Housing 101 – Part 3

Lead paint is high on the list of dangerous substances in New York City apartments. When a kid shows up in school with signs of having ingested this prevalent material in older buildings, the damage has already been done. Skin damage may be tolerable but brain damage is not.  Of course that depends upon whether you are a tenant, parent or doctor – or, whether you are a landlord or its law firm.

 

Fortunately, New York City has enacted laws that can impose severe sanctions on landlords to allow the presence of lead paint in apartments. HPD, the Health

Department, the Buildings Department and even the Mayor’s office weighed in on this.

 

In theory, that is.

 

Reality is another matter.

 

Our meandering experience with this problem; a problem that exists throughout our 60 family building at 80 Varick Street is quite another matter altogether. It began nearly 15 years ago when the presence of lead paint was discovered in our rent-stabilized apartment.  The first response from the landlords, Michael Saperstein and Mark Ramer, was to be told that lead paint did not exist in our apartment.

 

So, we made complaints and finally a series of City inspectors with the Department of Health and HPD arrived finally with a machine called an XRFAnalyzer.  Our entire apartment had lead paint, the paint was chipping, we had a two year old and we obtained a written report.

 

After going to court to obtain relief, the landlord finally agreed to abate the condition. Workers were sent to our apartment that did not speak English, armed with hand-scrapers and no protection against the paint dust and chips.  Needless to say, they had no training, credentials or knowledge.  We threw them out. To handle this dangerous situation we agreed to use lead paint abatement paint to encapsulate the condition throughout our apartment and moved on.  The landlord clearly intended to do nothing and obviously did not care about our health or safety.

 

Of course, two children later, the paint started to chip and peel. The problem was again a danger.

 

This time, starting in 2004, we decided that a more permanent solution had to be found. We contacted 311 who referred us to HPD, which is empowered to enforce the laws about apartment conditions.

 

In response to the complaint the landlord explained that there is no lead paint in the building.  Despite the report that had already been provided, we were starting over.

 

Again we had to have inspectors in our apartment to verify the existence of lead paint that had already been proven.

 

However, as a warning to anyone seeking to correct such a condition – unless

Channel 2 News picks you up – this is how solving the problem plays out:

 

A series of HPD inspectors again came to the apartment, looked at the physical evidence of peeling paint (among other problems) and reported, “presumed lead paint” in one location in the apartment.  Every inspector who arrived after that looked for the “presumed lead paint” in that one location only and would not even look at any other spot.  They could not report the lead on the several columns in the apartment because, are you ready for this, there is no such description on their complaint sheet where columns exist.  Hence, we could not report it.  This, despite the fact that the columns existed in our 5 year old’s bedroom. So, the fact that the first inspector picked one arbitrary spot in the apartment, limited ALL further investigation and treatment to only that one location.

 

Of course, the fact that our entire apartment is loaded with this lead paint, including in our children’s bedroom, doomed us to ever having this treated.

 

And, of course, for making complaints, we now face eviction for being unpopular with the landlord. Retaliation is high on their hit list – which, of course, is why 90 percent of the rent-regulated apartments have been evicted and is now market rate.

 

Now in court, we have had to once again hire a private environmental company to re-test the re-tested locations of lead paint but the court, in the face of $400/hour lawyers (Belkin, Burden), we have had to submit to unending visits to cure the one spot of “presumed lead paint” because that is the only source of violation that the landlord has to cure. No City agency has done anything further. And, after 3 days spent eliminating the one spot of “presumed lead paint,” the landlords are off the hook.

 

Of course, in the meantime, all of the hallways in the building, the exterior of the building, and the basement (where people illegally live), are loaded with lead paint.

 

A neighbor who lives illegally in one of the storefronts wondered why people don’t complain – especially those 20 parents who have young children in the building – so we pointed out that we have a bill for $50,000 in legal fees to explain that.

 

Litigating tenants out of their apartments is the new ploy to decontrol apartments. Affordable housing is in serious jeopardy in New York City.

 

How many parents would call and make a complaint about lead paint in an apartment if they knew that the landlord would find a way to start repeated evictions against them?

 

The City is not serious about the safety of tenants because it does not protect them from frivolous litigation for making complaints.  Once criminal sanctions are initiated against law firms and landlords who retaliate against tenants that assert their rights, matters will change.

 

 

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