Fourteen months after an eviction was granted, building hijackers who illegally occupied Communicare’s Goedehoop property in Brooklyn were finally removed by the Sheriff of the Court last month.
Hijackers’ threats of violence plagued the lives of Goedehoop and surrounding tenants and their access to favourable rental opportunities. The staff members took it upon themselves to clean five of the 22 apartments that were illegally occupied.
They had a hands-on refresh of apartments to ensure that they are ready and waiting for families in need. Members of the Communicare team were on-site rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty to spruce up apartments, Balisa Mancay, communications officer at Communicare, said.
During this cleaning-up session, community stakeholders met with staff on-site and engaged about the future.
According to the CEO of Communicare Anthea Houston they are overjoyed to have the properties back. “The reason we have these properties is to rent it out to people who need housing and although people were using it to provide shelter for themselves the way they went about it was criminal and problematic, it was violent, and they were intimidating our tenants who live here.”
Many of the existing tenants are old, or single mothers with children and they were complaining about their safety the whole time.
“We were able to get the apartments back and now to clean it up. We know we are creating a safe space for the people who do live here and am able to give those apartments to people who need it.”
Today we are just cleaning up half a dozen apartments, but there are 22 that have been occupied, which have been returned and overall, in this complex, there are 132 apartments.
Faieda Jacobs, general manager of Communicare, said they are cleaning up themselves because the staff felt connected to what they do. Many joined Communicare because they want to make a difference, and this is one way of doing it. “We had so many staff volunteering for it. There was a high level of excitement, during the whole week and this morning you could see it when people just came in and they wanted to grab up anything, tools and materials and feel part of it.
“We will use a service provider to do some of the more technical things like the plumbing.”
The clean-up of the 5 apartments is 90% complete, some work needs to be done like the plumbing. By next month people can start moving in.
For the future, Communicare is planning to expand in the Brooklyn area and build 700 more apartments over the next couple ofyears, making most of the access to jobs, and public transportation.
