Three more perished in basement apartments in Queens

 

NY Daily News 

Thirteen doomed New Yorkers, all but two trapped inside flash-flooded basement apartments, were killed when the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida unleashed a lethal summer storm across a rain-soaked city, authorities said Thursday.

The dead, including an autistic 14-month-old boy and an 86-year-old woman, became victims of catastrophic flooding after the devastating weather system dumped record-breaking rain on the boroughs.

Eleven of the fatalities occurred in six incidents in Queens. The other two fatalities died in separate incidents in Brooklyn.

Neighbors of those who died recounted horrifying tales of basements flooded from floor to ceiling in the blink of an eye, with the victims helpless to escape the surging waters.

The tiniest victim, little Lobsang Lama, perished with his immigrant parents inside their Queens basement home after they were trapped by fast-rising floodwaters. His father Ang Lama, 50, and mother Mingma Sherpa, 48, were also killed as the deadly flooding filled their Woodside home — and even the first-floor apartment above.

“The baby was so cute,” said the little boy’s grief-stricken teacher Martha Suarez after arriving Thursday morning for her daily session with the child at the family’s home on 64th st. and Laurel Hill Blvd.

“Just a happy boy, very nice family ... They didn’t call me, they didn’t cancel me, so I was coming as usual.”

The 53-year-old Suarez burst into tears, taking deep breaths, after arriving to find the family apartment where she started work this week blocked off by police tape and surrounded by the media.

“This is too hard for me,” she said, adding the family was originally from Nepal.

The Cribs episode Eric Adams didn't plan well for

With Eric Adams' mayoral campaign panicking about revelations that he might live in New Jersey, Adams invited journalists to his NYC home and showed them this perfectly normal bed that wasn't just moved into the perfectly normal middle of this room. pic.twitter.com/yVnb6wb6lr

— raf (@rafaelshimunov) June 10, 2021

Mother kills her twin babies in Woodside Houses

 

QNS

Two infants were found dead inside a Woodside apartment on Thursday afternoon, and detectives are now questioning their 23-year-old mother.

Police made the horrific discovery while responding with FDNY units to a wellness check called in at about 3:10 p.m. on April 22 at the Woodside Houses, located at 31-76 51st St.

According to Chief of Housing David Barrere, the officers from NYPD Public Service Area 9 met with concerned family members and knocked on the door to the mother’s fifth-floor apartment. Once they got inside, he said, they encountered a nightmarish scene.

Barrere said one of the infants, believed to be six weeks old, was found lifeless inside a crib with trauma to their body. The officers then asked about a second baby inside the home, and the mother pointed them toward a sink.

“Officers discovered a second child under the sink area, wrapped in a blanket, who was also unconscious and unresponsive,” Barrere said.

Responding EMS units pronounced both babies dead at the scene. The Medical Examiner’s office will conduct autopsies to determine the cause of their deaths.

Police immediately took the mother into custody for further questioning. Barrere said that officers also recovered a knife at the scene.

According to Barrere, one of the mother’s relatives called 911 on Thursday out of concern for her children. He did not go into details as to what prompted such concern.

Based on a preliminary investigation, police determined that the mother does not have a prior criminal record. The status of the children’s father remains unknown at this time.

Tenant finds mystery apartment through her bathroom mirror

WHAT THE ENTIRE FUCK pic.twitter.com/J4UdHAWCIz

— Great Value Sade (@CheyMillz) March 4, 2021

In the second video, she found a hole behind her bathroom mirror leading to another room, which she compared to the secret room in the film Parasite. In the third video, she decided to go through the hole and explore this other room with a hammer in hand. And in the final video, she discovered trash bags filled with stuff and a bottle of Core drinking water inside the area, along with what appeared to be a lot of broken plywood and a toilet. “Made it out alive,” she declared at the end, after exiting her mirror. “My landlord’s getting a really fun phone call tomorrow.” We've reached out to Hartsoe to see what her landlord told her about the extra room inside her bathroom mirror, but assuming this building wasn't created by a Being John Malkovich superfan, there seems to be a logical explanation for it: as one person wrote on Twitter, "This is a refurbished project. Maintenance guys used to not want to stand in the hallway if the tenant wasn't there, so they had entrances thru the bathroom mirror. Candyman was inspired by a guy in Chicago who was getting in those and sexually assaulting women."

Astoria man blows up his apartment

 

 

 PIX News

 

Parts of an Astoria block were evacuated Tuesday and a man taken into custody after police found "precursor materials" for an explosive at the scene of a house fire.

Officials said the resident of the home's bottom floor — where the fire originated — was taken into custody and transported to a local hospital for evaluation. Police described him as "emotionally disturbed."

Flames broke out at a home on 19th Street near Astoria Park on Tuesday afternoon, officials said. The bomb squad was requested for a suspicious package at the scene.

At the scene, officials found chemicals and other hazardous materials, as well as books and manuals regarding military explosives and booby traps.

While officials did not find a "completed improvised explosive device," the fire could have created a much more serious situation due to the hazardous nature of storing the chemicals near each other, officials said.

Video showed police take a shirtless man into custody. He was found hiding behind the home.

Police said once the hazardous materials are removed from the scene and taken to a secure location, neighbors with homes

Bill passes to legalize basement apartments which might spur more gentrification

NY Daily News


Marlene Hernandez moved from her two-bedroom apartment in Bushwick to an illegal basement apartment in East New York two years ago out of necessity.

“I simply couldn’t afford Bushwick anymore, I had to go somewhere else,” the 29-year-old single mother of one told the Daily News. “Even if you live with a roommate, you’re paying $1,000, $1,200, to stay in a room. So I figured, why not live in a basement where I can have my own privacy?”

Some 114,000 New Yorkers live in illegal basement apartments, according to the housing advocacy groups Chhaya Community Development Corporation and the Pratt Center for Community Development.

Basement and cellar apartments must meet minimum requirements for light, air, sanitation and exits and be approved by the Department of Buildings.

A bill signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio on March 5 aims to turn illegal basement and cellar apartments into safe, legal, affordable housing, starting with a three-year pilot in East New York and Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.

But the new law has Hernandez worried. She’s paying $1,200 a month for her off-the-books place and argues that New Yorkers in her position may have to keep finding illegal apartments to keep their rent down, or face higher rents for legal apartments.

“My landlord isn’t going to lower my rent,” she said. “What incentive does he have to legalize my apartment?” she said.

The pilot program will provide $12 million in low-interest loans and grants to eligible low- to

middle-income homeowners, living in one- to three-family homes, to convert their basements into legal apartments. If successful, the city would look at expanding the program to other neighborhoods.

A report from the Citizens Housing and Planning Council (CHPC) in 2017 said such a program could add up to 38,000 housing units.

All basement apartments legalized with funds from the grants and loans will have to conform to HPD’s affordable housing rules, which cap rents at 30% of a tenant’s income. Landlords who decide to create legal basement apartments without the city’s help will not have to abide by the income cap.

“If they legalize basement homes, landlords can just take advantage,” Hernandez said. “They know that there are people who are able and willing to pay regular apartment prices for these units.”

Jessica Katz, executive director of CHPC, acknowledged that the pilot’s pathway to legalization opens the door for landlords to raise rents. But, Katz said, the benefits of legalization outweigh the possibility of higher rents.

“There is a risk that the landlords will raise the rent,” Katz said. “We’re trying to find the right balance between bringing up the quality of those apartments and protecting the tenants, but also not scaring off tenants who have in certain ways benefited from the legal gray area that they’re living in.”

If anyone else recalls, this is where Councilman Espinal described these areas which he represents as a guinea pig for this housing plan.

I have a gut feeling that East New York and Cypress Hills are going to become "hot", "hip" and "niche" towns pretty soon.
 

Another large building coming to Queens Blvd

From The Real Deal:

A partnership between the Chetrit Group and Queens developer Mount Sinai Properties pre-filed permits to build a 122-unit apartment complex at the former site of the Queens Motor Inn.

The partners are looking to build an 11-story residential building at 43-21 64th Street in Woodside, just a few blocks the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The planned structure would contain 122 apartments, according to documents filed with the Department of Buildings. Plans call for a nearly 99,000-square-foot property with about 95,000 square feet for residential space and 3,400 square feet of commercial space. Amenities at the property include recreation rooms on the eighth floor and a rooftop space, according to the plans. The ground floor commercial space is earmarked for a car showroom.

Chetrit and Mount Sinai acquired the property, which used to have the address of 64-11 Queens Boulevard, for $13.4 million in August of last year. Demolition permits were filed for the two-story building on the site in August of 2016. The property used to house the Queens Motor Inn, a motel that rented rooms by the hour.

Scammers sought in phony apartment rental scheme

From PIX11:

Several New Yorkers hoping to move into new apartments were the victims of a scam, police said Monday.

The culprits met with the victims over the last few months and identified themselves as apartment owners, police said. They took deposits from victims and gave them keys for already-occupied apartments.

The scam started on April 1 when a man took a $1,400 deposit from a 40-year-old woman in Jackson Heights. Subsequent ‘deposits’ by other victims were for even more money. A 25-year-old woman gave a man $1,800 for an already-occupied apartment on April 21.

Spike strips cause controversy in Kew Gardens

From CBS 2:

As CBS2’s Jessica Layton reported, residents want to know why spike strips have been installed leading up to their front door.

The six-story building in a pleasant Kew Gardens neighborhood seemed like the perfect place for Katerina Masheeva to raise her kids. But now, the strips of spikes have raised serious concerns for her family and others in the building.

“It’s sharp, yes; it’s dangerous, yes,” Masheeva said.

There is now a double line of spike strips, each several feet long, just installed on both concrete ledges leading up to the apartments on 118th Street.

“I’ve seen a lot of, you know, hostile architecture over the last 20 years or so that it pops up more and more frequently, and this is just the most vile type that I’ve seen,” said Dan Irving.

“The woman that was just passing by said it looks very prison-like,” said Jessica Gomez.

(Check out the thug that slapped the camera.)

More proof that de Blasio's homeless policy is bogus

From NY1:

Letters overflow from a mailbox, a sign that the house at 32 Brownell Street in Stapleton has been vacant since the end of June.

It used to be "Neighborhood Homes," a 12-bed adult homeless shelter for recovering addicts.

But the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) did not renew its contract.

"This provided a last step for people as the reentered out community. And we've lost that valuable piece of the puzzle," said Reverend Terry Troia, the executive director of Project Hospitality.

Project Hospitality operates city-run shelters on Staten Island.

Troia says that even though 75 percent of residents at "Neighborhood Homes" were successful finding jobs and a housing post-program, the shelter's contract wasn't renewed because the program was apartment-based.

"Our setting in an apartment in the community was no longer acceptable to city standards of how to provide shelter for single homeless people," Troia said.

Of course! Why would you give people apartments when they can be warehoused in a hotel instead?

AirBnB is gobbling up affordable housing

From the Daily News:

Airbnb is gobbling up a huge chunk of apartments in some of the city’s hottest zip codes — snagging as much as 20% of vacancies in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, according to a new study by two affordable housing advocates.

The East Village led the list with a whopping 28% of its units going as illegal hotel rooms on the popular home-sharing site, according to an analysis from New York Communities for Change and Real Affordability For All.

The 20 most popular Airbnb neighborhoods — in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Long Island City, Queens — have lost 10% of their available housing units to Airbnb, according to the study.

Airbnb has maintained that its users are overwhelmingly tenants looking to make a quick buck when out of town, but the study found that the average rental was available for 247 days a year, and rented 109 nights a year.

That number would support criticism that huge numbers of shady landlords were using the website to convert rental units into illegal hotel rooms, exacerbating the city’s housing crisis to make a profit.

It’s illegal to rent out your apartment when you are not home, but you can rent out a room when you are, according to the law.

Because every piece of available land must be developed

From the Queens Tribune:

Several years ago, a handful of Elmhurst neighbors and volunteers transformed a vacant lot into a community garden. In the coming months, it is slated to transform again, but this time into new apartments.

Winnie Mok, a secretary at Tan Architect P.C., which is designing the planned development, said five two-family buildings are slated for the lot. Owners expect to file construction permits within weeks, Mok said; preliminary work installing a temporary perimeter fence has already begun.

The lot in question sits at the end of Manilla Street at Kneeland Avenue, up against the LIRR tracks. The youth volunteering program Young Governors spearheaded the reclamation of the lot, starting in 2011, with the help of the New Life Development Corporation and other community members.

According to lead garden organizer Jennifer Chu, the group received a “verbal OK” from the lot’s then-owner, a retired attorney now located in Florida, to use the site.

“We figured, he’s not using it, we can just work on it make to it look nice.” Chu said. “He said he intended to sell it and so we said, ‘sure, whenever you need to sell it, we’ll vacate.”

Nevertheless, the lot was sold in early February, according to the City Department of Finance. Chu said she received no notification of the sale.

“I’m just surprised that he didn’t give us any notice,” she said, adding that the Young Governors had made an effort to keep the owner up-to-date on activity at the garden, sending pictures and sometimes harvested produce.

The site’s previous owner could not immediately be reached for comment.

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.

AirBnB costs woman her rent controlled apartment

From the Daily News:

An unemployed Upper West Side woman using Airbnb to rent out rooms in her huge Central Park West apartment has been ordered to stop doing it by a Manhattan judge.

Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead said in a decision that Noelle Penraat, 62, appears to have made a substantial income over the past two years through Airbnb and that’s a violation of both rent control and zoning laws.

Penraat, a photographer who has been mostly unemployed since 2006, said in a court affidavit that she was forced to use Airbnb to pay her $4,477 monthly rent and other mounting bills.

The owners of her building at 315 Central Park West estimated that she could have made as much as $8,883 a month if she had rented out all four bedrooms in her rent controlled unit, which has views of Central Park. She charged $75-$150 a night or $450-$1,000 a week, depending on the size of the bedroom.

Penraat had the right to stay in the apartment because she grew up there and always lived there; it was first rented by her father, architect Jaap Penraat, a wartime hero who saved 406 Dutch Jews from the Nazis by smuggling them from the Netherlands to France where the Resistance got them out through Spain. He died in 2006.

Jeffrey Turkel, the lawyer for Brookford LLC which owns the building, said Edmead in her decision clarified changes made in 2010 to the rent laws when the legislature barred landlords from turning residential buildings into hotels because health and fire standards are much more strict in the hotel industry.

Eventually, he said, his client will seek to evict Penraat from the unit, which on the open market can earn three or four times what she is paying.

Because they won't be raising families here

From the Queens Courier:

...new rental apartments in the borough tend to be smaller studios and one-bedrooms as opposed to larger two- and three-bedroom apartments, according to a report released Thursday by Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Smaller apartments took more of the market share in November when compared to October, and when compared to November of 2013, according to the firm’s monthly analysis, which tracks rentals in northwest Queens.

In November, 76 percent of new apartments were studios and one bedrooms, compared to 71 percent in October, and just 60 percent in November of last year.

$1600 for 1-bedroom in Jamaica?

From the Queens Courier:

Development in Jamaica is about to pick up and bring big changes to the New York City real estate scene, according to a firm building new apartments in the area.

TCX Development, a Great Neck-based firm, is working on a seven-story, 21-unit apartment building on Hillside Avenue near 191st Street. TCX officials believe they are ahead of the wave of development they feel is coming to the neighborhood because of its zoning, extensive public transportation network and massive downtown shopping district.

The building will mostly be comprised of one-bedroom apartments for $1,600 a month, which Asherian said will be attractive compared to Brooklyn and Manhattan prices for comparable rooms. There will also be one three-bedroom penthouse.

$1,600/mo seems a little steep for a one-bedroom in Jamaica. But if it doesn't work out, the Department of Homeless Services will gladly pay $3,500/mo for these apartments.

Astoria apartment breaks rent record

From the Times Ledger:

A three-bedroom, 3 1/2-bathroom apartment has set a new record for rentals in Astoria at $5,000 per month, according to an agent at Douglas Elliman, which had the exclusive listing.

The Greek owner of the townhouse, on 35th Street,lives in Geneva, Switzerland, and did a wholesale renovation of the property with European-style finishes.

The unit was listed in late January and Kinslow had his tenants lined up less than two months later.

“They are three guys in their mid-20s, all Ivy League graduates who work in finance and were looking for more space,” he said. “They really like the feel of the community, having moved from the East Village where they say everyone is there to just party.”

Another church tragedy

From Brownstoner:

The St. Ignatius Church and its community hall are in the process of being demolished at 267 Rogers Avenue in Crown Heights, where Curbed found this rendering on the fence. Building applications were filed last November to construct a five story, 165-unit apartment building, but they weren’t approved until last week.

Heights Advisors are the developers behind the 112,155-square-foot project, which will have 35 underground parking spaces and 48 open ones, a fitness room, laundry, rec room and roof terrace.

You don't have to be religious to understand that this is a travesty. Beautiful green space that was used by the community to be covered with a building lived in by those of means who probably haven't even moved here yet.

Hearing both sides

From The Forum:

Plans to create an upscale apartment building in the heart of Ridgewood put some residents at odds with one another at a rowdy rezoning public hearing.

There was a clear divide among those who spoke at last week’s Community Board 5 meeting. While some Ridgewood residents said the 176 Woodward Ave. apartment proposal would help uplift a community eyesore, others sounded off against a complex they felt would only cater to the more financially comfortable.

Aufgang Architects designed the proposal for the $18 million facility that includes a 90,000-square-foot structure to house 88 residential units, commercial retail space, and 118 underground parking spots. Developers said rental prices there were estimated to range anywhere from $1,100 to $1,200 for a studio; $1,400 to $1,600 for a one-bedroom apartment; and $1,700-$1,800 for a two-bedroom apartment.

Wow, what a bargain!

I couldn't help but laugh at this ad on Brownstoner Queens:

There’s a new building renting at 37-53 75th Street, right off Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights. There are six full-floor units, all three and four bedrooms. The three-bedroom units are asking $2,950 a month, four bedrooms are asking $3,600.

What idiot is paying that much to rent a piece of Steve Chon Queens Crap in Jackson Heights? This replaced a one-family home.