that will enable us to offer temporary housing for residents affected by the fire for up to six months more,” the spokesperson said. “While we know this has been challenging, we have worked hard at every step to go above and beyond to give residents some security and breathing room to plan for the future.”

The additional temporary lease agreements will run through Jan. 15, 2025, giving impacted families another six months to secure more permanent housing.

“Ultimately, it’s the insurance settlement that will compensate all parties for their losses in the fire,” the A&E spokesperson said. “We appreciate Borough President Richards’ partnership in finding an approach that we can sustain for several months more.”

The lawsuit filed on behalf of 200 tenants seeks $10 million in damages for gross negligence in failing to properly supervise their contractors and/or employees. Brett Gallaway, the tenants’ attorney from the law firm of McLaughlin and Stern, emphasized the severity of the situation.

“The reckless actions of A&E have caused irreparable harm to these families,” Gallaway said. “This lawsuit seeks to hold them accountable for the devastation they have caused and their continued failure to provide adequate support and compensation to the displaced tenants.”

 Considering the stupidity of the developer's contractor, A & E should just let those tenants have those apartments they are only temporarily staying in. Wonder what they look like and I wonder if they are building new "affordable housing" in this town.

 

 

The rent is too damn higher

 

 Queens Chronicle

In a vote affecting the roughly million New York households in rent-stabilized apartments, the New York City Rent Guidelines Board voted Monday night to allow rent increases of 2.75 percent for one-year leases and 5.25 percent for two-year leases beginning Oct. 1.

The 5-4 vote capped a contentious voting session, part of an annual process in which the city board weighs landlord and tenant economics in setting permitted rent hikes.

A crowded tenant group on the Park Avenue sidewalk outside Hunter College calling for a rent freeze preceded the vote inside. Eleven demonstrators were arrested after police ordered them to step away from the entrance.

The final decision comes after a volatile few months of meetings, including a preliminary vote April 30 during which two tenant members of the board walked out in protest. In that earlier meeting, the board decided on a potential range of rent adjustments of between 2 and 4.5 percent for a one-year lease and 4 to 6.5 percent for two-year leases.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a former tenant organizer, spoke at the protest, calling on the board to decide on the “lowest rent increase humanly possible.”

“Raising rents on tenants does not help landlords that are suffering,” Williams said to the crowd. “You can’t raise rent on people that do not have it.”

Landlords and their representatives assert larger increases are necessary to help them maintain buildings and afford taxes.

“Rent is income that buildings need to meet escalating costs, and we are hoping for an upward adjustment that recognizes the need to maintain buildings that are at and approaching 100 years old,” Michael Tobman of the Rent Stabilization Association told THE CITY.

According to an annual report the Rent Guidelines Board produces on building operating costs, buildings that contain rent stabilized apartments had expenses projected to increase 3.9 percent this year. Meanwhile, tenant advocates generally argue that raising rent to make up for operating expenses will only result in more evictions and homelessness.

“There are small landlords that are dealing with issues and need assistance,” Williams told THE CITY. “But we need the landlords to get help from the state and the city, and not from tenants who can’t afford it.”

 

More little housing

QNS 

The average size of apartments in Queens was the smallest among all New York City boroughs in 2023, as well as the third-smallest among cities in the United States, according to a report by the real estate firm RentCafe.

At 692 square feet, Queens boasts slightly smaller apartments on average than Brooklyn’s 712 square feet. Among major U.S. cities, only Seattle and Portland have smaller averages, at 661 and 685 square feet respectively.

Compared to the historical average square footage of rentals in Queens, the borough had a decrease of 32 square feet over the last ten years, marking a 4.4% decline. Over the same period of time, Brooklyn had a 21 square feet decrease for a 2.9% decline.

In addition to Queens and Brooklyn, which placed third and fourth among the smallest average apartment sizes in the country, a third New York City borough, Manhattan, was found within the top ten, placing sixth at 737 square feet. However, unlike Queens and Brooklyn, Manhattan actually increased in square footage over the last decade. Apartments there grew 2.2% in the last ten years, adding 16 square feet to the average size of apartments there.

 

 

No duh

 

 LIC Post

According to a study conducted by the nationwide apartment search website RentCafe, the Queens ZIP Code of 11101, which covers Long Island City, ranks third in new apartments completed from 2018-22.

RentCafe hypothesizes that a big contributing factor to the high demand among renters is due to Long Island City’s close proximity and easy access to Manhattan. Additionally, the area’s location along the East River provides residents with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline.

In 2017, there were an estimated 9,631 apartments in Long Island City. From 2018-22, there were 7,081 new apartments built there, marking a 73.5% increase to a total of 16,712 by 2022.

In addition to calculating the number of new apartments added during this period of time, RentCafe also determined the median income and age of residents within this zip code. The median income for apartment residents within the 11101 zip code was $87,264, while the median age of residents was 34.

The only two zip codes to rank ahead of 11101 when it came to new apartments were 20002 and 20003 in Washington, D.C. Ivy City, located in northeastern Washington, D.C., represents the 20002 zip code. The area had 7,378 new apartments added from 2018-22. Capitol Hill is the Washington, D.C., neighborhood represented by the 20003 zip code. From 2018-22, there were 7,225 new apartments added in that neighborhood.

 Some of these buildings are in the affordable housing lottery program. Like the one pictured above by the clock tower. The biggest lie in the world is the theory that building more leads to lower rents.

 

Ridgewood landlords capitalize on obscure city law to raise rents

THE CITY 

The number of rent-stabilized apartments registered in Ridgewood, Queens, has plummeted — and a loophole in New York’s rent regulations may help explain why.

An analysis by THE CITY shows that the number of rent-stabilized units registered in the increasingly trendy neighborhood plunged from 6,228 in 2019 to just 2,149 in 2021 — a decline of more than 65%, compared to a roughly 10% decline citywide.

The sharp drop happened even though a June 2019 law prohibited moving apartments out of the state’s rent regulation system, with few exceptions.

One of those exceptions is called “substantial rehabilitation,” and tenant advocates say they see signs that landlords are angling to use it to remove entire buildings in Ridgewood from regulation and sharply hike up rents — by claiming the buildings were dilapidated and then undertaking extensive reconstruction.

“Just by walking around Ridgewood, you’ll go from block to block, and on every block, there’s a…building that has a new façade and it’s totally renovated,” said Raquel Namuche, a volunteer tenant organizer with the Ridgewood Tenants Union.

A three-story, six-unit walk-up building at 1819 Grove St. is one area property that appears to have undergone a rehab inside and out, with a group of new tenants who moved in earlier this year. As recently as 2019, its owner reported six regulated apartments in the building. Now it reports none — and a refurbished apartment in the 93-year-old-building is now being offered on Streeteasy for $3,300 a month.

In Ridgewood, just north of Bushwick, the median sale price for residential real estate — which includes condos, co-ops and one- to three-family buildings —  has almost tripled in the last decade, going from $390,000 in 2012 to $1.09 million in 2022, according to Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of real estate appraisal and consulting firm Miller Samuel Inc. 

That’s benefitted property sellers and landlords, Miller said, as rents in Queens have hit an all-time high thanks in part to what he called “the global phenomenon of Brooklyn spillover into Queens.”

More room at the inn at NYCHA

NYC City Planning Department and their urbanish declaration of independence from communities

 

 Cityland

On October 17, 2022, the Department of City Planning will host an information session regarding the proposed “City of Yes” zoning text amendments. The “City of Yes” amendments, announced in June, aim to resolve obstacles that prevent the creation of more housing, remove certain zoning limitations to encourage economic growth, and support sustainability.

Earlier this summer, CityLand published a series of articles regarding the three proposed text amendments. While the Department of City Planning has yet to release a draft of the text of the amendment, the agency has updated its website recently with some more information.

The Zoning for Zero Carbon amendment would amend zoning regulations that place restrictions on the placement of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and limits on the amount of rooftop that can be used for solar panels, and increases energy efficiency requirements. For more information from the City’s webpage, click here.

The Zoning for Economic Opportunity amendment will remove restrictions and limitations on what types of business are allowed in commercial districts; removing restrictions on dancing in bars and restaurants in line with the City’s 2017 repeal of the Cabaret Law; support for the reuse of existing buildings for other purposes; and provide more flexibility for small-scale production spaces among other things. For more information from the City’s webpage, click here.

The Zoning for Housing Opportunity amendment will address the City’s housing shortage. The proposed amendment will increase opportunities to use different housing models, including two-family houses, accessory dwelling units, small apartment buildings, and shared housing models. The amendment will also expand opportunities to build affordable and supportive housing and reduce certain parking requirements. The amendment will also make it easier to convert obsolete buildings into housing and make it easier for home and property owners to alter and update their buildings. For more information from the City’s webpage, click here.

 

The fair market rent is still too f%@*!#g high

Inbox: @HUDgov has published new Fair Market Rents for New York City (and everywhere else)

The numbers will be used to determine rent subsidy amounts

In NYC:

•Studio $2,123
•1 BR: $2,170
•2 BR: $2,451
•3 BR: $3,078
•4BR: $3,316

More info here: https://t.co/dWKFZQTxuo pic.twitter.com/Vnncafu4Mj

— David Brand (@DavidFBrand) September 7, 2022

This is just as logical as what the city calls an affordable apartment in their "affordable" housing program. And four bedroom apartments? I thought that was called a house.

Rent guidelines board made the rents too damn higher

 

AMNY 

Confirming a preliminary vote in May, the New York City Rent Guideline Board voted Tuesday to approve a range of increases in rent-stabilized buildings affecting more than 2 million tenants across the city.

Renters with one-year leases can expect a 3.25% jump in their rents, while those with two-year leases will see rents the climb 5%.

The vote of the board — composed of nine mayor-appointed members which include two landlords, two tenants and five are considered public members — disappointed plenty of tenants and rental advocates.

“I waited to see how this allegedly neutral process would unfold and frankly, I’ve seen enough,” said board Tenant Member Adán Soltren, as he expressed his disappointment in the increase vote on June 21. “Despite all our good faith efforts, the public members [of this board] decided that rather than listen, digest and make informed decisions, they’d rather keep moving the goalpost. People on this board today are choosing to continue to uphold a racist, classist system that pushes Black and Brown people and low and moderate income working families into cyclic poverty and out of their homes.”

Board Public Member Christian Gonzalez-Rivera also condemned the vote, and addressed the statements made by fellow board members indicating that the only way for property owners to cover their operating expenses is to increase rent – even if the increase means tenants cannot afford to live in the units.

“Landlord representatives that told us [the Rent Guideline Board] at these hearings that, since the HSTPA (Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019) closed their alternative avenues of raising rents beyond the levels that are voted on by this board, that they now depend on high enough increases from this board in order to keep up with increases in operating expenses,” said Gonzalez-Rivera. “This is simply not true. The only way that this could be true is if you think of the rent-stabilized housing market as a closed system, where the only input is rent.” 

AMI is not enough to pay the rent

  

AMNY

New Yorkers need to double their average income just to afford the escalating median rent in the Five Boroughs, a study from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) revealed.

That was just one finding released Tuesday in the HPD’s annual survey conducted to evaluate housing and vacancy throughout the city.

These findings concluded – among other things – that in 2021, the city’s overall household income would need to double in order to afford the median rent price of $2,750.

Even so, the vast majority of available residences are taken, as the HPD reported a citywide vacancy rate of 4.54%.

The survey aims to create a comprehensive profile of the city’s housing stock, neighborhoods, populations as well as housing vacancies in order to glean crucial insight to inform policy to make a more equitable city.

The New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey is a critical tool for our understanding of the city’s housing market,” said Mayor Eric Adams following the release of the report on May 17. “New Yorkers can be confident that, despite all of the challenges, this year’s survey was conducted professionally and methodically — thanks in part to Intro 70, which I signed in March. The findings are clear: Our city’s affordable housing crisis is as dire as ever, and that’s why I am working every day to create and preserve the high-quality, affordable housing hard-working New Yorkers need and deserve.”

Urbanish parasite

 

NY Times

Isaac Goldberg was working on the 2014 re-election campaign of Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of Huntington, N.Y., when he decided to have a party in his Astoria, Queens, apartment. He sent out a mass invite to everyone working on campaigns for Democrats on Long Island.

Anna Doré didn’t know Mr. Goldberg, but she was helping out with another campaign, heard about the party and decided to go. Ms. Doré, who works in public relations, has spent only five months of the last seven years working in politics. But that short window of time just happened to coincide with Mr. Goldberg’s party. “It was very much kismet,” she said.

It was also 90 degrees when she arrived, and most of the partygoers were circled around the air-conditioning unit, nursing Jell-O shots to keep cool. Campaign posters, an American flag and a 1996 Yankees championship poster adorned the walls. “The décor was definitely in need of some love and affection,” Ms. Doré said.

Surrounded by a mix of memorabilia, election talk and spiked refreshment, she and Mr. Goldberg found each other. One spark led to another and, seven years later, they are married and living in the same building where they met.

“We joke that Anna came to a party at my apartment and hasn’t left since,” Mr. Goldberg said. The joke is only partially true: While the couple has stayed in the building, they are living in their third apartment there — all on the same floor.

It was just a few months into their relationship when Ms. Doré moved in with Mr. Goldberg. She had been living on the Upper East Side, but fate forced her hand when a 4 a.m. fire broke out in her building. “Isaac raced over and came to the rescue,” she said, “even though we were just newly dating.”

She stayed with him that night, and the next day her building was condemned. Sharing the one-bedroom with Mr. Goldberg quickly evolved from a short-term fix to a long-term commitment.

“I didn’t want to be burned into living together,” Ms. Doré said. “But it worked out.”

In 2019, after the couple married at the Queens Museum, they envisioned themselves remaining in the second apartment for years to come. But then, Covid.

With both of them working from home, Ms. Doré set up a makeshift office in the bedroom. “I was sharing a wall with Isaac in his office,” she said. “As a political consultant, Isaac tends to talk on the phone all day.”

Investing in noise-canceling headphones helped “preserve our sanity,” she said, but it soon became clear that they needed a more permanent fix.

They thought the day had finally come when they would move into another building. Over a couple of months, they looked at 10 apartments in 10 buildings, sticking to Astoria for their search.

They are, by Mr. Goldberg’s admission, “Astoria obsessed.” For more than two years, Ms. Doré ran a locally focused Instagram account, WeHeartAstoria.

“I started to love the neighborhood through that lens,” she said. “We knew we didn’t want to leave.”

For his part, Mr. Goldberg is attracted to Astoria’s livability and working-class feel: “There’s the joke that the two hardest things to find in Astoria are doormen and dishwashers.”

 Might as well leave this here. Mr. Goldberg happens to work for Berlin Rosen, the consultant lobby that donated robustly to Bill de Blasio's campaign and his illegal 501c4 PAC "Campaign for One New York" as "agents of the city"

 

People who could afford to buy a house, but choose to rent in Astoria because of the "working class feel" thereby driving out the working class residents. (Meanwhile we are told the problem is low density communities.) https://t.co/9KMTMd9LNh

— Queens Crapper (@QueensCrapper) December 20, 2021

Tenants and landlords left wanting for rent relief

NY Daily News

Getting injured during the height of the COVID-19 crisis was just one of many hardships Fernando Livingston faced when he found himself out of work last year and, even worse, falling behind on rent.

The 68-year-old former security guard has been living on food stamps and workers’ compensation since he got pinned under a gate for nearly an hour while on the job. The resulting spinal injury makes it hard for him to walk.

 The 68-year-old former security guard has been living on food stamps and workers’ compensation since he got pinned under a gate for nearly an hour while on the job. The resulting spinal injury makes it hard for him to walk.

The prospect of a fund that could cover months of back rent buoyed the Brooklyn man’s hopes and initially assuaged his fears of becoming homeless as he applied for the state-run Emergency Rental Assistance Program in early June.

Nearly seven weeks later, and now behind another month’s rent, Livingston and thousands of others have received no response from the state despite promises that $2.3 billion set aside for rental assistance would soon begin flowing.

“I’ve never been homeless before. I’ve never really had problems with rent before,” he told the Daily News. “I’m scared. I’m not going to tell you no lie. I can’t sleep at night thinking of what’s next, what’s going to happen.”

Livingston, who emigrated to the U.S. from Panama and served in the military for six years, owes his Flatbush landlord more than $10,000.

“If this thing doesn’t work out, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m just hoping and praying this works out.”

Coreena Popowitch is in a similar situation.

The 45-year-old has been unemployed since the start of the pandemic. She also applied for rental assistance through the state.

“I don’t know what’s going on. I really wish that they let us know,” she said. “It’s frustrating. It’s been pretty much just silence.”

Popowitch says she has paid off some of her Bronx rent but still owes her landlord more than $8,000.

The pair are examples of the more than 160,000 New Yorkers who face a frustrating and byzantine application process with the Emergency Rental Assistance Program that has left them with little patience.

The $2.3 billion program was made possible by federal cash set aside in the state budget with the understanding that it would be up and running in time to help struggling New Yorkers before the state’s eviction moratorium expires at the end of August.

The application process didn’t launch until the first week of June, despite promises from Gov. Cuomo and administration officials to get it online earlier.

Making matters worse, the web application portal has been riddled with technical glitches.

Applicants have complained that submissions must be completed in one sitting and can’t be saved and have reported problems uploading documents and other issues.

Landlords are also anxious about the slow relief rollout.

Anthony Sarro, a small-scale residential and commercial landlord who owns one building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and another in Forest Hills, Queens, said the eviction ban has caused major headaches after one of his tenants refused to pay rent for almost a year and then vanished.

“He stayed on for 11 months and told me, ‘You can’t evict me,’” Sarro said. “Now he has disappeared and left the apartment completely destroyed. There were cocaine bags all over. I think he lost his job, and now he has disappeared.”

Sarro says he’s out more than $100,000 and had to let some employees go because of the financial stress caused by the deserter and giving a few tenants breaks on rent during the worst of the pandemic.

He was initially hopeful that the rental assistance program could help both him and at least two of his tenants who he knows have applied. But the slow process is just making matters worse in the short term, he said.

“It sort of inspires people not to pay rent,” he said. “What the tenants are doing is that they’re putting themselves in arrears, even though they may be able to pay at least some of their rent because why wouldn’t they? If they can get the city to cover their arrears, why would they try to pay them? It’s hurting me rather than helping me at this point. It’s a little bit egregious.”

 

Debts pile up for the rent burdened

The Real Deal 

It’s clear that the pandemic has impacted New Yorkers’ ability to pay rent. What’s less clear is exactly how much rent debt has been amassed since the beginning of last year — a crucial piece of the puzzle for policymakers in determining how much relief to extend to tenants and landlords.

A report released Wednesday by New York University’s Furman Center aims to inform the efforts of lawmakers in apportioning those funds.

The findings offer a snapshot of citywide rent debt by analyzing rent owed by tenants in 13,163 affordable housing units concentrated in the South Bronx and North Brooklyn. (Some data was included for units in Manhattan and Queens.)

The analysis focuses on buildings with over nine units with apartments financed by Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). Some units are also home to recipients of Section 8 vouchers. The buildings used in the sample were able to provide granular rent ledger data, enabling the Furman Center to take a detailed look at the distribution of arrears.

According to the report, rent owed by tenants in the sample more than doubled during the first year of the pandemic, while the portion of families that have incurred severe rent debt has jumped even higher.

Rents go down near subway stations

 

 QNS

With many New Yorkers avoiding the subways this past year, rents for apartments above major train stations, including several in Queens, saw a severe drop in price during the first quarter of 2021, a new report found. 

Rents decreased in the areas immediately surrounding 418 of the city’s 473 subway stops from January 2021 until the end of March 2021, according to the report from RentHop. In Queens, the biggest drop came around the M train’s Forest Avenue stop in Ridgewood, where the median rent for one-bedroom apartments dropped by over 21 percent year-over-year. 

Renting for $1,800 on average, the one-bedroom apartments’ drop in price around the Forest Avenue stop was among the top five biggest declines in pricing across the city. 

Just one little unsettling thing about this data. The median rent nearby Mott Ave. in Far Rockaway went up, which is where "affordable housing" apartment buildings just went up. And the other four areas in the Bronx that saw the rents rise follow recent rezonings approved by the Blaz. 

It's a lot harder to get and start an airbnb in this city

 

Brick Underground 

 Renting out your New York City apartment to visitors via short-term rental sites like Airbnb has become more difficult in the last year. Not only did the pandemic end the city’s steady stream of visitors but a court ruling means owners of one- or two-family houses are restricted from doing short-term rentals if they are not in the building at the same time.

This may sound similar to previous restrictions, but until recently there was ambiguity about whether the rules applied to New Yorkers who live in or own smaller buildings. Prior to the ruling, it was understood it was illegal for anyone in a building with more than three units to rent out their place for less than 30 days, unless the owner or leaseholder was present during the stay.  

Fines for violating these rules can be massive and now the rule extends to owners of one- and two-family homes. 

Responding to a question on the Brick Underground podcast about whether the owner of a single-family home in Queens might be able to start using the property for Airbnb rentals without living in the property, Steven Kirkpatrick, a real estate attorney with Romer Debbas, says the simple answer is no. 

“Recently there was an ambiguity regarding whether owners of one- or two-family houses could do short-term rentals while not residing in the apartment or house being rented. That ambiguity has now been resolved by an appellate court in New York and the appellate court held that the rules are applicable to one- and two-family houses,” he says. 

A short-term rental is defined as under 30 days. So if you're renting for 30 days or more, then you are within the law and would be able to rent out the place while not being present. “If you're renting for 29 days or less, and the owner is not present, then it's against the law,” Kirkpatrick says. 

He points out the penalties for breaking the law are are "brutal." Fines, even for a first time violation, can be anywhere from $10,000 up to potentially $100,000, he says.

Home alterations found responsible for city housing shortage, including luxury housing

 

 

THE CITY 

 New York is a city that’s seemingly always under construction. But for all that building, some richer neighborhoods haven’t added a single new home overall in the past decade — and have even lost units.

That’s because so many people combined apartments or homes into one dwelling, the total for new housing dipped below zero, according to a new analysis by the Department of City Planning.

The Upper East Side’s stagnation was particularly stark, the study shows. The area saw more than 2,000 residential units built since 2010. But because so many alterations took place there over the same period, much of the neighborhood lost housing.

Overall, the area added fewer new residential units over the past decade than 57 of the city’s 59 community districts, the report said.

The news came to no surprise to Barry Schneider, an Upper East Sider for 54 years who lives in a condominium building on First Avenue that he estimates has lost about 20 units to combination renovations since he’s lived there.

“It’s fairly common,” he said. “The apartment directly below us combined two floors. The apartment directly to the south of us, next door, they have a combined apartment.”

 Howard Slatkin, deputy executive director for strategic planning at the Department of City Planning, believes this type of analysis is important to help New Yorkers to grasp the forces affecting the housing supply.

“People see housing demand when it spreads vertically — when buildings pop up, when you see new construction — but what they don’t see is that the demand for housing also spreads horizontally,” he said. “In the absence of those new additions, as affluent people take more space and larger residences for themselves, what you get is a reduction in total housing units.”

The report includes alterations of all kinds, from relatively simple two-apartment combinations to mega-mansion projects like Russian billionaire Roman Abromavich’s four-townhouse complex on East 75th Street.

It also includes those places where alterations actually added units, such as in Queens’ Ozone Park, where creating multiple apartments within a single-family home is common.

Landlords are illegally refusing city vouchers from homeless people

 

NY1

 

It’s been more than a year since Rebeka and her family lost their apartment in Queens. Since January 2020, they have been living in a hotel — a hotel operating as a homeless shelter for families.

"This whole year has been different," Rebeka explains. "Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, everything is just different."

She has two children and worked for the city until the pandemic hit the five boroughs. NY1 has changed her name to protect her family's privacy.

When we met on a cold day in December, Rebeka was carrying a large stack of papers. On it was the names and phone numbers of management companies and realtors.

"This is a prospective list that I was given by my shelter," she said. "And this is what I have been doing, making calls. I also do social media."

 Rebeka was given a list of management companies and buildings from her shelter provider that are supposed to accept her voucher. She called one of them, only to be told they only accepted Section 8. 
 

Her family’s only path out of shelter is a voucher from the city — a path that all too often is a dead end.

She calls a management company based in Long Island City.

  On the other end, they ask: "Do you have a Section 8 voucher? Are you looking for affordable housing?"

Rebeka replies: "I currently have CityFHEPS." 

"We don’t accept that here," replies the management company. It’s an exchange that is repeated again and again for Rebeka.

 Rebeka calls a realtor about an apartment in Brooklyn. He says they have income and credit requirements. 

"He is looking for 650 credit and he is also looking for about $45,000 to $50,000 annually," a realtor tells Rebeka. 

"Wait, so is he accepting vouchers at this time?" she asks.

"I sent him a message and he hasn’t gotten back to me," the realtor replies. Then he hangs up.

There are thousands of people in the city’s shelter system desperately searching for housing with the city’s rental assistance voucher known as CityFHEPS. It’s a voucher program started in October of 2018 aimed at getting people in shelter back on their feet.

A NY1 investigation found these vouchers are routinely rejected by landlords — some refusing to rent to people coming from the shelter system — discrimination that is illegal but nonetheless appears to plague the system.

The city has issued thousands of eligibility letters to homeless people to show landlords that they can use the voucher to get an apartment. But statistics exclusively obtained by NY1 show just a fraction of these families actually get housing every month.

For the first 10 months of 2019, on average every month, about 4,118 families with children in shelter had an eligibility letter to entice landlords into the voucher program. On average in that time period, only about 178 of those families found an apartment every month — a tiny slice of those potentially eligible.

Since it started in October 2018, the city says a significant number of households exit shelter and enter permanent housing every year with CityFHEPS. Through September 2020, 6,490 households have moved into an apartment.

Queens rents take a dip

 Jackson Heights Post

The cost to rent an apartment in Queens has dropped more than 4 percent in the past year, according to a new report.

The average amount paid to rent a studio, one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment was down across the board, compared to the same time last year, according to a report released by the real estate company MNS.

Some neighborhoods saw a particularly steep price drop in rental prices, such as Long Island City and Astoria, while others like Jackson Heights, Jamaica and Rego Park were mostly unchanged year over year.

Meanwhile, Flushing saw a slight uptick in rental prices from last year to this year and Ridgewood also saw a small increase in the price of studios and two-bedroom apartments.

Boroughwide rent prices fell for studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, according to the Queens Rental Market Report.

The average rent paid for a studio apartment in Queens was $1,782 last month — down by 2.3 percent from $1,823 in November 2019, the report states.

Lead found in 9000 more NYCHA apartments; three years after de Blasio thanked God when he lied that only a few were contaminated

 

THE CITY 

Thousands more young children living in public housing were potentially exposed to lead poisoning than originally thought, officials revealed Thursday.

The city’s public housing authority has determined that the number of apartments believed contaminated with lead paint that house children under age 6 is triple the number it previously claimed.

NYCHA officials this week acknowledged for the first time that there are 9,000 apartments — not 3,000 apartments as they had asserted — that likely contain lead paint where youngsters live. Children under 6 are particularly susceptible to cognitive damage caused by exposure to lead.

The revelation was not made by NYCHA but by Bart Schwartz, the federal monitor appointed to oversee the nation’s biggest public housing authority after revelations by the press and federal prosecutors that the authority had for years deliberately hidden its failure to perform required lead paint inspections.

Late Thursday, NYCHA was unable to spell out precisely how many kids live in these apartments. The list of 9,000 includes apartments of relatives where children spent more than 10 hours a week.

Councilmember Alicka Ampry-Samuel (D-Brooklyn), chair of the public housing committee, blasted NYCHA for what she called yet another failure to confront its many failures.

“At this point in time, there is no room for excuses,” she said. “We should be at a place where we know the apartments that have lead exposure and who lives in them. Just that simple. To continue playing this game of paper shuffling is increasing the known risk of detrimental health hazards and brain damage in our children.

“If NYCHA cannot get it right and ensure these apartments are safe, people should lose their jobs and some should go to jail for reckless endangerment of a child,” she added.

Hovels discovered in Lower East Side apartment building

PIX News

It was a 311 call that led city inspectors to this building at 165 Henry St. on the Lower East Side and their disturbing, even shocking, discovery.

The NYC Buildings Department says the owner of one apartment created a new floor between the fourth and fifth floors to rent out nine micro apartments, tiny spaces with ceilings in the apartments between four-and-a-half and six feet from the floor.

In one picture, you see an inspector on his knees almost touching the ceiling.

Tenants in these windowless, tiny, cramped, illegal apartments were being charged up to $600 a month.

“I’m concerned for the safety of the tenants, mostly an immigrant population, Ben Kallos, a NYC Council Member, told PIX11 News. “Part of me thinks this is like the movie 'Being John Malkovich,' back in the 1990s. Then there was this idea of creating a floor in between. But that was fiction and this is a horror story,” he added.

The Buildings Department issued a vacate order for apartment 601 and the apartment right above, 701. You can even see from the outside of the building the many air conditioners and boarded up windows in the two apartments.

de Blasio's D.O.B. office is a joke, But from the mayor's viewpoint, these hovels are a good way to claim that affordable housing is being built.