Worst Places to Rent in PLG

I was psyched to see that the City has put its slumlord data to good use: a handy map allows web users to see the worst landlords at a glance. Here in PLG, two have earned the "worst" designation, Louis Bombart of 150 Lefferts Avenue (bet. Bedford & Rogers), and Jean Bernard Mode of 441 Rogers Avenue (bet. Lefferts and Lincoln). Congratulations, guys.

Apartment hunters: consider yourself warned.  Now all the City has to do is cross-list the landlord data with the bedbug registry and we'll be in business!

More Hate for Parkside Eyesore

It seems that someone new has discovered the abomination at 205 Parkside (gmap). On my way to work this morning I spotted this flyer taped to the scaffolding.

It is a fake letter "from" building owners David Tepper and Moses Fried imploring people to call 311 and complain about the building. Among the choice sentences:

"You see, we basically don't care about you or your neighborhood or the fact that honest working people could be living in this building if we'd fix it up or sell it. You'd think that after owning this building for MORE THAN A DECADE we'd have figured out how to change this public nuisance and eyesore into something halfway decent for the 'hood. But you know what? We don't live here and we don't care what you think."

Good for whoever posted the note.

Earlier: Free Building Prank and Follow-up
Rathole of the Month: 205 Parkside

Affordable Housing Forum on Saturday

We received word from the Winthrop Street New Generation Block Association that the PLGNA Housing Committee is sponsoring a forum on maintaining affordable housing in PLG. The forum will include a showing of the film Some Place Like Home (see the trailer here) and guest speaker Wanda Imasuen, a representative of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), the advocacy organization featured in the film.

Some Place Like Home
A  Community Forum On Affordable Housing in Prospect Lefferts Gardens
Saturday, March 13
From 4-6PM
Church of the Evangel Fellowship Hall
Enter on Bedford Avenue, just south of Hawthorne Street.

For more information, contact PLGNA at Info@plgna.org.

Community Board Meeting To Address Curb Cut Change

A proposed amendment to zoning rules would make it harder for property  owners to turn their stoops and front yards into parking spaces.

You need to look no farther than Parkside Avenue to see how curb cuts can make a nice block ugly: many front gardens there have been paved over to serve as driveways. The owners paint the curb in front yellow, removing space available for public parking -- sometimes legally, sometimes not.

Flatbush Life has more about the proposed changes here.

At the next Community Board 9 meeting, reps from the Department of City Planning will be discussing the zoning changes and answering questions about them. Come on down!

Tuesday, December 22
7 pm
Middle School 61 Auditorium
400 Empire Boulevard
Brooklyn NY  11225

Councilmembers Pander To Brooklyn Merchants

In recent days both Courier Life and The Brooklyn Paper have written about recent efforts by the Brooklyn City Council delegation to pass bills intended to (a) make small businesses offer their employees mandatory paid sick leave and (b) institute a kind of rent control for commercial leases. I'm at a loss to decide which policy is worse.

The reason that small businesses are routinely exempted from labor laws like mandatory sick leave is that a company with few employees often lacks the financial resources to cover the extra expense and even less frequently has the employees necessary to cover for sick employees. While the impact on employment overall is probably overstated - the law would likely not lead to massive layoffs or business closings - some struggling businesses would get severely hurt by the imposition. Part of working for a small business is the knowledge that you are working for the kind of company that can't give you the benefits that Starbucks does.

On the other end of the spectrum, rent control for commercial leases is preposterous. I support rent stabilization (if not old-school rent control) for large residential apartment buildings despite the negative affect it has on the condition of rental housing and the rental market generally. I am willing to have the economy suffer in order to prevent the disruption and upheaval to individuals and families that would result if landlords could easily oust their tenants once a neighborhood became hot or the economy as a whole started improving faster as a whole than it did for the most vulnerable populations.

But commercial leases? No way. Yes, it is disruptive to have to close a business because it isn't profitable enough to meet the new lease terms. It is unfortunate for the patrons of that business to have to find a new way to meet that need. It is not, however, the city's responsibility to prop up small businesses that can't survive on their own.

In other words, the legislators are trying to simultaneously support businesses that don't earn enough to survive AND burden those businesses with substantial labor costs. Brilliant. And to think that this is supported by all of the candidates that I endorsed in the last election. *sigh*

In other, better, news, and in an attempt to regain my left-wing cred, kudos to the New York Court of Appeals, which upheld the decision of the New York Department of Civil Service to extend marriage benefits to same-sex couples with valid out-of-state marriages and congratulations to my sister-in-law, who wrote one of the amicus briefs in support of the State's decision. It was a narrow ruling by a bare majority and may not withstand later challenges for boring legal reasons ... but today I'll enjoy the good news.

PLG Among the Worst Recylers in Brooklyn

The Department of Sanitation has published a list of the best and worst neighborhoods for recycling throughout the city and PLG falls near the bottom of the list. This is especially unimpressive, since Brooklyn is fourth among the boroughs.

Bay Ridge is the greenest Brooklyn neighborhood while Brownsville is throwing away the most of its recyclables. PLG is among a cluster of central Brooklyn neighborhoods. Laurel was right to call out the unnamed "neighborhood leaders" mentioned in the article who blame the "lack of facilities" in the area for their constituents' poor showing on Nostrand Park, a Crown Heights blog. What facilities do you need? The Department of Sanitation comes to you!

Image via Nostrand Park

A solution to illegal advertising

I was recently looking over our Community Board's "Statement of Community District Needs" for 2010, a sort of governmental wish-list of things the board would like to happen. This bit caught my attention:

There appears to be an increase in the proliferation of illegal postings on light poles, street trees and traffic signals in the district. The [sanitation police] agency must be more aggressive in enforcing against this abuse that creates blight in our community.

If it were up to me, I'd get rid of all outdoor advertising and billboards, but commercial posters attached to street lights, sidewalks, and trees deserve their own place in hell. I don't know how many times I've walked by the giant water bottle hanging outside the Parkside Station and grumbled to myself about it. But instead of waiting for the Sanitation Dept. to do something, I found a better solution: a Swiss Army Knife. It's cheap, portable, and all you need to liberate a street light or tree from the chains of invasive advertising.

Gay bars and city life

The Lefferts Yahoo list has been abuzz lately about the possibility of new-bar-in-town Lime starting a gay and lesbian night. I have nothing really to say on the matter; our household is split on whether gay night would be valuable or necessary (note: we have a very gay house)... but it reminded me of this fine Boston Globe story about how the decline of gay bars in Boston stands to hurt city life. The story looks at how a confluence of factors—increased rents, the rise of the internet, greater public acceptances of gays and lesbians—has contributed to the decline in bars.... though in the end it's as much about the fall of indie book stores, record stores, and video rental places, as anything else. Anyway, a recommended read!

How would YOU reinvent Grand Army Plaza?

From Streetsblog:

The Grand Army Plaza Coalition and the Design Trust for Public Space are launching an "Ideas Competition" called Reinventing Grand Army Plaza. Building on GAPCo's on-going effort to re-envision this historic Brooklyn crossroads, the Ideas Competition will solicit new, creative proposals for Grand Army Plaza's re-design. Top submissions will be exhibited in the summer of 2008 at the Brooklyn Public Library or the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

To document GAPCo's progress to date, the existing context of the Plaza and the competition's goals and aspirations, GAPCo is creating a Briefing Booklet for competition entrants and they want your thoughts, ideas, hopes, frustrations and visions for Grand Army Plaza represented in this publication...

1. What about Grand Army Plaza currently functions well?
2. What existing problems could be addressed by a Plaza re-design?
3. What potential uses or opportunities for the Plaza might a Plaza re- design incorporate?
4. Please include your name, organization/affiliation, neighborhood and contact information in your response.

For more information, please visit: http://www.reinventingGAP.org. Or email info@reinventingGAP.org.

Noise complaints: Not just for yuppies

If you were wondering if complaining about the noise in PLG is a gentrifier thing, it isn't: Flatbush leads the city in noise complaints. So to the people who think that complaining about loud music late at night is a form of cultural oppression, we say Shhhhhhhhhh!

In our little corner of PLG, we've been very lucky with respect to noise and rarely find any reason to complain. Last summer, we called 311 to report an outdoor party after it continued hopping past 3 am. But once isn't so bad, is it?