Bureaucracy Beat !!! ℠ HPD & the Mold Health Blues

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Imagine you wake up tomorrow and you know that your next encounter with a bureaucracy, any bureaucracy, is gonna leave you with a big smile on your face! Since you know that isn’t gonna happen, you now understand the importance and grave purpose of this new column.

You can know that herein is soothing salve for the wounds of encounter with bureaucracies—companies, institutions, representations, local, state, federal and beyond—and perhaps the mimicking-bureaucracies even we have become. Take HPD—Housing & Preservation Development–or if you’d rather not, try to get a repair, or even heat or hot water with a rapid management/‘landlord’ response, without calling 311.

Good luck!!! However, there are pitfalls to picking up that phone to call 311, and thank your lucky stars that the wait to get a live person has at least seemingly been reduced considerably.

Remember the “O”/Operator response, keep your fingers crossed and you might actually get a live breathing person. Beware of talking to computers however, you very well might be talking in a continual loop, and wasting precious and valuable time; and if all else fails in other instances, hammering on the “O” key, is both a way to vent some of that negative emotional energy in bureaucracy-encounter, and finally get a breathing individual hopefully at your service—good luck with the service part, too often….

Consider “Angie’s” plight. Needing to report improper repairs after considerable water damage, the news at hand by the HPD operator at hand, was: “there was a ‘new app’,” according to 311 HPD “Susie.”

[All names are pseudonyms to protect everyone’s privacy and some peace-of-mind after bureaucracy-encounter.]

This “new app” does not allow you, as previously, to merely and simply describe your apartment’s problems and issues. Oh no, apparently multi-choice from the education system’s regime of standardized testing, Common Core, etc. has been brought to how you explain the concerns for repair and rectification in and of your apartment.

(Less ideas sometimes more).

To say this is a bit problematic and disconcerting doesn’t quite tell the tale. Since “Angie” had experienced significant water damage from an improperly installed air-conditioner in the above apartment for 4 days, she of course, wished she could report a new superintendent whose attention had been brought to the root of the problem by the above tenants.

However, his strangely bureaucratic response was to tell the upstairs tenants to “keep the air-conditioner on low,” apparently instead of installing it correctly, and ascertaining his required fee posthaste. Meanwhile, he told “Angie”—downstairs—that he had told the upstairs folks to not use the air-conditioner—until correctly installed.

Clearly virtue is always its own reward, that b-e (bureaucratic entities) often forget. This new Super, for a considerable while, was and has been the perfect example of “us” mimicking-the-bureaucracy. Miraculously, persistence with and around these bureaucratic entities of all stripes is also the perfect example of how things can transform and get much, much better.

While first coming on the premises, he had the swagger and manner correctly referred to as not unlike “a rogue cop.” Perhaps, his previous aggression, and readiness to forget his job is to care for, and serve the tenants, was responded to by love and concern, and he’s not so ready to respond with argument, antagonism, and other inappropriate behavior.

However the significant success of now a considerably calmed down Super, the HPD problem looms large for both “Angie” and you, with HPD apparently being unaware of the grave dangers of mold and therefore, out of touch with the patterns of ‘landlords,’ even those same owners/managers contributing through their negligence with all the water coming down, but on absolute intransigence to proffer anything resembling a proper repair.

Why? Why mold being a fungus, and is also a microbe—invisible—does not negate the gravest of health consequences.

Molds of many types not only are known to be carcinogenic, but are also linked to respiratory and neurological health impairments and degeneration. Molds also subject the human body to conditions like skin rashes, allergic reactions, and other downward spirals to one’s health.

So, the question is: Why can’t one claim one has had an improper repair regarding water damage, so the actual and/or potential mold problem cannot be cosmetically and literally covered-up by landlords since the health stakes are so high and debilitating?

This seems to require that HPD has some basic understanding, and grounding, and protocol to protect tenants against mold(s) and potential molds—likely after water seepage and damage–throughout New York City.

As that is the question, I will be following up with an answer most graciously sought directly from HPD, and intended for you the beloved. HPD: Please, Please, Please. Acknowledge the problem and the “trick” of resolve tenants are caught in by both landlords and presently HPD.

Allow tenants to provide proof—photos, witness affidavit(s), etc.—after a cosmetic repair has been done that your housing inspector presently has no way to describe, report, and analyze—due to a disconnected to you/us and unhelpful bureaucratic frame-work.

What you see is not always what one gets or has. HPD: Be familiar with proper mold alleviation and remediation. We know you HPD want to partner with your tenants when it comes to any suspicion of mold. Do your job HPD correctly and efficiently.

Thank you HPD for your connection to what Bureaucracy Beat!!! ℠ calls the HUMAN TOUCH.

And Thank You tenants for your support and efforts to realize the quite, quite reasonable.

 

© Copyright 2016 ALH; The 21 Report ℠ {The Original}

One thought on “Bureaucracy Beat !!! ℠ HPD & the Mold Health Blues

  1. Heya i am for the first time here. I found this board
    and I find It really useful & it helped me out much. I hope to give something back and help others like you helped me.

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