My DiaryLand Diary

2006-07-28 - 12:30 a.m.

Peter in Canada, and HPD came through, wowie!Right now he's in Germany for his brother's wedding.

I got home Tuesday night and was just in a tank top and underwear and someone was banging on the hall door...I yelled out, "WAIT!" and put on pants and went down the steps and saw a guy heading away from the building, so, I yelled "Can I help you? Were you just trying to get in?" He said, "Thank God, I've been here three times, and couldn't get in; I'm an inspector with the NYC Housing Preservation and Development Anti-Abondonment Unit...can I come in?" I said, "Oh, yeeahh, welcome in!"
He said, "This building has had so very many violations over the years, and the supposed 'owners' have not paid their Rent Stabalization Fees for some years, so, the city was alerted that this was an abandoned building. We have no idea anyone actually lives here. And the City is extremely burdoned with managing abandoned buildings, so we have a new process. We contact whomever slumlord you are sending your rent to, and they have to meet with me at my office within the week, and either agree to accept to sign a loan that we arrange to get everything in this building up to code, which is prohibitive in all cases due to the electric re-wiring code, the lead pipes being replaced, etc...these slumlords have no means to do this...upon we take them to court, we help the tenants connect with an advocacy group who will arrange to put your rent payments in a pool until all violations are up to code, and the city comes in and does it all.
"Have you had any leaks or problems recently?" he said. "Well, my toilet fell into the basement couple of weeks ago..." He said, "No. Way." I said, "Yeah, and I had to prop myself up on a stool and pee in the sink, and one of our tenants had to turn on the water in an abondoned apartment upstairs, for me to go the other way..." He said he had to look at this firsthand. Then (and this is the best part) he told us the city helps all the tenants own the building AFTER all the upgrades are done and charged back to the slumlord, who they arraign on charges, and they even arrange us a very low interest loan to buy our building. We get to own our own apartments with the help of the city via low-interest loans.
Right now, I and everyone else have one electrical outlet in each room. If I dare to keep the refrigerator (which is one of those dopey cube-type dorm room $50 refrigerators like, one foot by one foot!) plugged in while heating up something in the toaster oven, the electric goes down and you have to replace the fuses. The guy came in and looked at my ceiling that had fallen, and said, "Oh. My. God. Nobody should have to live like this!" He then looked at the Victorian toilet and said, "Why didn't he replace your toilet instead of put this junk thing back? And what's this with a concrete floor? And all your pipes are lead - LEAD!" We're all feeling good all over; finally, the city came through!