Kenmore Hall Tops List of Department of Buildings Complaints Last Year

https://therealdeal.com/2015/07/15/former-kemore-hotel-leads-city-in-dob-complaints/

The Real Deal is a very pro-landlord publication... this could be considered a fairly radical thing for them to publish. Just wanted to share what the real-world media picks up on about this place.

Former Kemore Hotel leads city in DOB complaints

Allegations at infamous building include poor ventilation, water leakage

July 15, 2015 05:35PM 
The former Kenmore Hotel – the single-room occupancy building infamous for a 1994 seizure by the U.S. Marshals Service – continues to be troubled after the Department of Buildings recorded a city-high 220 complaints at the property for the year ending last month.

Complaints at the 22-story building, located at 145 East 23rd Streetbetween Third and Lexington avenues, include allegations of poor ventilation and water leakage. The property, now known as Kenmore Hall, provides affordable housing.

The 326-unit property’s 220 complaints – up from 78 the previous year – outpaced 168 complaints at 535 West 162nd Street in Washington Heights and 94 complaints at 2700 Third Avenue in the Bronx, according to the New York Observer.
The building is infamous for falling into dilapidation and becoming a hotbed of drug trafficking and prostitution before the U.S. Marshals seized it in a 1994 raid. The nonprofit Housing and Services Inc. reopened Kenmore in 1999 after a $34 million gut renovation, converting the property into affordable studio apartments. [NYO] – Rey Mashayekhi

Tags: department of buildings, tenant complaints
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TOXIC SOLUTION

On the afternoon of Wednesday, March 14, H.S.I.’s maintenance staff plugged multiple Glade air fresheners into the hallway outlets on many floors of Kenmore Hall. By late afternoon, the perfume was overpowering, and all over the building.

Staff and management didn’t explain why they did this, and tenants were not consulted or informed about it ahead of time.

Many floors of the building have a foul smell - smoke, urine, cooking odors (and worse) create a stew of odors that is constant and disgusting, so some tenants may find the perfume covering the stink to be an appealing alternative. However, for other tenants who have serious, chronic and potentially life-threatening lung diseases like asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and lung cancer, the air fresheners are a BIG PROBLEM. Covering bad smells with strong perfume is not the same thing as actually cleaning the air; it’s much worse - it’s adding a layer of potentially hazardous chemicals to the mix.

Many of the chemicals found in products like Glade Plug-Ins and Febreze are linked to cancer, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and organ system toxicity. Many of these chemicals are also potential allergens, immunotoxins, and neurotoxins which can cause irritation to peoples’ skin, eyes and lungs.

Of course, if you go to the S C Johnson (maker of Glade Plug-Ins) website, they make it sound like their products are totally safe, and present rave reviews of the new scented products they sell - but here’s a reality check: they have a whole section covering chemical ingredients that can potentially cause allergic reactions. Even though they minimize the potential for problems, it’s safe to say that enough people HAVE had problems with their products that the company’s legal department realized the need to essentially post a warning in a publicly accessible place.  Try typing the following phrase into Google: can scented products make you sick.

Some people may say that the solution to the air freshener problem would be for tenants having a problem with the perfume to keep their doors closed. That’s not practical, though: these perfumes seep around the doors of individual units the same way smoke and other odors do. Even if we keep our doors closed, we all still have to walk through the hallways to get to the elevators, stairs, trash chute area, and - on the floors that have them - the laundry rooms.

H.S.I. needs to find better ways to address this issue. We need better air circulation throughout the building. We need NOT to have additional chemicals added to the mix (isn’t the smoke from illegal drugs like crack bad enough?) And instead of pulling a sneak-attack, having maintenance plug all these units in without consulting tenants, why not do some research on a better solution, and then communicate with tenants so that there’s full disclosure and an opportunity for informed consent? It’s just another example of how H.S.I. tries to “resolve” issues within the building in autocratic, patronizing and inappropriate ways.

Work allegedly started on the building's elevators last summer, and so far (it's March) only one has apparently been finished - but it's not accessible to tenants because staff is using it, mainly for maintenance purposes. Work is being done on a second elevator now - but who knows how long THAT will take (could it be that 6 months is average?) which leaves us with just two elevators for all the tenants to use, and the back area of the lobby still blocked off because that's where the elevator workmen have their stuff stashed, some of it inside of a makeshift wooden shed.

One tenant was stuck in the elevator for over 20 minutes a few days ago. He uses a wheelchair. The fire department had to be called to get him out, and they pried the door open with some huge pry-bars. Over the past few weeks, we've had several incidents where only one elevator was working all day, and people were significantly delayed getting in and out of the building because of it - and fights were breaking out on some floors as tenants lost their patience. We all know how well the elevators in the building (don't) work during the summer - they get stuck more frequently as the weather warms up. 

Couldn't the elevator work have been made a priority over the construction work we all had to endure? Seems like the ability to get in and out of the building easily is a MUCH bigger deal.

HSI ROUTINELY VIOLATES HIPAA REGULATIONS

March 6, 2018

So, I was coming home from the Morton Williams on 2nd Avenue at about 9:40 p.m., and from a block away I could see two ambulances and a police car pulled up in front of the building. When I came into the lobby, a tenant was on a stretcher near the fire alarm panels and elevator bays with a LOT of EMT workers helping him. 

Another tenant who had come into the building just before me and I waited by the entrance to the mail room to give them room enough to work with the tenant. It seemed impractical and potentially disrespectful to try to get to the elevators while they were in the hall. After a few minutes, one of the front desk workers came out to ask the EMTs what hospital they were taking the tenant to; this is a standard question they ask every time tenants are picked up by ambulance. They've been instructed to do this by the social work staff. One of the EMTs told him that they couldn't give him that information because it was a HIPAA violation, but if the tenant wanted to share it, that was up to him. 

The tenant didn't answer right away because he had a nebulizer or oxygen mask on his face. It's pretty much impossible to speak without moving the mask away from your face, which is not what you want to do while you're receiving a treatment to address difficulty breathing.The front desk worker explained that they've been told to collect that information so that the social workers can help provide continuity of care to the tenants.

Interesting. I've spoken to management and a social worker here about what they plan to do to comply with either adhering to the Department of Health's Smoke Free Housing recommendations or Intro 385, a law that the City Council recently passed to promote Asthma Free Housing by making sure that landlords take responsibility for cleaning up mice, roaches and mold in their buildings because these are the top 3 triggers for asthma. The social worker told me there weren't any specific plans at all. Management told me that it would be very difficult to make the building go smoke free and might pose legal issues. This sounds like they don't plan to do ANYTHING about something that would improve quality of life and health conditions for tenants in the building.

Meanwhile, as long as some tenants are allowed to smoke crack and marijuana in the building, the rest of us (many of whom DON'T smoke crack and marijuana) are forced to breathe nasty second hand smoke from illegal drugs - along with cigarette smoke. Second hand smoke causes health problems too.

The reason the front desk always asks where ambulances are taking tenants is because it helps the social workers provide "continuity of care" to the tenants. That's the "party line" that's been fed to the front desk. What is it that the social workers actually DO to help tenants with health issues? They aren't medical professionals. They collect a lot of personal information about tenants and report it to other agencies, but does very little for the tenants. It just ensures that they get a paycheck. Here's the link to HSI's privacy policy, which nobody seems to have seen, EVER: H.S.I.'s privacy policy

If you want to see background information on Kenmore Hall, including permits, violations, etc., check this link at the Department of Buildings:

http://a810-bisweb.nyc.gov/bisweb/PropertyProfileOverviewServlet?boro=1&houseno=145&street=East+23rd+Street&go2=+GO+&requestid=0

Just click on the link.

Knowledge is power.