Community board vents rage at city homeless policy
Despite the concerns of residents and local officials that a Longwood apartment building is unsafe, the building will continue to serve as a shelter for homeless families, a spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services told angry community board members.
Once repairs are completed on the building at 941 Intervale Ave., which was badly damaged by a fire on Dec. 9, homeless families will be moved in, said Alex Zablocki, of the homeless services department.
Members of the community board and district manager Rafael Salamanca blasted Zablocki and a representative from Aguila Management, the non-profit paid to help formerly homeless residents in the building. At a Jan. 9 meeting at the board office, they said the city program that places homeless families in apartments is shoddily administered, hurts other tenants in the buildings and enriches slumlords.
A month after the fire hospitalized five and displaced the other residents, neither Aguila nor the city could say who the Intervale building’s owner is, they admitted when they were questioned.
A child set the Longwood building ablaze by setting fire to a pile of mattresses that tenants say the super had left lying in the lobby for days. They said leaving the mattresses out was just one example of a poorly-maintained building.
Forty families who were moved to a Mott Haven shelter after the fire won’t be back. They will soon be moved into other transitional housing, but their place will be taken by new homeless families when renovations are finished.
“These are not livable conditions,” protested Salamanca, after showing slides of the building’s charred walls and peeling paint.
After seeing the slides, board members demanded to know why the residents had been allowed back into their apartments in the damaged building for nearly a week after the blaze. Tenants had complained the fire escapes and smoke detectors did not work when they fled during the inferno. They worried about the smoke, and possibly lead, in the air, when they returned.
“Is that acceptable to you as a human being to live like that? You have to do better because these are people’s lives,” board member Paula Fields told Alex Brussovansky of Housing Solutions USA, another non-profit that will take over management of the homeless program from Aguila.
The CEO of both Housing Solutions USA and Aguila is Robert V. Hess, the former director of the Department of Homeless Services.
Board members criticized the city and Aguila for allowing the building to fall into disrepair well before the December blaze.
“When it comes to the maintenance of the building, that’s not Aguila’s responsibility,” countered Zablocki, explaining that the landlord and a separate management company are responsible for maintenance.
The city’s Department of Housing and Development website lists the building’s owner as Intervale Realty. A woman who answered the phone at Intervale Realty said the landlord’s name was Pedro, but declined to take a message for him and hung up when asked his last name.
The city pays $3000 a month for each homeless tenant. Just four of the tenants in the Intervale Avenue building rent on their own, for a far lower sum. Salamanca said one of the renters told him and a representative from Senator Ruben Diaz Sr.’s office that the landlord refused to conduct needed repairs on her apartment, and offered her $6000 to move out.
“If it’s a rent paying tenant, we are Homeless Services: we have no jurisdiction over someone’s private unit that they’re renting from a landlord,” said Zablocki.
Board members demanded to know why the city pays so much for squalid apartments with sparse furnishings, crumbling ceilings and moldy bathrooms. The city’s payment covers not only rent, but residents’ electric bills and the cost of building security, along with the fees for non-profit organizations like Aguila to help the residents find housing and jobs, Zablocki responded.
Board member Robert Crespo, a property manager who manages four buildings, said the city is failing to live up to its responsibility to the tenants and the neighborhood.
“DHS has more than just a contract,” he shouted at Zablocki. “You’re a stakeholder in that building.”
“As a city agency if you have an issue with a building and there’s problems like this one and the landlord is not servicing tenants, that to me is like a slumlord,” said Fields.