BURIED IN FINES
City’s ‘error’ sinking funeral home
A Brooklyn blonde dubbed the “Victoria Gotti of funeral homes” is fighting to save her mortuary after bungling city inspectors accused her of keeping dead people “in a restaurant.”
Doris Amen, who has owned the Jurek-Park Slope Funeral Home for 25 years, faces $165,000 in fines since the Department of Buildings claimed she violated a certificate of occupancy that says the building is technically an eatery.
“I’m fighting for my financial life,” cried Amen, a divorcee who wrote the memoir: “I’m Dying to Tell Ya!!! True Tall tales of a Brooklyn Funeral Director.”
Her woes started on Dec. 17, 2014, when a DOB inspector somehow got into her 14th Street funeral home before it opened.
“You have deceased persons in a restaurant,” the inspector told Amen’s secretary.
The inspector “illegally entered my building after picking a sidedoor lock,” Amen charges. He walked through rooms where bodies covered by sheets lay on preparation tables, she said. The DOB denies breaking in. For the past two and a half years, the DOB has insisted that a certificate of occupancy, issued in 1938, permitted only a store or restaurant on the first floor. At the time, it was a bar and grill.
In 2015, two DOB inspectors again showed up unannounced, Amen said, this time barging in while an elderly woman was making arrangements for her husband.
“Our conference was interrupted by agents of the NYC Department of Buildings, demanding to inspect the premises,” says a letter by widow Josephine Walsh, who has since died.
“I found it unconscionable that they did not recognize the situation at hand,” and slapped a violation on the door before leaving, she wrote.
Now the city has hired a collection agency to go after the $165,000 — payments Amen said will cripple her business.
“It’s absolute harassment — and a grave injustice,” she said.
Amen was lauded by GreenWood Cemetery President Richard Moylan, who hired her to bury his mom, for her “quality service to the Brooklyn community . . . deep understanding and compassion.”
Last week, after inquiries by The Post, the city discovered “a typo” in paperwork, and admitted a certificate of occupancy issued in 1950 allowed a funeral home to move in.
But officials will not halt the bill collections, saying Amen has failed to fix the other alleged violations.