Patches of mold grew on Jessica Rios’ ceiling, which she fears could collapse. Already having worked with tenants in several buildings in East Elmhurst, Corona and Jackson Heights – as well a building Haros owns on 50th Street where McCreanor represented 36 families facing heating problems and holes in their walls – he finally had the chance to focus his work on his own neighborhood, thanks to the chance meeting in the church. “The Church is a place, sometimes the only place, where many immigrant families feel welcome. And so, it is a means of extending services to those who would otherwise be fearful of interacting with outsiders,” he said Behind Crumbling Walls The one other place that many immigrants should feel safe, but often do not, is in their own homes. Of the 50 units in the five-story Woodside building, McCreanor is fighting to offer half the families at least an ounce of safety as he targets the landlords of specific buildings that have outstanding violations. For Rios the problems stretch beyond her bathroom she said, causing her to worry for her younger sister. Sometimes the heat and hot water fail and the electricity doesn’t work in the summer, leaving tenants without air conditioning or stranded in the faulty elevator, she said as she pushed on her windows that won’t close properly. “The problems get worse and they get in the way, and one of these days a window could come down they aren’t properly installed,” she said of her building, which is one of 80 buildings Haros owns throughout the city. Roughly half of them are located in Queens. “It’s really bad, he has so many buildings and he’s just not a responsible man,” Rios said. “How does he expect people to live in buildings as dirty as these, this can really make people ill?” she said glancing towards her sister. Haros declined to comment for this story. While McCreanor credits the church for getting the program rolling at the other buildings, he said that Rios, the goddaughter of a tenant at another Haros building where McCreanor had helped, was the true spark that helped bring the tenants’ concerns to light. “Not only was she aware of the improvements that has occurred in her godfather’s building, but it also helped that I knew her from a class I had taught at St. Sebastian’s. So she really helped out with going around the building and bringing the families together.” McCreanor said. The Buzz Grows As soon as Rios informed an Ecuadorian family a flight above her of McCreanor’s intentions, they looked at their decaying ceiling and broken light fixtures and decided to accept his help. “The first time I came to this building the ceiling in here was falling down and all the landlord has done is plastered again and repainted,” he said. “Instead of wasting time and money, this problem could easily be fixed by resealing the roof or the bricks on the outside of the building.” Another flight up Kyungah You, a Korean tenant who has lived in the building for a year an a half, said that she has filed complaints about her leaking ceiling and front door that she can’t open from the outside, as well as the trash that piles up in the garbage room. “There are so many cockroaches in my apartment, even though I clean very well, but I’m right next to the trash room that there is nothing I can do,” she said. “I see the super coming around cleaning and starting to work hard but they don’t always fix everything.” How It Works Even though some tenants might not see the repairs being made quick enough, or not being made at all, McCreanor said that after inspectors from the Department of Housing and Preservation present their findings to Haros in court Feb.6, changes would be made. “We really shouldn’t have to be posing lawsuits to get the repairs done,” he said. “I start by taking pictures of the tenants’ complaints, and put the landlord on notice. If he fails to substantially correct the problems, I file a suit in housing court asking the judge to order him to correct the problems. He has time to fix the problems before it comes to this.” In the past McCreanor said, Haros generally only responds to these serious complaints of housing code violations. “In the buildings where we have initiated HP actions, he has complied substantially with court orders to correct the violations. However, the tenants have reported that many of the repairs are done in band-aid fashion.” A few tenants have said they have seen repairs that they would have never expected being made; such as the super scraping the staircases clean by hand. Since joining with the Catholic Migration Office in September, McCreanor said he has settled about a dozen lawsuits, but it is something that he couldn’t have done without the trust of the tenants and minimal funding from the office. “For many of these families a private lawyer is something they can’t afford and it’s even more difficult to get a free lawyer,” he said. “Sure, they can go and represent themselves in court, but many of these families have two parents that work one or two jobs each to support their families and those are hours that they can’t afford to lose, so we are here to help.” McCreanor admits that after graduating law school he was under a lot of financial pressure to work in a large, corporate setting, but for now, while he’s not married and doesn’t have children, he wants to make use of his freedom by doing something meaningful and challenging. “Sadly, the tenants are often exploited and treated with disdain,” he said. “But if this project helps to correct some of that injustice, we are doing something good.”

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