By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
CHINATOWN — Tenants displaced by a massive fire in Chinatown are being forced to fork over nearly $400 to replace vital personal information lost in the blaze that gutted their Grand Street buildings last week.
As the residents begin piecing their lives back together following the seven-alarm fire that claimed one life and left hundreds homeless, important documents like passports and citizenship papers need to be replaced for the tenants to access certain services, advocates said.
“We estimate that a family of four would need at least $1,000” to replace the documents, said Chris Kui, executive director of Asian Americans for Equality, which recently established the Grand Street Fire Fund to help raise money for the residents.
For example, a replacement Green Card costs $370, while replacement naturalization/citizenship papers costs $380, according to Kui.
The fund has already received $8,000 in donations, he added, with the goal of raiasing at least $30,000 to help all of the displaced individuals.
The Lo-Down reported that Edison Properties, owner/developer of The Ludlow luxury residential building nearby, donated $5,000 to the fund.
The buildings’ many elderly tenants have also been arranging to receive certain benefit payments, like Social Security and retirement checks, while trying to find permanent housing closer to their neighborhood.
The residents of 283 and 285-287 Grand St., whose buildings continued to be demolished piece by piece this week, had been staying at a hotel in Midtown provided by the Red Cross immediately following the fire.
As of this week, most of the those tenants had been transferred to temporary locations by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which has placed a total of 131 residents in hotels in upper Manhattan and Queens, a spokesperson said.
But relocating the tenants closer to Chinatown — where many hold jobs, go to school or simply rely on the neighborhood services unique to the Chinese community — may not even be possible.
HPD’s shelter services are currently near capacity, limiting the department’s ability to accommodate the residents near lower Manhattan, said HPD spokesman Eric Bederman.
“It puts a major stress on their lives,” Kui said of the tenants who have to shuttle between Chinatown and their hotels in Harlem and LaGuardia Airport. “Most of the families have been living in this building for a long time, so there’s a lot of sentiment attached to the location.”
Meanwhile, Asian Americans for Equality has been organizing the tenants by address to help them seek out the services they are entitled to, including filing the appropriate documents to ensure they maintain rent-regulated status.
The tenants at 283 and 285-287 Grand St. are also still waiting for the conclusion of an investigation into the cause of the fire to pursue any possible legal proceedings against their landlord, who Kui said has still not surfaced.
The cause of the fire still remains under investigation, an FDNY source said.
