Tenants Blame City in 889 Broadway Eviction
889 Broadway in Bushwick, where tenants were evicted last week without warning. — Photo by Jeremy Sapienza
A year after moving into 889 Broadway, Shawn Gallagher has found himself sleeping on a friend’s couch and bitter. He is one of many tenants who were abruptly evicted from their dwellings by the Department of Buildings on Thursday, August 6 after the building was cited with numerous housing violations.
Now Gallagher spends his days impatiently waiting to move back in and worrying about the belongings he was forced to leave behind.
“I edit films so I have a lot of audio equipment that’s sitting in my apartment, just waiting to get stolen,” Gallagher said. “I also have a fridge full of perishables and a bunch of plants that are dying. Worst of all, it’s hard not having a bed to sleep on… I just want my life to get back to normal.”
Though 889 Broadway has been a 15-unit residential property for more than 10 years, the trouble started two weeks ago when fire marshals found several fire code violations during a routine inspection. Building managers promptly began installing fire doors in the hallways, but were interrupted several days later when DOB officials arrived to issue vacate orders, saying the commercial building was illegally converted into apartments and lacked a sprinkler system.
Eric Cohen, a resident of 889 Broadway for three years, had taken a sick day from work the day the building was vacated and said DOB officials, followed by a group of police officers, went door to door to inform tenants they had to leave within three hours. It was about 9 a.m. and many residents had already left for work so officials simply padlocked their doors – locking some of their pets inside. Cohen was able to grab his most-needed possessions and bring them to his girlfriend’s place a few blocks away where he has been riding out the bureaucracy storm.
“I turned out a little luckier than others,” Cohen said, but he remains surprised by the DOB’s actions.
“This building was not your cliché trashy Bushwick hipster loft building,” Cohen added. “We had real working professionals in there and it was a nice place to live.”
Since the vacate order, VJ Holdings, the building’s management company, has been working non-stop with the DOB to correct faulty paperwork and bring 889 Broadway up to code, said a VJ Holdings manager who would like to remain anonymous. The company, which acquired the building in 1998, denies any prior knowledge of the cited violations and wants to move tenants back in as soon as possible.
“The DOB gave us no warning that this was going to happen,” said the manager. “What they did to the tenants was ridiculous. Especially considering how many people live in much worse housing conditions in this city.”
Building management has kept stranded tenants informed through daily emails and updates via Twitter. The most recent developments imply that residents will be homeless for at least another week or two since the DOB will not let anyone inhabit the building until a sprinkler system is installed in every unit. The management hopes tenants will be able to move back in once the sprinklers are active, but at this time, there is no way to know for sure.
“Technically, they can hold the tenants hostage until we install a new water main for the building,” said the manager. “It could take anywhere between a week and more than a month to get people back in their homes depending on what the DOB decides.”
As the DOB and VJ Holdings sort through mountains of paperwork, 889 Broadway residents have been making it any way possible as they wait to move back in. Cohen said the Red Cross was able to find temporary housing for about nine tenants and most others are staying with friends, lovers, or family. In attempt to offset the inconvenience, management has offered tenants $100 a day to cover lodging expenses during the fiasco.
Meanwhile, Gallagher has been contacting city council members and bringing tenants together to help speed up the process and get everyone back in their apartments. The situation has been frustrating for him and he can’t help but wonder if something else is going on behind the scenes — a grudge, a personal revenge plot?
Every night, he lies down on his friend’s lumpy couch and ponders the absurdity of it all.
“Yes, the landlords are at fault for allowing these conditions to exist, but there was no reason why the DOB couldn’t have talked to the landlords first and maybe come up with some kind of resolution without kicking innocent people out on the streets like that,” Gallagher said.
“I’m very mad at the city right now,” he added.
“I’m very mad at the city right now,” he added.
Boo hoo…..welcome to Bushwick.
Gallagher – give the city a break. They vacated the building because of a CO issue – they did their JOB. The OWNER, your piece of shit lazy unprofessional landlord, that’s who you should be angry at. They didn’t take the responsibility they should have.
Dresden – It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize. Like I said, the landlords are obviously at fault here, but if you had been kicked out of your home with absolutely no notice by arrogant, stonefaced DOB inspectors backed up by a paddy wagon full of police, then you would be mad at the City too.
Yes, the City did its job, but blindly following the letter of the building code and absolutely terrorizing dozens of innocent people made little sense in this situation. By no stretch of the imagination was there imminent danger to life in this building and there is no reason in my opinion why after 10+ years of residential use that the DOB couldn’t tolerate 2 or 3 weeks of continued residential use while the landlords made the necessary improvements/remediation in the building.
If the laws and codes under which DOB operates leaves them little room for more reasonable action in these situations, then those laws and codes are in serious need of review and revision.
If a building is in danger of immanent collapse or explosion, then this kind of action is warranted. But, for a sprinkler system! Come on. How many perfectly legal residential building built in the early 20th century have sprinklers?
The reason why I’ve been contacting politicians and talking to reporters like Diego is because there is a real problem with DOB’s inflexibility and power in these situations. Our building isn’t an isolated incidence of this inflexibility and I would hate to see anyone else have their lives thrown in chaos unnecessarily.
Yeah Shawn, give the inspectors a break — they’re just following orders.
The DOB is supposedly going crazy fining small building owners for bizarre infractions — like not posting a “no smoking” sign if they’re renovating. Maybe this is part of the same effort to drum up revenue for the city?
they just ’shut down’ my old loft on lorimer st. I got an email last week from our friend/landlord. a fire inspection that escalated. After 10 years of fire inspections where nothing was done, then this year they bring in the dob. Was there anything different this year from the last 10 years? Of course not.
I also reside in 889 Broadway(or I DID!),but I have been living on the other side of the building (at the 2 Belvidere St. entrance) for 4 years…& the D.O.B. couldn’t even grasp something as simple as a large building with exit/entrances on streets that are perpendicular to each other! Like Shawn said,the city’s agencies have been completely inflexible & vague about any kind of timeline for allowing us back into our homes. The City supposedly “vacated” us for our safety,yet they have put an entire building into a homeless state because of a lack of fire exits,& they (the D.O.B.) did not even know 889 had another entrance until we pointed it out to D.O.B. inspectors the day they were kicking us out! They are blindly following orders. No common sense or on-the-spot decision making ability AT ALL. The SS troops in Nazi Germany just “did their job”,too. Following orders..Ha!! Like lemmings off a cliff. I believe that Bloomberg has given the orders to call in all the real-estate chips around the city before his re-election comes up. This is happening in every Borough right now. NYC now completely belongs to greedy developers who pay off people at D.O.B. & City Hall(in “cash contributions”) in order to clear out plots of land (w/dubious Vacate Orders) & then they can either re-develop it or renovate,then raise the prices. Thanks for the memories,old New York. You will be missed. But only by true New Yorkers. See you in court,D.O.B.!!
This is the system we live in. I’ve posted before where you can find the CO for your building – if you go online and see that there’s not CO for a residential use, or an AIR use, then you are in danger of being kicked out AT ANY TIME. We live in something of a Byzantine legal situation in NYC, but if you live here, you have to deal with it. Being angry at the city or the DOB is like being angry at a dog that bit you. It bit you because you were there to bite. Get outside it’s leash length. DUH.
Thanks Jackasses! Thanks Suckers!
From the natives…
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…
Whew! Thanks,Dresden! It’s a good thing I’ve had your sage wisdom to guide me in my 23 years of living in NYC(came to Manhattan as a teenager,been in Brooklyn since’90)…don’t know what I’d have done without you. Your pompous,judgmental lack of empathy is a great example of what New York has turned into. And that’s why you(& anybody like you) should just stay here stewing in your self-righteousness,& keep inviting your wack friends & family to join you,until you’re surrounded by lots of superior beings like yourself. Then the rest of us poor,uninformed humans will at least know where all the A-holes are! And we can laugh at you. (From Berlin,or San Fran,or Budapest,or Tokyo..)
Dresden does have a point, describing the reality of the situation — the city doesn’t work for or care about you, it never did, so you might as well do all you can to avoid it. Like not wearing your iPod at night walking down the street to be aware of potential muggers, you should always check out the legal status of your building online.
Gordon is right on the money! Shawn,too. City govt.’s are always complicated to navigate,but their ultimate purpose is to HELP THE CITIZENS. And if NYC thinks it’s helping the tenants of these buildings when it evicts them & makes them homeless,then it’s defeating its own purpose. About this forum: It seems like ‘Dresden’ is just here to criticize others & ‘Professional Alternative’ is like his lackey,just being a Yes-man to whatever Dresden posts. Are they the same person? Quite possibly. Bushwick still rocks,but the Hipster/Yuppie quotient is getting dangerously high…& with it,the amount of smugness is going up,too. Care about your neighbors,people! You’re on the same team. To quote Dresden,”DUH”.
I’m one of the tenants from this building and was quoted in this article.
Dresden: you are correct. Somewhere the landlord must’ve fucked up. But it’s also way more complicated than that. And, yes, the DOB were just doing their jobs. However, the DOB initially cited a lot of violations as justification for kicking us out, ALL of which were invalidated except for one: lack of fire sprinklers. That’s it. And why? Because this is deemed a commercial building by the DOB. But we can still live there. Only after the sprinklers are installed. Now this says more to the byzantine, complicated and contradictary zoning laws and building codes of industrial-turned-residential areas of Brooklyn. And I’m pretty certain that almost every residential building along Broadway from Halsey all the way to Peter Lugers are in violation of some code and, because of this, would be in the DOB’s right to shut down.
One of the main points of dispute (one that Shawn touched upon) was with regard to two points of egress in terms of fire safety. Now, that C of O you posted on the site earlier… that is for ONE address. The building itself actually comprises of TWO adresses. It’s still one building. Just two separate exits/entrances with different adresses. That’s because our building was originally two buildings combined into one and that has been the source of every confounding interpretation made by the DOB. There’s also a C of O granting permission to do residential work on the building in 2003, then another that contradicts that which simply states “in preview.” Not only that, but the building has been fined for an elevator that does not exist, and has been held accountable for an incomplete work request that was made in 1994 — when the current owners only bought the building in 1998.
Now, do I completely trust the landlord? No. But I don’t trust the DOB, either. Largely because it’s a system so bureaucratic as to be rendered detrimental to what’s fair to both tenants and landlords. It’s a system built to be non-progressive in many ways. In terms of this case, somebody tipped off the DOB about something and apparently there was enough time between the tip off and when the DOB shut the building down to warn somebody, anybody. But this did not happen. The landlord found out when we found out. According to the landlord, a fire marshall seemed to be okay with the building a week before. Another issue was lack of fire doors in the hallways. This was pointed out to the landlords while the firemarshal was there. And an agreement was made to install those doors. And they were in the process of installing those very doors the day the DOB showed up to shut us down. So… who knows?
The point is we were the victim of circumstance and the best we can do is partake in a process of expediting our return, which all of the tenants have attempted to do.
Yeah Dresden, I know what a fucking C of O is, thanks. That’s not the issue, there are literally thousands of buildings in NYC where the use is contrary to the C of O, it’s a very common problem and in the end it’s an administrative problem. There was no need to kick dozens of people onto the street for a contrary C of O.
Actually, if you cared to look and not just show off your very elementary real estate knowledge, you would see that even the designation of our building was murky. Yes the C of O was for light manufacturing, but the more recent DOF designation was C-7 (walk-up residential apartments with 6 or more units), which means the building is taxed appropriately and that there is a disconnect between agencies. For the DOB to come in heave everyone on the street for a CO that’s been outdated for decades wasn’t “Byzantine”, it was just stupid.
Here’s a little lesson for you Professor Dresden, When the NYC building code was updated in 1968 any commercial use building built before that time was required to have fire doors and sprinklers (which is why we are currently homeless), but it was not deemed necessary in residential buildings from that time. The issue is that the building is not commercial and has not been for a long time. If it could be proved that the building was used for residential purposes from a certain time then the old residential codes would be grandfathered, but no one is really sure what gets grandfathered and what doesn’t. This is why the City is working on a totally new building code.
I totally agree that the City is doing its job when it clears out a building where there is real immanent danger to life, and although they really need to give the residents more notice in these eviction situations, I basically agree that life and safety issues override. But, to render innocent people suddenly homeless for building code technicalities when there is no structural or other immanent danger – that just shows an unthinking inflexibility that is way out of proportion to the real risk of the situation.
The word of the day is: “Byzantine”.
Good luck guys. Fight the power. Be angry. I was angry for a long time. I even held up signs and stuff. Wow, was I foolish. No hard feelings!
Just to add another 2 cents:
There’s another factor that hasn’t been mentioned during the discussions, news feeds, etc., and that’s the involvement of the NY Fire Department. Apparently they are calling the shots here in their own way. So, it’s possible the DOB could have approved an initial plan allowing us to return to our homes a lot earlier than anticipated. But the NYFD could put the kabosh on that. Based on their interpretation of whether it’s safe for us to return or not. This is just an example of two agencies determing the future of a building without any direct communication with one another. And if one says “okay” it could easily be rendered moot if another agency says “no.” And vice versa. So whether the building is “commercial” or “residential” can be rendered moot at a certain point.
Fuck the government. That’s what I say.
K says: “Fuck the government. That’s what I say.”
So eloquent (sarcastic tone). Is that the way you speak to your mother?
You mean, like, fuck the government, like let’s not have one? Like Somalia? Ha ha ha!
Being evicted or kicked out is so boss.
yeah so me and a roomate moved in on aug 1st,
4 days later, barely had shit out of boxes were kicked out,
ive lived in bushwick, had shitty landlords, been in buildings
that had violations, but this was so sudden,
“welcome to bushwick”
fuck you yo,
i am typing this from my friends computer, i am sitting in my friends livingroom,
i have mad money tied up in this apt that i just dropped,
i work from home and am losing money for everyday im not there,
plus all my shit is there,
the “compensation” just stopped and im worried that since nothing is
contractually tied, me and my roomate are gonna be hung out to dry.
so tommygunz go fuck yourself, which im sure you do in your own home,
alone,
like every other night of the week.