Re: TENANTS WITH ASTHMA FIGHT TO BREATHE EASY

June 19, 2007

This is a great idea EXCEPT - and this is a big except, it could put a lot

of people who are already living in a very perilous state in a terrible

situation. Why, because then their landlords will often do ANYTHING TO GET

THEM EVICTED.. to avoid having to fix up the building. In NYC, when tenants

complain about housing conditions sometimes (often, in some neighborhoods in

transition) it leads to ARSON. people end up dying in fires. Whole buildings

of poor people are forced out on the streets. Landlords hire thugs to burn

the buildings down.

I am not kidding.

See (on the same website)

AND MANY OTHERS...

An empty lot is worth millions.. a building with tenants in it is worth much

less.. especially if they are complaining...

There have been epidemics of arson in New York City in both the past and the

present..and as a result of this probably hundreds or more of people have

been blinded and disfigured horribly with third degree burns all over their

bodies even as they are made homeless. Many have died. Tens of thousands

have lost their homes.

There has to be a better way.. Band aid solutions won't solve the root

problems..

>Fifth Avenue Committee is working with Lutheran Medical Center in Sunset

Park on a medical-legal partnership, a local initiative that would include

housing advocacy. As it stands, when a person comes to the medical center

with asthma, the patient is assigned a nurse, and sometimes a community

health educator to conduct an environmental assessment of the patient's

home. What Fifth Avenue Committee is proposing is an additional step in

which community educators could opt to call on housing advocates who could

organize tenants, assist in mediation with the landlord, or call on a lawyer

to help settle the housing issue. Then, when a doctor writes a prescription

for an asthma sufferer to avoid allergens like mold, mites or roaches – as a

physician recently did for Mendoza's niece, with no result – " an enforcement

mechanism will be triggered, " Guerra said.

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