LIES - and what to do about them

According to one case worker employed by H.S.I. at Kenmore Hall, the site is an assisted-living facility and according to new rules, all tenants have to submit to once a month home visits from their assigned caseworkers. If they don't cooperate, this constitutes a "nuisance" and they can be taken to housing court on an eviction proceeding. If they don't cooperate, case workers may also contact A.P.S. to have the tenants investigated, and they may have to submit to physical and psychiatric examinations. Insulting? Yes. Outrageous? Feels that way. LIES! THIS IS A LOAD OF CRAP! The social services department is trying to intimidate tenants into cooperating with their need to give us "support" so they can bill government agencies for "services" so they can get more funding. It's not about TENANTS, it's about MONEY. Look at the post on January 19 on this blog - it has H.S.I.'s privacy policy, downloaded from their website. It discusses all the ways they want to gather personal information about tenants and share it with other agencies, and H.S.I. pretends that they've got it posted publicly and that tenants are aware of it and consent to it. Nobody I've asked has ever seen the document. That's ethically wrong.

September 19, 2014: THE TRUTH - and SOLUTIONS! The case worker who made those claims no longer works for H.S.I. - she's been gone for months now, but she was well-hated by every tenant who had to deal with her because of her obnoxious, disrespectful and overly-aggressive attitude toward tenants. If H.S.I. reports tenants to A.P.S. (Adult Protective Services), the tenants can simply submit a F.O.I.L. request to obtain the report. If you're visited by an A.P.S. worker, be calm and polite and demonstrate that you don't need their services because you're competent. If you can show that you're not in need of their help, they will make a note in their report that you're ineligible for assistance, and that should settle the matter. You don't want A.P.S. "managing" you - they will take complete control of your life in ways you'd never imagine, and it takes forever to get rid of them. (On the other hand, if you find that you're in Housing Court with H.S.I., A.P.S. can advocate for you and make it more difficult to evict you.)

Based on records at city agencies, Kenmore Hall is still classified as a residential apartment building, which means that it has NOT been re-classified as a supportive housing or assisted living facility - which means that we're all still protected by rent stabilization regulations and have full rights as tenants. By the way, if you look up H.S.I.'s annual reports to the NYS Charities Registration, it clearly states that the building is subject to rent stabilization laws. So there.