UHAB is a criminal enterprise.
My name is Theo Chino and I am a New York City resident. I live in a building that today is owned by a non profit called UHAB. I was born in that building.
(This post is a work in progress as English is not my first language. Spanish and French are so if something is unclear, feel free to ask in the comment and I will fix the story. The original press release is here: https://twitter.com/theochino/status/1193606165122441217)
8/7/2020 update: Rick Echevarria put together this video asking Bill DeBlasio why he doesn’t listen to us. He is an HPD director that got fired.
https://nypost.com/2017/08/31/ex-city-employee-says-he-was-fired-for-making-corruption-complaint
3/1/2020 update: The mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio was asked twice about the no-bids contracts for HPD sponsors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTxDWc2SJrA
3/1/2020 update: The story in video broken in 3 pieces. The first piece is a voice agreement between HPD and myself regarding a regulatory meeting and a broken promise from HPD, a court case of a tenant being taken to court for not signing the regulatory agreement despite the promise of HPD to stop the clock, an Audio of UHAB explaining to the Dawson family about HPD rules and Bill de Blasio answering the No Bid question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbZ7W6db0ig
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6714285/Rosario-Dawsons-family-swindled-New-York-couple-Manhattan-apartment-lawsuit-claims.html
“ Gregory and Isabel, who are separated, each got their own apartment in the 14-unit building, along with one for their son Clay and another for family friend Rex Hughes.”
More stories on the building at https://showthebooks.org/apts/2599
On 11/13/2019, I spent the whole evening in front of Jimmy’s BBQ where Cory Booker had a grassroots fundraising event. I stayed from the moment the SVU arrived to the moment it left.
I gave a flyer with my accusations to Cory’s staff. I captured the brief interaction a post it on Instagram.
The HPD program states, according to UHAB, that each leaseholder will get at a preferential rate the apartment listed on their lease. Nobody from the close family is allowed to expand into the building. Those were the rules of the program. How someone goes from 1 apartment to 4 need to be investigated.
Audio of TA from 2003 where the Dawson family was told they were getting 1 apartment: https://soundcloud.com/user-11159272/uhab-544-east-13th-2003-meeting
The relation between a vocal group of tenant and UHAB and the City of New York is very contentious.
Each year I read the Non Profit annual report, and this year they had two addresses side by side.
The ask is pretty simple, get someone to start issue subpoenas to get a forensic accounting investigation into the Non Profit and the various entities controlled by that Non Profit. https://twitter.com/theochino/status/1192855171073789952?s=20
https://www.uhab.org/sites/default/files/annual_report_2018_updated_2.pdf (Page 10)
I googled the address of 544 East 13th street and I stumbled on a series of article including this one by the Real Deal and the article mentioned Rosario Dawson which I realized was an actress and Senator Booker’s girlfriend.
https://therealdeal.com/2017/05/15/rosario-dawsons-family-eyes-purchase-of-low-income-housing
The article mentioned actions taken by the Dawson family that were contrary to what the families in my building were not allowed to do. Several families in my building lives like sardines while bigger empty apartment were available for them to move in. Instead, the worse tenant is living 7 people in a 3 bedroom apartment.
The Post article mention turning apartment into a duplex which was against the rules of the HPD. We were prohibited to get our children apartment in the building under some supposedly prohibited nepotism rule.
Something seemed unfair.
Looking at the future; our Assemblyman Al Taylor lives at another co-op that went trough the same program that we did and was further than ours; 936–938 St. Nicholas Ave. Since they were owned by the same UHAB, they used the same contractor, Dellwood.
Because we have been fighting for 40 years, we refused to start the project without an independent contractor report on Dellwood works.
We kept a detailed journal of the Construction https://640rsd.new-york.ny.us/ConstructionJournal
The construction company dismantled and we don’t know what happened to the principals.
Fast forward 2019 and it was reported that the City of New York were transferring properties from homeowner which prompted an quick investigation of the whole Third Party Program.
Taking good homes from rightful owners was the last straw and a 6 hours hearing took place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCN38pMUXc4
The City Commissioner response to the issue is that she just took the job 3 month before so she did not know and could not be held accountable.
However the city investigation did not drill into the building already in the program or those that went into the program and because lack of oversight are ending up in foreclosure.
We brought it up at the hearing but to date nothing has been done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf5RPaseT-0
Each time, we the tenant of 640 used our muscle to slow the process and get answers.
We asked the city 41 questions. We are still waiting for the answer. Nothing has been done. https://twitter.com/theochino/status/1013987836188557312
The board of the tenant association was changed to UHAB liking. I caught the secretary of the board renting his apartment on AirBnB to pay for a house in Connecticut. UHAB and the City of New York were made aware of that but since he was amenable to the UHAB, they have not evicted him despite working against the tenants best interests.
The first line of apartments were repaired but the board membership did not find it necessary to get an outside professional opinion. The work is clearly shoddy.
Here are two article from 2000 and 2014 explaining the struggle.
https://citylimits.org/2000/03/01/becoming-home
The harassment by UHAB happens all the time. This is a video of the tenant asking for help from our local councilman.
You can see at the bottom of the thread the eviction notice. All she ask is that they comply with the American Disability Act. I will need to trek downtown to the housing court once again like I did with many of the tenants. https://soundcloud.com/user-11159272
For 17 years, I have carefully reviewed the finances of my building by transcribing the management reports that UHAB needed to review and transcribed month after month into an excel spreadsheet.
All the financial documents used to do that spread are located here: https://640rsd.new-york.ny.us/Finance (The MOR directory contains all the Management Report that the management company gives to UHAB.)
You can access most of the MOR in web format https://640rsd.new-york.ny.us/MOR
All I am asking for are the same documents for all the property UHAB had including the one from Rosario Dawson at 544 East 13th street.
Until that is done, I will be trolling everyone during the presidential campaign.
