The most outrageous real estate story I ever heard: [View all]

[Brigid]

I am reading a short, charming novel about a cat living in NYC. The cat is adopted as a kitten by a woman living on the Lower East Side. Long before the cat ever comes into the picture, the woman has a daughter. They live in one of those shabby old buildings that are abundant in that part of the city.

One rainy Saturday morning when the daughter is 14, NYPD and FDNY come through the building, knocking on doors and saying that bricks have fallen from the facade in the back of the building, and it is in imminent danger of collapse. Everyone must evacuate immediately. They will be allowed to go back in as soon as possible to get their belongings, they are told.

As the day wears on, the residents, now soaking wet after standing out there in the rain all day, begin to smell a rat. They observe workers going in and out of the building without any apparent concern that it's about to fall down around them. In the early afternoon, even the mayor, Rudy Giuliani, pays a visit. He, too, enters the building without even a hard hat. Protests to the cops fall on deaf ears. One old man, a close friend of the girl and her mother, is not even allowed to get his cat, his last real connection to his recently deceased wife of over fifty years.

Within 13 hours, the building is demolished and the residents shipped off to homeless shelters. That's right: A building full of immigrants, working poor, and retirees are on the street. The property is taken over by the city and sold to a developer. An upscale condo building is constructed. The compensation to the residents who have lost everything? $250 in gift certificates (provided by the Red Cross, as if a natural disaster had occurred) and a stint in a homeless shelter.

The author insists that this incident is based on a true story. I can't imagine something like this happening without lawsuits out the wazoo, but then the residents wouldn't have had the resources for that. One of them grumbles that this would never have happened to the denizens of Park Avenue. Everything is about money and real estate in New York, I guess.