More than 60 of the hundreds of tenants displaced after a massive fire at a Jackson Heights apartment building in April are now suing the property’s owners and management, as well as city agencies.
They’re demanding that the building’s owners repair their homes so they may return — and let them back in soon to retrieve possessions from the still heavily damaged and inaccessible block-long complex.
The building remains surrounded by scaffolding and caution tape, with many windows boarded up. The eight-alarm blaze crumbled ceilings and destroyed interior walls, exposing wooden beams in their place.
Tenants allege that in the five months since the fire, Kedex Properties and city officials have provided little sense of when repairs will be completed, if any belongings can be salvaged and when residents might be able to return to their apartments.
Access to the building has been “unreasonable and severely limited,” according to the complaint filed Sept. 10 in Queens Housing Court targeting the owner, along with the city Department of Buildings and Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Several dozen tenants in one wing of the two-address, 133-unit building have been allowed scheduled visits to retrieve personal items. but former residents of more than 60 apartments in the other wing have not been granted that same privilege, said Andrew Sokolof-Diaz, the building’s tenant association president and a plaintiff in the suit.
Three homeless men were arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on Tuesday and variously charged with felony robbery, attempted gang assault, and assault for allegedly stealing the belongings of a 69-year-old homeless man who was asleep on a Manhattan-bound 7 train in Woodside early Sunday morning.
The victim woke up and tried to regain his property. During the ensuing brawl, the victim fatally stabbed a 37-year-old assailant and slashed a second man. The victim has not been charged in the fatal stabbing. The investigation by the NYPD’s Queens Homicide Squad and members of the 108th Precinct in Long Island City remains ongoing.
Six women-owned and locally based businesses are now operating at John F. Kennedy International Airport’s Terminal 8 (T8), a milestone in the $125 million commercial redevelopment of the terminal.
Two men were shot in the head during a botched robbery at a suspected gambling den in Flushing on the night of Thursday, Dec. 19.
Police from the 109th Precinct in Flushing responded to a 911 call of shots fired at around 9:20 at the illicit gambling parlor that was operating inside an apartment building at 41-19 Haight St., where they found a 37-year-old man who was shot in the back of his head.
Queens-based non-profit the Arts4All Foundation joined U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan to hold a “Peace For All Rally” at the US Capitol Wednesday, calling for an end to violence, atrocities and persecution of vulnerable, indigenous and minority populations in Bangladesh.