The total nightmare that we lived through was due to the unsafe hazardous conditions, which existed throughout the building. A temporary certificate of occupancy was issued to the builders to allow tenants to move into the building not understanding that there was ongoing substantial construction going on.. The most hazardous condition was an open door at the end of the hallway, which led to an apartment completely open. A child could easily wander and fall off the side of the building. The reason why I ventured down to investigate was the unbearably cold hallway and my cold apartment. The building is on the waterfront and it being late fall, the facade was not installed until December of that year, it was unbearably cold! In fact not only was the door wide open, but it did not even have a sign indicating the unsafe condition to prevent anyone from wandering off the side of the building. The door was finally locked and notices posted only after tenants called the Mayor’s office repeatedly.

Further the electrical closet, which was across from my apartment, was filled with debris and carpeting left over from the contractors. There were loose wires all over. This was certainly a fire hazard. One night, I came home from work at about 9:00pm to find an entire light fixture with a one inch steel electrical line hanging from the ceiling in front of my mailbox. The construction workers were running rampart throughout the building finishing the apartments. In fact, I was the only tenant on my floor for months. The rest of the apartments were unfinished. Every morning at 7:00am, I was awakened by construction workers screaming, drilling, banging and every other noise accompanied by construction. How could the Jersey City Building Department issue a certificate of occupancy?

One evening when I called the police because the construction was going until 10:00pm, one police officer remarked,     " How can they let people live there?" Even the construction workers were frustrated at having tenants interfere with the completion of their work by constantly bumping into them or stepping over them in the hallway. One construction worker even remarked to me, " You don’t belong here yet, the construction is not finished!"

One night, I awoke to find  my apartment filled with smoke, due to the fact I left something on the stove, and the smoke detector did not go off.    The handyman came and replaced it since it was defective and not working. Tenants filed so many complaints that if you called the police, they said they were tired of coming down here. I won’t go on further with any more stories but the Jersey Journal article included many stories from other tenants as well.

I came to realize that the reason that the tenants were forced to move into an unfinished building was because management decided to do the construction "in house"- i.e. they did not have an outside general contractor. There was no management of the construction workers. One of the handymen of the building indicated to me the construction workers would do one thing then have 4 beers and return 5 hours later. He had even asked the managing agent who was supervising these men?

Letters were written repeatedly concerning these hazards, but to no avail.

Repeated unresponsiveness to the letters addressed to the management company by its tenants has prompted the formation of a tenants association. However the tenants association could initially not meet because management would not provide us with a meeting room. A request for a meeting place in a residential complex of about 10,000 tenants has been denied.  The tenant association meetings have been moved to JC Penney's at the Newport Mall. See Jersey Journal articles  dated November 22, 2000 and February 8, 2001.

As further noted in the Jersey Journal articles, the health, safety and welfare of the tenants were at risk due to these conditions.

A Newport Resident