💨 Status of 26 Jefferson and 1105 Fulton and what it means for the pace of NYC Government

🌟 Author’s Note

Hello and welcome to the 5 new subscribers this week of the Better Block Project, bringing our total group of advocates to 44!

As a reminder, later today is our first Better Block Potluck Community BBQ 🍔 at the Greene Garden next to Fort Greene Park, from 2-5pm. RSVP here if you’d like to attend. We’ll have independent Mayoral candidate Jim Walden speaking, food, music and activities for the kids. Hope to see you all there 🥳

🧱 Running into Brick Walls: Where we are with 1105 Fulton and 26 Jefferson and a Lesson for our City Officials

This week, we focused primarily on trying to push forward the situation with 1105 Fulton and 26 Jefferson, two vacant properties we’ve been working to improve for over a year now. If you remember from our update 2 weeks ago, the City Council’s office attempted to connect us with the Deputy Commissioner of Department of Buildings (DOB) to give us a status update on both properties. As some quick background, DOB levied enforcement on both buildings in mid-December, but since then, only marginal activity has occurred. To 1105 Fulton’s credit, they sealed up vacant windows and improved some of the cracks on the buildings, but this introduced a new issue of scaffolding which has attracted more trash and individuals huddling underneath. As for 26 Jefferson, despite hefty fines on the building, the property is exactly the same.

So, for the last 2 weeks, I have been anxiously waiting by the phone for DOB, like a teenager waiting for his crush to call. I have heard nothing. If you’ve been following our updates, you know this isn’t really a new experience. Since I’ve dived into community activism, the lack of urgency and responsiveness from our city has proved to be a primary feature of New York City government, some other examples:

• When attempting to schedule time with an Assemblymember, I’ve sent 6 follow up emails to schedule a meeting, and still haven’t received a response

• I’ve emailed my Community Board email contact 4 separate times, and they have never replied (this is despite the District Manager announcing this week in the Community Board meeting “if you say you can’t contact me you are lying.” I am not making this up…)

It’s not just limited to emails and phone calls. In having conversations with other community members, I have learned of court cases dragging on and building permits taking almost a year, which has the effect of putting any sort of progress in limbo. Buildings can’t be built and any enforcement can’t happen.

For the city and state officials on this email, the lesson is simple: our government needs to work faster and be more responsive. While I’m waiting for my phone call to be returned, 1105 Fulton and 26 Jefferson still remain vacant, attracting drinking out front, trash and continuing to bring down the blocks of Claver Place and Jefferson Avenue. While a city official may only get an occasional follow up email from a persistent constituent, neighbors have to continue to walk by these issues everyday.

Luckily, this isn’t an impossible problem to fix. Great public servants, like Governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, are proving government can move quickly. A perfect example of this is when they rebuilt I-95 in just 12 days after it collapsed:

If your reaction to that is, well, it was a crisis so of course they moved fast! He hasn’t only done this there. He’s gone further to improve occupational licensing permit speeds (3 days down from 8 weeks), reduced the Department of Environment Protection backlog by 75 percent, and more (you can read about it all here). Be like Josh!

⛲️ Hope springs eternal: Next steps with 1105 Fulton and 26 Jefferson

Despite the slow pace of enforcement, we’re still pursuing other avenues to achieve progress. We continue to follow up directly with the property manager and owners of both properties to lobby for improvements or the sale of the buildings. The biggest news is on Monday, we’re planning to do a follow up story with Pix11 from our press last year on the properties. We’ll highlight the slow progress, showcase what we’ve been doing with the Better Block Project and drive awareness of the next problem we’re trying to solve: improving the trash situation on Fulton Street. Media is often a huge motivator for both elected officials and the private sector to take action, so we’re optimistic this will make a difference.

💡 Final Thought on Vacant Buildings

This week, I heard from another community member about three vacant homes on Macon Street, between Nostrand and Marcy, which are not kept in good order and encourage homeless people to sleep on their steps. This is in addition to the two vacant properties on my new block, one of which is a magnet for trash. Vacant properties are everywhere across Bed Stuy, and based on the 2023 Housing and Vacancy Survey, there are ~33K vacant units like these in New York City. In a time where New York is in a housing crisis with 1.4% vacancy rates (lowest since 1965), and existing neighbors are tired of new development, vacant properties present a unique opportunity. If we can create policy and enforcement to ensure these properties are occupied, we can unlock more housing, avoid messy new developments and make our neighborhoods safer. It’s a win-win-win. If you want to collaborate on this with me, reply to this email.

⏳ Where we are on the other problems we’re working on

We’re starting to firm up our plans for improving the trash situation on Fulton and continue to push forward on improving the Wasp’s nest and property tax reform issues:

• 🗑️ Cleaning up the trash on Fulton: We attended the Community Board 3 meeting this week to announce we’re working on this issue, and half the hands went up 🖐️ in the room went up when asked if Fulton street needed to be cleaner! We’re organizing a broader community meeting for mid-July to meet with DSNY and our City Council member directly, we should finalize the date this coming week

• 🐝 Removing the Wasp’s Nest in Williamsburg: After 2 months of engagement, we seem to be stuck in a bureaucratic loop: exterminators won’t act to remove the nest without a permit, and arborists won’t apply for a permit because they’re not performing the work. Remi continues to work with City Council to drive this issue to ground

• 🏠️ Protecting Residents from Property Tax Reform: We followed up with the key stakeholders in the upcoming tax reform: Senator Gounardes, Assemblymember Braunstein, and Property Tax Committee Chair Jaime Williams. We haven’t heard back from their offices, but plan to follow up again next week to find time to push this issue forward

🤝 How you can help

1. We’re planning to pass out fliers to neighbors about the trash issue on Fulton on Friday, June 13th to drive awareness of our July meeting. If you are available to support this, reply and I can share more details

2. We continue our search for attorney support 💼 . This has been challenging, as there are limited Pro Bono resources for block improvement work. As a result, we’re broadening our search to include paid consultations to see what’s possible. If you know of any resources, reply and let me know!

3. As always, if you can assist with one of the problems above, just reply to this update! This group is even more powerful if we help each other.

That’s all for this week’s update. If you like what we’re doing here, share betterblockproject.com with other community members you know who are looking to drive change in Brooklyn. The bigger our community, the bigger our impact.

See you next week,

David