NYC NOW - May 10, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

Representative George Santos has been arrested on federal criminal charges. Plus, a housing policy group says New York City can start fixing its decades-long housing shortage by utilizing vacant city-owned buildings. Also, residents in a neighborhood nicknamed “The Hole” have for decades begged city officials to fix dire problems. Now, tenants say worsening conditions have led to health issues. And finally, we’re back in the community garden. WNYC is traversing the five boroughs to meet some of the people getting their hands dirty to strengthen neighborhood ties and increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Good evening and welcome to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. U.S. Representative George Santos has been arrested on federal criminal charges. A U.S. attorney says the indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations. The 13-count indictment says the New York Republican received donations to his company under the pretense the money would be used to support his campaign. Santos has faced outrage over revelations he fabricated parts of his life story,

including lying about being a wealthy Wall Street dealmaker. New York City is stuck in a decades-long housing shortage. While city leaders look for ways to bring vacant apartments back onto the market, one housing policy group says the city can start with its own buildings. WNYC's David Brand has more. A five-story building on Lennox Avenue in Harlem could be used as housing for New Yorkers in need of an apartment. Instead, the windows and front entrance are covered in plywood. It's one of many empty city-owned buildings identified by the organization Open New York.

They're calling on the city to fund renovations and hire more housing staff to get the work done. It won't be easy, but Open New York Policy Director Andrew Fein says the apartments can help solve the housing crisis. There should be more of a public reckoning with these buildings and setting real priorities and deadlines to get them occupied. The Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development said it's working hard to get the repairs done quickly. Stick around. There's more after the break. Near the border of Brooklyn and Queens sits a neighborhood known as the hole in East New York. For decades, residents there have begged city officials to fix dire problems that cause their streets and apartments to flood on a regular basis. Now, tenants in one of the buildings say the situation has grown so bad it's causing them to get sick.

WNYC's Sophia Chang has the story. Inside a three-story white building on Amber Street in the farthest pocket of eastern Brooklyn, three families are fighting a landlord who has long ignored decrepit conditions inside. And the city's response has failed to help them. Ashley Saunders lives with her mom and sister on the second floor. The apartment is leaking so badly, there is a cluster of dark fungus sprouting on the ceiling of her bedroom. So this is actually black mold that turned into a monster. Sonders says the environment has given her skin rashes, and her sister now has breathing problems.

The building on Amber Street is part of what's known as the whole, a series of blocks on the Brooklyn Queen's border that were built on a creek bed. Decades ago, the area was known as a place where the mafia dumped bodies. In some ways, the neighborhood today is like many others in New York, with people hanging out and barbecuing in their front yards. But the infrastructure is far worse than anywhere else in the city. The area is below grade and has no sewer lines. That means water and sewage flow onto its curbs anytime it rains. Former mayor, Rudy Giuliani,

proposed to elevate the neighborhood streets and build sewers more than two decades ago, but the work never happened and the problems persisted. Last year, developers built the Linden Terrace complex across the street from Saunders building. It's a massive 234-unit affordable housing development with a planet fitness gym on the ground floor. A press release from the city touted the elevated lobby, green roofs, and solar panels,

and noted that it's part of a program that gives its owner's property tax discounts. The new building is set higher than the rest of Amber Street, which means stormwater runs down and pools in front of Ashley Saundra's door. Because there aren't any storm sewers, floodwater sits there until it dries up or is pumped out by a truck. On the first floor of the building, Ricardo Vivas opens a door in his kitchen that leads to the backyard. There's a couple of his kids' bikes lying in the grass. He points to an uncovered septic tank a few feet away that he says is leaking sewage. Pipes is busted, so it leaks over here, too.

It's on this side. So we try to keep the door closed and the window closed. So it stinks. I called the landlord Frank Solicito, who lives nearby in Queens. He's a criminal court officer who also owns several other residential properties around Brooklyn and Queens. Solicito says he, He knows all about the problems at the Amber Street building, but he won't make any fixes until the tenants pay him thousands of dollars in back rent. My first obligation is I take care of the tenants that pay their rent on time.

That's whose repairs are going to get fixed first. What about the mushroom patch in Ashley Sonders' apartment? I asked him. Yeah, unfortunately, there's a mushroom. There's a mushroom growing out of that wall. I've never seen anything like it before, you know, and will I do anything? You got to tell me where the money comes from. The situation is so bad that Saunders went to a city council hearing last month, where she told lawmakers the sewage in the backyard made her home smell like methane,

and she regularly wakes up to roaches in her kitchen. We have reported these incidents to various agencies with no help. I was told by the health department that I can clean the black mold with mushrooms, the black mold and mushrooms with chlorox and a washcloth. At least three city agencies have looked into the 311 complaints, that the Amber Street residents have filed. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development has issued 32 violations for mold, roaches, leaky roof,

sewage, electrical wiring, and more. The Department of Buildings issued violations for an unauthorized above-ground septic tank. And the Health Department issued a summons in February for the building's unsanitary conditions, though it's not clear which are the specific issues it targeted. Yet none of that has made a difference. Christina Lopez lives in the top floor

of the Amber Street building with her family, where she deals with mold on her bathroom ceiling and leaky walls. This is not a place where people should be living. It's not something even as a less resort. Landlord Frank Solicito says the Amber Street apartments are bargains, and the residents should lower their expectations. You look at a thousand dollar apartment. What do you expect? You're going to, you're going to expect a perfect apartment? You know, you want a perfect apartment? You pay market value. I told Frank Solicito that Christina Lopez's ceiling has started leaking during the recent heavy rainstorms. Good, perfect. I hope it could become so unbearable that she moves out. For WNYC News, I'm Sophia Chang.

Community gardens are springing to life across New York City. These vital green spaces exist because of the hard work of volunteers committed to seeing them thrive. All this week, WNYC is making its way across the five boroughs to meet some of the people getting their hands dirty to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables. My name is Ena K. McPherson. I am the founder of Tranquility Farm, situated, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Central of Brooklyn. I was born in Kingston, Jamaica.

Kingston is a city, it's like Harlem. But my mother was a country girl, and my mother is sort of the most defining character in our entire lives. You know, my mother was amazing. She raised us in a urban setting with rural sensibilities. I actually came to this neighborhood over 20 years ago, and I invested. I purchased property.

And then I saw these vacant spaces that were around. And actually, I have to say, my first intention was to uplift the neighborhood, is to improve the neighborhood. It was really not to do public gardening because it's a whole different dynamic. gardening publicly and gardening in your backyard. But it's life-affirming and it's amazing. You know, I'm one of four black women that created these spaces. And we did it with no money. And really, we did it on our own and really presented this and say, you know, here,

and this is what we want and we want you to support us. I see, you know, really hardcore young men pass by. And they're not even able to express out loud what their feelings. feeling, but they will call me over and said, this is, you know, whatever, obscenity, beautiful Ma. We grow a lot of edible food here. We grow a cultural crop. A couple of years ago, we had beds and beds of African greens.

And there was this woman. She was a doctor. She is from Ghana, and she passed by, and I had her, you know, from Cameroon. They call it Tete. It's similar to Amaran. And she couldn't believe it. She called her mom. And she said, ma.

I mean, bedstine, you know what I ran into? And that just, you know, makes my heart sore. Ina K. McPherson is the founder of Tranquility Farm in the Bedstine neighborhood of Brooklyn. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.