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PROMOTING EXCELLENCE IN NYC MULTI-FAMILY BUILDING OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE

The New York Sun, Page 3 Dec. 2, 2002

 

Beyond Brinks and Pipes to Bones and Flesh

City Superintendents Say Their Jobs are Bigger Than Just Buildings

by A.L. Gordon, Staff Reporter of the Sun

Rebelling against their image as maintenance workers, a group of building superintendents wants the city to set up a hotline for them to report anything from domestic abuse to truancy and health problems among tenants.

Calling themselves The Superintendents Club of New York, the group has 140 regular members and a mailing list of 1,000 building workers citywide.

"We have a strong conviction that our job is not just bricks and pipes, but it's also bones and flesh," the vice president of the group, Peter Grech, told The New York Sun. "We try to treat people like people. The superintendent should be able to do something, should know what to do, whom to notify at the Department for the Aging. It could be asthma or lead paint. The question is who should the super notify?"

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz suggested the hotline when he attended a recent club meeting.

"This is such an important organization because building superintendents take care of more than just buildings, they also take care of people," Mr. Markowitz said.

"Whether is it noticing potential cases of abuse or getting an elderly tenant information about food stamps, these men and women are the eyes and ears for so many people."

The club was founded in 1998 by Richard Koral, a building trades writer, and superintendents Eugene Marabello, Nathaniel Hurd, and Angel Ortega.

It publishes a newsletter called "Super!", which deals with issues like electrical fire hazards, and holds monthly meetings in the Bronx and Brooklyn for technical training.

"The supers do more than anyone else for the elderly, for people at risk," said Mr. Marabello, the Club's president and building superintendent for the past 11 years. "The people at risk, like the elderly, they reach out to the super more than anyone else because they're there all the time."

Mr. Grech, a 26-year veteran who works as superintendent in a high rise building in Manhattan, said he often encounters truancy. "What are you going to do, if you know the parents know about the fact that their child is not in school?"

Karen Booker, director of operations for the education unit of the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, has met with the group, but was non-committal about setting up a hotline.

"We don't have a formalized system," she said. "One of the things we teach supers is that they should maintain a list of high-risk tenants for their owners."

Most club members do maintain a list, and even go one step further, keeping a list of the tenant's nearest relatives and emergency contacts.

But when an elderly person has no one to contact, the superintendent is often on his own.

At a recent club meeting, 63 supers attended a certificate-earning seminar on handling lead paint, taught by city HPD marketing manager, Julius Wilson.

Mr. Wilson began the class by having every superintendent introduce h8imslef and state how long he's been on the job. The answers ranged from two to 30 years.

"Your role as a professional is to protect your tenants and yourself," he said.

Mr. Koral, who wants the HPD to take on the role in setting up the hotline, couldn't agree more.

"The majority of the supers, members of the Supers Club, are non-union, underpaid, overworked, under trained, the whole works," Mr. Koral said. "If we get to heaven, this will by why."

NEW YORK NEWS