Tenants at city housing project apartment in Bed-Stuy wonder who'll stop rain?

BY Jake Pearson - NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

When Joseph Jones looks at his ceiling in his city housing project apartment, he can see the sky.
That's because there is a gaping, 3-by-4-foot hole in his top-floor apartment in the Weeksville Gardens Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

"It makes me go crazy at times," said Jones, 30, a security guard who lives in the three-bedroom apartment with two siblings. "I can't believe this; I know we need to get out of here."
Jones is one of at least a dozen tenants who live in fourth-floor Weeksville apartments with leaky ceilings at the 256-unit public housing project on Dean St. between Troy and Schenectady Aves.
The tenants said they have repeatedly complained for years as the cracks have grown larger, but it took until October before the city Housing Authority sent workers who put tarps up to cover the holes.

Tenants said the tarps don't catch all the rain water, which has damaged floors, beds and other furniture.

"It's dangerous, all that water, because you never know if one day the ceiling will just come down," said Mildred Ponder, 62, who said she complained 20 times before workers came.
After the Daily News asked about the holes in Weeksville's roofs, NYCHA spokeswoman Heidi Morales said that despite its tight budget the agency is looking to find the $3.5 million to repair the roof.

Morales also said Friday that inspectors were sent out to Weeksville to offer temporary transfers to residents who need them.

But resident Phelisa Benjamin said there's no way she would move her family - especially during the holidays.

"They should've fixed this years ago .... I don't think I need to move around at all," said Benjamin, who lives in a top-floor apartment where NYCHA workers plastered a piece of cardboard over a hole in her bedroom in October - a hole that continues to leaks.

"The plasterer who came was upset and he said, 'Why are they sending a plasterer when you need to send a contractor here to fix the roof?'" Benjamin said.

For Jones, the white tarp NYCHA workers put over the hole hasn't done much good. He said on days when it rains heavily he has filled a 30-gallon jug full of rain water at least three times.
"This is really wild," he said. "It wakes me up in the morning: The sound, the water splashing on my face, the debris."

"It's horrible," added Ponder, who said she's getting sick of repeatedly calling about her cracked ceiling. "They always say, 'Somebody will come and take care of it,' but they never do."
The tenants use pots and garbage cans to catch the dripping water.

Tenant advocate Reginald Bowman said a lack of funding was no excuse to let dangerous conditions continue at Weeksville.

"I think the Housing Authority needs to find the money to fix the problem immediately," said Bowman.

"In a situation like this where there's actually life-threatening damage to the building itself," said Bowman, "the Housing Authority should immediately find a way to get permanent repairs."

"Brooklyn 'jail' playground could be rebuilt as White House to mark one of America's historic moments,"
By Michael Daly - New York Daily News

The word "jail" has been painted over, but on close examination you can still see the letters.

And there remains the mystery of how the city allowed a jail to be part of a play set at a Brooklyn housing project for six years.

Another question is: What should be done with that playground now?

How about putting in something to mark a giant leap forward the whole country took, a leap that still seemed all but impossible when the "jail" was installed back in March of 2004?

How about replacing the city's only jail playground with its very first White House playground?

Until Barack Obama was actually elected, many people believed that an African-American could not become President.

Obama proved that America had finally become a place where anybody really can grow up to become President.

A kid-sized White House would have a perfect backdrop with the huge portraits of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X that presently adorn a handball court wall facing the playground.

And, where steps and a bridge once led to a jail cell, youngsters would be ascending to the highest office in the land, one no longer barred to a person of color.

I was lucky enough to be down in Washington on inauguration weekend and I remember watching 5-year-old Marcus Scott of Brooklyn, a descendant of slaves, doing a happy dance with an American flag.

"It's nice to be able to wave the flag and say we belong here," said his mother, Alison Scott.

I also remember seeing Elaine Cope of South Carolina point her camera between the iron bars surrounding the White House.

"How many times I've been to Washington and I've never wanted to take a picture of the White House," Cope said.

Obama remains our President even if the Tea Party nuts rail against him with such fury that you have to figure race is involved.

As the health bill was finally nearing passage last week, some of that came to the surface. A tea party protester spat the N word at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga).

"It surprised me that people are so mean and we can't engage in a civil dialogue and debate," Lewis said afterwards.

Lewis is a civil rights champion who addressed the same rally where King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The modern day haters seem exasperated by the reality that part of the dream has been realized with Obama's election.

I do not include Sarah Palin in that group. She is even worse. She fans the flames to her own ends.

She is no hockey mom.

She is a hockey player and she looks to win.

But maybe she was a blessing during the election. She was such a bad candidate that whites who probably would never have voted for a candidate of color ended up going for Obama.

The right wing has grown so wild and wacky that the one-time embarrassment Palin is stepping in to help her former running mate, Sen. John McCain.

In the midst of this mad meanness, we would do well to remind youngsters of the continuing victory that preceded it.

That will becomes all the more important as the city and state budget cuts begin hitting the schools and leaving the streets more dangerous. As always, the poorer neighborhoods will feel the cuts most keenly.

Doing well in school could become even tougher. Falling into trouble could become even easier.

Just as the playground "jail" carried a bad message, a White House would carry a good one: However tough things may get, we have overcome one obstacle that was so important because it never should have been there in the first place.

In the meantime, even a city going broke can afford to replace the ragged American flag flying in front of Public School 59 across Throop Ave. from the playground.

As a playground White House would remind the kids, the flag does indeed belong to everybody, as much to them as to Sarah Palin and her Tea Party pals, or anybody else.

"Fed-up tenants sue, demand city fix nightmare Bedford-Stuyvesant apartments,"
By Jeff Wilkins - New York Times

A city housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant has been a horror for residents who have lived with rats and mice, lack of heat, water damage and mold for years.

Tenants of the Bed-Stuy Rehabs, a three-building complex on Willoughby and Throop Aves., filed a lawsuit against the city Housing Authority in December after living with the conditions since the 1980s.

"We're tired of being treated like NYCHA's foster children," said Cassandra Harrell, president of the Bed-Stuy Rehabs Tenant Association, who said years of living in her mold-filled apartment left her stricken with asthma. "We want our apartments fixed."

The three small buildings with 81 apartments were originally part of Woodhull Hospital, and were converted into public housing in 1983.

Right from the start, said longtime tenants, their apartments had problems. They said Housing Authority officials promised fixes that were never made.

If the work is done, they added, it's shoddy or takes a long time to get scheduled.

In one case, a tenant at 281 Throop Ave. said workers showed up as late as 9 p.m. to repair a collapsed ceiling.

"Every time they say they're going to fix something, they don't do anything," said Luisa Figueroa, 33, pointing to a hole in her wall that isn't scheduled to be repaired until June. "It's just talk, talk, talk."

Retired postal worker Kathleen Green, who has lived at 675 Willoughby Ave. since 1983, has gone without heat three or four days at a time for years.

"It gets really cold in here in the winter, like you're living outside," she said. "I wake up and turn my oven on at 6 a.m. just to get some heat."

Green said she has phoned in countless complaints. Workers have come and looked at her radiators, promised to send someone to make repairs - and rarely do.

"Ten years ago, I gave them a list of all my problems," said Green. "Ten years later, they're still not fixed."

Housing Authority spokeswoman Sheila Stainback denied the agency had neglected the buildings, and said they have repeatedly responded to tenants' requests for repairs.

"NYCHA staff has addressed and worked on the repairs needed for Bedford-Stuyvesant Rehabs and will continue to do so," Stainback said in a statement.

Residents of 281 Throop Ave. used a lawsuit to force the Housing Authority to repair the building's leaky roof in 2005.

"Mayor's New Plan for Affordable Housing: Overnight Delivery?," - Gothamlist

Rather than building new affordable homes in the city, Bloomberg now wants to spruce up those that already exist. His revamped plan will cost $8.5 billion and seeks to preserve 165,000 units by 2014. One Bed-Stuy housing development would have been a good candidate for the program, until it called a press conference to address its long list of complaints and the repairs were miraculously completed. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” said Cassandra Harrell, the president of the Bed-Stuy Rehabs’ resident association, who has lived in the project for 27 years. “They put up Sheetrock, they painted the walls, they knew the press was coming.”

For years residents of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Rehabs complained about "mold, leaky pipes, stained ceilings, holes in the walls, puddles in the hallway and long spells in the winter without heat or hot water," according to the Times. The vermin problem was so bad that one resident lost his pet bird to a rat. “Yeah, it ate the bird,” said David Caban. “The cage was on the floor.” But the night before a press conference was scheduled, 8-12 repairmen appeared at the projects and got to work. “[We are] a 24/7 operation,” said a spokeswoman for the housing authority in an email, adding that the work had been scheduled ahead of the press conference.

Under Bloomberg's plan, affordable housing tenants shouldn't have to sic the press on the housing authority to get their repairs. The New Housing Marketplace Plan will "preserve" affordable housing, meaning that "its housing agencies refinance and renovate buildings in return for keeping rents locked in for long periods, usually decades, as opposed to letting the units rent or sell at market rates" as the Times puts it.

The city will build 60,000 new homes and preserve 105,000 amending a cheaper 2005 plan to build 92,000 units and preserve 73,000. “The extra money will go toward allowing us to save projects that otherwise would’ve gone to market rates, and keeping rents low, and locking that in 30 or 40 years,” said housing commissioner, Rafael Cestero. “We have the opportunity right now to step in at a way that we weren’t able to before.”

"Neighbors protest new Bed-Stuy housing facility for recovering addicts," - REAL DEAL NY

332 Malcolm X. Boulevard (Source: PropertyShark) A new temporary housing facility for recovering alcohol and drug addicts in Bedford-Stuyvesant has the surrounding community up in arms over its potential impact on the neighborhood.

Roughly 20 new residents of 332 Malcolm X. Boulevard "came in over night," said Eric Smith, president of the Bainbridge Street Block Association. Bedford-Stuyvesant "needs that place like a hole in the head," he said. Neighbors say they've seen the men throwing out empty beer cans and liquor bottles from the home, though the Gelzer Foundation, a private organization that runs the facility insists the men had not been drinking and have been undergoing outpatient treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.

There's already a men's shelter one block away from the three-story building, whose safety is already in question as it has also been hit with a temporary stop work order for building without a permit. "Why would you bring a shelter on a block that has a history of drug issues that we're trying to kill?" said Henry Butler, chair of Community Board 3. Butler is meeting with city agency representatives this evening about the stop work order at the site

CURBE.COM posted that the "FHA-approved condo buildings at 111 Monroe Street, which claims to be the Federal Housing Authoritie's firt experiment, has sold 50% of its 1 & 2 bedroom units. The 14 remaining one- and two-bedroom units start at $375,000.

"Vacant Lot in Bed-Stuy Revitalized with Affordable Housing," - Real Estate Rama

Albany, NY - September 17, 2009 - (RealEstateRama) — DHCR Commissioner Deborah VanAmerongen recently joined elected officials and community leaders at 1825 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood to celebrate the opening of Atlantic Avenue Apartments. The once blighted block is being revitalized thanks to the seven story building with 149 units of ENERGY STAR-rated affordable housing.

DHCR provided $3 million for the development, which will have gross rents ranging from $196 to $1,430 a month. The 30 three-bedroom, 74 two-bedroom, 34 one-bedroom, and 12 studio apartments reserved for mentally disabled tenants, will help alleviate the housing needs of this neighborhood.