ELLENVILLE – Even though the floods have ended, and most residents have returned, at least one resident at the Ellenville Senior Apartments is feeling all wet. The son of an 80 year old resident of the apartments (who wishes for himself and his mother to remain anonymous) has levied some harsh criticisms towards the senior housing complex and its developer, Jonah Mandelbaum, for what he believes is negligence and misconduct in the time since eight of the complex's apartments flooded on March 4 due to a burst pipe in the ceiling.

The flooding occurred on a Wednesday, prompting Mandelbaum to hold a meeting with the affected tenants the next day to discuss what would happen next. The developer told tenants to tag and identify any and all property that should be saved before workers came in to repair the apartments, said the anonymous tenant's son. However, he said that when they came back to the apartments on Friday morning, all of her possessions had been thrown away.

"These people didn't even have a choice of what they wanted to keep and what was destroyed, because they were told Thursday night to tag everything. By the time they got there on Friday morning, their workers are already tossing everything out in the gosh-damn dumpster," he said.

"My mother had a handicapped chair for the shower that's made to take water. That was tossed in the dumpster."

He said that his mother has yet to see any reimbursement for her lost property, nor has his mother been reimbursed for March's rent, which was paid just before the flooding occurred.

"It's been over a month," he said.

Mandelbaum, however, refuted the claims that he or his company have done wrong, saying that tenants will be reimbursed for all purchases made to replace lost possessions and furniture as long as they submit receipts. The insurance provider covering Sullivan Sprinkler Company out of South Fallsburg, the company that had installed the faulty pipe that caused the flooding, will be providing the purchase and rent reimbursements, he said.

The reason many of the items were disposed of so quickly, said Mandelbaum, was to limit or eliminate the possibility of mold infesting the apartments.

"Everything got soaked," said Mandelbaum. "If the beds are wet, you can't use them again because they'll get stinky and moldy. Buy a new bed, give us the receipts, and we'll give them to the insurance company to reimburse you."

The developer also asked the afflicted tenants to submit lists of their damaged or destroyed possessions to give to the sprinkler company's insurance provider.

The tenant's son, however, said that because so much of his mother's possessions were disposed of so quickly, it's been a challenge to figure out what's missing and what's been accounted for, since the tenants didn't do the disposing themselves.

Marcia Sherlock, the complex's apartment manager, has been keeping track of the lists, which she said that tenants are updating as they realize what is and isn't missing.

As for tenants who can't afford to replace damaged or destroyed furniture while they wait for reimbursement, Mandelbaum and Sherlock both said that they recommended to each tenant before they signed their leases that they obtain renter's insurance, which would cover lost property in such a situation. The recommendation is also printed in the leases themselves, they said.

In the end, it seems as though everyone's playing the waiting game and is out some cash. Mandelbaum is stuck waiting just like the flooded tenants — he's already put in a quarter of a million dollars-worth of repairs to the eight apartments, which were damaged so badly as to be deemed unlivable, without having gotten any money from Sullivan Sprinklers' insurance company.

"I took it upon myself to gut it, to clean it, to fix it so the people could come back to their normal lives. I may lose money because of that, because the insurance company may give me less because they didn't see [the damage]," said Mandelbaum.

Inquiries made to the Sullivan Sprinkler Company were answered, and representatives from the company said they too had made inquiries to their insurance company regarding reimbursement for the renters, though an answer had not been provided as of press time.

COMMENTS about this article (5)