By Bob Harris
At a recent Queens Civic Congress meeting, there was a discussion of zoning, the city Department of Buildings, enforcement, the Department of City Planning, self-certification and why there have been so many building deaths and crane accidents. Sean Walsh, former QCC president, said, “They just don't get it!”
This said it all.
For decades, I can remember civic associations or co-op owners complaining that there is too much illegal construction, too many workers are dying and too many communities are being destroyed by a few speculators and builders violating the zoning resolution.
People buy houses in a community with a certain zoning, type of house and quality of life. Builders are destroying this. People want a nice house, green lawns, tree-lined streets and flower beds. They do not want too many cars, garbage and recycling cans.
Civic association leaders want the DOB to stop illegal construction. They want builders who build illegally to be fined, made to pay the fines and punished. People want Queens' residential communities preserved, but the DOB does not seem to know how to enforce the laws because they “just don't get it!”
I have been to civic association and town meetings where a packed room of homeowners and renters screamed at DOB and DCP representatives and legislators who were there. The problem is that the DOB and DCP “just don't get it!” Do the leaders of our city really care what we want?
Thank heaven for elections. A couple of weeks ago, city Comptroller William Thompson audited the DOB. He discovered that the DOB does follow up on building visitations, but the DOB did not audit the 20 percent of buildings self-certified by builders, which they were supposed to check. This means that only about 5 percent or 10 percent of all buildings self-certified are checked for safety.
The law is so weak that building inspectors cannot even get into a building to check if it was built safely or a complaint made by a neighbor or civic leader was true. One excuse for not making the law stronger on private property is that it deals private property and one should respect it.
Today, however, city leadership is threatening to take away private property in Willets Point, northern Flushing's Iron Triangle and Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards by using eminent domain. The commonly held belief is that the current buildings do not look good and new, gigantic developments will be better.
But eminent domain is supposed to be used by governments to take private property because the government needs the land for the peoples' use.
When a building collapses or crane falls and a few workers or innocent residents die, something needs to be done. Civic leaders have reported, however, many illegal constructions, some dangerous. When something illegal is discovered, fines should be collected, the person who broke the law should be punished and the incident should be reported in the media.
BAD NEWS OF THE WEEK: Our society lives by the philosophy of hard work and making money, but sometimes we try to make money by artificially boosting prices. People buy and sell houses to make money. Banks and brokers falsely inflate the income of people who want to buy houses. People just kept on bidding up the price to artificial heights, which are unrealistic and based on lies.
TV shows give the idea that one can buy and flip a house to make money. Now, people are buying oil futures with 5 percent cash and artificially pushing up oil prices. The Great Depression was based on buying stocks with 10 percent cash. Current laws prevent that by requiring a 90 percent or 100 percent margin.
Of course, demand for oil is up all over the world. When will we learn that one cannot get things without hard work and sweat?
