This article was originally published on Aug 25 6:00pm EDT by THE CITY

Most New York City tenants can easily check if their landlord is violating the housing code by searching the city housing department’s online portal. There, details about toxic mold, dangerous lead paint, vermin infestations and other scandalous conditions are spelled out for all to see.

Not so for the city’s 400,000 public housing residents, whose code violation histories remain invisible.

This week the New York Legal Assistance Group called out the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) on the omission, noting that NYCHA’s code violations records were supposed to go up on the HPD Online public search website eight months ago.

In a letter sent Tuesday to HPD Commissioner Adolfo Carrion, NYLAG director Jonathan Fox pointed out that Albany changed the administrative code last year to require, for the first time, that NYCHA violations be listed on HPD’s website, just as with any other residential property in the city with more than three units.

The law officially went into effect Jan. 1. Yet a search for a NYCHA address at HPD Online still nets no information. Instead, visitors get this response: “This property is under the jurisdiction of the New York City Housing Authority.”

“Despite this clear obligation, and despite the fact that this provision has been in effect for nearly eight months, HPD is categorically failing to meet these obligations,” Fox wrote, asserting that the agency’s inaction “directly harms NYCHA residents and their advocates by impeding NYCHA tenants and their advocates’ efforts to identify trends and patterns in violations and organize collectively to address common systemic issues in NYCHA developments.”

In an interview with THE CITY Friday, Fox said, “The legislative intent was very clear and they basically just decided to just not do it. In a certain sense, it serves the interests of both agencies to basically not be able to comply with the law. HPD doesn’t have to keep track of this stuff and NYCHA doesn’t have to look bad.”

On Friday HPD spokesperson William Fowler said the agency is in the process of coming into compliance. But, he said, the software employed by NYCHA, which is technically not a city agency, and HPD, which is, use different systems to track complaints, inspections, repairs and violations.

“HPD and NYCHA are both committed to full transparency about building conditions,” Fowler said. “Significant amounts of NYCHA data is currently available on their website and we’re coordinating to get even more information online through HPD’s comprehensive HPD Online database as well.”

Asked about the status of incorporating the violation data into HPD’s system, NYCHA spokesman Michael Horgan responded, “We will continue to work with our agency partners on this matter.”

Failing the Law It Inspired

The lack of transparency about NYCHA’s living conditions has long been an issue for the nation’s biggest public housing authority.

In 2019, NYCHA was forced to enter an agreement with the federal government after prosecutors issued a report detailing years of management cover-ups and lies about the authority’s failure to address unhealthy and unsafe conditions, particularly mold infestation and the widespread presence of lead paint in apartments with children. The agreement resulted in the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee NYCHA’s promised reforms.

HPD, meanwhile, remains hands-off about housing code enforcement in NYCHA buildings. Although HPD does cite the housing authority for violations, it does not enforce collection of fines. As a result, a NYCHA property can get hit with dozens of citations and pay no penalty at all.

Last year, state Assemblymembers Marcela Mitaynes (D-Brooklyn), Chantel Jackson (D-The Bronx), Khaleel Anderson (D-Queens), Zohran Mamdani (D-Queens) and Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan), sought to bring those violations out into the light, sponsoring a bill requiring HPD to include NYCHA addresses on its complaints and violations site.

The law was signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in July 2022 and went into effect Jan. 1, 2023.

Epstein, whose Lower East Side district includes several major NYCHA developments, questioned why, given NYCHA’s track record of hiding its problems, public housing residents cannot see the crucial information about their living conditions that private-sector tenants can easily access.

“It has been a problem for NYCHA tenants for decades to get repairs done and hold NYCHA accountable in court,” Epstein said. “They should be held to the same if not higher standard than every other landlord in New York City.”

THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.

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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A.J. Laguerre worked at a Dollar General store after finishing high school to help support the grandmother who raised him. Angela Michelle Carr was an Uber driver beloved by her children. Jerrald Gallion relished weekends with his 4-year-old daughter.

All three were slain Saturday when a gunman with swastikas painted on his rifle opened fire at the Dollar General where Laguerre worked in Jacksonville. The sheriff said writings left by the killer, a 21-year-old white man, made clear that he was motivated by racism. Each victim was Black.

“I never thought I’d have to bury my baby brother,” Quan Laguerre said Monday outside the family’s house not far from the store.

“They say don’t question God,” he said. “But I just want to know why.”

A.J. Laguerre, 19, was the youngest of five siblings, all raised by their grandmother after their mother died in 2009, his brother said. The family celebrated in 2022 when A.J., like his older siblings before him, graduated from high school. As he looked into going to college to study cybersecurity, he got a job at the Dollar General store several months ago to help their grandmother pay the bills.

When he was off the clock, A.J. played Fortnite and other videogames on the live-streaming platform Twitch, his brother said, using the gamer tag galaxysoul. His goal was to build a large online following.

“He had dreams and aspirations of being a professional streamer,” Quan Laguerre said. “So after he would get off work, he’d just stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning just grinding, you know, trying to get that stance and have followers.”

A.J. Laguerre was shot inside the store trying to flee the gunman, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters told reporters.

Carr, 52, was killed in the parking lot when the shooter fired multiple bullets into her car.

“My mother, she was a good woman,” son Chayvaughn Payne told The Associated Press in a brief phone call Monday.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Carr family, said at news conference later Monday that Carr had just dropped off a customer and was waiting for the person to get back in the car.

Carr joined St. Stephen African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jacksonville when she was 3 years old and still attended services there. The pastor said the church community has rallied behind her family.

“She was just a loving, caring mother,” the Rev. David Green said.

Gallion, 29, was shot while entering the store’s front door with his girlfriend, who escaped.

“My brother shouldn’t have lost his life,” his sister, Latiffany Gallion, said. “A simple day of going to the store, and he’s taken away from us forever.”

Family members recalled Gallion’s sense of humor and work ethic. He worked two to three jobs — including as a restaurant manager — to provide for his daughter, Je Asia Gallion.

Je Asia’s fifth birthday is approaching, and the family had planned a big party, said Sabrina Rozier, the child’s maternal grandmother. Gallion was looking forward to a father-daughter dance in February.

“He was so excited about it, talking about the colors they would wear,” Rozier said, as Je Asia played with the microphones during Monday’s news conference. “Now she’s asking, ‘Who shot my daddy?’ ”

Although Gallion’s relationship with the child’s mother didn’t last, they worked together to raise Je Asia. That earned him lasting affection from Rozier.

“He never missed a beat,” Rozier said. “He got her every weekend. As a matter of fact, he was supposed to have her (Saturday).”

Gallion never made it to pick up his daughter. Now the pastor of the church he attended is preparing to bury him.

“In two weeks I have to preach a funeral of a man who should still be alive,” the Rev. John Guns of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church said during the vigil. “He was not a gangster, he was not a thug — he was a father who gave his life to Jesus and was trying to get it together.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans actually agree on something in this time of raw discord: Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president in a second term. Only a few years his junior, Donald Trump raises strikingly less concern about his age.

But they have plenty of other problems with Trump, who at least for now far outdistances his rivals for the Republican nomination despite his multiple criminal indictments. Never mind his advanced years — if anything, some say, the 77-year-old ought to grow up.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds much of the public oddly united in sizing up the one trait Biden cannot change.

The president has taken to raising the age issue himself, with wisecracks, as if trying to relax his audiences about his 80 trips around the sun.

Age discrimination may be banned in the workplace but the president’s employers — the people — aren’t shy about their bias.

In the poll, fully 77% said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89% of Republicans say that, so do 69% of Democrats. That view is held across age groups, not just by young people, though older Democrats specifically are more supportive of his 2024 bid.

In contrast, about half of U.S. adults say Trump is too old for the office, and here the familiar partisan divide emerges — Democrats are far more likely to disqualify Trump by age than are Republicans.

What’s clear from the poll is that Americans are saying out with the old and in with the young, or at least younger.

Democrats, Republicans and independents want to sweep a broad broom through the halls of power, imposing age limits on the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court. In all about two-thirds of U.S. adults back an age ceiling on candidates for president and Congress and a mandatory retirement age for justices.

Specifically, 67% favor requiring Supreme Court justices to retire by a certain age, 68% support age ceilings for candidates for House and Senate, and 66% support age ceilings for candidates for president.

With elders mostly running the show and the Constitution to contend with, don’t expect that to happen any time soon.

Even so, the survey suggests lots of people across political lines are open to seeing a younger face, a fresher one, or both, capture the public imagination.

Among them is Noah Burden, a 28-year-old communications consultant in Alexandria, Virginia. Despite a clear preference for Biden over Trump, he wishes the top contenders for the presidency were closer to his generation.

“They’re too old overall,” Burden said. That older generation represents “a sense of values and sense of the country and the world that just isn’t accurate anymore. It can be dangerous to have that view.”

Similarly, Greg Pack, 62, a past and possibly future Trump voter in Ardmore, Oklahoma, wishes Biden and Trump would both move along.

“Just watching and listening to Biden it’s pretty self-evident he is not what he was,” said Pack, a registered nurse.

Trump? “He is a lot sharper but at the end of his term, who knows?” Pack said, contemplating January 2029. “I’m just ready for someone younger.” He’s had about enough of a man who is “all about himself” and is “wearing his indictments like a badge of honor,” but if that’s who it takes to defeat Biden, so be it.WHAT’S YOUR WORD?

The AP-NORC survey went beyond posing questions and presenting choices. It also had a word association exercise, asking people to offer the first word or phrase that comes to mind at the mention of each man.

The answers underscored how age is a particular drag for Biden across party lines, even when people aren’t prompted to think about that, and how Trump largely escapes that only to draw disdain if not disgust on other fronts.

In those visceral responses, 26% mentioned Biden’s age and an additional 15% used words such as “slow” or “confused.” One Republican thought of “potato.” Among Democrats, Biden’s age was mentioned upfront by 28%. They preferred such terms over “president,” “leader,” “strong” or “capable.” One who approves of his performance nevertheless called him “senile.”

Only 3% in the survey came up with “confused” as the first descriptor for Trump, and a mere 1% used “old” or the like. Instead, the top words were those like “corrupt” or “crooked” (15%), “bad” and other generally negative terms (11%), words such as “liar” and “dishonest” (8%), along with “good” and other generally positive comments (8%).

Why the divergence between the two on public perceptions of their age?

“Biden just seems to be very compromised by age-related conditions,” said Eric Dezenhall, 60, a corporate scandal-management consultant who has followed Trump’s career and worked in Ronald Reagan’s White House. “Even people who like him see him as being frail and not altogether ‘there.’”

“Whatever Trump’s negatives are, I don’t think most people see them as being related to being disabled in an age-related way,” he said. “In fact, the more you throw at him, the more he seems like a ranting toddler. Disturbing, sure, but elderly? Not necessarily. Trump has been ranting this way for almost eight decades, and it always drives him forward.”

For Diego Saldana, 31, it hits close to home when he see Biden fumbling some words or taking halting steps.

“I see all the symptoms my grandpa had,” he said. “You can’t be ruling a country” that way. His granddad now is 94. Saldana supports Trump despite hesitancy over the criminal charges against him.

Eric Colwell, 34, an audit manager in Sacramento, California, came up with “old” for Biden and “incompetent” for Trump as his first-impression words. An independent who leans Democratic, he sounded a little embarrassed on the phone that the U.S. can’t do better than these two.

“Sheer optics,” he said. “Older gentlemen. You want your leaders, from a visual standpoint, to be spry and energetic. And we tend to fall short.”

He views Trump, with all his hand gestures and animation, as “a larger figure, a little more lively, just his personality. That gives him that energetic appearance.” But Colwell is certainly not going there.

“Biden was a good step to steady the water,” he said. “Biden is more representative of the status quo and normalcy and that’s probably what drew everyone initially to him” after the tumult of the Trump presidency.

“Now you have a return to stability. But in terms of moving forward and having any measurable change on my generation, we’re probably going to need younger leadership.”

Alyssa Baggio, 32, is a Democratic-leaning independent in Vancouver, Washington, who works as a recruitment specialist for a homebuilder. She thought Biden was too old for the presidency before he started it. She’s convinced of it now and open to voting next year for someone else, just not Trump.

“I don’t think he’s done a terrible job in office,” she said of Biden, “but I think that’s more because, as opposed to Trump, he surrounds himself with more experienced and logical people.”

Not that she places great value in experience, except in foreign affairs. “D.C. is a swamp,” she said, “and the more experience you have, the more you sink into the swamp.”

Said Jose Tapia, 33, a tech-company videographer in Raleigh, North Carolina, “There’s got to be a multitude of younger people who are also super qualified. There’s no fresh faces at all.”

Older Democrats are less negative than younger ones on Biden’s decision to run again. In the poll, only 34% of Democrats under 45 want him running for reelection, compared with 54% of those older. Still, about three-quarters of younger Democrats say they’ll at least probably support him if he’s the nominee; others did not commit to that.RESPECT YOUR ELDERS

All of this is dispiriting to S. Jay Olshansky, a public-health professor and aging expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He thinks age, when sizing up a presidential candidate, is no more relevant than eye color and the public’s focus on it shortchanges the gift of wisdom and experience.

“It’s sort of the classic ageism that we’ve been battling for the last 50 years,” he said. “The age of the individual is irrelevant. It’s the policies that they bring to the table that are important. And the number of times around the sun just doesn’t cut it as an important variable at all.”

From observing both men from afar and examining their medical records, Olshansky regards Biden and Trump as likely “super agers” despite signs of frailty from Biden and Trump’s excess weight.

“Biden is likely to outlive Trump because he has fewer harmful risk factors and he does exercise quite notably, whereas Trump does not,” he said. But overall, “they’re both functioning at a very high level.”

“If you don’t like what they say,” he added, “it’s not because of how old they are. It’s because you don’t like what they say.”

___

The poll of 1,165 adults was conducted Aug. 10-14, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

___

AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren in Washington and Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in New York contributed to this report.

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