Pros:
- Location / proximity to shops and Prospect Park
Cons:
- Vagrants & junkies live in lobby, fight, do drugs, cause public nuisance
- No security
- Rodents
- No extermination schedule
- Management does illegal rent actions
Advice to owner:
I live at 2016 Regent Place Apt 2J Brooklyn NY 11226. There are persistent vagrants in the lobby. They fight, defecate, smoke drugs, sell drugs, and generally cause a public nuisance that affects my work (I work from home), health (smoke fills my apartment daily and I am an asthmatic), and quality of life. I have complained to building management, the super, and called the police many times, but nothing has changed in almost 7 years. The police do not even show up anymore when I call.
The other day, the vagrants broke the glass on the building front door, leaving the building totally open to the public. Anybody could walk inside.
They once evicted the drug dealer across the hall from me. And after that, he would show up to the building to loiter, sell, and smoke drugs. The building managers asked me to “be their eyes and ears” when he showed up, and I regularly notified them of his presence. Having done this for years, I am simply tired of management pretending not to know what is going on, and making us, the tenants, run these people off, call the police, moderate their fights, all while trying to live and work from our homes during the pandemic. The building continues to deteriorate and the management should be embarrassed.
They changed the doorbell to include a video monitor, but it became clear they were not actively monitoring anything. At a point, they hired a security service to monitor it remotely and a "Voice from God" would boom out 20 times a day to shout at the vagrants. It was impossible to work, and eventually they discontinued the service, and have not figured out how to hire a security guard (because they're too cheap to want to pay for one). There are constant fights and commotion on the street in front of the building and in the lobby. Constant noise at all hours of the night.
Every now and then, management pretends to get a doorman who disappears in a couple of months and the loitering cycle starts all over again. I have had my own visitors accosted in the lobby by the vagrants, who often fight and threaten to kill each other well into the wee hours of the morning. I have seen blood in the lobby, feces, urine, food containers, drug use, drug sales, and fights. I have seen vagrants overdose and be taken away in an ambulance, then show up to smoke drugs the next day. Now it is constant EVERY DAY. Smoking, fighting, blood, excrement, urine, eating food, arguing, virtually living in the lobby. I have called the police as often as possible to the point they do not show up anymore. I'm just tired. This is a major security issue. I don't feel safe, and even calling 311 yields no results.
It's as if nobody, not even the management company, cares about the integrity of the building, and the safety of the residents. I'm sensitive to the issues of the unhoused and addicts, but every single day—EVERY SINGLE DAY—until 4 or 5 in the morning, vagrants are smoking drugs in the lobby. This is not safe. I have smoke filling up my apartment constantly. I have had to tape around the edges of my door to seal myself in and prevent the smoke from entering the air. And every month, someone from the management company actually pushes the rent envelope through the tape and breaks the seal so that smoke enters my apartment. First of all, STOP PUSHING THESE ENVELOPES UNDER MY DOOR. I HAVE A RENT ACCOUNT ONLINE. Secondly, STOP ALLOWING VAGRANTS IN THE BUILDING.
It is not a safe situation for the residents. I work hard to pay my rent, and I've never had to deal with a situation such as this in almost 16 years of living in the city. We’ve all been left to fend for ourselves here and it is professionally negligent and in violation of the warranty of habitability.
I am now submitting these complaints publicly, at least I can prevent someone else having my same fate.