Winter Walk

...you've come a long way, baby. ;D

Senior Citizen Crack Attack!

At the behest of a long time tenant, who vouched the applicant was a changed man, and against my better judgement, I rented to an old man who had done some prison time for selling crack, was now supposedly dying of AIDS, and was taken under the wing of Catholic Charities.  They apparently had some Section 8 vouchers mandated for AIDS patients.  
A short time into his tenancy we began having problems.  I kept seeing all kinds of trashy people entering and exiting my building, many of them inebriated at 10 in the morning.  Expecting that sooner or later we’d end up with a slip and fall lawsuit, I did some investigating and found out that he was operating an illegal bar from his apartment.  He would regularly buy liquor and have people over “for drinks”.  His front room was essentially converted into a bar.  Illegal bars actually have a long tradition in Hudson, but that's another story.

I say that like the bar discovery happened right away.  The truth was, the situation was so far outside my realm of experience that it took me quite a few months to figure out what was going on, and even then, only with other people opening my eyes.  Left to my own undeveloped instincts at the time, I just went around wondering what the heck was happening for much longer than a savvy person would have.  Even today it’s hard for me to picture a senior citizen doing those things, but then again, it’s hard to picture a leopard changing its spots. 

Since he was receiving Section 8 through Catholic Charities, and this was a clear violation of Section 8 rules, I called and told them what was going on.  They should’ve revoked his voucher, but they gave me some mealy-mouthed excuse as to why they wouldn’t do that (reminiscent of my conversation with Habitat) so I had to deal with it myself.  I gave him 30 days’ notice, and, incredibly, Catholic Charities helped him find another place.  
I don't know if the change from selling crack to selling booze was a step up in his "rehabilitation".  All I do know is, I should’ve moved him next door to the tenant who so convincingly vouched for him.  We'd see how she liked him as a neighbor.
  
And I don’t donate to Catholic Charities, either.  

Homeless Housing, Part 1: More B.S.

About the same time B.S.(see Nov. 2^nd post) were skimming the city’s funds, word went out from HudWorld that homelessness was a big problem.  All of a sudden, we were “desperate” for a homeless shelter, and B.S. put in a grant application, which was approved. B.S. got mounds of money to build a homeless shelter right in the middle of the same area we, and later they, had been trying to convince people to buy houses! 

I went to the public hearing about it, and asked how B.S could handle managing a homeless shelter.  Their answer was that the shelter would be right across the alley from their office.  And what makes you think you are capable of the intense management that a shelter requires, when you can’t even manage your property with regular tenants a block away?  They mumbled, mumbled, but it was already a done deal, so the city approved it.

Construction began, but at some point B.S. either realized they were inept (unlikely), or they left the area, I can’t recall which.  The building was sold to another non-profit, opened as a halfway house for rehabilitating drug and alcohol abusers, and there it remains until today, quietly operating (with on-site counselors & managers) as The Red Door.  

Happy Chanuchriskwanza!

Every once in a while a tenant gets behind on rent.  Barring an obvious crisis (time in the hospital, etc.), I’ve found you can never let someone get past the point of being a month behind, because, no matter what the promises and intentions are, no matter how hard they try, it’s almost impossible to catch up.  And when that happens, people take the path of ( what seems to them) least resistance:  they move.  Still owing rent.   

Doubly unfortunate:  December and January’s rents are the hardest to collect.  People who already don’t have a reserve go over the edge with Christmas spending, and then reality hits on January 1^st.

Two weeks ago a tenant asked me if he could “skip” December’s rent.  I thought he was kidding.  He wasn’t.

The Worst Corner in Town

Already told you we had a building there*.  But a lot of funnier (and fun) stuff happened a long time before we owned it.  It was a brothel & bar, when Columbia Street was named Diamond Street.  I was amused, but not surprised, when I saw a picture of it in Diamond Street, a history of Hudson’s bordellos back in the day.

By the time we got it, it was a vacant, crumbling mess.  With lots of little bedrooms, of course – and a long, well-worn vintage bar in the front room.  And a lot of people hanging on the corner, day and night --  every day and night. 

When the guys went in to rehab it, they put snow fence around the building to keep pedestrians away from the work zone.  Back then snow fences were made of wooden slats and chicken wire, not the plastic mesh you see now.  Anyway, every morning, when the workers returned, there would be less and less slats on the chicken wire, until, at some point, there was only wire.  We never figured out why anyone would steal just the wooden slats, but they did.

In the middle of what was supposed to be interior demolition, what little mortar was left on the building gave up the ghost, and men on the other sites that made up the job got word to hurry down to the corner building, because it completely caved in.  We were trying to get historic tax credits for the rehab, so the guys cleaned off all the bricks and re-used them for what was actually a brand new building under used brick.

The disguise didn’t work too well, and because of the newness of the building, and the fact that the historic district wasn't extended to Columbia Street in the end, we never did get the tax credits.  But we ended up with this awesome-looking building, all brick with marble sills, on what was still,
unfortunately,
the Worst Corner in Town.

*See Oct. 27, 2010

Good Fences, Part 3: Gentrification

When Hudson was down-at-the-heels, I put my office in a storefront that went begging further up Warren Street.  But then antiques dealers kept popping into my storefront office, asking about renting it.  At first I said “nah”, but after about the fourth inquiry, it hit me like I needed a V-8.  Who cared where my rental office was?  At that point there was not much happening on the 200 block, so I moved my office into a vacant apartment in the BND.  I knew applicants and tenants would come wherever I was.  Heck, my first office was a construction trailer in the alley, an afterthought behind one of our buildings, and people came there.

But as I write this now, my office is in the BND, and unrecognizable as a former crack house.  The BND has morphed into a charming building on a gentrified block.  It’s totally detached, on a double lot, and sports a front lawn, rare on Warren Street.  The sun shines all day long, roses and morning glories festoon the iron railings in the summer, and birds have been known to winter over in our hedges.  I’m always getting inquiries into selling it, and it’s the only building I really want to keep.  Good karma.  Who would’ve thought.

Epilogue:  After many years we sold our original building, but kept the BND. Before we closed on the sale, I installed yet another fence, this one separating the two properties once again. There are a couple of long-time tenants in the original building who have free use of our gangway and yard*, but, I figured, you never know who might move in if they move out. 

So we’re back to “good fences…”   


*see Oct. 12th post

Good Fences, Part 2: A Night at the Opera

Now we had to clean up the BND --    no small undertaking. 

First, we had to discourage and re-direct the trafficking coming through the alley. the BND had garages which backed the lot up to the alley, with walkways from a kinder era between the garages to get from the alley to the back yard.  So we started by putting up 8’ high fences, and screwing the walkway doors shut.

The "neighbors" didn't take this inconvenience kindly.  While The Man was in the yard screwing the door shut, crackheads were in the alley pushing against it from the other side.  More than one junkie, in a really big hurry, scaled the new fence, only to find himself locked into the backyard, with the only way out being to do it again, albeit with less of a running start.  Somehow they all made the jump back out before the cops came.  But it was good for a couple of laughs in the meantime. 

As far as the vacant building on the other side of the BND, surprisingly, by merely contacting the owner, he agreed to put up a fence.  It wasn’t much of a fence, just some 2x4s and chicken wire, but, amazingly, the crackheads were apparently too lethargic (probably from all that fence jumping) and stopped shooting up in his building.

Besides renovating, there was the problem of trying to get good tenants into a building with a bad reputation.  The druggies in the alley, with their noise at all hours didn't help.  I repeatedly called the police, but Crack Alley was so entrenched by this time that their spotty coverage was ineffective.

I’d read about a convenience store which had large groups of kids hanging out, discouraging paying customers.   They solved their problem by piping Muzak over loudspeakers outside their store, which drove the kids away.  I figured, why not?  But we’d need the big guns:  Opera.  So we set up a loudspeaker in the gangway between garages, and, being the days before mp3s, turned an opera tape on continuous play. LOUD.  We figured we could use some extra help, so I called the police chief.  I asked him if there was a noise ordinance in the city.  I told him what we were doing, and to refer any legitimate complaints about the music to me.

I don't think the police wanted to be the brunt of the joke, so they helped for a while, actually stationing a patrolman right in the thick of it some days.  I could’ve sworn I saw a bullseye on that officer’s chest, but maybe I was just hallucinating.

After a while of continued harassment, the crowd thinned.  It took 10 years, and to this day there’s still some “hanging out” in that alley, but now it’s mostly the Alley Cats, a bunch of old guys who hang in their garage.  Or maybe they're actually crackheads who simply didn’t age well.  Anyway, they don't disturb us, we don't disturb them.  

     

But the building and yard today is beautiful, actually a double yard shared by the two buildings, with grass, shrubs and patio furniture.  In fact, the yard is so nice now we advertise our apartments in both buildings as being on "a beautiful double lot, with a fenced-in yard."