Evacuated Bushwick Residents Have Been Homeless For A Month, Are Tweeting About It Relentlessly

By Brooklyn Magazine and Brooklyn Magazine Staff

• Bushwick Daily via Bushwick Nation

Back in August, two buildings in Bushwick were evacuated for cracks in the foundation and damage caused by a neighboring construction crew, but it wasn’t so bad — people were moved back in pretty quickly for the most part, and everything was probably gonna work out, right?

Now, over a month later, residents of 420 Melrose, one of the two buildings involved, are still essentially homeless, and naturally, have responded to the problem with a blog and Twitter feed written by the building itself.

The bio for @420Melrose simply reads:

“I’m an apartment building in Bushwick, Brooklyn that got damaged by the Procida Construction Company. All my residents are now homeless with no answers! WTF?!”

Which does basically get to the heart of the problem here. WTF indeed! The “building” has also been guest blogging over at Bushwick Nation, writing:

“I came into this world like anyone else, the offspring of a stack of building permits and some raw construction materials. I never wanted to be anything but a good home for eight families. And I was doing just that until August 15th.[…[ I am not the one who broke my foundation and cracked my own facing. Credit for that is due to someone else. However, I can’t point a finger at any one person because it seems like a lot of people are to blame. Also, I don’t have fingers.”

Normally, I’d be wary of this kind of flagrantly adorable anthropomorphizing, but in this case, it seems like a smart and effective way to confront was is pretty obviously some bureaucratic bullshit. Will someone give this poor, cracked, finger-less building some answers? And also its residents a home?

Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.