City Lays Down Law To Some Residents: Lose The Stoop

As CBS 2’s Hazel Sanchez reports, the city is saying “move it, or lose it.”

Veronica Deignan’s family has lived in her Monitor Street home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn since 1945.

But the city just informed her that part of her front yard belongs to someone else.

When asked if the city had ever approach her family in the previous 66 years to say it owned the property, Deignan said, “No, this was our property.”

The City Department of Design and Construction sent the Deignan’s and all their neighbors on Monitor Street letters to inform them their ages-old wrought iron fences and front stoops are on city-owned property.

Residents must remove them or the city will — all to make way for sewage and aesthetic improvements. The neighborhood is outraged.

(...) Basically the city wants to extend the sidewalk an extra five feet, which would mean one property owner Sanchez met on Wednesday night would have to get rid of an entire staircase landing.