Harlem catches Mayor Adams with his pants down trying to move migrants into luxury building

 

NY Post

Mayor Eric Adams stunningly reversed course on plans to turn an abandoned luxury Harlem condominium complex into a migrant shelter when he was met with community outrage Thursday night.

Adams’ change of heart came during a surprise appearance at a St. Nicholas House Resident Association meeting packed with dozens of residents furious over the city’s plan for a building development on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd once marketed as upscale housing.

The 35-story building was quietly slated to become a homeless shelter that could potentially house migrants — a plan that was only revealed to the community this week when some neighborhood residents saw workers bringing bed frames and mattresses inside.

But in the face of pressure, Adams on Thursday night backpedaled. 

“You will not have migrants and asylum seekers in that property,” Adams declared.

The site will instead be used to house long-term New York families experiencing homelessness, a spokesperson for the city Department of Social Services told the outlet in a statement.

The building, originally billed as a lux living space where residents would pay market rates to enjoy an indoor swimming pool and apartments with marble bathrooms, has sat vacant for a decade since developers were forced into foreclosure.

It was then leased to a non-profit that had been working with the city Department of Social Services/Homeless Services to use it as a shelter for either migrants or the Big Apple’s native homeless population.

 Those in attendance at Thursday’s community meeting let Adams know how they felt about the plans to possibly house migrants.

“You are the mayor. We do not want to hear excuses,” one Harlem resident shouted at Adams, CBS New York reported.

Others expressed hope the complex could be turned into affordable housing for neighbors who are struggling to afford their rent.

“We have a dearth of affordable housing we’re being priced out of the community … The lack of respect is absolutely appalling,” Harlem resident Regina Smith said.

Other cop gunned down from Harlem domestic disturbance call dies

  

NY Daily News

Mora, 27, died at NYU Langone Medical Center, where he was transferred Sunday from Harlem Hospital. Fellow Officer Jason Rivera, 22, was shot along side Mora while responding to a 911 call of a domestic dispute between a Harlem woman and her ex-con son, with sources telling the Daily News the fight started in part over the shooter’s strict vegan diet.

“True heroes never die,” said Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association union. “Our brother Police Officer Wilbert Mora has left us, but he will live on in the heart of every New York City police officer from this day forward.”

The recently-married Rivera, only 22 years old with just 14 months on the job, died Friday evening.

Mora remained on life support since Friday evening after he and Rivera were shot inside the apartment of a woman who called 911 over a fight with her son. Gunman LaShawn McNeil, 47, was fatally wounded by NYPD rookie Sumit Sulan in the wild shootout and died Monday afternoon.

Man shoots cop to death and critically wounds another cop in his mother's apartment during a domestic disturbance call

  

 

NY Times

 

A New York City police officer was killed in a shooting in Harlem on Friday and a second officer was in critical condition, officials said. They were the third and fourth officers to be shot in the line of duty this week, according to the Police Department.

The police initially reported that both officers had been killed, but later said one had not been officially pronounced dead by the hospital.

The police did not immediately provide information about what had precipitated the shooting of the officers, who were taken to Harlem Hospital. One suspect was also shot, officials said. Information on the person’s condition was not immediately available.

The shooting happened around 6 p.m. near the intersection of Lenox Avenue and West 135th Street. Within an hour, dozens of officers were in the area, which was sealed off by yellow caution tape and a half-dozen patrol cars.

Mayor Eric Adams — who was in the Bronx earlier attending a vigil for an 11-month-old girl who was hit in the face by a stray bullet on Wednesday night — was headed to the hospital, a spokesman said.

The shooting of the officers was the latest in a series of crimes early in Mr. Adams’s term that is testing his vow to heighten public safety after increases in certain crimes amid the pandemic. Shootings especially have surged in some parts of the city.

The recent spate of violence has included the fatal shoving of a 40-year-old woman into the path of a subway train at Times Square station, the killing of a 19-year-old woman who was shot by a man robbing an East Harlem Burger King and the shooting of the baby in the Bronx.

On Tuesday, an officer was shot in the leg as he scuffled with a teenage suspect during a confrontation in the Bronx. And early Thursday, a detective was shot in the leg when a man fired through a door during a search for drugs at a Staten Island home, officials said. Neither of their injuries was life-threatening.

The shootings of the officers this week follow one on New Year’s Day in which an off-duty officer was shot in the head while sleeping in a car between shifts outside an East Harlem station house. He was treated at a hospital and released.

The last New York City officer to be fatally shot was Brian Mulkeen, who was killed by so-called friendly fire in September 2019 while he struggled with an armed man in the Bronx.

In October 2015, Officer Randolph Holder was fatally shot by a suspect he was chasing in East Harlem. The previous December, two officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were killed while sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn. The gunman shot them at point-blank range after traveling to New York from Baltimore intent on killing officers.

The shooting death of a police officer in Harlem on Friday adds mounting pressure on Mayor Eric Adams to deliver quickly and effectively on the central thesis of his campaign for office: that only he, a retired police captain with 22 years on the force, has the know-how to restore a sense of public safety to New York City’s streets.

The Friday shooting caps the mayor’s third week in office, and his tenure has already coincided with a spate of violence that has riveted public attention.

On Wednesday, an 11-month-old baby was shot in the face in the Bronx. On Thursday, a police officer was shot in Staten Island while serving a warrant. On Saturday morning, an Asian-American woman was shoved in front of a moving train in Times Square, in the heart of New York City’s once thriving tourist district.

Then, on Friday afternoon, two police officers responding to a domestic dispute were shot in Harlem, one fatally and one left in critical condition.

“Today, I went to the hospital to visit the cop that was shot in Staten Island,” said Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks, who chairs the committee on public safety. “I hugged his mom and said how lucky you are. And hours later, you hear this news.”

The act of violence is eerily reminiscent of an episode during his predecessor Bill de Blasio’s first year in office, when a gunman assassinated two police officers while they were sitting in their police car in Brooklyn.

Mr. de Blasio ran on a platform of police reform. Mr. Adams, who was both a former police officer and police reformer, ran on the idea that he could rein in violence and reform the police at the same time.

He has yet to lay out a comprehensive plan for how he intends to do that.

 

 

 

 NY Post

The man who allegedly ambushed and shot two NYPD officers —  one fatally — in Harlem Friday is a convicted felon who was on probation at the time, authorities said.

Lashawn McNeil, 47, was shot in the head and arm by a third officer as he tried to flee, and was hospitalized in critical condition Friday night, NYPD Chief of detectives James Essig said at a press conference.

The alleged gunman was on probation for a 2003 felony narcotics conviction in New York City, Essig said.

Authorities said McNeil was sitting in the back bedroom of an apartment at at 119 West 135th Street when he swung the door open and allegedly fired on two cops, Rookie Officer Jason Rivera, 22, was killed and and 27-year-old Officer Wilbert Mora, who joined the force in 2018, was gravely wounded.

The officers, and a third cop, had been responding to a domestic disturbance call from a woman who said she needed help with her son at around 6:15 p.m.. The woman “mentioned no injuries and no weapons,” said Essig.

When they got to the apartment, the three cops were met by that woman and another son. They were informed that the son she was having issues with was in the back bedroom, down a “very tight” hallway about 30 feet long, Essig said.

 Police recovered an illegal Glock 45 at the scene, equipped with a “high capacity magazine” that holds an additional 40 rounds, Essig said. The weapon was stolen from Baltimore in 2017. Police are working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to further trace the gun.

(I updated the headline according to recent reports- JQ LLC)

 

It only took five days

NY Post 

After being open only a week, a city public school in East Harlem is the first to cancel in-person classes, after a COVID-19 outbreak among staffers.

Nineteen people tested positive as of Friday at P.S. 79 on East 120th Street, prompting officials to switch over to remote education, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer tweeted.

“My understanding is there are enough cases of COVID that the [Department of Education COVID-19] Situation Room has decided to close the school for 10 days until Sept. 28,” Brewer told The Post.

In addition to 19 “confirmed” cases, 45 others were quarantined, the City Council’s education chair, Mark Treyger, added.

The DOE said all of the cases were among staff.

de Blasio is setting up a new deal for the city to buy cluster buildings from another slumlord

 NY Daily News

Ashley Taliercio and her two children have been in their Harlem apartment for three months, but it feels like years.

Each day they’re forced to walk a gauntlet of squalor: caved-in ceilings, used condoms, cigarette butts lining the stairways and constant cold inside their claustrophobic studio.

All of it has begun to numb the 30-year-old mother.

“There’s roaches, there’s fighting. There’s people doing drugs in the hallway,” she told the Daily News, her son crying in her arms, her daughter sitting stone-faced on the bed they share. “It’s not safe. But it is what it is.”

Taliercio lives at 148 W. 124 St., one of 14 buildings in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx the city is planning to buy from Mark Irgang, a landlord who already earns money from the city by housing homeless people in emergency “cluster-site” housing.

The land deal, which the city has treated as a closely guarded secret since announcing it in November, is the second part of its plan to phase out cluster housing by buying it and converting it into permanent affordable apartments.

The practice of housing people in cluster, or scatter-site, apartments has come under fire because the units cost the city a fortune to rent, and are often in a terrible state of disrepair.

Buying the Irgang’s 14 apartment buildings outright will also cost the city, however. Property records show the buildings are worth at least $41 million.

And it won’t just cost in terms of taxpayer money. Buying property from shady landlords does not happen without at least some political fallout. The purchase price in phase one of Mayor de Blasio’s cluster site conversion plan was a major headache for him both before and after the deal’s completion.

He came under fire earlier this year when The News revealed the city would be buying 17 buildings from notorious landlords, Jay and Stuart Podolsky. That was phase one of the plan. The brothers ultimately ended up making $173 million on the deal — despite one city appraisal that valued the properties at just $49 million. The city comptroller launched a probe into the appraisal process, which is ongoing.

Further complicating matters in phase two is that the controversial Acacia Network manages some of the Irgang properties.

Removed trash baskets cause dumpers to trash neighborhoods

This PIX11 story is about a residential area in Harlem having their street corner trash baskets removed, however we're aware that this seems to be happening all over the city, even in commercial areas. There's a backwards logic that removing cans means people won't dump trash, which just is not the case.

Contractor with dubious past accused of work without a permit

From the Real Deal:

The contractor who was charged with manslaughter following the fatal East Village gas explosion is now performing illegal renovations at Harlem apartments, according to a new complaint.

Dilber Kukic is gut renovating four apartments at 303 West 154th Street with no permits, according to the New York Daily News. The complaint to the Department of Buildings from Jerry Leazer, who worked as a broker at the building, says the contractor has been doing rewiring work and removing walls without the proper approvals.

Inspectors went to the building on Thursday but could not enter and posted a notice telling the landlord, Uphattan Corporation’s John Schreiber, to schedule an inspection.

City deed restriction lifted by donation

From DNA Info:

The city has struck a deal to build 38 affordable housing units on a formerly deed-restricted plot of land.

The area, formerly owned by the Dance Theatre of Harlem at 152nd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, will be developed by BRP Companies.

Earlier this year, The Department of Citywide Administrative Services accepted $875,000 from the developer in exchange for lifting the deed restriction, which had been in place since 1976 and ruled it could only be used for cultural groups.

​The developer bought the lot for $3.1 million. They also made a financial contribution to one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s political causes, the New York Times reported. BRP Companies did not respond to a request for comment.

Oh, well that's never happened before! And is 38 units really a lot?

De Blasio has landed a helicopter in a park before

From the NY Post:

Mayor de Blasio shut down a Little League baseball game in a Harlem park for more than an hour in August so police could ready a field for his helicopter, The Post has learned.

The chopper landing was then abruptly canceled after an angry dad started griping to cops about the intrusion, threatening to post pictures of the mayoral interruption on social media, a source said.

The extended seventh-inning stretch got underway at Harlem River Park during an Aug. 9 Little League game when the NYPD cleared the diamond of two under-14 teams, one dad told The Post.

The cops “basically told everybody to get off the field,” the dad said.

“The mayor wants to land his helicopter here,” he recalled police telling him.

And when he griped to the officers they sympathized. “They said it’s absolutely ridiculous and that I should file a complaint,” said the dad, who didn’t want his name printed for fear of retribution.

Another angry dad confirmed the story.

De Blasio was slated to deliver remarks at Gracie Mansion at 7 pm that evening and visited an injured firefighter at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx earlier that day. He had nothing else on his public schedule.

LPC sues homeowner over building neglect

DNA Info/James Fanelli

From DNA Info:

The city is suing the owner of a dilapidated landmarked rowhouse in order to hammer home a message — fix it.

In a rare move, the city Landmarks Preservation Commission filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Nina Justiniano to compel her to rehab her red-bricked home on historic Astor Row in Central Harlem.

The interior floors and walls of the 133-year-old three-story home have collapsed and most of the roof is missing after years of neglect.

The commission, which has only filed 13 lawsuits like this in the past 12 years, took the unusual step after repeatedly requesting the work since 2012. City law requires landmarked homes to remain in good repair.

The lawsuit asks a judge to fine Justiniano $5,000 a day until she renovates the home.

Report details major rent squeeze

From Curbed:

When adjusted for inflation, rents throughout New York City have risen a staggering 32 percent since 2002. Think that's bad? Well, it is (as seen here), but in certain neighborhoods, rents have soared twice as much, or even almost threefold. A report released by the nonprofit Community Service Society says that rents in Central Harlem have risen 90 percent in the last 12 years, from a median rent of $821 to 2014's $1,560. Central Harlem is the neighborhood that's most acutely felt the rise in rents since 2002, with Bed-Stuy following with a median rent increase of 63 percent from $921 to $1,500. Other neighborhoods that follow close behind are the lumped areas of Fort Greene/Dumbo/Brooklyn Heights with a 59 percent increase, and Washington Heights/Inwood with a 55 percent increase in median rent (h/t NYDN).

So it's come to this

From the Daily News:

So, you thought you’d look to live in happenin’ Harlem? And you hoped to find a pad for, say, ballpark of $1,300 or less?

If you’re lucky, you might land one of a handful of newly refurbished cubes that’s just big enough for a party of one, with a common washroom just down the hall.

Developers Matthew and Seth Weissman are lifting the curtain this weekend on their second set of five recently completed mini-apartments ranging from 150 to 450 square feet at 2299 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd, at W. 135th St.

It’s called a Single-Room Occupancy, or SRO - a vanishing segment of city real estate that was long associated with tenants who were down on their luck.

The Weissmans have identified an opportunity to market the minis to a new, up-and-coming niche even as housing advocates bemoan the loss of affordable options for the lowest-income residents.

Two of the building’s four residential floors are occupied by tenants with rent-stabilized leases with rents of $350 to $600 per month, but the landlords are asking $1,200 to $1,550 for the renovated units.

They’ve sunk more than $500,000 into facelifts at the building, which they bought for $1.4 million in 2013.

But not everyone supports the brothers’ rare move to preserve the building’s 20 tiny SRO units, which are grouped five to a floor and share 2 1/2 bathrooms.

Housing advocates have long bemoaned the loss of SROs, which have declined from 200,000 units in the 1950s to as few as 15,000, according to a 2014 report published in the CUNY Law Review.

The authors acknowledged the relative affordability of refurbished minis but said they did nothing to stanch the rise in homelessness that has long been correlated to the decline of SROs.

Landlord tries to get illegal hostel shut down

From the Daily News:

An East Harlem landlord is taking steps to shutter an illegal hostel that has been operating in the Lexington Ave. building since the summer, the Daily News has learned.

A three-bedroom apartment in the building at E. 122nd St. is being rented out on booking.com, where guests are invited to stay in apartment 6G at a nightly rate of $199 per bed this holiday season.

Most galling, perhaps, is the fact that this unit is enrolled in a federal program that keeps rents affordable for low-income residents. The apartment in question rents for $1,017 per month — almost $2,000 per month less than the unit would fetch at market rate.

That means the tenant is making a killing — on the taxpayers’ dime.

If you liked Frest Hlls, you'll love Jcksn Hgts!

I don't know which is more amusing - that this is considered by the City to be an effective ad campaign, or that this poster was found across the street from the Grant Houses in Harlem.

I can't wait to see how they mangle "Corona".

1-2-3-Crap

352 West 123rd Street in Harlem. Just a little bit out of place, don't you think?

And then there's 342 West 123rd Street, which was started in 2001, stopped, was vested under the old zoning and still is yet to be completed because it has a stop work order.

Manhattan has a long way to go before it looks like Queens, but at least they're trying.

Sad day in Harlem

From the Daily News:

In the months before a gas leak leveled two E. Harlem buildings, there were telltale signs of potential trouble.

Tenants say they complained repeatedly about strong gas odor in the buildings, making calls to 311 as recently as Wednesday morning.

And as of Wednesday, the city had yet to check to see if the owner of one of the doomed buildings had ever repaired a dangerous wall crack discovered in 2008.

Nine months ago a contractor installed a new gas line from the basement to the 5th floor in one of the buildings, and was allowed to sign off on his own work under a common practice known as “self-certification.”

At the time, the installation was “audited” by the city to ensure there were no leaks and as of Wednesday officials said there was no suggestion the new pipe caused the leak.

Eminent domain invoked for project that may never happen

From DNA Info:

The city recently launched eminent domain proceedings for a long-delayed six-acre East Harlem redevelopment zone where property owners say they are unfairly being squeezed off their land.

The city's Planning Commission approved the acquisition of the property via the use of eminent domain in August 2008 with the goal of building the $700 million East Harlem Media, Entertainment and Cultural Center, a 1.7 million-square-foot project that was supposed to include affordable housing, retail and cultural space, and create at least 1,500 permanent jobs.

But the developers have had struggles, with developer General Growth having gone bankrupt and Archstone being acquired by another company.

The delay left the land in limbo with rising property taxes but sapped the owners' ability to sell, develop or mortgage their land because of a blight designation, necessary for any eminent domain prococess.

The city would have lost the right to use eminent domain in the area on Feb. 16 without starting the proceedings, which they did on Feb. 12.

Officials with the city's Economic Development Corporation said the filing was made to preserve their right to use eminent domain in the area "only as a last resort," because they hope to negotiate sales agreements with the property owners.

MTA to vacate Manhattan slave graveyard

From the NY Post:

The MTA will likely shut down its East Harlem bus depot because it sits atop a 17th-century African burial ground, two transit sources told The Post.

The 126th Street facility — home to the M15 fleet that traverses Second Avenue, the city’s busiest bus route — could close permanently as early as June, one of the sources revealed.

The Post first reported three years ago that the agency had confirmed the existence of the burial ground, used by Harlem’s first house of worship, the Elmendorf Reformed Church, from 1665 until 1869 to bury slaves and freed slaves.

Community activists began lobbying to relocate the 67-year-old depot, a former trolley yard, to memorialize the cherished ground and even establish a cultural center around it. At the time, the MTA maintained it would continue to study the issue but planned to go ahead with the refurbishment of the depot in 2015.

Now the agency appears ready to wash its hands of the 104,000-square-foot building, sources said.

It's a shame that slave graveyard in Elmhurst isn't owned by the MTA.

Nowhere to ride

From the NY Times:

The outcry has become even more pitched since Sept. 29, when a pack of motorcyclists was involved in an altercation on the Henry Hudson Parkway with a man driving an S.U.V. The police said some of the motorcyclists pulled the driver from his vehicle and beat him. One motorcyclist was hospitalized, and this month 11 men, including an undercover police officer, were indicted in connection with the attack; all but one were charged with gang assault. And while helmet-cam videos do not show dirt bikers in that melee, bikers say the authorities are intent on shutting down their urban sport.

Back in Harlem, they unloaded the bikes and rode off into the streets. Fire trucks and police cruisers showed up almost instantly. It is illegal to ride a dirt bike on New York City streets.

“This is why we rip and run in the streets,” Joseph Middleton, 31, a biker from Harlem, said. “There really is nowhere to ride.”

So far this year in the city, there have been at least 437 motorcyclist and dirt biker arrests: nearly 200 for reckless endangerment or reckless driving, and 5,498 summonses for license plate violations and other infractions. Joseph A. McCormack, the chief of vehicular crimes at the Bronx district attorney’s office, said prosecutors there had seen a sharp rise in the number of cases involving dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles in recent years. There were more than 200 cases — including reckless driving, vehicle violations and, in a few instances, striking pedestrians — this summer alone.

Illegal hotel owner bitches about snitch

From the Daily News:

The West Side’s mysterious “Hotel Hunter” has shut down two illegal B&Bs in Harlem — but their owner is assailing his “Nazi” tactics.

Tom Cayler of the ad-hoc Westside Neighborhood Alliance's Illegal Hotel Committee sicced the Department of Buildings on the Sugar Hill Harlem Inn and its sister hotel a few blocks away — and now the owner of both places has shuttered rather than allow in city inspectors.

“It's like Nazi Germany,” said the inns’ owner, Jeremy Archer, who moved to Harlem more than a decade ago and became an unauthorized hotelier in 2005. “They (investigators) tried to come in here. It was a violation of the Fourth Amendment. They had no warrant."

Archer said he didn’t know Cayler’s “illegal” hotel group and he had no idea why it had targeted him.

"I never heard of him, but he is causing me a lot of problems," Archer said from the foyer of his empty seven-room, four-story guesthouse at 460 W. 141st St., where he once charged $125 to $275 a night — well below the city’s hotel room average of $281 a night.

"October is my busiest month. I am losing a lot of money over this," Archer added, mentioning that he also closed his other hotel on Convent Ave. to dodge city inspectors.

Turning a house into a profitable crash pad requires more than just sprucing up the space and posting it on Craigslist and Airbbnb. City law requires a proper certificate of occupancy from the Department of Buildings and the collection of the city’s 6% hotel tax.

Archer did neither — plus he violated city zoning, which forbids commercial operations such as hotels in residential districts.