Category Archive

This articled appeared in a local publication on Saturday, November 7, 2009. Clearly there is nonsense throughout not only by the landlord, but by the current Commissioner of Public Safety, Wayne Bennet.

SCHENECTADY

Landlord says drug raids besmirch Hill’s image; police defend practice

Some excerpts from the article include…

… Police raids may stop drug dealers, but they hurt Hamilton Hill more than they help, according to one absentee landlord.

… This week, Devika Persaud asked police to stop raiding houses on the Hill, saying the raids are a bad PR move that scare away good tenants.

… A new city law requires absentee landlords to have a local contact person, but doesn’t say that they must be used for anything other than emergency contacts with the city.

The landlord, Devika Persuad lives in New York City and is obviously not available in case of emergency. Which is what the City’s Landlord Registry was all about. To name someone local as a property owner contact in case of emergency. Now I’m not saying that she should live in or close to Schenectady, but she’s clearly out of line in telling the city what they should or shouldn’t do.

Think about it, if the cops are doing their jobs right, meaning they are going to raid drug houses and arrest the scumbags who deal or use drugs, why would they tell the landlord? Is she living on the same planet as the rest of us?

And I don’t go along with what the cops say being that absentee landlords are a major part of the problem. You can certainly own a house here and rent it to reasonable tenants. I would say that its the NOT-FOR-PROFITS who bring the scum to the city, as well as all the LAWS put in place to prevent discrimination.

Bennett states that “every absentee landlord should hire a local property manager who would make sure no one deals drugs in the building or its vicinity.”

Oh yeah Wayne? And how do you propose that a local property manager do that?

He is quoted further with, “Clearly the local representative is the key to the whole thing. That person can check on the street if [the prospective tenant] has a reputation. She can ask where the tenant is living now and the representative can go there and talk to the landlord, talk to the neighbors. That may save them a lot of trouble.”

Is he nuts? After a hundred years “leading” the New York State Police he tells these ignorant people that all they have to do is talk to their friends? He is nuts.

The article degrades further into a he said, she said scenario that accomplishes nothing. But the most disarming statement is from Devika Persaud. “How are we supposed to bring middle-class people back into Hamilton Hill if they’re going to continue to do these things?” Meaning the raids.

The only way Hamilton Hill in Schenectady is going to be brought back to a middle class neighborhood is for reasonably paid jobs to be brought to Schenectady, and to raze the entire neighborhood and build new homes.

So it goes to show that not only is the Guyanese landowners living in a dream world, the cops and the commissioner is too.

Pat Zollinger