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The initiatives come just over two weeks after the remnants of Hurricane Ida caused flash-flooding that killed over a dozen New Yorkers and after a summer of multiple record-breaking heat waves.

During New York City’s annual Climate Week, local and state legislators served up a litany of environmental policy announcements to improve infrastructure, invest in clean energy and promote climate justice. 

These initiatives come just over two weeks after the remnants of Hurricane Ida caused flash-flooding that killed over a dozen New Yorkers and after a summer of multiple record-breaking heat waves.

Following are some of the highlights from the week, culminating in a report released Monday by Mayor Bill de Blasio on how  the city to better prepare for extreme weather:

Green light on green energy

On the first day of Climate Week, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced she had approved two proposals to bring wind, solar and hydropower to New York. The projects are two of seven submitted in response to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA’s) January request for proposals. Combined, they would bring enough renewable energy to heat 2.5 million homes in the state.

Hochul also directed NYSERDA to create a roadmap this fall outlining how the state can reach a goal of 10 gigawatts of solar energy by 2030 (the state is almost at its current goal of six gigawatts by 2025). 

Hochul said she’d also invest $36 million in the creation of “regional green energy hubs” to help improve community engagement in climate-focused efforts — particularly in disadvantaged communities.

And the governor said she’d allocate $59 million to the Clean Green Schools initiative, which will launch next year and strive to improve indoor air quality and energy efficiency in public and private schools.

Focus on environmental justice

Hochul announced last week that under her direction, the Department of Environmental Conservation will conduct hyperlocal air monitoring in 10 areas around the state, with a focus on disadvantaged communities. The effort will measure levels of pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. 

Communities of color, including the South Bronx and areas of Queens, have historically high asthma rates and are overburdened with highways, waste transfer facilities and power plants, all of which contribute to poor air quality and detrimental health effects for the residents. 

“For generations, black, brown, and low-income communities have been the reluctant hosts of polluting infrastructure and toxic emissions from fossil fuel plants, highways, solid waste, and diesel trucks to name a few, creating a legacy of historic health disparities,” said Elizabeth Yeampierre, director of the Sunset Park–based group UPROSE, in a press release. Earlier this summer, Yeampierre met with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and expressed the need for local, community involvement in creating solutions to the climate crisis. 

Investing in infrastructure and resiliency

The governor also announced she was allotting $600 million in grants to invest in infrastructure that would make communities statewide more resilient to storms and flooding, and proposed an additional $1 billion — for a total of $4 billion — for Environmental Bond Act, which would finance projects to improve resiliency infrastructure, water quality, conservation and climate change mitigation.

The act, which was set to be considered by voters in November 2020, was pulled from the ballot by the Cuomo administration. It will instead be considered by voters next fall. Gov. Hochul also said she would rename the act the “Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act.”

“Increased funding for clean water infrastructure and the Environmental Bond Act – including critical nature-based solutions like restoring and enhancing wetlands and salt marshes – will provide direct support to communities that are experiencing the impacts of climate change,” said Erin McGrath of Audubon New York in a statement.

Other legislators also used the week to push forth agendas related to storm resiliency.

In a Coney Island press conference on Friday, mayoral candidate and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams pledged to, if elected, implement a resiliency plan for the city that includes an early warning system with sirens, an effort to bring basement apartments up to code and the appointment of a climate czar.

“Mother Nature’s not going to wait for us to build out a 20-year plan,” he said. 

And on Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio released a report outlining the city’s plan to prepare for and respond to extreme weather. The plan calls to appoint an extreme weather coordinator in City Hall, create a “Rainboots on the Ground” program to conduct outreach in disadvantaged communities and make upgrades to the city’s sewage and drainage systems. 

De Blasio also said he’s investing $2.1 billion in funding for the Department of Environmental Protection, and another $500,000 toward the Parks Department, Department of Transportation and other agencies.

“We will plan for the worst-case scenario in every instance,” the report says.

Liz Donovan is a Report for America corps member.

The post ICYMI: Announcements and Investments During NY’s Climate Week appeared first on City Limits.

Tenants say they fear the property owners are waging a war of attrition, waiting the renters out until they give up, move on and forfeit the rent-regulated apartments.

First came the fire that ripped through her apartment building, killed four neighbors and left her homeless in March 2020. Then came the September rainstorm that flooded the city and knocked out a wall of the basement where she was staying while she awaits repairs. Now, after 18 months in hotels, shelters and family members’ apartments, Bronx nurse Oneka Dunbar just wants to go back home with her two children.

The problem for Dunbar, and eight other families displaced by the fire at 1560 Grand Concourse, is that the landlords haven’t yet completed the necessary renovations—despite a judge’s order to have the work done by the end of August 2020.

The group of tenants took legal action against the landlord, 1560 GC LLC; the management company, Chestnut Holdings; and the Chestnut executives, Jonathan Wiener and Ben Rieder, to force the repairs and reclaim their apartments in April 2020, a month after the fire. A year and a half later, it’s unclear if the owners have started fixing the damage caused by firehoses or removing the asbestos they say they found in the ceiling.

Through it all, Dunbar has continued working as a nurse, now with the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore. She has stayed in a shelter in Queens, at her sister’s home in Connecticut and with her daughter’s father in the flooded basement. She has been mostly separated from her 12-year-old son while he stays with his father in Brooklyn, she said.

“I just want to get back into my place as soon as I can so I can give my kids somewhere that’s stable and not be bounced from place to place,” she said. “But Chestnut Holdings has been stalling.”

Dunbar and two other tenants say they fear the property owners are waging a war of attrition, waiting the renters out until they give up, move on and forfeit the apartments. The landlord’s history gives them reason for concern: Weiner, who owns one of the largest portfolios of rent-stabilized apartments in the Bronx, evicted more tenants than all but six other property owners in the city in 2019, according to the Right to Counsel NYC Coalition.

The Grand Concourse building has 111 rent-regulated units, including the nine affected apartments. New York’s Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019 limits the amount that landlords can raise rents after completing an individual apartment improvement (IAI), but the property owner does not need the tenant to sign off on the renovations if the unit is vacant.

“I think it’s so unfair,” said third-floor tenant Mary Avery, 69. “I’ve been there almost 40 years, it’s home to me.”

Avery said she stayed in Pennsylvania with her daughter for a year, forgoing medical appointments in the Bronx, until Chestnut agreed to temporarily rent her a fifth-floor unit in another nearby building. She said the apartment is nice, but the elevators frequently malfunction and the neighborhood is unsafe. Still, she said she’s glad to be near her doctors again.

The property owners agreed to a stipulation stating that they would not seek an IAI as long as Avery has a claim to the Grand Concourse apartment.

Chestnut and its attorneys did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In court filings, they have given various justifications for the delays.

“It would be remiss not to point out that this fire and subsequent proceeding all occurred during the very height of the pandemic,” they wrote in documents filed in November. “The roof of the building melted because of the severity of the fire. Four people lost their lives. These are not violations that contemplate a little spackling and plaster.”

In the course of assessing the damages, inspectors discovered asbestos in the ceiling, they added. “It is very likely that the asbestos remediation will not be complete until early 2022 given that it is going to take approximately one month per apartment that was affected, 15 in total,” they continued.

The tenants’ lawyers, from the organization Mobilization for Justice, say the landlord hasn’t produced specific information to back up those “fluffy” assertions, or a number of other reasons for delay raised in court.

Chestnut “cited to the loss of life, the fire marshal’s investigation, its insurer’s investigation and the pandemic as impediments to commencing reconstruction,” MFJ Supervising Attorney Rochelle Watson wrote in court documents last December. “However, Respondent produced no affidavits or documentation evidencing how any of these factors were related to its failure to commence work to restore the apartments.”

They still have not provided specific information about the extent of the asbestos either, the attorneys said. “Instead, the statement as to the asbestos finding is completely uncorroborated and magically appears out of thin air,” Watson wrote in December.

An engineering firm hired by Chestnut has submitted a pro forma “Asbestos Abatement Protocol” document to the insurance company, which describes rules for wearing protective clothing and posting signs about the asbestos. That document was included in court papers, but Chestnut has not yet submitted information about just how much asbestos there is. The engineer, from the firm H2M Architects + Engineers, did not respond to a phone call.

And, despite citing the complications of the pandemic, Chestnut filed applications for major projects in at least 31 of its buildings last year, including gut renovations in two other apartments inside 1560 Grand Concourse, the MFJ attorneys added in court papers.

“From the commencement of the court proceedings, the landlord has shown no compassion for the plight of the tenants and zero urgency to correct the conditions in the vacated apartments.  As a result, many of the tenants believe that the landlord is attempting to use dilatory tactics to frustrate them from returning to their homes,” MFJ said in a statement.

The aftermath of a deadly fire

The three-alarm fire began in unit 603, on the top floor of the six-story building at 1560 Grand Concourse. The 118-unit property is less than a block from Bronx Healthcare System, the medical facility formerly known as Bronx-Lebanon, where Avery’s doctors are located.

Some 140 firefighters converged on the building as the blaze grew around 7:20 p.m. on March 30, 2020, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.

Four women died as smoke consumed their apartments. Another was injured. Below the sixth floor, ceiling sprinklers turned on and doused the other units, including the home of 90-year-old Edith Thompson.

Thompson had lived in the apartment for 45 years. The night of the fire, she was able to make it to an elevator on the other side of the building after people outside alerted her, said her daughter Cynthia Hammond. Water sprayed by FDNY firefighters caused the ceiling to cave in in several rooms, prompting a Department of Buildings (DOB) vacate order, so Thompson moved in with Hammond in a New Jersey suburb. 

She spent the next year hoping to return to the place she called home since the mid-70s, Hammond said. 

“It was just a horrible situation,” Hammond said. “My mom was like, ‘When can I come back home?’ I’m quite sure she was depressed. She liked staying here but there’s nothing like being home.”

Thompson died in March, without ever returning to the apartment, or getting a satisfactory answer from the property owners. Another daughter, who lived with her since 2009, is now attempting to secure legal tenancy in the unit.

“What is the hold up?” Hammond said. “It was excuse after excuse.”

The DOB issued vacate orders on the nine damaged units following the fire but does not yet know when the owner will complete the necessary repairs. A DOB spokesperson said asbestos abatement is underway in the building and that the agency has reached out to the engineer to find out how long the work will take. 

The landlords did complete temporary roof repairs by Oct. 20, 2020 and filed an application to fully repair the roof and the fire-damaged apartments in December 2020, DOB said. 

The 1560 Grand Concourse tenants aren’t the only New Yorkers fighting to recover their homes following a disaster. 

More than 60 Jackson Heights tenants displaced by an April fire have sued their landlord and management company to hasten renovations. An untold number of other tenants experienced damage to their homes following flooding from Hurricane Ida earlier this month, with just over 270 families moving into temporary city shelters following the storm; the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) has approved payments totaling $37 million to more than 8,200 New Yorkers. The city and state will make another $27 million available to undocumented immigrants affected by the flooding but who do not qualify for FEMA relief, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.

But the relief funding and the legal challenges are just early phases in what can turn out to be years-long struggles. 

The parties are due back in court Thursday, after Bronx Housing Court Judge Howard Baum ordered the landlords to allow the tenants, their attorneys and their inspectors to enter the apartments and assess the damages last month. Baum also instructed the landlords to turn over documents about their insurance reimbursements and the asbestos work.

The process will continue to drag on, but Dunbar, the Bronx nurse, said she has no intention of giving up. 

She said she already had to battle to win the right to the two-bedroom apartment after first moving in in 2015 to care for her grandmother. When her grandmother got sick and later died, Dunbar stayed in place, finally winning a three-year legal dispute for a lease in January 2020. 

She said she returned the signed lease just a week before the fire displaced her and her two children.

“I’ve just been waiting to get back into my place,” she said.

The post Bronx Tenants Still Locked Out of Homes 18 Months After Fire appeared first on City Limits.

The city’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) said it will stop contracting with Aguila to run the men’s shelter inside the Park View Hotel on West 110th St., across the street from Central Park, by the end of the year as it seeks to weed out inadequate providers.

New York City is kicking shelter provider Aguila, Inc. out of a Harlem hotel for homeless men and cutting ties with the troubled nonprofit, City Limits has learned.

The city’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) said it will stop contracting with Aguila to run the men’s shelter inside the Park View Hotel on West 110th Street, across the street from Central Park, by the end of the year as it seeks to weed out inadequate providers. The Park View is the last site run by Aguila, once one of the city’s largest homeless shelter operators with dozens of facilities in Manhattan and the Bronx.

A DHS spokesperson said the building, which is owned by the notorious Podolsky family, may still function as a shelter run by a different nonprofit. The city does not appear to have issued a request for proposals for a new shelter operator at the site.

The decision comes amid an ongoing audit of the city’s sprawling shelter system, commissioned by the mayor in February, following a New York Times investigation into allegations of rape and bribery against the head of another major shelter operator, Bronx Parent Housing Network.

Aguila CEO Ray Sanchez said he did not know about the city’s decision until he was contacted by City Limits, but said his company would “[cease] to exist without New York City contracts.”

Sanchez, the former counsel to Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., took over Aguila in 2020 after the previous agency head was fired while the state attorney general conducted an investigation into allegations of financial crimes and bribery. He sought to reform the organization, he said.

He said Aguila worked with the city to establish a new type of pandemic-related facility at the Park View: a “pre-assessment” shelter housing men who may have been exposed to COVID-19 before they are assigned to shelters for longer stays elsewhere in the city. The former single-room occupancy hotel is currently known as the Jardin Central Pre-Assessment Shelter and earned “significant praise” from city officials, Sanchez said.

He said he met in October 2020 with senior city officials who informed him “that almost all of Aguila’s contracts would be canceled or reassigned to other providers except for the ‘Parkview  Inn/Jardin Central Pre-Assessment.’”

“Nevertheless, the city expressed a willingness to work with Aguila at new sites,” he added in a statement. “To that end, I took several important steps to rehabilitate Aguila, such as implementing new financial controls and recruiting three upstanding attorneys to Aguila’s Board.”

Prior to the pandemic, the 110th Street building served as a shelter for adult families. It was the frequent subject of tabloid reporting.

One resident who spoke with City Limits outside the building Monday said men sleep in single rooms and share bathrooms in the 205-unit property overlooking Central Park. He said he arrived Friday and was informed that he would be moved to another shelter as early as Wednesday, as is common at the transitional site.

Three staff members who spoke with City Limits while entering or exiting the building Monday said they had not heard of any upcoming changes at the shelter.

Less than a decade ago, Aguila ran more than 40 shelters for single adults and families with children. The troubled but politically connected nonprofit managed to win contracts totaling more than $250 million since 2012, despite scathing accounts of financial mismanagement and unsafe conditions uncovered by the city comptroller’s office.

“In light of the repeated and systematic failures, DHS should discontinue its use of Aguila,” then-Comptroller John Liu wrote to Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2013.

At the time, Aguila was led by former DHS Commissioner Robert Hess and frequently provided services in shelters, like the Apollo Hotel and the Aladdin Hotel, owned by the Podolskys and their associate Alan Lapes. Those landlords have been accused of failing to maintain their buildings and driving tenants out in order to land lucrative city shelter contracts.

After Liu’s report, the nonprofit continued to score major contracts despite its reputation for shoddy services and hazardous conditions.

A 2019 audit by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office looked at five of the 24 shelters Aguila ran at the time. The inspectors rated conditions “poor” at two of the sites and “very poor” at three, where they found cockroaches and rodent feces inside an oven, a mangled floor covered in plywood, broken appliances and a missing fire extinguisher. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer’s Office inspected 10 Aguila shelter units during a 2020 infant safety audit report. They documented “Safety and Health Concerns Due to Unsafe Sleep and Inadequate Unit Conditions” at all 10.

Aguila received $56.1 million from the city in the 2014 fiscal year, the year the Bloomberg Administration gave way to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s. Aguila continued contracting with the city under de Blasio, including agreements totaling $47 million in the 2018 fiscal year and $36.4 million in the 2019 fiscal year, the comptroller’s contract database checkbook.nyc shows. Aguila received $16.5 million last year and has so far taken in $6.9 million during the current fiscal year, which began July 1.

In addition to accusations of substandard services, Aguila has in recent years been embroiled in a legal dispute with another provider and a criminal probe targeting its former top executive. Ex-CEO Jenny Rivera was fired last year after Attorney General Letitia James’ office investigated her for bribery, money laundering and falsifying business records. James’ office did not immediately respond to a query about the status of that probe.

Before her ouster, Rivera complained in an open letter to de Blasio about the city’s efforts to “systematically dismantle Aguila” by rejecting their contract bids and citing them for poor conditions. Rivera was replaced by Sanchez, who ran unsuccessfully for City Council in Manhattan’s District 7 earlier this year.

DHS’ systemwide audit of its shelters could lead to even more shake ups. The agency’s First Deputy Commissioner Molly Park described their strategy for ending contracts with problematic providers during an April 30 City Council hearing about the audit.

“These ongoing transformation efforts include phasing out certain providers who do not meet our high standards of service and care, and our comprehensive review of all providers and contracts continues,” Park said.

She noted that the city had ended its relationships with four shelter operators that oversaw egregious conditions, particularly inside cluster site shelters. They include the organizations We Always Care, Housing Bridge, Bushwick Economic Development Corporation and Children’s Community Services.

“We are four years into addressing a problem that built up over 40 years, overhauling the way we do business top to bottom, including removing noncompliant providers and building a bench of qualified and experienced new providers, while also meeting our legal and moral obligation to shelter all those who need it every single night,” Park added.

Advocates say they hope the audit will foster a safer shelter system and more moves to permanent housing. There were 45,616 people, including just 8,495 families with children, staying in DHS shelters on Sept. 27, according to the city’s most recent census.

“The right to shelter is a vitally important part of the city’s safety net, and we support oversight efforts to ensure that homeless New Yorkers are provided with safe, accessible, and clean shelters with services that meet their needs,” said Coalition for the Homeless Senior Policy Analyst Jacquelyn Simone.

“The city must also redouble efforts to prevent homelessness before it begins and to move people out of shelters and into permanent affordable housing as quickly as possible, which will allow for a smaller, more person-centered shelter system,” she added.

The post NYC Cutting Ties with Troubled Homeless Services Provider Aguila, Inc. appeared first on City Limits.

Before the 2021 season began, Bailey Ober figured he might get a call-up later in the year, perhaps to help the Twins make a September push for the playoffs.

There was no push for the playoffs, of course, but there was a rookie season beyond Ober’s expectations, one that reached its conclusion on Tuesday when the Twins placed the 26-year-old on the injured list with a right hip strain.

“I didn’t think I was going to be up for this large of a body (of work) up here,” Ober said. “It’s definitely been unreal to be able to stay up here as long as I have been and have some of the success that I had.”

In 20 starts at the major league level this year, Ober posted a 4.19 earned-run average, taking hold of a rotation spot for good in early June when the Twins finally shifted Matt Shoemaker to the bullpen. Beyond his success on the field, he didn’t have arm issues throughout the entirety of the season, a welcomed development for Ober, who said he hadn’t had a pain-free season since 2016.

The club has been carefully monitoring Ober’s workload this year as a result — the righty underwent Tommy John surgery while in college and had elbow issues in both 2018 and 2019 before the minor league season was wiped out in 2020.

“It’s definitely been neat to see the stuff that I’ve been putting in off the field is paying off a little bit ,and hopefully I can continue that going into next year,” Ober said.

Prior to this year, he had never thrown more than 80 innings in any season as a professional. He ends 2021 at 108 1/3.

While coming out of games early was not always ideal for the competitor in Ober — his pitch count was often held to around 75 pitches — he understood and respected the decision of the Twins in an attempt to keep him healthy.

And it’s hard to argue with the results.

“A lot of the starting pitchers last year maybe threw about 60 innings, around there,” Ober said. “I had zero, so I had even less. And I somehow made it through this year without being injured, and my arm feels grear. So the regimen that I have been doing and sticking to and all the people that have been helping me, I’m going to continue to do that and continue to learn and try to find new ways to improve my body and stay healthy.”

While Ober’s season is ending one start short of what it would have otherwise, the Twins have been pleased with what they saw from the rookie over the course of the year as he carved out a role for himself in the rotation.

The Twins put Ober on the 40-man roster ahead of this season, and general manager Thad Levine, citing how uncomfortable opposing hitters are in the box against him, said the Twins were always curious “how that would play in the big leagues, how that would play pitching every five days.”

Ober spent this season answering those questions.

“He’s gone out there and really had a tremendous season. In a season that was dying for some silver linings, I think Bailey Ober presents as one of the more prominent silver linings for the season and goes into this offseason in a really good position relative to factoring into our starting rotation for next year,” Levine said.

Students at the University of St. Thomas on Tuesday protested the appearance of stickers linked to a white nationalist group on their St. Paul campus, the university said.

About 200 people turned out for the demonstration outside the Anderson Student Center, the day after the stickers showed up on doors and signs around campus, according to a post on the St. Thomas website.

The stickers, which were first discovered Monday morning, were quickly removed, the university said.

St. Paul police told TommieMedia that about two dozen were affixed to university property, light poles and traffic signs about 3 a.m. Monday.

St. Paul police are investigating the incident with the university’s department of public safety.

The school said in an email Monday that the public safety team removed the stickers.

“St. Thomas will not tolerate acts of racism and intolerance, or anything that stands against our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. We understand these acts are hurtful and are intended to instill fear and division,” the school told students, faculty and staff.