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Priced Out of the Air. Priced Out of Safety.

The death of a neighbor forces us to confront what privatization and neglect have built.

Theo Gobblevelt

Nov 28

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I want to begin with a person, not a policy.
A life, not a headline.

Her name was Catherine Same Mahouve.
A longtime resident of Roosevelt Island.
A former Minister Counselor at Cameroon’s Mission to the United Nations.
A woman whose kindness and quiet dignity were felt long before anyone knew her title.
A neighbor. A friend. A presence.

She died on November 15 inside her home at 560 Main Street.
There are no words that carry the weight of that truth.

She should have been safe.

Her family is now facing the impossible. Her daughter, Justine, lost her mother and her home in the same night. If you are able, this is where you can help.

Hold her memory for a moment. Because everything that follows is about what it means to lose someone who should still be here.

The warnings were everywhere

This tragedy did not erupt in a vacuum.

Residents of Roosevelt Landings have been raising alarms for years. The record is painfully clear.

A year ago, a mobility device battery ignited in the hallway at 540 Main. Fire doors that should have isolated the smoke did not close. Tenants had already reported them broken. Nothing was done.

Residents filed complaints about mold.
About electrical problems.
About dust and debris from construction.
About heat failures.
About security lapses.
About unsafe conditions in stairwells where people with mobility needs could not rely on the most basic infrastructure.

Roosevelt Landings has been trying to warn this island for a long time.
No one with power listened.

The hedge fund years

To understand the present, you have to understand how Eastwood became Roosevelt Landings.

The state built this building with public money.
The state funded it under Mitchell Lama to provide affordable homes for working families.
And when the time came to decide its future, the state handed it directly to private equity.

Urban American took control.
Then Brookfield arrived.
Then the building was packaged into a billion dollar portfolio.
Then sold again.

Across every transfer, the price rose.
And across every transfer, tenant control fell.
Eastwood never became a co-op because no one in power ever offered the tenants what Island House, Westview, and Rivercross were given.

Island House fought for ownership.
Westview negotiated a path.
Rivercross privatized by vote.

Roosevelt Landings was never invited into the room.
It was treated as an asset to trade, not a community to preserve.

This is not speculation.
It is the documented history of a building that deserved better.

The air has a cost. Now we see a life does too.

Two weeks before the fire, Eleanor and I wrote about being priced out of the air we breathe as a metaphor in our last two articles. We did not imagine how quickly our warning would become literal.

At Roosevelt Landings:

The air is metered.
The heat is inconsistent.
The mold spreads.
The doors do not close.
The alarms fail.
And now, a resident is gone.

When a building becomes a financial instrument, safety becomes optional.
Maintenance becomes flexible.
Accountability becomes abstract.
Lives become numbers that never appear in the spreadsheets.

We must name what this really is: a culture of disregard that predates the fire, that shaped the conditions of the fire, and that will produce another tragedy unless someone stops pretending this is normal.

The institutional silence

It has been months since RIOC acknowledged anything we have published.
Maybe the silence comes easily because we speak for the Landings.
Maybe it continues because our work touches rooms where our presence is not welcomed.
Maybe it is because accountability has a cost, and some would rather not pay it.

After the fire, RIOC offered no meaningful public accounting.
No building-wide safety review.
No independent inspection of fire doors.
No examination of submetering failures.
No assessment of past warnings.
No plan to prevent another loss of life.

And within RIOC’s structure sits the REDAC Committee, chaired by Howard Polivy.
Polivy is not a villain.
He is something more dangerous: comfortable.

Comfortable approving projects without asking who is left behind.
Comfortable letting state agencies and private contractors operate without scrutiny.
Comfortable with a board where a majority lives in Rivercross while not one seat represents the residents of Roosevelt Landings.

Nine seats.
More than a thousand Landings households.
Not one voice at the table.

This is not an oversight.
It is a hierarchy.

Roosevelt Island’s quiet truth

This island was planned as an experiment in equity.
Today the outcome is clear.

The buildings with power have representation.
The buildings without power have consequences.

The largest building complex on the island houses the people with the least political influence.
And when a crisis comes, they receive the least protection.

No one should be comfortable with this.
Not after this fire.

Accountability grows louder when the community joins in.

Return to Catherine Same Mahouve

Her life mattered.
Her presence mattered.
Her loss must matter.

Her story must not be absorbed into the bureaucratic silence that has already swallowed too much of this community’s pain.

We will keep asking the questions others avoid.
We will keep documenting what the state refuses to acknowledge.
We will keep listening to residents who have been ignored for far too long.

And we will not leave the Landings behind.