Bath Beachers are demanding the city clean up an abandoned home on Bay 31st Street that unruly squatters use as a flophouse.
The decrepit residence between 86th Street and Benson Avenue is a fire hazard and a hotbed for illegal activity, a woman who lives next door said.
“We don’t know what’s going on in there, the place is completely unsafe and it’s falling apart,” neighbor Debbie Patterson said. “I’m afraid of a fire, that’s my biggest fear.”
Three city agencies said there is nothing they can legally do to remedy the situation, although the Department of Buildings said it will re-inspect the property in response to the Fire Department’s March 21 request to vacate and seal the building. Utility companies have also cut services to the building.
This paper met with Patterson and a dozen other neighbors gathered outside the home on March 11 to hear stories of their encounters with individuals they said stay at the house.
At the time, there were three bottles of what appeared to be urine along the walkway to the front door — which was missing from its frame — and mounds of trash in the front yard. Inside, a middle-aged man who is homeless said he has stayed out of trouble with the law, but that police sometimes arrest others staying there. The stairway to the top floor was barricaded with a mattress and trash.
And the home isn’t just an eye sore — it’s a danger to the public, locals said.
A man staying at the house stabbed someone on Bay 31st Street last year, neighbors claim. Squatters often solicit neighbors for money or hang out in front of the house, brazenly drinking alcohol and urinating in public, locals said. One teen recalled when an intoxicated man followed her and a friend from outside the building up Bay 31st Street to 86th Street.
City officials should at least step in to prune the overgrown front yard, which makes for a dangerous ambush point for muggers looking to prey on passersby, a 24-year-old lifelong neighbor said.
“At least try to get rid of the overgrowth so the house can be seen, because this has so much shade that anyone can do anything, it’s really hard to see,” the woman said. “Someone could pop out at any time they want and attack someone.”
The house’s owner appears to be a Bay Ridge man who died in 1989, city records show. The property has been largely vacant since, although one family member occasionally cleaned it up in years past. She stopped coming about five years ago and squatters started to turn up at night about a year ago, neighbors said. She was unreachable at two phone numbers.
The police department has responded to numerous incidents at the home and made arrests, but a lieutenant at the 62nd Precinct said the department cannot legally vacate the property without a complaint from the landlord.
A Department of Finance official said the agency did visit the property, but did not say if taxes had been paid on the property and said there was nothing further the agency could do.
Councilman Mark Treyger (D–Coney Island) said his office is aware of the issue at the house and investigating potential solutions.
