Tenants in buildings owned by Jared Kushner and other "predatory" NYC landlords are subjected to increasingly dangerous levels of lead dust -- and describe the toxic clouds as an "invasion."
Gothamist reported Monday that a five-year investigation by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that lead levels in a number of East Village-area buildings were four to 440 times higher than EPA standards suggest.
David Dupuis, a tenant at a building owned by Kushner's Westminster City Living, lives above a unit being renovated and told Gothamist that "there was a white dust cloud that invaded" his apartment.
"It covered everything,” Dupuis said. “I felt a very intense burning in the back of my throat. I was coughing and choking.”
The report noted that the practice of renovating buildings not only allows landlords like Kushner and not only to raise market rates -- it also "creates conditions noxious enough to make rent-stabilized tenants want to leave," a practice known as "construction as harassment."
The tenant at Kushner's East Village building said he once saw a construction worker "coated head to toe in thick white dust—you could see it on his eyelashes," and another carrying rubble out of the building with only a rag around his mouth.
Dupuis added that dust in the hallways had been so thick, "you could see footprints."
Read the entire report on the toxic conditions at a building owned by the president's son-in-law via Gothamist.
