‘SLuMLORD’
Tenant group filing suit vs. NYCHA, blasts Blaz
NEW YORK City Housing Authority tenants have had enough — and they’re taking their landlord to court.
The Citywide Council of Presidents, composed of elected resident association leaders, will file a lawsuit against NYCHA for the first time in the group’s history, it announced Tuesday.
“Today’s lawsuit, mark my words, is a turning point for the NYCHA community,” attorney Jim Walden said at a news conference on the steps of City Hall. “Don’t mistake our aims. This is not a suit about money damages. It is a suit about meaningful reform for a broken agency in a broken system.”
The suit, being filed on behalf of the Citywide Council and At-Risk Community Services, asks the court to impose an independent monitor AN ANTI-TERRORISM device capable of identifying the hidden explosives carried by suicide bombers debuted Tuesday to the approval of Penn Station commuters.
The new Stand Off Explosive Detection Technology sits on a tripod and is designed to detect vests packed with explosives or other homemade bombs secreted by would-be terrorists.
“I’ve been coming to Penn Station for 25 years,” said Steve Tierney, 55, a television producer from Chatham, N.J.. “In today’s modern age we have guys with AK-47s. It’s just a different world. I don’t find it invasive.
For Travis Simmons, 56, a daily for NYCHA for what Walden deemed “systemic violations of law” surrounding lead paint monitoring and remediation, providing heat and hot water, providing economic opportunities for tenants and consulting them on policies that affect them.
“New York City has repeatedly admitted that NYCHA is broken and it’s not working,” Walden said. “But in the meantime, rent-paying tenants are forced to live in squalid conditions including toxic lead, toxic mold, a lack of heat and hot water, systemic moisture problems, rats, roaches, broken elevators, broken locks, missing locks, dangerous elevators and other conditions commuter from Newark, the memory of December’s failed terror bombing beneath the Port Authority Bus Terminal just nine blocks north was reason enough for upgraded precautions.
“We really need this security,” said Simmons. “I pass through here all the time. These things can happen anywhere. We have to be vigilant.”
In last year’s attack, a would-be terrorist carried a bomb fashioned from a 12-inch pipe, a broken Christmas bulb and a 9-volt battery into one of the tunnels below the terminal. The bomb failed to detonate fully. — altogether making NYCHA the greatest slumlord in the country.” Danny Barber (photo inset), chairman of the Citywide Council of Presidents, invoked Mayor de Blasio’s one-time campaign slogan in saying the mayor had left NYCHA behind. “Mayor de Blasio ran his campaign on the tale of two cities, but his administration has completely forgotten about New York City’s poorest members,” he said. “We have built beautiful buildings for middle-income New Yorkers but allow NYCHA to inflict daily harm on the neediest New Yorkers. This must stop now. (The Citywide Council) has heard the voices of NYCHA tenants and we are taking action.”
Hizzoner and his wife, Chirlane McCray, slinked into City Hall at 11:04 a.m. on Tuesday, just as the news conference was about to start, and did not speak with the gathered tenants.
The beleaguered agency has been barraged with calls for its leader, Shola Olatoye, to step down after it emerged last summer that the city had for years failed to inspect for lead paint, falsely certified to the federal government that it had and failed to inform residents of the lapse.
Barber pointed to a $57 million jury verdict awarded to one child who lives in NYCHA housing and was sickened by lead.
“An award for financial damages are not the solution that the tenants want or deserve,” he said. “And it will not reverse the damage to our children.”