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.
A Corona hitman was found guilty of killing a man outside a Flushing karaoke bar in exchange for a $100,000 wristwatch in 2019.
Antony Abreu, 36, was convicted by a federal jury on Tuesday on both counts on an indictment charging him with murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire conspiracy in connection to the fatal shooting of 31-year-old Xin “Chris” Gu at the Grand Slam KTV on Fowler Avenue on Feb. 12, 2019.
New York City has launched a housing lottery for 134 units in the 17-story mixed-use building The Peninsula A1, also known as Edgemere Commons Apartments, at 51-23 Beach Channel Dr. in Far Rockaway.
In celebration of Earth Day, which takes place annually on Apr. 22, the Queens Botanical Garden has teamed up with Queens Center Mall for a series of engaging and environmentally-focused events aimed at promoting sustainability and community involvement.
The Summer 2024 Queensboro Dance Festival, slated to run from June 8 through Sept. 15, will include more than 30 scheduled performances at various venues throughout the borough.
While New York City as a whole has experienced a decline in the number of housing units on the market over the past year, the borough of Queens has bucked the trend.
A Flushing man was indicted by a Queens grand jury in a fatal collision that killed an 8-year-old boy in East Elmhurst last month.
Jose Barcia, 52, is accused of speeding through a crosswalk while making a left turn, killing Bayron Palomino Arroyo and injuring his 10-year-old brother Bradley on Mar. 13. The grand jury indictment was filed on Apr. 18, and Barcia will be arraigned on May 2, according to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz.
Queens College officials held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Apr. 16 to celebrate the grand opening of its newest CUNY Citizenship Now! office, which has opened in the Student Union building on the Flushing-based campus. The office, like the dozens of others in the CUNY system, aims to help immigrants with visa applications as well as to obtain citizenship.
Stacy Bliagos, executive director of HANAC, an Astoria-based Hellenic non-profit organization, spoke exclusively to QNS about the organization’s dedication to helping Queens’ most vulnerable residents.