Jean Hill, Tracy Towers Tenant Organization President, testifies on building conditions

Okay, so our first panel, we have Jean Hill, Ed Yeager, and Sally Stroman.

And I apologize if I'm mispronouncing your names.

So if you could please come to the front table, that would be great.

Are you ready?

Okay, great.

So you can start in whichever order.

I think you just have to push the button.

Okay, my name is Jean Hill.

I'm the president of the Tracy Towers Tenant Organization.

I'm here representing Tracy Towers with a lot of my Tracy Towers residents here with me.

I have been there since 1975.

I've listened to everything that's going on today.

I found some of it extremely interesting.

I'll just give you a brief history of what's going on.

So we got $10 million two years ago from the assembly office to do work on the elevators and pointing.

None of that work has ever gotten started.

I don't know why they're holding on to this money.

The elevators are constantly breaking down.

People are constantly getting stuck in the elevators.

The building leaks like a sieve because the plumbing is 52 years old.

If they even touch it to go repair stuff, it breaks.

It floods the building.

We've had apartments that have been totally flooded in certain lines.

One of the apartments, they had to run the hose from their outside hallway into their apartment because the whole apartment was flooded and then back out to the terrace.

Okay?

The people couldn't even close their door.

So they had to go three days with it.

their door wide open while this water has been sucked out of the building.

We know that the leaks are one of the main problems.

We know the elevators are a main problem.

The fire department should have an apartment in the building.

They're so constantly getting people out.

The 4th of July, the heat was on.

It was 96 degrees outside, and they had the heat going on.

This is just one of the many things that goes on in there.

We know all of these things have been happening.

We have pleaded, begged, conjoled.

And the other thing that pisses us off the most, and excuse me for that word,

They come in and they do this work.

The work is substandard.

They came in in 2012.

They put in new cabinets.

The cabinets all falling apart.

They put in new windows.

We were still using fuses, and they came in and put in breaker switches in 2012.

That's how long it took us to get.

Breaker switches in the apartments.

So most of the work that they do there is substandard.

They say they come back and they check.

I have never seen anybody in there checking, coming back to say, is this work completely done correctly?

Does the work stand up?

They did the roof some years ago.

They had a 20-year warranty on the roof.

The roof warranty has not even expired, and they're back asking for money to do the roof again.

We don't have cameras around the part of the building, so anybody can wander in and out of there at will.

You know, they talk about they need all...

All of this extra money for security.

We know the security is substandard.

Anybody could walk in.

You could walk in there right now.

Nobody would stop you and ask you, what are you doing here?

You're going to see somebody.

We have.

A system of supposed to be you can ring the bell, but that doesn't work.

That hasn't worked since they put that in.

So everything that they put in is substandard work and it does not last.

But yet you keep coming back to the tenants asking for all of this money and we're not getting service for the money.

And then you have all of these people who don't fall under any subsidy program.

At least 60% of the residents are not going to fall under subsidy.

And what are they supposed to do?

Nobody's going to increase their salary because Tracy Towers wants more money.

Okay, so where they're supposed to go find it.

I have in the past had to work two and three jobs to pay the money.

So I know what that's like and raise a family at the same time.

And you have people in there with small children.

So we have a lot of issues in there that people really seriously need to pay attention to.

I know Julie Walpert for the last 40 years.

I don't know how long she's been there.

She says less than that, but I remember at least seeing her at least that long.

I know most of them from HPD.

It's not that we don't send in the 311 reports.

It's not that we don't make the complaints.

It's not that we don't film everything.

But it's like I'm talking to myself and who's paying attention.

So we are so glad to be able to come down here today.

I know some of the council members.

I see them on occasion.

I'm also, you know, working the community.

So we really need somebody to really be paying attention to what HPD is supposed to be doing.

It's what they say they do and what they actually do.

And we're not getting the actual work.

We're just getting a fantasy land.

And we tied it to fantasy land where we got to put good money out for it.

Thank you.