Bay Ridge

Brooklyn housing preservation group seeking funds

July 29, 2016 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Bob Cassara, founder of the Brooklyn Housing Preservation Alliance, used a vintage auto to get his message across at the recent Summer Stroll on 3rd event in Bay Ridge. Eagle photo by Paula Katinas
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A Dyker Heights-based housing preservation group that has been at the forefront of the city’s fight against landlords who illegally convert single- and two-family homes into multi-unit apartment houses is hoping for a boost in donations in order to continue its work.

The Brooklyn Housing Preservation Alliance will hold a fundraiser on Saturday, Aug. 6, at Indigo Murphy’s, a pub at 7102 Fort Hamilton Parkway, from 6 to 10 p.m. Tickets are $20 at the door.

Bob Cassara, the alliance’s founder, said the group needs additional funds in order to print informational fliers and pamphlets, as well as for other expenses. “We can’t keep doing what we do without money,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle.

The alliance regularly distributes fliers at street fairs and other public events to inform residents of the battle to stop illegal home conversions. At the Summer Stroll on 3rd event in Bay Ridge on July 22, Cassara parked a 1938 car on the corner of Third Avenue and 86th Street in hopes that the vintage auto would attract attention and enable him to distribute fliers.

Cassara formed the alliance a few years ago after spotting construction work in a house on his Bay Ridge Parkway block that raised his suspicions. “There were a lot of dumpsters,” he said. The home in question came under scrutiny by Community Board 10, local elected officials and the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB), which investigated the site as a possible illegal home conversion.

An illegal home conversion takes place when a property owner guts the interiors of one- or two-family homes and subdivides the dwellings into multiple units in violation of city building codes.

The result is a dangerous situation in which large numbers of tenants are crammed into a living spaces designed to hold a small handful of people, housing preservationists charge.

Cassara said DOB is inspecting more houses suspected of being illegal home conversions and is issuing more violations against property owners and that inspections are the result of calls from residents reporting suspected sites.

There were 448 reports of illegal home conversions called into DOB from residents of Community Board 10 (Bay Ridge-Dyker Heights) in 2015, according to Cassara, who said in cases where the DOB inspectors were able to gain access to a property, 35.6 percent of the landlords were hit with building code violations.

“The vast increase in violations issued during 2015 was due to the fact that the DOB received a far greater number of credible complaints from the community than in 2014. As a community, we’ve proved that we can make a real, tangible difference,” Cassara wrote in an alliance online newsletter.

For more information on the alliance, email [email protected].

 

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