The Gallery, by Diego Cupolo, from the BushwickBK.com Flickr pool
Welfare Doesn’t Pay: After learning to work the City’s byzantine entitlement system and getting a rent-free apartment on Jefferson Street, it seems one of our neighbors has discovered a pitfall — after the program missed a payment, the landlord tossed her stuff onto the sidewalk, and she came home to find it mostly picked-over. The rent mix-up was rectified, but her and her children’s things were gone. Fortunately, she could rely on family, friends, and charity to help her with some essential items.
Or… Welfare Pays Big?: It seems there is a fight over a design charette the City organized to redevelop the “Broadway Triangle” in East Williamsburg into blocks and blocks of subsidized housing — Vito Lopez’s Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and a Hasidic organization were invited to participate, but a bunch of Latino-specific, Williamsburg-based groups were left out. Vito Lopez has tried his hardest to steal Pfizer’s property nearby to make their private plans for affordable housing HIS plans, so it makes sense that he’d be shutting out competing housing organizations in order to keep his patronage strangehold in the district.
Past Fears Fizzle: Interesting story from 1994 conveying the anxiety Ridgewood residents felt about their highly organized and interrelated system of neighborhood social groups falling to Bushwick’s (cresting) wave of blight and crime and their own inability to refresh the ranks of volunteers. They never attracted the “quiche crowd” that one organizer coveted, but it’s clear since then that their worst fears didn’t pan out, as Bushwick steadily improved after the crack years ended and Ridgewood’s younger resident population was replenished — one good result of the Balkan wars? And in a profound twist of irony, Bushwick’s “quiche crowd” is now bleeding over into Ridgewood.
Suspended Logic: Rock Street is named for a big rock…sitting ON TOP of a poured concrete sidewalk? Doubtful. Also, I’m rather sure you can’t sell a rock for scrap.
Ingo Hart November 17th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Wow I didn’t know people could have their WHOLE rent subsidised.
I know it was just a turn of phrase but the Balkan war comment made me wince.
Jimmy Legs November 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
i’m sort of surprised the article doesn’t raise the notion that what the lanlord did is super illegal, especially in this town. you don’t just throw somebody’s stuff on the street. i dunno, something’s missing from this story, why isn’t the woman complaining about the theft of her personal property? i kind of hate to defend her, since it certainly sounds like she was living in a $925/mo apt for free for some reason, but the eviction laws are pretty clear and generally known around here.
Jimmy Legs November 17th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
okay i looked it up, the Housing Stability Plus program is a temporary (max 5 yr) program to help homeless people into permanent housing. a family of 3 starts with $925/mo for the first year, so they just managed to find a place with the same rent. the subsidy goes down 20% every year so they will gradually have to pay more and more.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dhs/html/press/pr121004.shtml
Jeremy Sapienza November 17th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
At least there’s some incentive to get back on track, even if it’s in a rather luxurious amount of time. It seems risky for the landlord to toss out a tenant whose existence the City is quite aware of outside of the proper eviction process. Maybe there’s something we’re missing here?
Justin November 17th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
That NYT article makes absolutely no sense. When tenants miss one rent payment, the owner can’t just put their stuff on the street. In reality, there will be up to a year of court appearances before any sort of eviction in Brooklyn…. I think NY Times got played, didn’t check the facts on this one.
Jeremy Sapienza November 17th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
That’s a good point, Justin. Some of these landlords are real hardasses but you don’t just get booted because you miss one payment, especially one from a govt agency. I assumed it was a full month late, but even then… something isn’t right here.
petebfd November 17th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
i’m totally for stealing pfizer’s property. how can we steal more?
ricmac01 November 17th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Gosh, once upon a time nobody wanted to come anywhere NEAR Phizer’s facility – especially their employees!
JJ November 17th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
So steal lawfully owned land in order to help the community with affordable housing? Sure, only the ads will be written in Hebrew and will read “For Rent Only If You’re Hasidic”.
Reid November 18th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Illegal evictions happen more frequently than you might imagine in NYC. People come home and their locks are changed and they become homeless. While that article does not criticize ghetto landlords taking advantage of less-educated and vulnerable populations as harshly as it should, it makes sense.