“Never give up, never, never, never give up.”

— Winston Churchill

Well, I have been known for my constant bitching about the fact that many of us downtown especially in SoHo have had no access to city agencies that actually do anything.

HPD, also known as Housing, Preservation, and Development is an agency charged with overseeing the safety of apartments in Manhattan and making sure that residents rights are not violated by landlords.

Here’s a list of their largely ineffective functioning in Manhattan:

We have a landlord who is part of a team of two dentists and their families that essentially purloined the building that we live in and has managed to evict, by one method or another, at least 90% of the tenants in the building. Amid collusion with HPD we have no 311 service to our building as we have been designated a loft building when in fact, we are rent- stabilized tenants. As an example of the violation of our rights, we have practically no heat in the winter and 311 will not take our complaint when they used to take our complaint. When it used to function, 311 would give us a Report number and tell us that within 72 hours someone would show up to verify the fact that we had no fucking heat.

Strangely the inspector when we used to have 311 ability to make complaints would first call the landlord, who would then of course turn the heat on so that when the inspector arrived there would be heat and then turn the heat off after the inspector left. After going to court to force 311 to again service our building, the City-owned judge ruled that we must file an article 78 to get justice. At a cost of $10,000!

While I try to understand people when they’re speaking to me, the HPD inspectors rarely spoke enough English for me to convey my complaint and once the complaint was filed (when we used to have 311 ability to make complaints) absolutely nothing was done to force the landlord to give us heat. HPD is a bad joke.

NYPD recently arrived at our apartment because someone had broken into our apartment while we were there — which, in my illustrious experience in prison as a journalist being prosecuted by a corrupt district attorney in Suffolk County — I learned that breaking into someone’s apartment is called Home Invasion. The individual who broke into the apartment was charged with trespassing. If he’d had a weapon, one of us might’ve been killed.

Another recent experience with NYPD has been that I was sideswiped by a car on Broadway and I rushed to try to get a photo of the car which was fleeing, but it did not show a clear license plate number When NYPD arrived I was cross-examined as to why I was there and I got no assistance whatsoever with finding out who the perpetrator was. I contacted DOT, the police department, FBI, and even surrounding building owners to find out if they had cameras that could elucidate. I receive no cooperation whatsoever, including from the DOT inspector general, which had cameras that were strategically located at the corner of Canal Street on Broadway. When I visited NYPD to update the investigation I was told at the front desk that the detectives only see people regarding murders — a hit-and-run in SoHo was an irrelevancy.

I complain to the Community Board about the fact that the landlord of the building that I was living in was abusing and harassing tenants, using tenants as spies to find ways to evict rent stabilized tenants, and allowing and may have been involved in a sex trafficking operation with underage girls — and had stolen the building from the previous owners under very suspicious circumstances. Toby Bergman was the chairman of the community board at one point when I described some of these conditions and he found it to be very humorous. The community board has never done anything to assist the residents in SoHo and has become an insulated donation/patronage operation which does nothing for us Senior, Disabled pedestrians. In fact CB2 and Deborah Glick has allowed the Hudson Square BID and the SoHo BID to essentially operate a money producing racket for their employees and investor friends while controlling real estate interests Downtown.

Then, when I contacted Richard Fife in the DAs office to describe criminal behavior on the part of my landlord, I was totally ignored. They don’t even return emails when crime is reported.

I attempted to get DOT to provide ticket writing traffic agents — since the agents that currently monitor the traffic flow on Canal Street, Avenue of the Americas, Broome Street, Watts Street areas do not have the ability to write tickets. There is no way to get anything done to improve the safety for pedestrians. In fact I was a member of Community Board 2 and discussed these items 20 years ago and absolutely nothing has been done, except to add several traffic agents that are unable to write tickets.

The improvements of adding bikes for transportation, in lower Manhattan and elsewhere is laudable and I knew Sadik Khan who was a biker and who influenced the Bloomberg administration to improve the ability for people to ride bikes, however, bikes have overtaken pedestrians and we are no longer safe. Further, the installation of Citibike bike racks (owned by Lyft and Citibank) has, in many cases, interfered with the ability for seniors and the disabled to get into their vehicles safely for doctor appointments and transportation without the risk of being hit by a tourist or delivery service motorbike. The biking interests which include Transportation Alternatives are on the verge of becoming a fascistic organization that provides opportunities for those who are acolytes of biking where those of us who are disabled and seniors are left behind to our own devices and safety. This should be the domain of the community board which completely anbrogated its obligation to protect us.

For Disney fans, hopefully you will appreciate the new blocklong building at 137 Varick street also known as 7 Hudson Square. They are a new, valued addition to Hudson Square, buddies with the Hudson Square BID and Trinity Real Estate—who deserve each other. We should welcome them.

Note: The only downtown politician who actually does anything for SoHo is Christopher Marte — who is running for Speaker of the City Council.