Bob Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, holds up a picture of two graffiticovered trucks parked on a property he says is one of many chronic eyesores in Middle Village and Maspeth. Forum Newsgroup photo by Jeremiah Dobruck.
The Juniper Park Civic Association (JPCA) is fed up with the graffiti, deteriorating properties and building violations that members say are plaguing Middle Village and the surrounding neighborhoods. They want an eyesore blitz.
At the civic group’s May 3 meeting, members confronted a representative from the Department of Buildings (DOB) about chronic eyesores and asked for tighter enforcement.
To kick off the discussion, JPCA’s president, Bob Holden, strode up an aisle of chairs holding a blown-up picture of a house in Middle Village blocked by two cargo trucks littered with graffiti.
“We pay our taxes. … We take care of our properties in Middle Village and Maspeth here for the most part, and we spend a lot of money to fix up our homes and take care of them because we’re proud of where we live,” Holden said. “Imagine doing all that—you work all week, you spend thousands on your house, you pay tens of thousands in taxes and then you wake up in the morning and every morning, you’re looking at this,” Holden said.
The home at 58-22 84th St. is well known to neighbors. It’s surrounded by a rusty fence, has a gutter that dumps water onto the sidewalk, and often has graffiti-covered trucks parked in front.
It’s become Holden’s poster child for eyesores in the neighborhood that have not been fixed.
He brought about a dozen pictures of the house and other properties he’s
deemed chronic problems.
Among the addresses he listed were a Maspeth property that has graffiti-covered walls surrounding construction equipment and a home in Rego Park that has racked up $14,500 of fines for disrepair and unauthorized vehicles.
The organization keeps a list of about 30 problem properties—they consider about 18 chronic eyesores, Holden said.
“We’re seeing a pattern here. We’re seeing a pattern of ‘do what you want,” Holden said.
Holden’s charge to the DOB’s representative was that this is a slippery slope dragging down property values and inviting lawbreakers.
Don Ranshte, from the DOB’s community affairs department, didn’t disagree.
“Once it starts, it’s like a ball that gets rolling, and then everyone worries, ‘When are the outlines coming?” he said.
But this is not a Middle Village problem, he explained. “This isn’t unique, I swear to you and I promise.” Ranshte saidd this is simply how the DOB does business.
With 420 inspectors serving the city, quality-of-life violations often take a backseat to construction and emergency violations.
Rashte said to cite illegal trucks at a property like 58-22 84th St., a team of night inspectors must swing by whenever they happen to be in the area to catch the vehicles when they’re in the driveway.
Even with those intermittent inspections and continual complaints from Holden, that property has amassed more than $25,000 of unpaid violations.
“We wrote him a violation this morning,” Rashte said. That hasn’t affected the property’s condition, though.
Holden said the civic group has been complaining about the property for 10 years and nothing has changed.
Rashte explained that the process takes time. When a violation is written, it can take months to culminate in a court date where the violator officially pays or defaults.
Rashte said this is part of due process and simply can’t be avoided by the system.
“I don’t think the Constitution would allow us to do it any differently,” he said.
If that court date is missed, the property is automatically reinspected if the violation was considered a hazard. If it hasn’t been fixed, a harsher civil penalty is instituted.
Quality-of-life issues like the graffiti-covered trucks take a lower priority and don’t have an automatic reinspection.
This was where much of Holden’s frustration surfaced. He objected to constantly having to remind the DOBof eyesores lingering unpaid and unfixed in his neighborhood.
“The only thing we can do as a civic association—and you can do— is call 311 and cross your fingers,” he said.
In the end though, Holden attributed the problem higher than the DOB.
“It’s not anybody at the Department of Building’s fault. It’s how much money they get from the mayor,” Holden said. “This is Mayor Bloomberg’s New York. He’s forgotten about Queens.”
By Jeremiah Dobruck
j.dobruck@theforumnewsgroup.com
