60-clarkson-avenue

The owner or this building at 60 Clarkson Avenue in Flatbush is doing his best to get rid of his paying tenants. No, the building is not going to be converted to condos or torn down for new development. However, this scheme may be just as lucrative–housing homeless families for the city. WNYC reported yesterday that the landlord is evicting paying tenants and leaving the building in a terrible state of neglect. According to the report, the building has 215 housing code violations. The majority of tenants have left the building. According to WNYC, inside the apartment of one of a dozen or so renters who has refused to leave, “The sticky traps in the kitchen…are covered in dead roaches. The insects even make their way into her freezer.  The whole building is dirty and in need of repair.  The elevators smell like urine, and the trash rooms in the hall overflow with garbage.” The tenant pays $700 a month. The city will pay about $3,000 a month (in SROs it will pay $3,000 per room) though a portion of that fee goes to cover the cost of counseling and security. The city is under a court order to provide housing to anyone seeking help and the number of those in the shelter system has grown dramatically since 2011 when the state and city ended funding for programs to help homeless people find permanent housing. The same skewed math is at the heart of the controversial effort to turn the ten-unit building at 165 West 9th Street in Carroll Gardens into a homeless shelter for 170 men. The city is now leasing 2,500 apartments from landlords at these rates, an increase of 66 percent since 2011.

To Create Housing for Homeless, Landlords Evict Paying Tenants [WNYC]


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