Ripped for roaches, rats & trying to evict tenants
Oquendo and Ravenales name Sobro Sharp, Apex, LCG and DHS as the defendants in the suit.
A mother of three, Oquendo, 29, became homeless in fall 2015 and a few months in a shelter moved into an LCG cluster apartment in the South Bronx. She called the junior one-bedroom “disgusting.”
Her stove doesn’t work, and she has to pour a bucket of water down her toilet to flush it, she said. Then there are the pests. “I have the worst roach infestation known to mankind,” she said, noting that they crawl over her 7-month-old daughter’s crib.
Meanwhile, she said she has seen six different LCG case managers because of turnover at the nonprofit. She said that LCG’s housing specialist rarely met with her.
“These people have left me here to basically fend for myself,” she said.
Earlier this month, Homeless Services informed her that Sobro was evicting her and she had two days to move, she said. Her lawyer got a temporary restraining order stopping a transfer to another shelter.
Oquendo wants to stay in the neighborhood because she has family there, her 7-year-old son goes to a nearby school and she is enrolled full-time at Bronx Community College to become a nurse.
“They just want to uproot my entire family,” she said.
Melissa Krantz, a spokeswoman for the company, said that its case managers regularly met with clients and kept records of those interactions. She also said LCG always advocated for the tenants to get the landlord to fix problems in their apartments.
The Lazar brothers are the sons of Joseph Lazar, a Midwood, Brooklyn, resident whom state Assemblyman Dov Hikind handpicked to run for City Council in a 2010 special election. Then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio also supported the dad’s campaign.
But Joseph Lazar, 69, lost the race to David Greenfield.
Records show that Joseph Lazar works full-time as the chief financial officer and chief operating officer for LCG but receives no compensation for his services.
His sons’ LCG office is inside a building that he owns, according to city records.
His 36-year-old twins each own homes in Lawrence, L.I.
Krantz said that the relationship between LCG and the brothers’ for-profit Razzal is noted in public tax filings.
She said the nonprofit’s lawyers picked Razzal through a transparent process that involved putting out a request for proposals.
Homeless Services said it was unaware of Razzal’s ties to the twins but was now looking into the relationship.
The city previously ripped into LCG in May 2016 after it found many of the nonprofit’s cluster units had building violations that landlords refused to fix. The city also took legal action against LCG’s landlords to compel compliance.
At the time, the Department of Social Services sent a letter to LCG questioning its ability operate it cluster units. Still the nonprofit was allowed to keep operating under further oversight and tougher enforcement, according to DHS.