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Displaced NoLita Residents Have to Wait Until 2011 to Move Back Home

By DNAinfo Staff on October 28, 2010 1:19pm

By Gabriela Resto-Montero

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

NOLITA — Tenants who moved out of their NoLIta building nearly two years ago to make room for a city rehab of their homes will have to wait until at least 2011 before they can return, officials said.

The Department of Housing, Preservation and Development relocated 13 tenants living at 244 Elizabeth St. in 2009 in order to do extensive rehab on the building, which they said was unsafe for residents. Four other tenants relocated themselves, according to HPD.

But construction on the walk-up hasn't started yet, leading residents to post a letter criticizing HPD and the city for their lack of action, as Curbed first reported.

"For many of the elderly tenants — most of them have grown up in the building, and have never called another place home — the relocation has taken them away from their community, their friends, and their church," read the letter posted on the building's boarded-up front door.

Tenants of 244 Elizabeth Street posted a letter criticizing the HPD and city for their inability to get the construction started on their building.
Tenants of 244 Elizabeth Street posted a letter criticizing the HPD and city for their inability to get the construction started on their building.
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DNAinfo/Gabriela Resto-Montero

"Sadly, three of our elderly tenants have passed away, alone, never to return to the neighborhood they love," the letter said.

Neighbors also said the boarded up building on the middle of the block was attracting vandalism and vermin to the street.

The city took temporary ownership of the building, which sits on a block filled with such swank boutiques as Tory Burch and Rag & Bone, as part of the Tenant Interim Lease program where HPD rennovates old buildings in order to create low-income cooperatives for the residents.

After renovations, the city plans to sell the apartments back to the original tenants for around $250, according to HPD.

Rehab of the building is now expected to begin sometime in the 2011 calendar year and the building will remain protected as affordable-housing, the department said.