The environmental progress New York City—and Brooklyn especially—have made reflects federal legislation and local infrastructure. But it’s also been a story of community groups working to make their neighborhoods healthier.
A look at three buildings that the city once ordered vacated for safety reasons reveals the changing—and very different—fortunes of three Brooklyn neighborhoods.
When a housing market collapse kicked America into recession, it was reasonable to hope that one benefit would be to reduce housing costs for low-income people. No such luck.
Two people associated with a notorious portfolio of troubled Bronx buildings took guilty pleas after a welfare fraud investigation involving fake eviction cases.
The Bronx activist group had targeted landlords and lenders before. This time, however, they were rewarded with a million-dollar lawsuit and a court order to leave the owner alone.
Prosecuting property owners for alleged negligence linked to fatal fires is hard to do, experts say. It’s only regularly attempted in high-profile cases involving firefighter victims.
The mortgages were massive—$36 million here, $32 million there, $19 million a couple years later. But the buildings remained in dismal shape, plagued by lead paint, rats and crime.
A Housing Court judge ordered repairs to the electrical system at the building on DeKalb Avenue. A year later, the work undone, an eight-year-old resident died in an electrical fire.
One Bronx real estate operator had an interest in more than 100 buildings, most of them severely troubled. But when regulators or tenant advocates tried to push for improvements, they…
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