Empty House With Lots of Damage

Missing: Landlord of New Brighton house with 119 open violations
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Tamika Haney, 35, is no longer sure who owns the two-and-a-half-story house at 151 Hendricks Ave. in New Brighton, where she lives on the second floor with her nine children, ranging in age from 1 to 19 years old. 

She moved there in April 2005 from a shelter in Brooklyn. She said, “The city gave me a list of apartments, and this was one of them.” 

Over the past five years, conditions in the house have deteriorated significantly. 

“The basement is filled with raw sewage,” Ms. Haney said. “The smell is horrible, and my kids and I are breathing in this stuff. 

“There are holes in the ceiling and floor, and squirrels come inside. I don’t have an oven — it’s been broken for four years. The kitchen sink doesn’t work — I have to wash my dishes in the bathroom tub.” 

The city’s Department of Finance lists the building’s owner as Angelito Chuakay, who has a mailing address in Secaucus, N.J. Ms. Haney confirmed he was her landlord, but said he and his wife, Aurea, have not returned any of her telephone calls recently. 

Public records of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) show 119 open violations at 151 Hendricks Ave., 96 of them listed as Class B, meaning hazardous. 

An HPD inspection last month documented a collapsing ceiling in Ms. Haney’s living room, a hole in the kitchen ceiling, a broken pipe in the kitchen sink, vermin throughout the apartment and raw sewage in the basement, among other violations. 

An earlier inspection in August found exposed electrical wiring, a sagging bathroom floor and doors that created rooms within bedrooms. 

When an HPD inspector visited the building in March, flies, roaches and mice were noted throughout the building; electrical wiring was exposed in the basement; there was a leaking pipe in Ms. Haney’s kitchen, and no smoke or carbon monoxide detectors, as required by law. 

“HPD comes here and takes pictures, but nothing else happens,” Ms. Haney said. 

She is also concerned that the building may have been illegally converted from a one-family to a two-family house. “On the first floor, there’s just a piece of sheetrock that separates the downstairs apartment from the upstairs,” she said. 

As for landlord Angelito Chuakay, “He said that he did not have the money to help me up here when the downstairs tenant stopped paying rent and moved out about a year ago,” Ms. Haney said. 

A message a reporter left for Chuakay at his Secaucus phone number was not returned. 

About two months ago, “Chuakay’s wife asked me if I could move,” Ms. Haney said. “She told me there was no money, and the bank was taking over the house.” Since then, Chuakay and his wife “don’t take my calls.” 

Ms. Haney said she subsequently spoke by telephone with Tom Marco — of Tom Marco Real Estate, Inc., with office addresses in Brooklyn and on Staten Island — after she received a letter from him, dated Oct. 25. The letter said the real estate company had determined that 151 Hendricks Ave. was unoccupied, and that the locks would be re-keyed. 

Ms. Haney said she explained to Marco that she and her children were living on the second floor. “He said that he’d get back to me, but I never heard back,” she said. 

A reporter reached two persons by telephone at Tom Marco Real Estate in an attempt to clarify the building’s ownership status. 

“I don’t need to make any comments at this point,” said Anthony Trinarche, who was identified as a property manager in the company’s Staten Island office in the letter that Ms. Haney received. 

In a second call, a man who identified himself as a secretary said he would pass on the message “to upper management.” That call has not been returned. 

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