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Funded Project |
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Funding Program:
IPM Partnership Grants |
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Project Title:
Community Education for IPM in Upper Manhattan |
Project Director (PD):
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Lead State: NY Lead Organization: Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation |
| Undesignated Funding: $8,000 |
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Start Date: May-01-2010 End Date: Apr-30-2011 |
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Pests Involved: rats, mice, roaches |
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Area of Emphasis: curriculum, education, workshops |
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Summary:
In upper Manhattan, the aging housing stock, characterized by extensive water infiltration, holes, cracks, and poor sanitation, results in an environment conducive to vermin. In response, NMIC proposes to increase awareness of IPM among residents, owners, building managers and superintendents as an effective method to eliminate rodent infestation in targeted areas, and diminish use of toxic pesticides. We will hold a total of 10 training workshops on IPM over the course of one year. Five will be targeted to low-income cooperatives and tenant controlled rental buildings, all with rodent infestation problems, and two with adjacent vacant lots, with the remaining five workshops targeting tenants associations, superintendents and building managers in privately owned buildings with rodent problems. Our workshop curriculum will cover the basics of Integrated Pest Management. Our approach will be holistic -- we will discuss the neighborhood conditions that foster vermin infestations, such as the prevalence of deteriorated buildings and vacant lots, and review the laws and mechanisms available to residents to change these conditions. We will promote the long term cost effectiveness of controlling infestations, saving on the cost of violations given by the NYC Department of Health, as well as repeated use of pesticides. Bilingual (English/Spanish) materials will be distributed at all workshops. To evaluate our effectiveness, NMIC staff will survey infestation in targeted buildings before workshops, creating a baseline. We will document all attempts to exterminate vermin using IPM. At the conclusion of the trainings, we will again survey the extent of the infestation to assess success. The service model will be promoted beyond New York for replication in other urban, immigrant communities in the northeast with aging housing stock. Objectives: Goal: Eliminate rodent infestation in targeted areas in Manhattan. Objective: Increase usage of Integrated Pest Management Techniques as an effective and safe method to reach the stated goal. Outcome: Increased awareness of IPM among residents, owners, managing agents, and superintendents. Evaluation: NMIC staff will survey the extent of vermin infestation in target buildings before the workshops, establishing a baseline regarding building conditions. We will then document owners' attempts to exterminate vermin. Finally, at the conclusion of the program, we will again assess the extent of vermin infestation, to assess the efficacy of both tenants and private owners' attempts at extermination. Proposal |
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Final Report: |
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Outcomes Outcomes 1. Tenant controlled buildings: In these buildings, tenant Boards of Directors can authorize their managing agents to take specific actions, and do not suffer the disadvantage of having an adversarial relationship with their landlords (since tenants collectively own their buildings). All Board members in all these buildings were enthusiastic about employing integrated pest management techniques, rather than the monthly exterminating service they employ now. Board members seemed to demonstrate an intuitive understanding of the benefits of IPM techniques. With these buildings, it has been the managing agents who have resisted most in employing what are for them new techniques, which does, in fact, require extra effort on their part to deal with pests; their current efforts, frankly, are limited to paying monthly invoices from exterminating companies. We will continue to work with these Boards of Directors to help them implement their decisions to employ IPM techniques. 2. Privately-held buildings: Workshops in these buildings went well, with a lot of interest from tenants. Building owners, agents, and superintendents showed no interest in the topic and did not attend the workshops. In these cases, tenants had to either expend their own funds to do what they could in their own apartments, or appeal to government authorities to pressure building owners to comply with existing laws regarding vermin abatement. New York State provides two avenues for tenants to complain about landlords who do not take proper steps to address vermin issues: a formal complaint to the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which can issue a repair order and penalize landlords who fail to comply, or action in the Housing Part of Civil Court. Tenants in four of the buildings we worked with chose to complain to the State; tenants in the fifth went to court. In the group of four buildings, the State did issue repair orders; in the court case, the judge found that the landlord had not maintained the building, and ordered him to pay the tenants significant monetary damages, but, inexplicably, did not order the landlord to provide extermination services. |
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Impacts Tenants both in tenant-controlled buildings, and in those owned by private landlords, encountered resistance by owners in employing IPM techniques. The resistance may derive from the fact that these techniques require more effort by building agents to effectuate than simply employing monthly exterminating services, which tenant all agree are ineffective. The private owners in the second group of buildings have also demonstrated in the past an unwillingness to properly maintain their buildings in general. However, tenant Board of Directors are now aware of IPM techniques and are in the position, over the long run, of insisting that their agents employ them. Tenants in buildings owned by private landlords actually made impressive strides in improving building conditions over the past year. Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation surveyed these buildings in March 2010 and again in April 2011, assessing the number of housing maintenance code violations in each building. All of these buildings showed significant improvement over the year. The figures following each address show the number of violations in March 2010, followed by the number in April, 2011: 516 W. 169th St.: 204, 108; 820 Riverside Dr.: 140, 91; 516 W. 167th St: 90, 73; 525 W. 169th St: 182, 41; 507 W. 170th St.: 364, 16. |
Report Appendices
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