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Migrants Being Housed in Brooklyn Rec. Centers Amid Crisis

glendaleregstg on August 16, 2023

A red brick building with columns at the entrance stands in front of a blue sky. The U.S., NYC Parks and New York State flags hang off the building. The words "Sunset Play Center" are written on the building's facade, and people can be seen walking up the steps to the entrance.

The Sunset Park Recreation Center.

By Carmo Moniz | brooklyndtstarnews@gmail.com

As New York City’s migrant crisis continues, the city has taken to housing the influx of asylum seekers in unconventional locations, most recently in the recreation centers of Brooklyn’s McCarren and Sunset parks.

Over a hundred asylum-seekers are being temporarily housed in the centers as shelters and emergency hotel space in New York City have exceeded capacity. In a statement, a City Hall spokesperson said the number of asylum-seekers coming through the city’s intake system has left it to deal with a national crisis on its own. The spokesperson also said almost 100,000 asylum seekers have passed through the city’s system since last spring.

“We are constantly searching for new places to give asylum seekers a place to rest their heads, and recently located a wing of the McCarren Recreation Center and the Sunset Park Recreation Center in Brooklyn to house adult asylum seekers,” the spokesperson said in the statement.

The new shelter spaces, which have been met with mixed reactions from local residents, will house around 80 and 100 migrants, respectively. Those housed in the centers receive three meals per day and have access to onsite shower and bathroom facilities.

When a group of 60 or so migrants moved into the Sunset Park center last week, around 100 local residents protested their arrival, while others offered them food and other resources, according to Gothamist.

Councilmember Alexa Avilés, who represents Sunset Park, said she asked those planning the protests to instead focus their efforts on community funding and problems with the immigration system in a statement.

“Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity,” Avilés said in the statement. “I recognize community frustrations and share them over a lack of communication from the Mayor’s Office and a temporary disruption of services, but we must not fear monger. Whether you’re the Governor of Florida or a local, I will not stand for the use of human beings for political gain.”

A group of six city, state and federal Brooklyn politicians, including assemblymember Emily Gallagher, councilmember Lincoln Restler and councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez, said they were notified that the McCarren Park center would be used to house asylum seekers ahead of time and that access to pool and fitness facilities would remain open in a joint statement.

“We will continue pushing to secure more appropriate facilities to house people in need and expedite moving New Yorkers from our shelter system into vacant permanent housing,” the statement reads. “In the interim, we will do whatever we can to galvanize compassion and support for our new temporary neighbors.”

Benjamin Rodriguez, an asylum-seeker staying in the Sunset Park center, said that he came to New York from Peru seven months ago, and that he was previously being housed in a hotel. He said that while he has been able to find employment in the city, many others have not and would benefit from more government assistance with employment, such as work permits.

“We have a roof to live under, and for that I give thanks,” Rodriguez said in Spanish. “We know we are going through a very difficult situation, but it will pass one day.”

Mohammed Yamdi, who traveled to the city from Mauritania and is also staying in the Sunset Park center, said that there is little work available for migrants. He also said he has been told his request for asylum could take six months to a year to be processed.

“I want to bring my family here,” Yamdi said in French. “My children would learn to write and go to school and be alright, not like in Mauritania.”

Currently, there is a backlog of over two million cases in U.S. immigration courts, according to a 2023 Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse report. The average wait time for a hearing is more than four years, and receiving a final decision can take even longer.

Luke Petrinovic, a city employee who lives near Sunset Park, said he had worked in a migrant shelter in El Paso, Texas last summer, and he thinks it is important to be welcoming of asylum seekers.

“It’s talked about like it’s a crisis, but migration is a fact of human civilization,” Petrinovic said. “People oftentimes get very discouraged because it’s an unsolvable problem, but that means it’s the sort of thing that you have to accept and learn to be a good person in that circumstance.”

Opioid Use Treatment Center Opens in Downtown Brooklyn

glendaleregstg on August 9, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams at the new center.

By Carmo Moniz | news@queensledger.com

Treatment for opioid addiction can be difficult to access, but a new center in downtown Brooklyn is looking to remove barriers to care.

The new wellness center, which is run by the Center for Community Alternatives, will provide opioid use disorder treatment through medication, counseling, employment support, court advocacy and other services at no cost to patients. The center is a part of a New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports project that will create up to 39 of these programs across the state.

Mayor Eric Adams attended the ribbon cutting ceremony for the center on 25 Chapel St. this past Friday, praising the De Blasio administration’s past efforts to curb drug overdoses and voicing concerns over the rise of fentanyl. Assemblymember Jo Ann Simon, State Senator Jabari Brisport and Deputy Brooklyn Borough President Kimberly Council were also in attendance.

“Because you’re at a bend in the road, it’s not the end of the road, as long as you allow it to make the turn,” Adams said. “On the other side of addiction, we see viable, healthy New Yorkers that want to give back.”

There are currently 35 other outpatient centers for substance use disorder licensed by OASAS in Brooklyn, but this will be the first center to take a holistic approach to treatment.

Mayor Eric Adams stands in front of a crowd of around 10 people, holding a pair of comically large scissors behind a large ribbon. The ribbon is navy blue and has white text reading "GRAND OPENING" on it twice.

Adams cutting the ribbon at the center’s opening.

Carole Eady-Porcher, a former opioid user who now serves on CCA’s board, spoke about her experiences with drug use and how difficult it was for her to find help. She said that she lost her job due to her drug use and was eventually arrested for selling drugs while pregnant.

Eady-Porcher said that she had sought a treatment program from a judge in her case, but that when her request was accepted the center she was sent to shamed patients for their past drug use. She eventually enrolled in a CCA program for women, which gave her access to employment and counseling.

“Across this country, people who use opioids are overrepresented in jails and prisons, and after at least they are the most likely to overdose due to their reduced tolerance,” Eady-Porcher said. “What New York has needed for a long time is an integrated opioid treatment program that is tailored to the needs of people who’ve been impacted by the criminal injustice system.”

Eady-Porcher said that while treatments for opioid use disorder have existed for years, they have not been widely accessible. She said that if she had had a program like what’s offered at the new center when she was first struggling with drug use, she might have avoided using and being homeless for 12 years.

Black and Latine people are the most common demographics for drug-related arrests in New York City, according to 2023 arrest data. So far this year, there have been around 3,400 arrests of Black people, more than 700 of Black hispanic people and just under 2,000 of white hispanic people over drug-related offenses.

Council spoke about the role mass incarceration and criminalization play in drug addiction, as well as her own experiences with drug use in her family. She said her father was a drug addict and that she lost her sister to a fentanyl overdose last year.

“The thing that brings us here today is a very big deal. The Center for Community alternatives is showing up for Brooklyn in a major way,” Council said. “When we leave from this place of love and care, that's when we turn the tide in the opioid crisis. That's when we put an end to the senseless preventable deaths incurred by our failure to show up in a real way, for those who need our support.”

OASAS commissioner Chinazo Cunningham, who is also a physician and professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said the center aims to improve access to treatment for underserved communities, including minorities and justice-involved people. She said a person dies from an overdose every 90 minutes in New York, and that justice-involved people are up to 40 times more at risk of overdosing than the general public.

“We know we're in a historic place in terms of the overdose epidemic. This is the worst we've ever experienced in this country, in this state and in this city,” Cunningham said. “This work happening here at CCA is so important, more important now than ever before, and specifically for the population that it serves.”

New Legislation Introduces Speed Limiting Device Proposal in Brooklyn

glendaleregstg on August 9, 2023

By Oona Milliken | omilliken@queensledger.com

At the Brooklyn Heights intersection where Katherine Harris was hit and killed by a speeding driver in April of this year, Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assemblymember Emily Gallagher introduced legislation that would impose hindrances on drivers going more than five miles per hour above the speed limit. According to a press release, the bill would mimic the model of drunk driving legislation where convicted drivers must prove that they are sober by blowing into a device before they can start their car. Similarly, the legislation would only impact driver’s with six or more speeding tickets in one year.

In a statement, Assemblymember Gallagher said the bill is important to take precautionary measures to ensure that people like Katherine Harris do not have to die.

“As more Americans continue to die from motor vehicle crashes than in any other country in the world, we need to take proactive and common sense measures to reduce traffic violence,” Gallagher said. “Cars and trucks can act as weapons when used recklessly, and people who have repeatedly demonstrated they will endanger lives while operating vehicles should be limited in how fast they can drive.”

According to Kate Brockwehl, the survivor of a near fatal car crash and an advocate for the organization Families for Safe Streets, the legislation is a big step in reducing serious car accidents and deaths. Brockwehl said that many people in the United States think of traffic fatalities as just an unfortunate part of life, something unpreventable, and said she wants people to understand that serious car crashes can be avoided by infrastructure like this bill. According to Brockwehl, she was hit by a speeding car as a pedestrian in 2017, and spent a year and a half in recovery from the incident.

‘I’m a huge fan of the bill,” Brockwehl said. “To me, this bill is incredibly straightforward. It doesn’t remove your keys, it doesn’t affect your ability to drive, you can go all the places you need to. It says you can’t go more than ten [sic] miles over the speed limit. You don’t get a ticket until that point.”

According to Brockwehl, bills such as the one that Gounardes and Gallagher are putting forward were nonexistent in the United States until recently because the technology to safely slow down cars did not exist in American markets, though some form of speed reduction technology has been used in the European Union on all new cars since 2022, according to Autoweek Magazine.

Under the new legislation put forward by Gounardes and Gallagher, offending drivers that try to go more than five miles will have their speed reduced by intelligent speed assistance . The bill has a precedent in an ISA pilot program installed on New York City fleet vehicles, in which 99 percent of vehicles successfully remained within the speed limit parameters.

Brockwehl said that the legislation is just one step in fighting traffic violence, and said that Families for Safe Streets is also pushing to introduce alternative street configurations that would slow down drivers, including something called a “road diet” which would add more room for bicycle paths and turning lanes. Brockwehl said that her ultimate goal is for fatal and near fatal traffic incidents to be a thing of the past.

“There’s nothing preventing my being killed next time, or like someone I love, unless I never go outside again in my life,” Brockwehl said. “I think we’re just so incredibly used to [traffic deaths] in the United States to the point that it affects so many more people than people who are involved in Families for Safe Streets, but I think people don’t realize it yet.”

In a statement, Councilmember Lincoln Restler said that, if passed, the legislation will ultimately lead to safer and more habitable streets.

“Too many New Yorkers are victims of traffic violence due to reckless drivers,” said Restler. “I’m excited to support Senator Gounardes’ and Assembly Member Gallagher’s common sense legislation that will increase accountability on the most dangerous drivers, make our neighborhoods safer, and ultimately save lives.”

Private Health Clinic in South Williamsburg Steps Up Amidst Migrant Crisis Overflow

Oona Milliken on August 9, 2023

By Oona Milliken | omilliken@queensledger.com

On any given Sunday on the outskirts of the Orthodox Hasidic community in South Williamsburg, passerby might turn the street to see hundreds of migrants gathered outside of Parcare, an unassuming private health clinic on Park Avenue, speaking animatedly in languages like French, Bengali, Arabic and Spanish.

The migrants are there for a drive that Parcare operates in order to help people who have recently arrived in the United States navigate the asylum seeking process, which includes information on how to obtain health insurance, registering for an IDNYC card and an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, getting in contact with immigrant lawyers or finding permanent housing. Gary Schlesinger, founder and chief executive officer of Parcare, said the drive emerged when patients who spoke little English started turning up at Parcare around Nov. 2022 without insurance, identification or long-term housing.

Levi Jurkowiz handing out informational flyers to those waiting to get inside Parcare facilities

“It started affecting us because all of a sudden, we started seeing people coming to our front desk asking for help,“ Schlesinger said. “So we jumped in, trying to help. I felt, ‘This is the right thing to do. This is the moral thing to do.’”

Levi Jurkowiz, community liaison for Parcare, said that Parcare runs three drives a week, on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays for anyone that might need assistance, but migrants are the primary visitors. Jurkowiz said Parcare is trying to help with the migrant crisis as much as they can, but he said he feels frustrated that there is no broader plan of action from the city and federal government.

“There is no plan, there’s an immigrant crisis. The people here are really, all of them, just looking to work, pay taxes and get their papers. We should help them get that,” Jurkowitz said. “I think there’s an issue with the federal government, they have to figure out what to do.”

According to Jurkowitz, the people who come into Parcare often live in shelters and speak little English, which makes it difficult to obtain health insurance, bank accounts, or a job as you need a permanent address to register, and it is difficult to find work if you do not speak the language. Jurkowiz said the system is incredibly difficult to navigate, and many newcomers arrive after long and arduous journeys with debt from cartels and other predatory lenders who make enormous profit off of smuggling migrants across the border.

“It costs them thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to come here,” Jurkowiz said. “And the people who lend them the money aren’t the nicest people in the world.”

Ibrahim, 23, said he had traveled through five countries and several American states to come to New York from his home in Mauritania, a country located in Western Africa. We are only using Ibrahim’s first name to protect his identity. Ibrahim speaks French and Arabic but minimal English, and communicated via a mix of spoken word and Google Translate. According to Ibrahim, life in Mauritania was extremely difficult, and he felt confined by government constraints, social and family pressures as well as a lack of opportunities.

“I have a lot of problems with Mauritania. You can’t be free,” Ibrahim said. “I want to be free in my decisions, I want to do what I like to do.”

Ibrahim said he studied computer science and business in Tunisia before coming to the United States, and hopes to continue his studies. However, he said he has had trouble finding work and resources in the U.S. due to his uncertain legal status in the country. Ibrahim said that immigration services cater to people from Spanish speaking countries, and that many under-the-table job opportunities available to Spanish migrants are not given to African migrants. According to Ibrahim, it has also been hard adjusting to living in the shelters where there is a lack of showers and personal space, and that theft is a big issue.

“It’s very hard to live where I live,” Ibrahim said. “[In the shelter] we live 70 in one room, eight floors. The big problem for me for now is stealing. You have phone? Steal. You have bag? Steal. I have papers, they steal that.”

Schlesinger, who grew up in the Orthodox community in Williamsburg, said he feels an obligation to help the asylum seekers after hearing stories from his parents who escaped the Holocaust from Hungary.

Inside Parcare

“My father used to always tell me how grateful he was for anyone that used to help them because they came here with nothing. He was talking the immigrant language, you know, he was an immigrant,” Schlesinger said. “So, when I started looking into this, I thought, ‘You know, this is a crisis, let’s do something.’”

As of July 19, there are 54,800 migrants under New York City’s care with hundreds of people arriving in the city each day. In a press conference, Mayor Eric Adams said the crisis has reached its breaking point as news broke that newcomers have been turned away from overflowing shelters and forced to sleep on the streets; Adams urged President Joe Biden to give aid to the city in order to alleviate the issue.

According to Jurkowiz, squabbles between Republican and Democratic politicians have caused the situation, and that the migrants have been caught in the middle. Since April 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abott has been sending busloads of migrants to sanctuary cities like New York and Washington D.C. in order to protest the Biden administration’s border policy. Since last spring, New York City has seen an influx of 90,000 migrants and asylum-seekers. Schlesinger said that the work Parcare does is not enough to help all the people arriving into the city, and that there needs to be more money and infrastructure to deal with the issue.

“Let’s face it, the money really comes from the federal government, that’s where the billions are,” Schlesinger said. “And if they don’t recognize this as a crisis, there’s a big issue here because there’s thousands of people and if the money isn’t going to come from Washington, God knows where this is going to end. Private people like us can only do so much.”

Notorious B.I.G Statue Unveiled in Downtown Brooklyn

glendaleregstg on August 9, 2023

By Oona Milliken | omilliken@queensledger.com

On Cadman Plaza, nestled amongst a cluster of institutional buildings like the Brooklyn Borough Hall, the County Clerk’s office and various other courthouses criminal and otherwise, stands an institution in its own right: Brooklyn’s own Biggie Smalls. A nine-foot tall interactive sculpture of the late rapper was unveiled on Wed. Aug 2 and was celebrated with speeches from Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and other community leaders, a dance performance by Victory Music & Dance Company as well as a marching band concert.

Sherwin Banfield, the artist who created the sculpture, said he was inspired to make the piece because of his connection to Biggie’s creativity and artistry.

“I was exposed to Biggie my first year of Parsons School of Design, my next door neighbor, he invited me over and said ‘You’ve got to hear this, this album just dropped,’ this was in 94, it was ‘Ready to Die,’” Banfield said. “When I listened and I heard it, I was completely blown away. It was completely unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It was cinema, cinema as music.”

The sculpture, dubbed “Sky’s the Limit in the county of Kings,” is cast with Biggie’s face in bronze, complemented with a variety of different materials such as resin, stone and stainless steels and also includes an audio component powered by solar panels that run alongside Big’s back. Hip-hop is not just being honored in Cadman Plaza: there is a world-wide movement to celebrate 50 years of hip-hop music, with multiple events happening in New York City this summer. Banfield said he was heavily inspired by hip-hop music, and that he wanted to mix different artistic mediums to mimic the genre’s amalgamating of different sounds and musical styles. In an interview, he also said he wanted the statute to inspire young people.

“This sculpture is not for everyone, but for kids that find themselves in unusual circumstances that are hurtful, or they might feel like the world is against them,” Banfield said. “You know, they can look towards this sculpture as an achievement for someone that took their talents, that took their God-given talents, and ran with it. Biggie said, ‘If you find something that’s in you, just develop it.’”

Biggie Smalls, who also went by the Notorious B.I.G, Biggie or just Big, was born 1972 as Christopher George Latore Wallace in Clinton Hill. He is often named by critics and other musicians as one of the best rappers of all time. Biggie was multi-faceted, and touched upon deeper subjects like struggle, depression, compassion, love, and suicide in a way that other hip-artists at the time would not speak about publicly. Oftentimes, he was also vulgar, rapping bluntly about sex, violence and drugs, and was controversial for the darkness of his lyrics. Overall, his rumbling voice, melodic lyricism and gritty storytelling came to represent East Coast hip-hop alongside peers such as Nas and Jay-Z.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said that hip-hop was incredibly important to young people growing in the city, and it was heartwarming to be celebrating such an influential artist in his birthplace.

“Hip-hop was, and is, the soundtrack of our lives,” Williams said. “To see the impact hip-hop has is amazing. To be celebrating 50 years [of hip-hop], to be able to unveil a Biggie Smalls, Notorious B.I.G bust and statue in front of Borough Hall…who would have thought that it going to be what it was when we were bumping our heads on the train, on the bus, listening to “Ready to Die,” listening to Biggie. It’s just amazing.”

An attendee of the event who goes by K.C., short for King Crust, went to the same school as Biggie, and said that watching someone from Brooklyn become such a big name in the music industry inspired others from the neighborhood to follow their own passions. According to King Crust, Biggie represents the essence of Brooklyn.

“Hip-hip is life, hip-hop is everything. The rhythm of how you carry your everyday is hip-hop,” King Crust said. “Biggie Smalls is the illest. That should be known all across the world. He was the illest to ever do it.”

The statue will be available for viewing on Cadman Plaza until November.

Carroll Gardens Residents Rally Against Eviction

Oona Milliken on August 3, 2023

By Oona Milliken | omilliken@queensledger.com

Organized chants of “Save Our Homes!” and “Irving Langer: Shame, Shame Shame!” rang throughout the street on Tuesday July 25 in Carroll Gardens as speakers at a rally in the neighborhood urged the people attending to fight against the end of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program at 63 Tiffany Place. The end of the program is expected to trigger a wave of evictions of people from the building as the current landlord Ivan Langer, recently dubbed one of the worst landlords in the city, will be permitted to impose rent hikes on tenants.

Photo courtesy of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander’s office

John Levya, who has lived in the apartment complex for three decades, said the tenants have been dreading this moment for years. When Levya moved into the building after it first opened in the early 90s, he said the rent for his apartment was $604, now it’s $1,142 per month, a rare and almost fantastical price for the leafy Carroll Gardens neighborhood, where median rent for a one bedroom market rate apartment runs around $4,000. Levya said that many of the renters cannot afford to stay in the neighborhood without rental protections, and will have limited options for housing if prices are increased.

“People who moved in their 30s, 40s and 50s are now 60, 70 and 80. We even have a 90-year-old-couple that lives here. Where are they going to go? It’s just horrible,” Levya said. “At least three people have broken down and started crying here with me. Everybody has a dark cloud over their head, and that’s all we talk about in the elevator.”

The apartment building is currently a part of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, which provides a “dollar for dollar reduction in federal income tax” for owners and developers of housing designated for low-income people. Rents under the program cannot exceed 60% of area median income, which means that current landlord, Langer, has to cap rents at $1,590 for a one bedroom apartment, less than half of the median rent price for a one bedroom at Carroll Gardens’ marketplace value.

However, the program is temporary. After 30 years, renters will no longer be protected by the Low-Income Tax Credit Program. For 63 Tiffany Place, that day is coming up in December of this year.

Ben Fuller Googins, deputy director of the Carroll Gardens Association, a non-profit organization striving to keep Carroll Gardens accessible to people of all income levels, said one of the inherent problems with the program is that it only provides safeguards to tenants for a fixed period of time.

“One of the major programs, not only in New York City, but in the country for creating affordable housing, is this Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, and it’s inherently problematic because it has an expiration date,” Fuller-Googins said. “There is a more fundamental problem, where we need to create a system that’s actually for low-income people, and is permanent.”

Longtime Tiffany Place Tenant Joy Foster said in a speech that New York City had become a hostile city to renters, especially low-income ones, due to rising prices across the city.

“When I moved here 25 years ago, what I paid for rent was actually quite close to the norm … and now those rents have increased over ten fold. It’s not commensurate with people’s salaries,” Foster said. “It’s a sick and twisted game that is being played for the very few, the few at the top.”

According to the United Way of New York City, half of New York households can not afford to live in the city, and “do not have incomes that cover basic needs, such as housing, food, health care, and transportation.” After the pandemic, rent payments in New York City grew double the national rate at 33 percent between January 2021 and January 2022, as reported by the NYTimes.

This is true too in Carroll Gardens as prices have skyrocketed around 63 Tiffany Place since the tax program was implemented. According to the NYU Furman Center, rates in the area have risen 38.3 percent since 2006, swiftly outpacing the slower 7.1 percent change in income levels over the same time period.

Tiffany Place was originally surrounded by old factory buildings and other low-rent housing. Now, the neighborhood is filled with bakeries and shops, designer dogs on expensive leashes and renovated brownstones that sell for millions of dollars. According to Levya, the people in the building were pioneers in the area when the neighborhood was much less affluent.

“You know, we built a great community. When we first moved here, it wasn’t as nice as it is now. You couldn’t really walk around at night. It was really desolate, dark out here,” Levy said.

Some residents will be able to remain in the building after December. Linda Bell, resident of Tiffany Place for 29 years, said she has had to file a form every two years and travel an hour away to get her paperwork stamped by an office in Jamaica, Queens in order to renew her lease. Because of her efforts, Bell now has a short-term rent-stabilized lease that is valid until 2025, but many residents do not. Levy said he has not been given a lease by the landlord in eight years. In a phone call, Bell said she thinks the lack of lease renewals might have been intentional on the landlord’s part.

“I assumed it’s because they are trying to get rid of all of [the tenants],” Bell said. “[The tenants] think they have rights because they’ve been paying the same rent since 2012, but that is not so.”

Jenny Akchin, an attorney specializing in housing for local activist group TakeRoot Justice, also said she thinks that the landlords decision to let the tenants’ leases lapse was deliberate as it leaves the residents with very little legal protections from eviction or rental increases.

“We’re a little nervous about what’s going to happen in December when the tax housing credit program expires with all these tenants who don’t have leases. We think this is definitely part of the plan,” Akchin said.

Akchin said her organization is trying to provide tenants with rent stabilization protections to keep their rents lower after the tax credit program expires, though some residents will not be eligible. So far, Akchin said they have managed to get about a dozen tenants rent stabilized, but are aiming for 25 to 30. According to Akchin, the landlord has been appealing their rent stabilization requests because of a legal gray matter based on uncertainty around whether the building is classified as a condominium or apartment complex. As a general rule, condominiums are ineligible for rent stabilization.

“The really infuriating thing is that when we’ve applied to have tenants rent stabilized in the past, the landlord has actually appealed the decision saying that they can’t be rent stabilized because the building is a condominium,” Akchin said. “But [previous owners] never successfully converted it into a condo.”

E&M Associates, led by Langer, is notorious across several different boroughs for a high number of violations and evictions. Despite the work from tenants, activists and elected officials, it is unclear what will happen in December when the tax credit program expires unless Langer and E&M decide to either resyndicate the agreement or enter another affordable housing preservation program that will keep rents low. Almost 70 families and single people living at 63 Tiffany Place are at risk of losing their apartments.

Photo courtesy of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander’s office

Neither Langer nor any representatives for E&M attended the rally, and E&M Associates have not replied to requests to come to the table in order to negotiate a way to stabilize the rents.

In a phone call, Richard Walsh, a lawyer representing Langer and E&M, said there is no obligation for his client to negotiate any rent-stabilization measures or resyndicate the tax credit program. Walsh also said that the claims from the tenants are overblown.

“It’s voluntary, and we don’t have to extend it,” Walsh said. “We don’t know who’s making these claims up, they’re wrong. There’s no mass evictions on the horizon.”

Walsh said that his client cannot raise rents to unconscionable levels, or the company is at risk of being sued by tenants, at which point a judge would decide if the price increase is unconscionable or not. According to Walsh, a tenant can only be evicted with “good cause,” which includes not paying rent, illegally subletting an apartment, or being a nuisance. If rents at 63 Tiffany Place are converted to market prices in December, tenants who cannot afford the new payments can either choose to fight eviction proceedings in court or move elsewhere.

City Comptroller Brad Lander said that Irving Langer could keep the apartments affordable while still turning a profit. According to Lander, Brooklynites should come together to fight predatory landlords and maintain the atmosphere of their communities and neighborhoods.

“That’s really what’s at stake here, the families in this building, but also the vision of a Brooklyn where diverse people can live together, where working class and middle class families can afford to live in beautiful neighborhoods like this one,” Lander said.

Park Slope Flower Shop Receives Historic Business Award

Oona Milliken on August 3, 2023

By Oona Milliken | omilliken@queensledger.com

Fonda Sara, owner of the flower shop Zuzu’s Petals on 374 5th Ave. in Park Slope, feels flowers in her body.

“I have a physical reaction to flowers and growing-things, when I see a beautiful flower or an interesting flower in an incredible color, I literally have a visceral reaction,” Sara said. “I physically feel a jolt. I feel it in my body, it’s a thrill, an excitement.”

Exterior of Zuzu’s Petals. Photo courtesy of Fonda Sara

After 50 years of delivering flowers to the people in Park Slope, Zuzu’s Petals was recently added to the New York State National Historic Business Registry. Sara said she applied because it felt like a tremendous accomplishment to have survived being a small-business owner for five decades. However, according to Sara, the designation is mostly just a social media buzzword to use for marketing purposes: she said the real satisfaction comes from fostering her team of workers and seeing the impact her business has had on the community.

“I feel that the designation as a historic business is important as a handle for social media. For me, the richness of my life experience is enough to make me feel that I’ve lived a good life. But in terms of external tools to promote my business, it’s just another handle,” Sara said.

Sara said she also loves mentoring young creative people who might need a restorative break from a rigid career path, such as her manager Rebecca Brinkley, who she said will hopefully take the reins of Zuzu’s eventually. Brinkley, a former actress, said she started working at the flower shop during the pandemic when all her acting gigs dried up. According to Brinkley, she took a position as a salesperson with her friend and ended up staying long term even after her friend moved on to other things because she enjoyed work so much.

“I stayed here. And, I just liked it so much better,” Brinkley said. “As a creative person, it’s really nice to do something that’s physical. Also, the people that flowers attract are so much more pleasant to be around than anything else. Coming from the theater industry, it’s a relatively abusive place. What’s so nice about this is you go to the market, and all the florists are trying to help each other out.”

“[Park Slope] was a nurturing environment for people to do things that weren’t the norm,” Sara said.

Photo courtesy of Fonda Sara

After a fire broke out in their original location on 9th Ave. in 2004, Zuzu’s went through a round of fundraising to move to their current location on 5th Ave.. Sara said the hardship she experienced from fire, as well as the time spent in the neighborhood, pushed her to feel that Zuzu’s deserved to be added to the historic registry.

“The definition of someone who qualifies to be on the registry is that you have to be in business in a neighborhood and that you’ve had to contribute to the neighborhood,” Sara said. “ I’ve lived in Park Slope for most of my adult life, and I feel it’s my heart and soul. It’s where my people are.”

Council Grills Officials on Air Quality Response

glendaleregstg on July 19, 2023

By Carmo Moniz

news@queensledger.com

The New York City Council committees on oversight and investigations, health & environmental protection and resiliency and waterfronts questioned city officials on their response to last month’s air quality emergency at a hearing Wednesday, with many politicians criticizing the timeliness and effectiveness of city agencies’ emergency communication.

In early June, New York City’s air quality index — which measures air quality on a scale from zero to 500 — rose to 460 due to smoke from Canadian wildfires, posing health risks to the public. Some councilmembers criticized officials for being slow to warn the public of the situation and being inconsistent in its emergency messaging.

“When smoke descended on New York last month, New Yorkers were shocked to see the sky blotted out and find the air was dangerous to breathe,” Councilmember Gale Brewer, who chairs the committee on oversight and investigations, said in the hearing. “They looked to state and local leaders for guidance during this unprecedented incident, however to many people it appeared that our local executives and agency chiefs had little advice to offer on how to stay safe or aid to provide.”

The council’s questions were mostly addressed to Office of Emergency Management commissioner Zachary Iscol, who defended the city’s response to the emergency. Iscol said that city agencies used Notify NYC, a citywide alert system, along with other avenues of communication to get information about the emergency to the public, distributed hundreds of thousands of masks and coordinated response efforts across agencies.

“We will continue to pivot and shift our response to ensure New Yorkers are best served and protected,” Iscol said. “That said, I am incredibly proud of our robust response.”

Iscol said that the city did the best it could with the air quality data it had available. He said that AQI forecasting is especially difficult for smoke, and that the information is only available less than 24 hours ahead of time from the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Iscol also said that forecasts did not project “hazardous” air quality levels, where the AQI is 301 or higher and the general public is “more likely to be affected” by pollution, until June 7, the first day Mayor Eric Adams held a press conference. He also said that public messaging around the crisis began June 1. While an air quality alert exists for June 1, it warns against poor air quality caused by Ozone rather than smoke pollution.

Lynn Schulman, a councilmember from Queens who chairs the committee on health, noted that the air quality emergency was a new challenge for the city and that city agencies had limited reliable air quality data to work with.

“We’re facing a new norm now, so the city did the best that it could do but we can always do better,” Shulman said in an interview.

Samantha Penta, an associate professor of emergency preparedness at the University at Albany, said that while the speed of public messaging in emergency situations is important, the accuracy and detail of the information should also be a priority.

“It wasn’t necessarily like New York City starting from scratch, they have a long history of emergency management and risk communication, but just because you have experience with it doesn’t mean it isn’t still an undertaking,” Penta said in an interview. “Inherently we’re talking about systems under stress and that always poses an additional challenge for the folks whose job it is to help people survive those moments of stress.”

Councilwoman Jennifer Gutiérrez, who represents parts of Williamsburg, Bushwick and Ridgewood, asked what would be done for communities living near manufacturing areas with already lower air quality in an emergency, such as in North Brooklyn.

Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Deputy Commissioner for Environmental Health Corinne Schiff said that the agency will be sharing the public recommendations made during the emergency on its website, and that it worked with community and faith centered organizations to share information.

“We know that these burdens are not distributed equally throughout the city,” Schiff said. “We were, all of our agencies including the health department, messaging to communities that are disproportionately burdened by air quality and conditions like asthma, we were doing outreach to those communities and we’re going to continue to do that.”

A committee report created prior to the hearing included recommendations for how to handle future air quality emergencies from press outlets and public experts, including providing more advance notice of the emergencies and using subway system announcements and police car loudspeakers to alert the public. They also recommended issuing a Code Red warning, which is usually used in instances of dangerous heat, so that outreach workers can help get homeless individuals into shelters.

Lincoln Restler, who represents parts of North Brooklyn, said that the California government sets up public clean air centers in air quality emergencies, and criticized Iscol for not implementing a similar system or calling a Code Red.

Iscol said that Department of Social Services outreach teams were deployed to encourage homeless people to enter shelters and hand out masks during the emergency, similarly to in a Code Red. He said that a Code Red includes heat emergency specific protocols, such as sending out cooling buses and distributing sunscreen, that would not make sense in an air quality emergency.

“The most important thing during an event like this is taking care of our city’s most vulnerable, and we did that,” Iscol said.

“I disagree,” Restler said in response.

A day after the hearing, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and Councilman Keith Powers announced a package of new legislation addressing indoor air quality in schools and municipal buildings at a press conference.

The first of the four bills would require the Department of Education to update the standards of regulation for indoor air quality in public schools, and another similar bill was proposed for city owned buildings. The other two bills would create five-year pilot programs for monitoring air quality in other buildings, one for commercial buildings and another for residential buildings.

Schulman, who is a sponsor of the new legislation, said that the bills will help provide the public with air quality education and improve air quality in schools and public buildings.

“We have these wildfires that are proliferating around the globe, and they’re creating dynamics where it creates unhealthy air quality for people that breathe it in,” Schulman said. “It’s important now to be on top of that and have legislation that will help to enhance air quality moving forward.”

The legislation has been in progress for almost a year, but became more urgent due to the recent air quality crisis. Councilmembers Pierina Sanchez, Rita Joseph and Mercedes Narcisse also helped sponsor the package.

“When we came out and saw our sky was orange, it was a panicked time for us, wondering what was going on,” Narcisse, who represents parts of South Brooklyn and chairs the committee on hospitals, said at the press conference. “The air we breathe is so important, so we’re going to continue to hold those accountable to make sure we have the best air quality inside of school buildings, inside of hospitals, inside of offices and wherever we are.”

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast Returns to Williamsburg For Its 136th Year

glendaleregstg on July 12, 2023

The Giglio stands over the crowd in front of a cloudy sky, facing another structure with a wooden boat on it.

The Giglio stands before the crowd.

By Carmo Moniz | news@queensledger.com

Hundreds gathered in Williamsburg on Sunday to celebrate one of the oldest existing Italian American traditions, the Our Lady of Mount Carmel and San Paolino di Nola Feast.

The 12-day-long feast features plenty of food stands, carnival-style games and community traditions, including the lifting of the Giglio — an 80-foot-tall and 7,000 pound structure decorated with statues of saints and flowers.

Anthony Croce, who guided the Giglio through the festival, said that the structure honors an event dating back to 406 A.D.

“It was wonderful, it was one of the greatest days of my life,” Croce said. “It’s a show so I’m glad they’re happy and they’re cheering.”

The festival is a celebration of the return of San Paolino di Nola thousands of years ago after he was taken on a pirate ship. The saint had offered himself in exchange for the freedom of a young man captured on the ship, and was later released when word of his selflessness reached a Turkish Sultan. According to the legend, the residents of Nola welcomed him with lilies when he returned, marking the beginning of an annual tradition.

Just before the event began, Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, a pastor at nearby Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, led the crowd in prayer, after which a band played the national anthem.

“Summer doesn’t begin in Williamsburg until the opening of the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel,” Gigantiello said in a statement. “The highlight of the Parish of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel is our feast! It is the pulse and showcase of our parish family.”

This Sunday’s celebration involved around 100 men lifting the structure and moving it through the streets of the festival in what is called the “Dancing of the Giglio.” Another, shorter structure featuring a boat was also carried through the crowd, and the two met at the intersection of North Eighth Street and Havemeyer Street.

Nick and Andrew Conte, two brothers who helped lift the Giglio this year, said that they have been taking part in the tradition for many years.

“Our dad grew up around here so we’ve been doing it since we were big enough, and he’s been doing it since he was a kid,” Nick said. “It’s just tradition, family tradition, family, friends, every year it’s a good event to look forward to in the summer.”

Louis Passaro, who was also on this year’s lifting team and attended the festival with his daughter, said that he has been lifting the Giglio for 42 years. He said he had been unable to take part in the lift in the last two years due to a hip injury, but was finally able to return this year.

“My daughter loves it, and we’re going to keep the tradition going,” Passaro said.

A child sits on the shoulders of a man watching the Gilgio's procession. The child wears a headband with a unicorn horn and holds an inflatable mermaid doll in each hand.

A child looks on as the Giglio makes its way through the crowd.

Musicians and singers were aboard each structure, putting on a show for the crowd as they made their way to their destination. The afternoon saw scattered rain hit the festival, but the performers and crowd continued the celebration through the bad weather.

Other attendees were newer to the festival, like longtime Brooklyn resident Gil Moreno. Moreno had never attended the festival before this year, but said that he had been able to see the Giglio before all the way from the highway, due to its height.

“It’s been at least 30 years and finally I made it,” Moreno said. “The atmosphere is good there’s lots of food — too much food I think — it’s definitely a good time.”

Debbie Ferrara, a Williamsburg resident whose grandfather brought the Giglio tradition from Nola, said that she attends the festival every year and that people come from around the world to take part in the celebration.

“It gets better and better as you age, it’s like a fine wine,” Ferrara said. “It’s who we are, it’s our lifeblood. This is our Christmas in July.”

What is the LLC Transparency Act?

glendaleregstg on July 12, 2023

Assemblymember Gallagher stands in a neutral-toned room, wearing a blue blazer over a white shirt.

Emily Gallagher is one of the sponsors of the LLC Transparency Act (Credit: NY State Assembly)

By Carmo Moniz | news@queensledger.com

The New York legislature recently passed an act that would require those operating or profiting from limited liability companies, a type of business that shields the owner from personal consequences over debts and other liabilities, to disclose their names, addresses and other information, some of which would be included in a public database.

The new legislation, called the LLC Transparency Act, is meant to target money laundering and other financial crimes by publicly identifying beneficial owners of LLCs. The act was co-authored by Greenpoint Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher and State Senator Brad Hoylman.

“LLCs are used in a variety of ways, and because of their anonymity, they’ve really opened up the door to people not taking responsibility for certain things that their business does, as well as using LLCs as a mask to do illegal activities,” Gallagher said in a recent phone interview. “That’s pretty wide ranging, everything from wage theft, to tenant problems to drug trafficking.”

The act, which Governor Kathy Hochul is expected to sign into law, is similar to the federal Corporate Transparency Act that will go into effect this coming January. Unlike the CTA, however, which requires all corporations to disclose beneficial owner information to a confidential database, the LLC transparency Act would create a database searchable by the public, with the names and business addresses of beneficial owners.

The public database is likely to be beneficial for tenants, many of whom do not currently know their landlords’ identities if the owner of their building is filed under an LLC. Anonymous LLCs can also be used by landlords to evade code inspections, according to Gallagher’s legislative director.

“It’s insane that we bestow that legal privilege upon people anonymously, but that’s been the norm thus far,” the director said. “We have to adjust expectations of what should be expected of corporations doing business in New York, and I think it was a public policy mistake to let corporations do business in New York with only a P.O. box.”

The legislation would make it easier for tenants to take legal action against their landlords in the case of negligence, according to Yana Kucheva, an associate professor of sociology at the City College of New York and an expert in housing policy. Kucheva said that the act would also allow tenants with negligent landlords to find other buildings owned by their landlord and organize with tenants across properties.

“If something bad is happening to you, chances are that your landlord, if they own another building somewhere else, they might be neglecting that building as well,” Kucheva said. “This type of law would shift the balance in who might have the upper hand in a court if you can actually find your landlord more easily.”

Roberto Rodriguez, a tenant in Williamsburg, said he thinks the act will make it easier for tenants to resolve issues with their landlords and that it is a necessity that tenants know who their landlord is.

“It gives tenants that piece of leverage because now you know exactly who to go after in the courts,” Rodriguez said. “Right now there’s nothing we can do in the court system to protect ourselves, and knowing who owns the building is great.”

The act would also help create better housing legislation, according to Gallagher, as it would give lawmakers a better idea of how many buildings people own on average.

LLCs are relatively new in the United States, with the first one having been established in the late 1970s. Gallagher said that these kinds of corporations have been badly abused, and are currently easier to get than a library card.

“This is not something that is baked into the origins of American business,” Gallagher said. “Transparency is a really good thing that we should be seeking and protecting, and it’s terrible that folks who are cheating, either consumers or other businesses, have had such an advantage for so long.”

Under the act, beneficial owners of LLCs would also be required to disclose their date of birth and a unique identification number, such as from a passport or driver’s license, to the government. A beneficial owner is a person who controls or profits from an LLC, with some exceptions listed in the act. The 23 exceptions to the definition, which are the same as those in the CTA definition of a beneficial owner, include minors, banks, credit unions and governmental authorities.

Many countries outside the United States have long had corporate transparency laws like the CTA and LLC Transparency Act in place. In 2014, the European Union established a transparency rule similar to the CTA, and in 2016 the United Kingdom created a public register for beneficial owners of corporations.

Samantha Sheeber, a real estate attorney at Starr Associates LLP, said that she doesn’t see the act discouraging property ownership under LLCs, but that she thinks it is not clear enough what would count as having a significant privacy interest, which would allow a beneficial owner’s information to remain confidential. She also said she thinks the goals of the act could be accomplished without a public database.

“What they were trying to accomplish here, really could have been accomplished by having this same database, the same requirements, but not on a public scale,” Sheeber said. “They could have done all the enforcement, they could have had all the registration requirements done in a capacity that law enforcement or regulatory enforcement could have been enforced, but it wouldn’t be on a public open domain.”

Gallagher’s legislative director said that the legislation is less specific because the details of what counts as a significant privacy interest are being put under the responsibility of the department of state, and that there will be a period for comment before the agency implements regulations.

The director also said that there are many benefits to the database of beneficial owners being public, including that it would allow the public to flag illegal behavior by beneficial owners and help lawmakers make more informed public policy decisions.

“Among the motivations of the bill is the fact that the benefits that beneficial ownership transparency can bring to the public, to government and to civil society and to the business industry, are dependent upon that information being public,” the director said. “This bill creating a public database is the main motivation, the federal government’s already going to be collecting this information, but it does a disservice to the public to have it be private.”

James Vacca, a former New York City Councilmember and a distinguished lecturer at Queens College, said that he had pushed for LLC transparency during his time in office, but that he was unable to pass anything because LLCs are state entities and were therefore outside of his jurisdiction.

“They’ve been used to circumvent transparency and accountability, so anything that sheds light, anything that gives citizens information and gives sunlight to where there was none before, I think is a step in the right direction,” Vacca said. “The transparency that a law like this provides is invaluable.”

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