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May 1, 2007

42 Remsen: Lightning Strikes Twice

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File under: Gigantic Bummer. It's been a rough six months over at 42 Remsen Street. First there was a fire over Thanksgiving weekend forced residents to move out. The cause: Apparently, according to comments on Brooklyn Heights Blog, there's an older woman who lives on the top floor of the co-op who hoards piles of cardboard and paper in her apartment which was the source of the fire. Fast forward to late March: The top-floor resident was the first to move back into her apartment but before anyone else could return, she started another fire, this one even more damaging than the first. "The family that lives on the ground and parlor floors, who financed the rebuilding of the outside staircase which won them building a Heights Assn award a few years back and had a very, very nice apartment were understandably beside themselves," according to a commenter named Jo Ann. Any other details about this tragic story? Is there anything co-op members can do to remove a problem resident? GMAP P*Shark




Posted by Brownstoner at 10:15 AM | Comments (24)
Categories: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Properties

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I don't think this is a co-op. My understanding is that the family bought the building with an elderly rent-control tenant in that top apartment. Don't think they can throw her out.

I could be wrong. It was a really terrible fire.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 10:32 AM

melamine?

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 10:37 AM

Why doesn't the trackback URL work? Can someone post the correct one? I want to send this to a friend whose sister wants to buy a house with a tenant already in it who won't leave.

Three words:
Don't do it.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 10:40 AM

This is a three unit co-op.
The owner of the top floor unit is a hoarder. She has the Collier Brothers syndrome. Totally nuts. I doubt they will let her move back, starting two fires definitely violates the proprietary lease.
The fire was bad. Thank God it did not spread. The firemen were good, they did not destroy the brand new door nor anything else. The beautiful cornice burned and crashed into the areaway.
Hoarders are a danger to themselves and their neighbors. Fotunately no one was injured.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 10:41 AM

In our coop there is a now elderly woman who is deaf and on a lot of meds (she has been "confused" for 25 years). She has flooded us several times and left gas on (while she left for several days). The only recourse is to have the shareholders vote to evict and that is likely to result in legal action(expensive). Thsi woman's husband refuses to live with her but will not move her. It's a bad situation.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 10:42 AM

considering how many confused and mentally challenged people there are in New York's neighborhoods, it is amazing that there aren't more disasters. I have a hoarder in my building. you could barely get into the apartment, totally mind-boggling. But he is rent-regulated so the neighbors' hands are tied. We keep calling social services and they make him clean it up a bit, but he goes back to hoarding, he can't help it, it's a mental illness. You have to keep on top of it for everyone's safety.

Posted by: Serge at May 1, 2007 10:57 AM

where's Peter Braunstein when you need him?

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 10:57 AM

Although it takes a long time, you could try Adult Protective Services. There are also mental health outreach teams (mobile crisis unit) that could more quickly go into the home to do an assessment. If she is really confused or they deem her to be a danger due to hoarding and risk of fire, they could potentially have her hospitalized, which could lead to placement in a supervised facility (doubtful). Kings County might have a mobile crisis team.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 11:06 AM

http://www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding/

Before the early 1990's, there was virtually no research on compulsive hoarding. Since then, interest in this topic has increased dramatically among research scientists and clinicians. As a result of recent media coverage of hoarding, interest among sufferers and family members has increased as well.

http://www.gothamist.com/2003/10/28/collyer_bros_pack_rats_to_end_all_pack_rats.php

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 11:15 AM

We had an elderly woman that was also a hoarder. She died in our building two years ago come July, and they still have not fixed the place up. The fire brigade had to break in her door due to the six feet high walls of stuff. When they were able to get inside it was amazing that the floor did not collapse, and the smell from her rotting body was vile. The oddest part was that even her bathroom was packed solid with books and other items to the point where it was impossible to get inside the room. She had a gas-powered refrigerator (!) and was very paranoid of anyone.

Hoarders are a threat to themselves and others but given the low-priority of mental health services these incidents are doomed to repeat themselves.

Posted by: Gary at May 1, 2007 11:28 AM

A friend of mine lived in a building in Manhattan that had a rent-controlled/rent-stabilized tenant (not sure which) who started a fire that destroyed a number of apartments in the building. The guy was smoking in bed, woke up in time to realize he started a fire, and ran out of the building without alerting anyone or calling 911. He did have the presence of mind to take his dog out of the apartment, which he tied to the iron gate in front of the building and abandoned. (Nice guy.) Luckily, no one was hurt but the building sustained major damage to a number of apartments. They had no trouble at all evicting him so I'm not sure why it would be difficult to oust this firebug, even though she's rent-controlled. Do they need to wait until she kills someone?

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 11:32 AM

I do not think they will have legal trouble evicting the lady on Remsen Street. She is not a renter, she is a shareholder. And she was occupying the apartment illegally when she started the second fire. The apartment had not yet been made habitable following the first fire.
In my opinion, she should have been arrested.

Posted by: Serge at May 1, 2007 11:47 AM

Between 18% to 42% of OCD patients have hoarding and saving compulsions; and about 10-20% of all OCD patients are thought to have compulsive hoarding as their most prominent and distressing type of OCD. This means there are between of 600,000 to 1.2 million people who hoard in the United States alone. Dr. Randy Frost and colleagues argue persuasively that hoarding and saving symptoms are part of a discrete clinical syndrome that also includes indecisiveness, perfectionism, procrastination, difficulty organizing tasks, and avoidance. OCD patients who have hoarding and saving as their most prominent and distressing type of OCD and show these other associated symptoms are considered to have the compulsive hoarding syndrome.
Compulsive hoarding is most commonly driven by obsessional fears of losing important items that the patient believes will be needed later, distorted beliefs about the importance of possessions, and excessive emotional attachments to possessions. Hoarders usually fear making "wrong decisions" about what to discard and what to keep, so they acquire and save items to prepare for every imaginable contingency. Two types of saving have been identified: instrumental saving, where possessions fulfill a specific desire or purpose, and sentimental saving, where possessions represent extensions of the self. Compulsive hoarding is further conceptualized as an avoidance behavior tied to indecisiveness and perfectionism. By saving possessions, the compulsive hoarder postpones making the decision to discard something and therefore, avoids experiencing anxiety about making a mistake or being less than perfectly prepared. The most commonly saved items include newspapers, magazines, old clothing, bags, books, mail, notes, and lists. Living spaces become so cluttered that they cannot be used for the activities for which they were designed, causing significant impairment in social and/or occupational functioning.
.....
Loved ones often think that part of their job should be to throw items away. We tend to minimize this aspect of their role, because we believe that people with hoarding problems can best overcome the problem by doing it themselves. Obviously, some items may be large or heavy, and the person will require some physical help carrying them out. But if the loved one finds that they are discarding items while the person with the hoarding problem sits and watches, it is likely that the clutter will begin to grow again as quickly as it was removed.

http://www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding/index.php

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 11:57 AM

My very good friends have a building in Brooklyn Heights for 30 years and for all that time they have had a very colorful old dame with a rent controlled apartment, very smart and imperious, who lived in the house since the late 1940s. She is now 95, still colorful, smart and imperious and a world class hoarder. Her hoarding has gotten worse and her age and increasing forgetfulness terrify my friends. The owner is a very level headed individual, also very kind who keeps a close eye on her and trys to convince her to throw this or that out and is regularly engaged with her. His battle extends to the hallway where things occasionally show up. She now has volunteers from several organizations who visit her and help her by the endless and emotional (for her) process of sorting out her magazines, family heirlooms, clothes and try to straighten enough for her to move around. She was hospitalized for a while and a relative came and started tossing out stuff but she is back to her apartment and her old ways. A previous poster mentioned Adult Protective services which is a good thing to know.

Posted by: donatella at May 1, 2007 11:58 AM

Very interesting, 11:57. Thank you.

Posted by: donatella at May 1, 2007 12:01 PM

Last summer there was a hoarder in Prospect Heights who had filled up a whole brownstone: http://www.brooklynian.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=53261#53261

I think he got found out because he had to go into the hospital and there were a whole bunch of dogs in his backyard, going hungry and fighting each other... Sad.

Posted by: sylvia at May 1, 2007 12:09 PM

I was genuinely startled to read this item as, in 2004, I almost went to contract on the top-floor studio at 42 Remsen. Whether or not this was the apartment in which the two fires started I'm not sure, as I can't recall if the top floor had 1 or 2 units. The unit I was looking at faced the back. (I ended up withdrawing my bid.) To clear up some of the confusion in the comments so far, the building is a 5-unit coop. What a terrible tragedy!

Posted by: anonymous at May 1, 2007 12:30 PM

These nineteenth century houses generally make terrible multiple dwellings. They are entirely constructed of wood inside, and only have one riquety wooden stair as a means of escape. It'a just not safe or decent. New Yorkers accept such inferior housing. Cutting up rowhouses like this into miserable airless one-room apartments should be against the law. People deserve better. And "tony" Brooklyn Heights is full of these rabbit warrens. Sometimes you see eight or nine buzzers on a single house. Pathetic.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 12:49 PM

12:49, what mansion do you live in? and in which city? must be nice to have so much money in the bank that you can assume everyone has a choice about choosing a rabbit warren vs. a 2 bedroom on park avenue.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 1:53 PM

This is making me think of the abandoned houses and buildings that are allowed to just sit there year after year falling apart. Like the big building on 7th Ave in Park Slope at the corner of 2nd Street. Or the house on Berkeley between 5th and 6th. It's only a matter of time before one of those things goes up in flames and takes out a couple beautifully renovated brownstones with it. As for the mentally ill, why is it mentally ill people are allowed to live completely unsupervised by anybody, and ruin other people's lives is beyond me. Sure they have rights, but their rights stop where society's begins. PERIOD.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 2:01 PM

I think 12:49 was just getting down on commerce taking priority over safety.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 2:01 PM

I would petition the court for an Order of Protection that would prohibit the fire starter from coming within a hundred yards of the front door.
Otherwise she'll be back.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 2:30 PM

You couldent pay me to live over there anyway.

Posted by: Anonymous at May 1, 2007 3:49 PM

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