Elmont senior co-op, damaged by chronic flooding, leaves residents deep in debt, with no home for golden years

Zula Brown and her daughter wore protective plastic suits and masks as they entered the shuttered Elmont co-op building earlier this month, where Brown had lived for 10 years before it flooded last fall.

The 30-unit co-op building, which housed about 60 residents at 1888 Foster Meadow Lane, has been closed since Sept. 29, when 7 inches of rain flooded the basement and several feet of water destroyed the electrical panel, the boiler and fire alarm system.

The flash flooding forced some of the residents, all elderly, into emergency shelters. Several spent 11 days in a hotel, before moving into a county nursing home. Others went to live with family. One person ended up in a homeless shelter.

Residents have been allowed to return to their homes in recent months, but only to collect their belongings. The three-floor building has remained mostly padlocked, deemed "unfit for human occupancy" because of multiple fire code violations. The smell of mold wafts through the hallways, caution tape still hangs limp near the basement stairs, and flooring is unstable in parts of the building.

Residents say they don't have the means to make repairs to a building that repeatedly has flooded over the years. The building’s main infrastructure is in the basement, where the fire alarm system, electrical panel, boilers, hot water tanks and elevator persistently get flooded.

Brown's co-op unit — like those of most residents — survived the September flood, but it was destroyed when a third-floor pipe burst in January while heat in the vacant building was turned off. The pipe flooded the apartments below, leading to mold in the months that followed.

"There are late nights when I wake up and all I can think of is this furniture, my clothes and everything is gone," said Brown, 84. "I have to start over again. My whole apartment was flooded, and then the mold came in."

Brown, like many residents, had personal property insurance to cover her belongings, but her daughter, Brenda Shaw, said the insurance company told her it is waiting for the building's management to respond before processing any claims. Shaw said her mother did not have flood insurance to cover damage to her unit.

Residents say they did not expect to be spending their golden years in a flood-prone building, deep in debt. The Town of Hempstead, which partnered with a construction company to build the units as affordable senior housing, is warning that the building could be demolished due to code violations.

Seniors with combined incomes of less than $65,000 annually were selected through a lottery to live in the building. Under the co-op structure, the management company takes money from the residents and uses it for repairs. But the damage is so extensive, the building could be beyond repair.

"We haven’t gotten any help from anybody, and we are still sitting at square one. This was a total disaster, and we are trying to figure our lives out. A lot of seniors are just scattered all over the place," said Ruth Coleman, 75, who lived in the building for 12 years before being evacuated. She now lives with family in Virginia.

A history of flooding

The co-op was completed in 2011 using $1.5 million in state and federal grants and billed as a private-public partnership.

The Town of Hempstead acquired the land from Nassau County. The county later secured federal funding to reduce the cost of each unit for senior buyers, according to a town news release announcing the project at the time. 

Hempstead Town officials partnered with Bedford Construction and the Long Island Housing Partnership, a nonprofit coalition that supports affordable housing, to sell the two-bedroom units in a 2009 lottery for $150,000 each, supplemented with $25,000 grants for each owner. Residents 62 and older were selected. 

From the start, records show, structural problems related to the building's location contributed to chronic flooding from stormwater runoff. Residents said they have spent thousands of dollars in repairs after repeated previous floods, and the co-op remains upward of $100,000 in debt.

The building has flooded at least five times since 2011, including in 2021 during the remnants of Hurricane Ida, when residents were evacuated for six weeks.

Nassau County has been aware of the flooding problem for years. A year after the building was completed, the then-management company sued the county and the New York Racing Association over stormwater runoff that ran through nearby Belmont Park into the building. NYRA agreed to pay $30,000, while Nassau County paid $12,500, in a stipulation that protected both agencies from any future obligations at the property or liability in future storms at the property.

The building was built in a basin just south of Hempstead Turnpike and across the street from the stables at Belmont Park. Residents said the building flooded due to stormwater running off the adjacent property.

A 2021 engineering report commissioned by the current management company said: "As this location has suffered several flooding events in recent years, it is [our] recommendation that a study be undertaken to determine if the design of the storm sewer system in the area is a contributing factor to the flooding.

"Possible solutions can then be developed based on the findings to minimize the potential for future stormwater flooding and to prevent the significant monies being spent on renovation and remediation," the report said. 

The residents' attorney said Nassau County abruptly canceled a meeting in April with engineers to discuss the 2021 engineering report and address the flooding.

"The purpose of the meeting was to facilitate dialogue to address the overall problem and the aging sewer system and overflow," said attorney Dorian R. Glover, who is based in Uniondale. "It’s been an extreme hardship for these seniors. They were looking to enjoy these years with independence, which matters to them. Some have had to go to nursing homes and live with their children, and they have lost that freedom. They’re really wondering who cares."

The president of the co-op, Dorothy Malcolm, who identified herself as an 81-year-old widow in court documents, said Nassau County has not addressed recommendations of the engineering report. The management company recommended a $2,500 assessment fee per unit to address the problems brought up in the report, which the co-op board rejected.

Coleman, a co-op trustee and former president, said the building’s maintenance fees were raised in June 2023 to $750 per month. Before that, she said, the monthly fees had been $575 per month for 10 years. She said the co-op simply cannot afford to make repairs.

Coleman said the government should take responsibility. She said government officials "knew what it was like when it was sold to us. Why would you sell it like this to us and never mention it was a problem?" She added: "It’s heartbreaking and at our ages now, where do we go to find someplace else to live?"

Complications from litigation

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman vowed in the days after the September flood to help residents and hold building management's feet to the fire about the disrepair. The county housed a dozen residents for 11 nights at the Long Island Marriott in Uniondale and is paying for about eight residents to stay in a county nursing home.

On Oct. 4, Blakeman brought many of the residents to the courthouse to hold a news conference as he filed a lawsuit against the building's current and former management companies. As the residents learned later, he also filed the suit against them.

"Just like a good general doesn't leave their wounded on the battlefield, Nassau County will not leave our residents displaced, especially senior citizens who contributed so much to the growth of this county," Blakeman said at the time. "The county cannot go on for days and days in housing residents when the management company has the ability to make sure that they get back in their homes."

The suit, filed against both management companies and the co-op board, said the defendants "were unjustly enriched by the county" and said they failed to provide food and shelter.

While the residents themselves were not named as defendants, they are the shareholders and therefore own the building as part of the co-op. Most of the residents didn't realize they were being sued until they were served with summonses days later. They hired Glover to represent them.

"I don’t think they would have stood there in that moment, if they were going to be sued," Glover said of the news conference with Blakeman. "Many of the residents had no idea they would be defendants. They thought there was going to be additional aid."

Blakeman’s office and the county attorney did not respond to several requests for comment about the building or the lawsuit. 

Jan Thompson, the former secretary on the co-op board, said "it wasn't a fair deal. He didn't say why we were going. They were acting as if it was going to help.

"I don't think anyone realized what they were doing. They thought they were going to be helped and then we found out the lawsuit is going on. Blakeman has refused to do anything to help with construction."

The lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in Mineola notes multiple fire code violations and is seeking to reimburse the county for more than $200,000 in costs for housing and feeding the residents while the building was closed after the flood.

While local lawmakers have tried to help the residents — even seeking help from the governor — they said governmental assistance has to wait until litigation with Nassau County is resolved. 

Glover said negotiations are ongoing with the county, but the co-op and the management company are still in dispute with the county over a $43,000 Marriott bill the county incurred. 

Mold, darkness in their former homes

The situation has left the residents overwhelmed and desperate.

Thompson sat outside the shuttered building one hot July afternoon after visiting her apartment and lamented she doesn’t think the residents will return.

"It's still my home. It's what I purchased to be my end-of-life home. Do I think we'll ever live here again? To tell you the truth, it doesn't look like it," said Thompson, who has been living at A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility in Uniondale, along with some other residents, for more than eight months. "The building needs to be taken down to be fixed. Who's going to find the money? The senior citizens can't afford to build it.

"Many of us put our life savings to purchase this building and now they want us to pay the funds needed to rebuild and fix it," she added.

Gerald Karikari, the building manager, said residents have no money to relocate the building’s major utilities, which get damaged when the basement floods. He said the roof and the elevator also need to be replaced. He said Nassau County and Hempstead’s creation of affordable housing for low- to moderate-income senior citizens left them responsible for maintaining their building with limited resources.

"They barely have enough for maintaining their building. They are not responsible for the lack of infrastructure in the building, causing them undue harm every time it rains," Karikari said.

Brown, with help from her daughter, searched her first-floor co-op July 3 with flashlights through the darkness while the power was turned off, grabbing clothes and placing whatever they could find into garbage bags.

Most of her belongings and furniture were covered in black mold, and she couldn’t walk into the living room where the floor was buckling from the flood underneath. She and her daughter jumped as they saw a rat or mouse scurry by.

Repairs to the building are substantial, with full estimates still not completed. For the September rainstorm alone, flooding, plumbing and electrical estimates total more than $250,000, in addition to $100,000 needed to replace the building's elevator, according to estimates listed in court records.

The management company, Woods and Ruff, filed insurance claims after the flood. The policy was dropped earlier this year after building management filed nearly $700,000 in claims in two years, Karikari said. 

Residents were responsible for insuring individual units, and the building's policy did not cover relocation costs or loss of access and use of their units, the management company said in court records. The insurance policy also did not cover mold remediation.

In January, a building inspector noted multiple code violations and warned residents that if repairs were not made, the building could be scheduled for demolition.

At the town's direction, the co-op board president signed a "hold-harmless" agreement with the Town of Hempstead in February, removing the town from liability and outlining necessary repairs to be made within 20 days. County attorneys also warned the residents in January that the building could be razed, but town officials said it has not yet been condemned.

"This continued failure of defendants to properly maintain — much less repair — the building may preclude the possibility of ever restoring the displaced residents to their homes, as this latest damage may prompt the Town of Hempstead to bring proceedings to have the building demolished," Deputy County Attorney Brian McLaughlin wrote to the court in January, as part of the county litigation.

Meanwhile, some residents are still paying mortgages and expenses on their units while they remain empty, Karikari said.

The co-op board hired Woods and Ruff in April 2020 to oversee property maintenance. When the company took over, residents only had $17,000 in available funds, Karikari said. The co-op board pays Woods and Ruff $3,880 per month to cover maintenance, building utilities and management fees, Karikari said in court testimony. 

Karikari said he urged the co-op board to have a reserve fund of $100,000, which he said the board told him should have been included when Woods and Ruff took over. He said he recommended a $2,500 assessment per unit after the 2021 storm, but the board instead deferred tax payments and levied a $750 per unit assessment to set aside funding for building repairs. That fee also had to be broken into three $250 payments so residents could afford the assessment.

Residents have $25,000 in escrow to make the necessary deferred annual tax payments, but there are no other reserves, he said.

County attorneys in court said, following the flood, that residents pay $300,000 annually for maintenance fees. 

When the units were first sold, property taxes for each unit were set at $120 per month, with maintenance fees between $530 and $580, Hempstead Town officials said at the time. 

Seeking government help

Local elected representatives Assemb. Michaelle Solages (D-Elmont) and her brother, Nassau County Legis. Carrié Solages (D-Valley Stream), have been seeking help and state aid for the residents.

Michaelle Solages said any efforts to receive disaster aid from the state Division of Homes and Community Renewal has been hindered by Nassau County’s lawsuit. "At the end of the day, they’re not sure if we can repair that building, but no government agency wants to help them due to the pending litigation," Solages said.

State officials with Homes and Community Renewal said they are working with local officials and the co-op board to explore what funding aid could be available for residents. There was no Department of Housing and Urban Development disaster aid allocated for the storm. They did not comment on whether the county's suit would prevent the allocation of the aid.

Michaelle and Carrié Solages sent a letter to Blakeman last month, urging him to drop the county's lawsuit.

"While the case filed by the county may be well-intentioned, it has the potential to adversely affect the finances of the current occupants," they wrote. "... By naming the 1888 Foster Meadow Lane Development Owners Corporation in the lawsuit, the county risks making the seniors liable for damages should the county prevail in this case. This would impose an undue burden on these residents, subjecting them to cycles of insecurity and economic distress."

Residents say any aid to help the situation has to address the underlying flooding, which has made the building uninhabitable.

The chronic flooding in the building has contributed to a history of building code and fire code violations. The fire code violations have persisted for two years, Nassau County Chief Fire Marshal Michael F. Uttaro wrote, and include problems with the alarm system, uninspected sprinklers and improperly installed smoke alarms.

"In my professional opinion, these violations represent and constitute a direct and proximate threat to occupants’ health, safety and welfare," Uttaro wrote shortly after the September flood.

Carrié Solages said that, due to the location, making superficial repairs to the building would not prevent future flooding. He noted a series of letters he has sent over the years to local, state and federal officials seeking disaster relief and mitigation for the residents. 

In the months since the flood, Karikari said there has been plumbing and electrical work done in the building, but there is no time frame for when it may be habitable again. He said the greater concern is when the next storm arrives.

"We don’t have anywhere near the money needed to prevent flooding from happening again," Karikari said. "As we’re heading into this flood season headstrong, I don’t know what can be done to protect the building from being underwater."

By John Asbury

john.asbury@newsday.comJohnAsbury

John Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.