Astor House tenants plead for judge’s assistance

As the situation grows more desperate in Rogers Park’s Astor House building, tenants will gather outside the Daley Center on Tuesday with giant photos of building code violations. They will call on Judge Lauretta Higgins-Wolfson  to let lawyers intervene in the building’s court case.

The tenants are holding a press conference at 9 a.m. on the Clark Street side of Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington. Shortly thereafter they will head to a 9:30 a.m. building court hearing in courtroom 1107, where their lawyers will ask the court to address serious problems with building conditions.

Several tenants are facing immediate eviction and others – even some who have agreed to leave the building because they can no longer deal with the appalling living conditions – fear they will end up homeless without assistance from the city and Alderman Joe Moore. Some have children who may also become homeless; others have pets whose lives would be put at risk if they were to go to a shelter.

Since tenants first began asking management and the city to take action in February, few of the building’s problems have been fixed. Despite dozens of phone calls to the city’s 311 number to document problems with the building, the city has yet to impose meaningful penalties on the building’s management.

Regular loud construction noise in the building makes it difficult for tenants to sleep or even watch television. Dust from construction in the building has created respiratory issues for tenants including Arbie Bowman and her 8-year-old daughter Rosie, who has had to be hospitalized for asthma attacks. Others report being nauseated from the smell of dead mice in the walls.

The building has only one “working” elevator, but tenants still get stuck in it on a weekly basis. This elevator frequently takes tenants on joyrides, skipping floors and not stopping where it is supposed to. More alarmingly, the elevator has recently started accelerating to unsafe speeds when it drops.

Tenants still suffer plagues of bedbugs and cockroaches. Hot water service in the building is woefully inadequate, taking up to 45 minutes to warm up, and many units lack hot water entirely in the kitchen. Two fire hoses are missing and 10 are tied up and inaccessible. In addition, building management sent letters to tenants’ attorneys earlier this year barring them from visiting their clients in the building.  

“All they’re doing is giving BJB a slap on the wrist and saying, Get out of here. But we’re the ones who are suffering,” Bowman says. “This is our last chance to save low-income housing in Rogers Park.”

At the end of June, tenants met with 49^th Ward Ald. Joe Moore to demand that Moore convene a meeting between them and the building’s owner, BJB Principal Joe Slezak.

But Moore has refused to take action. Instead, he is trying to review tenants’ cases individually, a process that may not be over until any tenants are homeless.

In recent weeks, building management has put up ads on Craigslist trying to rent apartments for a variety of different prices. But several tenants who rented apartments in the building left almost immediately due to poor building conditions they were not informed about.