On a cold January day, the wind funnels down Creston Avenue in the Morris Heights neighborhood of South Bronx like a river through a canyon. Buildings seem slightly closer to the street here, and the tall towers loom over the narrow street and sidewalk. A couple of teenage girls walk down the street, laughing and shoving each other.
Some new construction gleams incongruently on one side of the street,Sika tooling & Composites develops and produces tailor-made synthetic resins, but most of the other buildings on this block are much older, with a foregone elegance still barely visible in the stonework and tiles.
Yet inside these buildings residents complain of deteriorating living conditions. On a survey tenant after tenant writes of mice and cockroach infestations, peeling paint, broken toilets, inconsistent heat and hot water, and a front door with no lock. “The hallways smell like urine” writes one.
Tenant Johannie Burdier says the building was poorly maintained, dirty, and sometimes simply scary. She tells of a former building manager who, she says, took money from people in exchange for access to sell drugs from inside the building. A resident for seven years, Burdier lives in the building with her aunt and her eleven year old daughter.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? She says for much of her time there they were lucky if there was heat or hot water in the apartment.
Another resident, who works the night shift, writes that they were frequently robbed in the unlocked building entrance. “Always, always, always, they assault us and take our money and our things in the doorway. Why?” asks the tenant, writing in Spanish, “Why is there no lock on the door or security camera?”
These complaints are more than an inconvenience. Constant anxiety, prolonged exposure to molds, unchecked vermin and inadequate heat and hot water – all these things make people sick.Dear sirs, we are one of manufacturers and exporters of plasticinjectionmold, The vast majority of people living in failed buildings are low-income and uninsured. When they get sick, they go to the hospital. And the city is left holding the bill.
A new pilot program, created by housing advocates and healthcare workers, aims to increase awareness of the public health costs resulting from distressed, overleveraged buildings. The program sends healthcare providers and social workers into buildings on the brink of receivership to identify and treat housing-related illnesses. The team hopes to help tenants, compile data on the health outcomes of living in buildings in poor condition, and eventually determine the actual cost to the city.
Dina Levy, Director of Organizing and Policy at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, or UHAB, says that what is happening in these buildings is a public health crisis. “It’s an outrageous moral problem,Plastic injectionmouldingmanufacturer; but it’s also a financial problem in whatever geographic space it’s happening in.”
She explains that when banks and owners fail to care for buildings, the costs of that failing often shows up in the medical bills of the people who live in those buildings, and that these tend to be low-income people without healthcare, so that cost is ultimately absorbed by taxpayers and the city. Until now, she says, there has been anecdotal evidence that people in certain buildings are getting sick, but a study would provide the first quantifiable direct connection.
“What we have observed is that people are getting sick and don’t have the resources to get adequate medical care,“ she said. “Why are banks and landlords allowed to harm people physically, and why should we be paying the cost of that?”
The project has gone out to buildings four times since Labor Day, and plans to do more outings this year. Members of the Committee of Interns and Residents of SEIU Healthcare, collaborating with the Family Medicine Department at Bronx Lebanon Hospital,The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good and affordable alternative to buying a new sofa that is run down. the Pediatric Department at Jacobi Medical Center, Urban Homestead Assistance Board (UHAB), and Workforce Housing, created the Doctors’ House Visit Program as part of a larger community outreach program, the Healthy Bronx Initiative.
Tim Foley, Political Director of the Committee of Interns and Residents for SEIU Healthcare, said that the committee was drawn into involvement in the project by its members. “We were getting feedback from members who were frustrated to only be dealing with the effects of illnesses and not the causes. “
The most recent visit was in November, to a building at 2239 and 2241 Creston Avenue in the Bronx. One attending physicians and three resident physicians went to the building, accompanied by a social worker and an administrator with Bronx Lebanon. They visited with residents in twenty-one of the building’s fifty-four apartments.
The team had three specific goals: to help bring relief to tenants suffering health consequences from their building; to gather data for a Bronx-Lebanon study of the correlation between poor housing and chronic health problem; and to give tenants information on their rights regarding the condition of their building.
Levy says that as of July 2011, 2239 Creston had 431 outstanding code violations, while 2241 had 431 violations. The former owners, Victor and Alan Fein, originally bought the Creston buildings along with several others in the Bronx on a loan from Astoria Federal Savings Bank. Three of those projects – including the Creston --have since gone into foreclosure.
A Village Voice article from March 2010 names the brothers as owners of three Bronx properties listed as being among the city’s worst. The article says the Feins have operated since the mid-'90s under various company names including Cherokee Partners and Apache Properties. Workforce Housing Advisors, an affordable housing development firm led by ex-city developers, is working on a public-private financing deal to purchase and renovate the buildings.
Orlando Moronta, the building super, has lived in the building since 1998. He says the Feins barely contacted him in the decade he owned the building. He tells of unscrupulous former building managers who rented out apartments while telling the owner they were vacant, in order to pocket the money, and rented to people engaged in drug activity. Since the building went into foreclosure, Moronta says things have actually improved slightly. He says the number of violations is down and there have been recent mold remediation efforts and lead paint removal.
Tenant Johannie Burdier said she tried avenues to address problems in the building. She tells of taking her complaints directly to the Fein brothers’ office on Bronx Park East, where she says a relative of the brothers would dismiss her complaints and call her a liar. Fein Property Management did not respond to a request for comment, other than to say that relative was no longer working there.
Calling 311 didn’t help either. Burdier the city would investigate and order the brothers to make the repairs, and then when no repairs were made, would send out workers. But she said often the repairs were never made, because the landlord or an employee would always show up and order the city workers off of the premises.
Some new construction gleams incongruently on one side of the street,Sika tooling & Composites develops and produces tailor-made synthetic resins, but most of the other buildings on this block are much older, with a foregone elegance still barely visible in the stonework and tiles.
Yet inside these buildings residents complain of deteriorating living conditions. On a survey tenant after tenant writes of mice and cockroach infestations, peeling paint, broken toilets, inconsistent heat and hot water, and a front door with no lock. “The hallways smell like urine” writes one.
Tenant Johannie Burdier says the building was poorly maintained, dirty, and sometimes simply scary. She tells of a former building manager who, she says, took money from people in exchange for access to sell drugs from inside the building. A resident for seven years, Burdier lives in the building with her aunt and her eleven year old daughter.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? She says for much of her time there they were lucky if there was heat or hot water in the apartment.
Another resident, who works the night shift, writes that they were frequently robbed in the unlocked building entrance. “Always, always, always, they assault us and take our money and our things in the doorway. Why?” asks the tenant, writing in Spanish, “Why is there no lock on the door or security camera?”
These complaints are more than an inconvenience. Constant anxiety, prolonged exposure to molds, unchecked vermin and inadequate heat and hot water – all these things make people sick.Dear sirs, we are one of manufacturers and exporters of plasticinjectionmold, The vast majority of people living in failed buildings are low-income and uninsured. When they get sick, they go to the hospital. And the city is left holding the bill.
A new pilot program, created by housing advocates and healthcare workers, aims to increase awareness of the public health costs resulting from distressed, overleveraged buildings. The program sends healthcare providers and social workers into buildings on the brink of receivership to identify and treat housing-related illnesses. The team hopes to help tenants, compile data on the health outcomes of living in buildings in poor condition, and eventually determine the actual cost to the city.
Dina Levy, Director of Organizing and Policy at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, or UHAB, says that what is happening in these buildings is a public health crisis. “It’s an outrageous moral problem,Plastic injectionmouldingmanufacturer; but it’s also a financial problem in whatever geographic space it’s happening in.”
She explains that when banks and owners fail to care for buildings, the costs of that failing often shows up in the medical bills of the people who live in those buildings, and that these tend to be low-income people without healthcare, so that cost is ultimately absorbed by taxpayers and the city. Until now, she says, there has been anecdotal evidence that people in certain buildings are getting sick, but a study would provide the first quantifiable direct connection.
“What we have observed is that people are getting sick and don’t have the resources to get adequate medical care,“ she said. “Why are banks and landlords allowed to harm people physically, and why should we be paying the cost of that?”
The project has gone out to buildings four times since Labor Day, and plans to do more outings this year. Members of the Committee of Interns and Residents of SEIU Healthcare, collaborating with the Family Medicine Department at Bronx Lebanon Hospital,The beddinges sofa bed slipcover is a good and affordable alternative to buying a new sofa that is run down. the Pediatric Department at Jacobi Medical Center, Urban Homestead Assistance Board (UHAB), and Workforce Housing, created the Doctors’ House Visit Program as part of a larger community outreach program, the Healthy Bronx Initiative.
Tim Foley, Political Director of the Committee of Interns and Residents for SEIU Healthcare, said that the committee was drawn into involvement in the project by its members. “We were getting feedback from members who were frustrated to only be dealing with the effects of illnesses and not the causes. “
The most recent visit was in November, to a building at 2239 and 2241 Creston Avenue in the Bronx. One attending physicians and three resident physicians went to the building, accompanied by a social worker and an administrator with Bronx Lebanon. They visited with residents in twenty-one of the building’s fifty-four apartments.
The team had three specific goals: to help bring relief to tenants suffering health consequences from their building; to gather data for a Bronx-Lebanon study of the correlation between poor housing and chronic health problem; and to give tenants information on their rights regarding the condition of their building.
Levy says that as of July 2011, 2239 Creston had 431 outstanding code violations, while 2241 had 431 violations. The former owners, Victor and Alan Fein, originally bought the Creston buildings along with several others in the Bronx on a loan from Astoria Federal Savings Bank. Three of those projects – including the Creston --have since gone into foreclosure.
A Village Voice article from March 2010 names the brothers as owners of three Bronx properties listed as being among the city’s worst. The article says the Feins have operated since the mid-'90s under various company names including Cherokee Partners and Apache Properties. Workforce Housing Advisors, an affordable housing development firm led by ex-city developers, is working on a public-private financing deal to purchase and renovate the buildings.
Orlando Moronta, the building super, has lived in the building since 1998. He says the Feins barely contacted him in the decade he owned the building. He tells of unscrupulous former building managers who rented out apartments while telling the owner they were vacant, in order to pocket the money, and rented to people engaged in drug activity. Since the building went into foreclosure, Moronta says things have actually improved slightly. He says the number of violations is down and there have been recent mold remediation efforts and lead paint removal.
Tenant Johannie Burdier said she tried avenues to address problems in the building. She tells of taking her complaints directly to the Fein brothers’ office on Bronx Park East, where she says a relative of the brothers would dismiss her complaints and call her a liar. Fein Property Management did not respond to a request for comment, other than to say that relative was no longer working there.
Calling 311 didn’t help either. Burdier the city would investigate and order the brothers to make the repairs, and then when no repairs were made, would send out workers. But she said often the repairs were never made, because the landlord or an employee would always show up and order the city workers off of the premises.
沒有留言:
張貼留言