Powerful Odor Making Life Miserable For Mother, Son In Brooklyn NYCHA Building
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A Brooklyn mother is fed up with a foul stench that's lingering in her apartment.
She said she has made numerous complaints to the New York City Housing Authority, but not enough has been done, CBS2's Dave Carlin reported Wednesday.
Tiffany Baptiste is a 41-year-old single mom living in conditions she said are unfit for humans. Her chief complaint has nothing to do with the appearance of her apartment in Brownsville's Howard Houses.
It's the smell, an overpowering stench that Carlin noticed and other neighbors on the floor said they struggle with.
Batiste said the toughest part is she's made repeated complaints to NYCHA, but hasn't received enough action. She said she plugs up drains, keeps the windows open but nothing works. She said when it started about a year ago the smell was especially bad in her son's room, so they now keep it vacant with the door shut.
"They fixed in here before. They fixed and patched and scraped and fixed things before and the odor is still prevalent and that's why my son has been sleeping in the living room for the past eight to 10 months," Baptiste said.
"I have headaches and sometimes I don't even feel like waking up and getting out of bed. And it like if my throat is being scratched," Curtis Baptiste added.
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Tiffany Baptiste tried to put into words just how powerful the odor is.
"The smell from the neighbor across the hall comes in and smells like 1,000 cats and cat litter and poop, and then we have the smell in the back in the bedrooms and then you have the smell coming out the drain, of sewage," she said. "Four different things."
Carlin reached out to NYCHA and was told it is on the case and that it is a mystery where the smell is coming from. The agency doesn't believe it is coming from sewage, and it is also ruling out a dead animal in a wall or something in the boiler room invading this first-floor apartment.
It could be a problem with a neighboring tenant who has problems with self care and cleanliness, but the agency doesn't know for sure, Carlin reported.
One likely solution is moving Baptiste and her son to a different apartment and perhaps also moving one or more of the neighbors as well, which would give NYCHA time to pinpoint the problem and do a deep clean.
Tiffany Baptiste said she needs a long-denied transfer. She's 2 months pregnant and scared of the air around her, adding no one should have to live like this.
