The Bronx Ink

Mice, roaches, leaking pipes, and bulging walls — one of these alone could be a tenant’s nightmare. Andrea Daniels, a long-time Bronx resident, lives with all of them.

Daniels has lived in her rent-regulated Mott Haven apartment for 16 years. When she needed repairs to her apartment, Daniels put in requests with her landlord. But many went unaddressed, she said. 

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) issues violations against apartments that don’t comply with the housing code, whether during routine inspections or when a tenant alerts the agency. In some more extreme cases, financial penalties may accompany violations. For Daniels, however, HPD was of no help; in total, her apartment has been issued 119 violations, 86 of which remain open, as listed on HPD’s database. Yet the problems persist. That’s how Daniels ended up in Bronx Housing Court in June.

Daniels is suing her landlord for repairs in housing court. Her case is what’s known as a Housing Part (HP) action, which falls under section 110 of the City Civil Court Act. Nearly every month since her case began, Daniels has returned to court, often spending an entire day there.  The 41-year-old has a disability and sometimes misses doctor’s appointments because she has to appear in court.

Each time, she meets with an HPD attorney, her landlord’s lawyer and a judge. Together, they attempt to avoid trial by negotiating the terms of a mutual agreement that aims to correct the violations.

In theory, once all the parties have reached an agreement, they must do what the judge stipulates within a set time frame. 

During a court session on June 26, Daniels, her landlord’s lawyer and the HPD attorney set up July “access dates” — days on which the landlord must send workers — to “correct all violations,” or make the repairs, according to court documents. But on those days, Daniels said, no one came.

During an August court date, court records show the access dates were rescheduled for September. On one of those access days, one exterminator arrived, Daniels said, though court records show seven violations that needed correcting. According to Daniels, her landlord argued the workers came, but no one answered the door.

Daniels’s landlord, Sharp Property Management, and the law firm representing the landlord did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

At her next court appearance, her landlord’s lawyer informed Daniels they were drawing up a holdover case against her for denying workers access to her apartment. Such cases are filed when a landlord sues to evict a tenant regardless of whether or not she pays rent.

Housing Court Answers, a local nonprofit that works with tenants and small homeowners to inform them of their rights in the judicial process, has witnessed HP cases since the organization’s inception in 1981, said assistant director Jessica Hurd. Involving HPD is almost always an ineffective way of getting repairs done or violations corrected, according to multiple representatives of the organization.

The only real purpose of reporting to HPD is to have an on-the-record trail of complaints, said Pedro Ariel Dominguez, the Bronx borough coordinator at Housing Court Answers. The city agency can issue penalties, or fines, but according to Dominguez, rarely does.

HPD admits as much.

“We issue violations, not fines. But some violations come with penalties,” a spokesperson for HPD said.

Civil penalties are various fees demanded of the landlord, the price of which depends on the degree of the violation. 

Genesis Aquino, Housing Court Answers’s NYC housing authority program coordinator, explained the flaws of the litigation process that make it difficult for tenants to navigate the judicial system. Typically, tenants seeking repairs withhold rent with the hope that their landlord will be pressed to make repairs, she said. Many don’t know they can take the landlord to court with an HP action, or that the case will be stronger when more than one tenant signs on.

“The court has never been pro-tenant,” Aquino said. 

The strength of the case also depends on how well each party represents themselves, or hires someone to do so. Many tenants can’t afford legal counsel, nor do they understand the policy nuances to fend for themselves. To add to the burden, it’s the tenant’s responsibility to bring the case back “on calendar,” or back to court, if the landlord violates the agreement that was reached in the courtroom.

“If you’re not on top of it, nothing’s going to happen with an HP action,” Aquino said.

A spokesperson for HPD disagreed. The agency can issue multiple violations for the same problem, and those violations won’t be cleared from the record unless they are corrected. In court, “all that is stacked against the landlord,” an HPD spokesman said.

Ferdo Shkreli, a property manager of five buildings in the Bronx, said he welcomes the HP process.

“It helps me, otherwise my building deteriorates,” he said, adding he actually encourages tenants to file an HP case so they can resolve it in court. 

HP cases can also benefit tenants because they will have more enforcement options, according to housing attorney Robert Farina. In Farina’s experience, it’s “an effective way of getting repairs done.”

“They get settled and that’s usually the end of it. Everyone’s usually happy,” Farina said.

In some cases, HPD, rather than a tenant, brings an HP case against a landlord. Shkreli, who fights on behalf of small landlords accused by the agency in court, suspects doing so is the agency’s way of going “after the landlord’s pocket.”

HPD knows a small landlord cannot afford the costs that come with going to trial, unlike big landlords who have in-house attorneys, Shkreli explained. In a recent case he settled with HPD, the agency demanded civil penalties totaling $800, which Shkreli paid in order to avoid going to trial. In some settlement cases, he said, even after he paid, and even with proof of the repair, the violation(s) in question remained open.

“It’s cheaper to pay a fine than go to trial,” Shkreli said. “Whether you fix it or don’t fix it, they’re still going to issue a fine. That’s how they twist the landlords’ arm.”

In order for a corrected violation to be taken down and no longer listed as open, a landlord or property manager like Shkreli must file a dismissal request with HPD, which costs upward of $1000 to submit, according to the agency’s policy. 

HPD issued a total of 643,200 violations in 2018 alone, the agency told The Bronx Ink.

Daniels, who has been in and out of court for months and is still in need of multiple repairs, has lost her faith in HPD and the process.

“They give [landlords] too many chances to do the repairs. I can’t take a year to pay you your money,” she said, referencing laws mandating tenants pay their rent in a timely manner. But, when it comes to repairs, tenants’ cases can drag on in court, sometimes for years.

“I just feel like the law is not really on the tenant’s side, especially when it comes to HP cases,” she said. 

One year since Gov. Andrew Cuomo voiced his imminent approval of a pilot program to establish overdose prevention centers in New York, it’s been nothing but radio silence, according to a coalition of drug prevention advocacy groups.

Research for a Safer New York, the group behind the proposal, which is made up of five nonprofits and syringe exchange providers, said it has Mayor Bill de Blasio’s approval but has been locked in a back-and-forth with Cuomo about getting the program up and running since the proposal’s inception three years ago.

In the past decade, the rise of drug overdose death rates in the U.S. has led several states to try to establish safer drug consumption spaces in order to save lives. Three years ago, New York appeared to be one of them. Today, it’s not so apparent.

In 2016, the AIDS Institute, part of the State’s Department of Health, released official guidelines for syringe exchange programs that acknowledged drug overdoses in the facilities’ restrooms could happen. It recommended implementing a variety of safety measures for emergencies, including an intercom inside each restroom to communicate with staff and a door that swings outward.

The same year, New York’s City Council paid for a study on the feasibility and benefits of overdose prevention centers, which are not legal in the U.S., but are common throughout Europe and Canada. In them, participating users may consume drugs under the supervision of trained medical personnel.

The International Drug Policy Consortium has published findings on the efficacy of the sites at reducing the number of overdose deaths and transmission rates of infectious diseases. They have also won the support of organizations like the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association.

The Washington Heights Corner Project, a nonprofit syringe exchange program in Northern Manhattan, pioneered the idea in N.Y. off-the-radar, quietly allowing program participants to administer drugs in their restrooms.

Other nonprofits, like St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction in the South Bronx, provide thousands of clean syringes for shooting galleries where users convene to do drugs, said Van Asher, syringe access program manager at St. Ann’s. According to Asher, the organization has been advocating for overdose prevention centers for years, long before Research for a Safer New York came to be.

The South Bronx suffered worse overdose death rates than the rest of the country behind West Virginia in 2017, Newsday reported, with an average fatal overdose rate of 21.3 deaths per 100,000 people. Pockets of the Bronx also have trouble managing collection of dirty syringes, a reporter found for The Bronx Ink.

There is nothing new about a drug overdose crisis in the Bronx, said New York State Senator Gustavo Rivera, chair of the Senate health committee, co-chair of the Opioid, Addiction and Overdose Prevention Taskforce and a staunch supporter of overdose prevention centers.

“Unfortunately and tragically, the current way that we have organized a lot of our drug policy is based on this idea that it is a choice,” said Rivera. “And if you’re making it, there’s something wrong with you.”

The way forward, according to Rivera, is with an approach known as harm reduction, a concept that was popularized as the AIDS epidemic raged through the U.S. and Europe beginning in the 1980s. This novel approach is a gentler alternative to abstinence-only public health interventions, aimed at de-stigmatizing drug addiction in society and reducing, rather than entirely eliminating, drug use, recognizing the latter is not possible.

The first overdose prevention center was born in 1986 in Berne, Switzerland. Today, approximately 100 facilities around the world are in operation. 

In 2016, five New York-based nonprofits rallied to propose a pilot program of four overdose prevention centers in the city and one in Ithaca, N.Y. The pilot would start as a two-year program that could eventually expand. Housing Works—a nonprofit that provides housing, health care and legal assistance to people affected by HIV/AIDS—along with four other unwavering sponsors of syringe exchange programs in the state formed a new entity: Research for a Safer New York. The proposal was set to go; all that was needed was city and state approval.

In October of the following year, State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker embraced the proposal, according to Housing Works CEO Charles King. Research for a Safer New York began working with the department’s AIDS Institute to develop protocols for operation and received legal counsel determining the proposal did not violate federal law.

That December, the group received word that Cuomo would sign off on the proposal if it first received de Blasio’s support, said King, who was in direct communication with the Governor.

The following May, after the citystudy’s findings were published, de Blasio signed off on the proposal. Cuomo, however, did not reciprocate. 

“The governor became suspicious that the mayor had delayed until this point,” King said, “and had issued the report with a lot of publicity in order to make it a big issue in the governor’s reelection campaign.”

Indeed, the topic came up in a gubernatorial debate between Cuomo and Republican opponent Marcus Molinaro. Cuomo said the centers are “very complicated” and the “the federal government is decidedly against them,” but that the state is “working on” it nonetheless.

After a campaign appearance at the Pride Parade was threatened to be disrupted by Research for a Safer New York, Cuomo indicated to the group he would approve the proposal “imminently” after the gubernatorial election in November, according to King, who also serves as chair of the board of the organization. 

Nearly one year later, Cuomo has not followed through on his promise.

“The governor got cold feet, decided to go back on his word and not move forward on this,” King said. 

Because Cuomo has not given his authorization, the hands of the health department, which originally agreed to the pilot, are tied. The years-old proposal hangs in limbo.

“We have been in active dialogue with advocates and the City on the proposal while addressing potential law enforcement concerns and the threat of legal challenges,” a spokesperson for the agency said.

New York is not alone in this uphill battle. Safehouse, a nonprofit in Philadelphia, was on track to establish the nation’s first overdose prevention site until February of this year, when federal prosecutors sued the organization, claiming it violated a federal drug law called the Controlled Substances Act.

At the heart of the debate is a stipulation known as the “crack house statute,” which prohibits using or maintaining any place to manufacture, distribute or use controlled substances. Though prosecutors believed Safehouse violated the statute, the organization’s lawyers argued in a brief it was “plainly far removed” from it, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice has strongly opposed overdose prevention sites, with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein writing an aggressive op-ed decrying the spaces in The New York Times.

Safehouse fought back. And won. Last week, a judge ruled the nonprofit’s plan to open and operate the site does not violate federal law. The federal government is expected to appeal the decision.

Members of Research for a Safer New York speculate Cuomo has been waiting with bated breath for the judgement from Philadelphia in order to move forward. Nevertheless, advocates have been and continue to call on Cuomo to approve the sites.

“With over 20,000 overdose deaths under Governor Cuomo’s tenure, his legacy will be marked by his choice to either stand with New Yorkers or stand in the way of their survival,” Vocal-NY, one of the five groups belonging to Research for a Safer New York, said in a statement. “Every day that we wait on his approval, the Governor has blood on his hands.”

Without making headway with Cuomo, Research for a Safer New York has been working with local elected officials Rivera and Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, who has proposed the Safer Consumption Services Act to rally for the research pilot. Each has been a  “champion” for the cause, Research for a Safer New York said.

Rivera believes in approaching the crisis as a public health issue, “not a criminal justice one.” Establishing overdose prevention centers in N.Y. would make the state a “leader in the country,” he said.  

“Nobody has ever died in any of these facilities from an overdose,” Rivera said, while admitting it is “a fairly controversial approach.”

In the meantime, Rivera said, the best alternatives are “evidence-based practices” like Medication-Assisted Treatment, decriminalizing the possession of syringes and making naloxone, a drug that treats overdoses in emergencies, widely accessible.

Syringe exchange programs like St. Ann’s in the South Bronx train volunteers on how to properly administer the drug and certify them to carry it with them at all times. St. Ann’s trains more than 1,000 people a year, Asher said.

For many advocates, overdose prevention centers are the only feasible next step forward in attempts to curb the crisis. 

“I think that the people that are against the idea don’t understand the shortcomings of our current approaches,” said Ken Robinson, executive director of Research for a Safer New York. “Law enforcement can’t fix this problem. In fact, law enforcement makes it worse.”

Cuomo was expected to meet with King last Friday to resume talks about the proposal. King said the Governor’s counsel postponed the meeting until Oct. 22.

On a Wednesday afternoon, a woman wearing glasses and holding a cane struggled up the steps of the elevated Morris Heights Mt. Eden Ave. 4 train platform. Just ahead was her 9-year-old daughter, who heaved a huge empty metal shopping cart slowly up each step. Sweat rolled down her face.

“Come on!” the daughter shouted to herself.

Both Marisol Rivera and her daughter stopped frequently for breaths.

This is the daily reality of getting to and from the station, which has no elevator, for Rivera.

This isn’t the only station where  disabled residents of the Bronx struggle. Of the 14 subway stops on the 4 train line running through the borough, only two are accessible by wheelchair, according to a Metro Transit Authority (MTA) subway map. 

Rivera, who suffered a bad fall on slippery stairs back in 2005, has since endured long-lasting pain in her lower back, hip and legs. She relies on a walking cane to support herself.

Her child assists with carrying items like a grocery cart up the dozens of steps. But she only has the strength to lift it, empty, upwards. On their way down, when the cart is full, Rivera has to lower it herself, she said.

A lack of elevators poses a problem for mothers with babies, too. Laurie Hernandez, 22, explained whenever her mother takes the train with her baby, she meets her at the station to help carry the stroller, sometimes multiple times a day. 

Leonara Delmoral, 57, is a transplant patient who relies on a walking cane. In the 20 years she has lived in her neighborhood, Mt. Eden Ave. and other stations in the Bronx have not been accessible.

“It’s not fair. It’s two flights going up to the third floor, and then when you get in, you gotta walk upstairs, too… If you’re in a wheelchair or walker, it’s very hard,” she said. 

As of last Friday, the MTA listed 35 stations as having at least one elevator or escalator out of service. Two stations had their only elevators out of service. 

Last year, the city approved rezoning plans that are expected to increase the population of University Heights, according to the area’s community board spokesperson Remi Bola. According to Bola, University Heights’s Community Board 5 has redoubled pressure on the MTA since then, as well as the Department of Transportation (DOT) and local elected officials to add elevators at Burnside Ave. on the 4 line. But the DOT, which is in charge of issuing permits related to construction affecting sidewalks state-wide, denied the request to install elevators at Burnside Ave.

“That proposal–they did not even let it see the light of the day,” Bola said. “We need infrastructure to be able to support [the rising population].”

Assemblyman Pichardo, of District 86, works with Rider’s Alliance, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for better transportation and riders’ rights, to increase community engagement and government awareness. 

“Transportation and wheelchair accessibility is a huge problem in the Bronx, especially on the 4 line,” he wrote in a statement. “It makes it nearly impossible for handicapped individuals to have proper access.”

While Pichardo is not aware of any current legislative proposals in the Assembly aimed at resolving the issue, he said he is open to them.

As alternative handicap transportation, the MTA offers its private cab service, Access-A-Ride. But it requires ordering a day in advance, providing specific times and locations and is slower than a train.

Delmoral said she never applied for Access-A-Ride because she’d seen first-hand, the extreme wait times while working at a private doctor’s office in Manhattan.

“In my experience with Access-A-Ride, you’ll be stuck there waiting the whole day,” she said. 

As soon as a patient was dropped off at her office by the service, Delmoral knew to call Access-A-Ride immediately to schedule the patient’s ride home. But even then, the patient would be seen by the doctor well before the service arrived to take them home, according to Delmoral.

Last spring, MTA President Andy Byford launched an initiative called Fast Forward, which featured proposals ranging from redesigning bus routes to improving station access. New York’s transit system is the largest in North America. However, only a quarter of its 472 stations are wheelchair accessible. The MTA released a proposal on Monday with plans to install new elevators or escalators at up to 66 stations within the next five years.

But for Rivera, Delmoral and others like them, the planned changes can’t come soon enough. In the meantime, they must resort to what little is available. 

“We do what we got to do,” Rivera said. 

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren drew a crowd of roughly 20,000 at a rally in Washington Square Park Monday night, during which she called out government corruption and promised a return of power to the American people. It was her largest campaign event to date.

Warren tapped into the rally’s location near the historic site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to retell the history of the fire and the flood of legislative change that followed after 146 factory workers died due to the owners’ neglect. Warren used the anecdote to illustrate the nation’s capacity for “big, structural change,” her campaign’s tagline.

“Giant corporations have bought off our government,” Warren said sternly into the microphone, drawing out each word for emphasis. “That’s corruption plain and simple and we need to call it out for what it is.” Like many other moments that night, Warren’s statement was cut off by the deafening roar of cheers from those in attendance.

For Warren, calling out corporate corruption starts with limiting the ability of the powerful to use their wealth to influence Washington. In her speech, she called for an end to all government lobbying and said under her presidency, elected officials would not be allowed to run a business and own stock while serving in public office. 

“Take care of people’s business, or take care of your own business, but you can’t do both at the same time,” she said as the crowd, again, erupted in applause. Dozens of supporters waved light blue “I’m a Warren Democrat” posters in the air. One young girl, perched atop the neck of her mother to see Warren through the crowd, pumped her fist into the air in solidarity. 

As part of her plan to help working families, Warren reiterated her promise of universal health care under Medicare for All, and a strengthening of labor unions. As she spoke about her plan for a 2% wealth tax on the ultra-rich, the crowd chanted, “Two cents! Two cents!” referring to her proposal to tax two cents on every dollar after the individual’s first $50 million in income.

Warren also pledged various proposals aimed at America’s minorities. They included protection of Native American land, $50B in funding to historically black colleges and universities and closing the wage gap for women of color. 

“I feel like she was even stronger and more determined than I’ve heard her ever before, and people were obsessed with every word,” said Ceci Sturman, 23, who attended the event and saw Warren speak for the first time earlier this year. 

Sturman said she would like the Massachusetts Democrat to devote more time to issues of climate and health care. 

“The two-cent tax stuck out most to me because it was a very specific proposal/plan. Definitely something I want to learn more about. I look forward to learning more about the tax and her other plans,” said Nhi Diep, 23, who went to see Warren for the first time. 

The Senator’s speech was prefaced by an unexpected announcement—the endorsement of Warren for president by the Working Families Party (WFP). The move by the progressive political group sparked a reaction on Twitter, where some users expressed their dismay at the party for not backing Sen. Bernie Sanders, as it did in the 2016 presidential race. 

Warren stayed at the park taking selfies with those in attendance till just before midnight, nearly four hours after she finished her speech.