How Is This Allowed? (with update!)

 

A disgraceful mess on Warren Street

The person standing to the left is responsible for the mess but does not own the property.  Someone in Peekskill owns the long-vacant former church.  And City Hall does nothing, allowing the so-called artists to do whatever they want and create as large an eyesore as they like.

Why does anyone need to see this day after day and night after night?

What do the one full-time officer and two part-time officers at our Code Enforcement Office do all day?

Update, Saturday 11/18: Late yesterday afternoon, I watched as a woman put the last of the most conspicuous junk in front of the former church into a van.  I was told that she is the mother of the squatter, and that she had done a similar cleanup last week, only for the junk and the son to return the following day. 

On Monday, a HPD officer told me that HPD and Code Enforcement were having a difficult time contacting the  owner of the former church (448-452 Warren), but that they had spoken with "the caretaker."  The officer also told me that Craig Haigh was looking into whether what was going on in front of the church was a "permitted tag sale."

According to public tax records, 448-452 Warren has been owned by Otera, LLC of Peekskill since 2014 when they (he, she?) purchased it for less than half a million dollars.  It was most recently assessed for just over one million dollars.

Earlier this week in the early evening, I approached the former church on foot, only to be greeted by a large shelving unit full of junk, as if it had been purposely decorated, directly in the middle of the sidewalk.  I asked the squatter why he had to leave his belongings in the middle of the sidewalk.  Moments later, he was chasing me up Warren Street while waving a hospital IV stand at me, telling me that he was going to "fuck me up."  Near 5th Street, he stopped to try to break the stand in two to better wield it and to more quickly run after me.  Eventually he gave up (I still got legs, y'all!), though not without a few more threats.

About halfway up the 500 block while catching my breath, a car pulled up beside me.  The window came down and the woman in the driver's seat asked if I was okay.  I told her that I was fine.  She had seen the entire incident and had already called the police (I could hear an officer on her speakerphone).  I decided to not bother reporting the incident to the police since it would have probably been a waste of my time.  Her final words to me were: "Why is he even allowed to be there?"  Yet another resident aware of the completely fucked up, ugly, and dangerous situation that the powers-that-be at City Hall apparently have no interest in dealing with properly.

A friend told me that he was recently at a bar on Warren Street talking with 4 or 5 regulars about the situation in front of the church and on the sidewalk.  The consensus among them all was that it never should have been allowed by the city and that  HPD, Code, and the mayor's office are all generally not much help.