That was the message from a Queens Housing Court judge outraged by the agency’s failure to provide hot water to as many as 300 tenants in a Rockaway apartment building since November, the Daily News has learned.
“If this was a private small landlord he [the landlord] would be in jail by now,” Judge Kimon Thermos said during a Jan. 20 hearing. “He would have been in jail by now and the fines would have been $500 per day, per apartment. So he would have been in jail and he would have been losing his building too.”
As a city-run agency, the New York City Housing Authority is not eligible for the same penalties as a private landlord who neglects its properties and tenants.
“Why is your crime shielded this way?” Thermos asked a NYCHA lawyer. “NYCHA is dropping the ball big time here.”
Tenants in Carleton Manor say NYCHA did little for months to fix the water problem that makes taking a shower a major undertaking. Dozens of tenants have filed a petition in Housing Court seeking to force NYCHA to make repairs at the 174-unit building on Beach Channel Dr. and Beach 74th St. in Arverne.
“This is the dead of winter,” said Alisha Robinson, 42. “We need this corrected. We need some attention on fixing this.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” she said. “I have to go to a hotel to take a decent shower.”
That deadline came and went, so the tenants took NYCHA to court. At the Jan. 20 hearing, Judge Thermos was outraged that NYCHA’s work on the building was being overseen by an unlicensed plumber.
The judge said he was considering issuing a subpoena demanding NYCHA Chairman Gregory Russ appear in court. But before he could, Thermos was replaced on the case by a different judge, for unclear reasons.
