"“You can have the best law on the books. But if it's not enforced, it's meaningless.”"

"NEW YORK — On a crisp Thursday afternoon in October, the 300 block of East 12th Street in Manhattan’s East Village became loud.

“Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” Chants erupted. “Housing is a human right!”

The roughly two dozen protesters were concerned with lead dust and other unsafe living conditions stirred up by ongoing construction. Holding homemade signs, they stood against the backdrop of a red brick apartment building, which many call home. Months prior, the building’s landlord, Silverstone Property Group – part of the mega-billion real estate private equity firm Madison Realty Capital – began knocking down walls and merging apartments to phase out rent-stabilized units, a process people refer to as “Frankensteining.”

“There's tons of dust and banging,” one of the protest organizers, Holly Slayton, who lives down the street in another Silverstone-owned building that was also undergoing construction, told the crowd. She said living conditions were “disruptive, horrible, and stressful.”"

Huanjia Zhang reports for Environmental Health News January 10, 2022. [2]