NYC NOW - February 22, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

New York City has suspended engineer Richard Koenigsberg from conducting building inspections for two years after his poor workmanship that contributed to a building collapse in the Bronx. Meanwhile, a federal monitor overseeing New York City's public housing system says thousands of units are sitting empty during a citywide affordability crisis due to bureaucratic delays. Plus, police are investigating a northbound F train hitting and killing a man at the West 4th Street station. Finally, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral has faced criticism for hosting the funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a transgender rights activist and former sex worker, which drew over a thousand attendees. WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with New York Times reporter Liam Stack who’s been following the story.

NYC, Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Thursday, February 22nd. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. New York City is barring an engineer accused of shoddy workmanship from inspecting building facades for two years. Richard Konigsberg allegedly misidentified a column as non-structural

shortly before a building collapsed in the Bronx last December. Witnesses and a government official told WNYC that workers were jack hammering that same column before the building partially collapsed. The city announced the agreement today. Konigsberg also must pay a $10,000 penalty as part of the deal. He had been subject to a temporary suspension. He declined to comment.

A federal monitor overseeing New York City's public housing system says thousands of units are sitting empty during a citywide affordability crisis because of chronic bureaucratic delays. Monitor Barry Schwartz says nearly 5,000 NYCHA apartments are now vacant up from just a few hundred, two years ago. In a report, Schwartz says the administrative changes are leaving staff confused about their roles in leading to a huge backlog of work on empty units. NYCHA previously attributed the rise in vacancies to intensive renovation needs like asbestos removal and lead remediation. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Police are investigating a northbound F-train hitting and killing a man in his 40s.

Officials say it happened early this morning at the West 4th Street, Washington Square Station. It's the second time an F-train has killed someone this week. 42 and partly sunny now, slim chance of rain late this afternoon, partly sunny mid-40s for a high, and then tomorrow rain through early afternoon, a high near 50, cold and gusty Friday night, and cold on Saturday. Stay close. There's more after the break. Last week, more than a thousand people flocked at St. Patrick's Cathedral to memorialize the life of activists and performer Cecilia Gentilly.

And may Cecilia's community be loved and received and seen by each other and have access to life-affirming health care and God's protection with secure housing. We pray to our Lord Jesus Christ who was full of love. Gentilly died this month at the age of 52 in her Brooklyn home. Now the cathedral is facing a backlash for hosting a funeral for a woman who was trans, a former sex worker, and a self-proclaimed atheist. Liam Stack is a reporter with the New York Times. He's been chronicling the events of the funeral, and he joins us now.

Liam, first, please, give us a little bit of background on Cecilia-Gentaili. Why were so many people so eager to pay their respects to her? Well, Cecilia was a very well-known transgender community leader, an activist, and an actress. You know, locally, she was involved in a lot of lobbying efforts at the state level for transgender rights. She was also known to kind of a broader audience as an actress. She was on Pose, the FX series. She performed a one-woman show last year that actually focused on her atheism. So she was quite a well-known figure.

You went to the funeral last week. Describe it for us. It was a very crowded funeral. Even the priest who was performing the service began by saying that he had not seen a crowd that large since Easter Sunday. So it was a big event. There's a lot of energy in the crowd. people were really turned out, both in terms of the size of the crowd and also in their kind of fashions. The organizers of the funeral predicted that people would be really dressed to the nines.

So they actually invited interview magazine and a photographer from Vogue to come and take pictures. Vogue published a fashion spread a couple days after the event. Wow. It was really, in a lot of ways, over the top, not the kind of thing you normally see at a Catholic funeral. So there were some people in, you know, kind of traditional black morning dress, but there were a lot of bright colors, a lot of very sumptuous furs. One person was wearing a boa that was sewed out of, what appeared to be $100 bills. I think there was a real desire to really put on a show for Cecilia. I'm wondering, Liam, if Cecilia even wanted a ceremony in a church as someone who was an atheist?

I do not know the answer to that question, but the organizers of the funeral said that they wanted, to have the event at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The line they used with me was because the cathedral is an icon just like she was. One word I've heard people use in the aftermath, you know, in the minutes after it was over, a number of people said, oh, that was iconic, right? There was a desire to really put on just a great, fabulous show for this historic woman. And I do wonder if that's part of where the kind of culture clash comes in. The pastor of St. Patrick's Church says the church was not aware of

Ms. Gentile's background or her vowed atheism, but I understand that you actually had spoken with St. Patrick's about hosting this event for a transgender woman before the funeral. What was St. Patrick's reaction then, and how did it change after the event? Yes, on the day before the funeral, I contacted them just the press office to ask how this is all come about. And the day before, they were taking a very pastoral tone. And one thing I think that they want people to know is that just because she was transgender does not mean she could not have a Catholic funeral, right? The Pope Francis and the church have become, you know, more inclusive in recent years and they're really trying to reach out more to LGBTQ Catholics. And so the fact that she was trans was kind of immaterial. I think the wallity of her activism makes it trickier for them.

and then certainly the way that the funeral was used as kind of a, as I said, a performance or show. I think that was very upsetting for them. And then to find out later that she had been an atheist, they had a real problem with. It's one thing if you are a complicated Catholic, right? If you're somebody who advocates for causes that the church does not agree with, for example, but you are Catholic. I think the church still feels like, okay, this is a Catholic person. who will get a Catholic funeral.

But if you are someone who advocates causes that the church does not agree with and you're not Catholic, they find that very, very offensive. You know, there's been a significant conservative Catholic backlash to Gentile's funeral. What kind of complaints are those folks voicing? So there have been a range of complaints from the right about Gentile's funeral. And in its statement on Saturday, the archdiocese, said that it shared some complaints, but it did not specify which complaints it shared. And so I think that created some ambiguity for the archdiocese that has, in turn, upset some people.

Some of the complaints, as I said, before, were about just the appropriateness of having a Catholic funeral for a non-Catholic person who spent much of their career advocating for causes that the church does not support. Others were more vitriolic anger about the fact that Cecilia Gentile was transgender. And that's something that the cathedral and the archdiocese in the church, you know, up and down, they say, you know, a trans person is not automatically excluded from having a Catholic funeral. But some of the complaints you see in, you know, quite conservative Catholic circles, there's anger that she was allowed to have a funeral at all. There's anger that the priest referred to her with female pronouns. he used terms like Our sister Cecilia

For conservative Catholics All of that is You know Very offensive and you know upsetting But not everyone is upset about this Some parishioners have praised They charge for holding this service What did they say?

You know there is a mix of opinion I think some people say I don't like the videos I saw Of how people behaved at the funeral But it's not my place to really tell someone How to behave at a funeral I think this is probably fine You know

Some people say it's a good thing to a sign of outreach from the church. You know, so it's a mix. Describe the reaction from Gentile's friends and family in the aftermath of this firestorm. They were very upset about the implication that they lied to the cathedral. You know, if anything, it was a lie by omission.

They don't like the narrative that they tricked the cathedral into doing this. I think they're upset to see this event that they experience was very joyful and very celebratory because in that room it was. I mean, it was a lot of very healing event for them in a lot of ways. And I think they're unhappy to see that now swallowed up in all this controversy. That was New York Times reporter Liam Stagg.

Liam, thanks so much for explaining so much about this. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep hours. Also subscribe wherever you get your. podcasts.