UWS Community Board Fails To Help After NYCHA Fire, Advocate Says

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Community leaders are quick to highlight crime associated with an Upper West Side housing project but, when it comes to helping tenants affected by a recent fire, they're nowhere to be seen, an advocate told them.

In a back-and-forth at the neighborhood's Community Board 7 meeting Wednesday Cynthia Tibbs, a tenant association president for West Side Urban Renewal Brownstones (a complex of several UWS NYCHA buildings) and a lifelong Upper West Sider, highlighted what she said was the board's lack of response to the recent fire that left seven people hurt.

"Nobody has reached out to us to find out the cause of the fire, the status of the residents, any assistance that could be given, or anything else, which is a bit concerning when it comes to our relationship with CB7," Tibbs said. "I would have hoped someone would have reached out to us."

Tibbs was talking about a blaze that ignited on Dec. 28 at a Wise Towers building on 133 West 90th Street.

The fire started within a trash compactor on the 10th floor of the building that residents say has been broken for months.

Steven Brown, the chair of Community Board 7, responded that Tibbs could have brought up the matter when representatives from a local firehouse joined the meeting earlier in the night.

"We didn't reach out to 79th Street (another recent fire on the Upper West Side). What we try to do is try to make an opportunity for you to speak and you could have spoken and brought up whatever point you wanted to bring to the fire department," Brown said. "I'm not sure why you would talk to us, opposed to them."

The interaction continued as the rest of the community members and meeting attendees watched on virtually.

"So aside from the fire department, CB7 doesn't think they should have reached out to any of us over here and find out the status of our residents?" Tibbs asked. "I mean, this board is so quick to find out about police stats and crime stats, but when it comes to the safety of our residents, there's no concern, there's a lack of it."

Brown quickly inserted that while he "respected" her opinion, he disagreed with her comment.

“I think we’re all empathetic, but the idea that we’re not reaching out to individual people, what we do here is create an infrastructure and an area for you to speak, we had a public safety session and you had every opportunity to speak or raise your hand," the community board chair added.

Brown went on to mention that there were four fires on the Upper West Side in the past month and none of them received special treatment from the board.

Reached after the meeting, Tibbs told Patch: "There is absolutely no respect from the community board when it comes to tenant association presidents.

"But when it comes to crime statistics, they want to know how much NYCHA is responsible for, that’s the only thing they’re concerned about.”

Patch also got in contact with Brown, who said that Community Board 7 has reached out to Wise Towers to help with the fallout from the fire.

"CB7 values and respects all of our NYCHA residents," Brown said in an email to Patch. "We are sad to hear about the recent Wise Towers fire and have reached out to offer help. We welcome feedback from all community members on how to improve the timeliness and the quality of our outreach."

"All government agencies, including community boards, need to do better at responding to the needs of NYCHA residents," he added.

You can watch the full interaction for yourself below, Brown and Tibbs' back and forth begins around the 3 hour, 34 minute, 55-second mark.