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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Babagounj" data-source="post: 764751" data-attributes="member: 12952">New reports from The Record out of Hackensack, N.J.,  reveal Feisal Abdul Rauf, the would-be Ground Zero imam, owns  taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings in Hudson County where the  tenants have made municipal health complaints including rat, roach and  bedbug infestations, seeping toilets, leaks, urine-soaked hallways, no  heat and no hot water. Despite millions of dollars in government subsidies, Rauf has trouble maintaining several small apartment buildings in North Bergen, Palisades Park and Union City. From the NewJersey.com report: Page after page of municipal health records examined by The Record  show repeated complaints ranging from failure to pick up garbage, to rat  and bedbug infestations and no heat and hot water. Cynthia Balko, 48, of Union City — a longtime tenant of Rauf’s — said  she’s had to live with rats, leaks and no heat: “I don’t have anything  nice to say about the man.” Despite having received over $2 million in public funding for  renovations, Rauf’s tenants were forced to file municipal health  complaints to seek relief. One such single mother living in a Rauf-owned  apartment in Union City said Rauf has not answered complaints. From an additional story in The Record:To understand her perspective, you need to go to a  forlorn corner on the Jersey side — to 22nd Street in Union City and a  four-story apartment building owned by Rauf. The locks on a front door  are broken and the hallway leading to [Melba] Lopez’s two-bedroom  apartment smells of urine. Looking east on 22nd Street — back across the Hudson — the Empire  State building pokes the sky. On that side of the river, New York’s  mayor speaks of Rauf as a symbol of religious freedom and last week  invited the Imam’s wife, Daisy Khan, to dinner at Gracie Mansion to  honor the Islamic celebration of Ramadan.  But in Union City, Lopez, a  single mother, has another way of describing the man who has time to  promote the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but does not seem to have time  to answer her complaints about leaks in her toilet. Lopez said in the report she has never met the would-be Ground Zero  mosque imam but she says she has met Rauf’s wife Khan.  Lopez said she  remembers Khan telling her that she and her husband did not have enough  money to fix her leak and other problems in the building. What Lopez did  not know was that at the same time, Rauf and Khan were trying to raise  money for their mosque project on the other side of the Hudson. According to the new reports, Rauf has a long history of taxpayer  subsidies and grants for slum properties. There’s even a new revelation  of a lawsuit settled in June over what the report terms a suit alleging  fraud. [T]he suit alleged Rauf and Khan transferred ownership to  another firm they owned and then obtained a $650,000 mortgage on the  same building from a bank. After the building was damaged by fire in  February 2008, Rauf and Khan stopped making mortgage payments to  Cockinos, a former key executive at Daibes’ Mariner’s Bank. When  Cockinos tried to foreclose, he discovered Rauf and Khan had switched  ownership and filed suit alleging “fraud.” The case was settled shortly before a June 28 trial, with Rauf and  Khan agreeing to pay off the mortgage to Cockinos within the next few  years, said the couple’s lawyer, Richard Rosa of Hackensack. In response to this story Rauf’s wife, Daisy Khan claims their  business dealings in New Jersey have “no relevance to the Park51  project”. She then goes on to blame the tenants for the state of their  slums. She doesn’t say where all the taxpayer subsidies went.</blockquote>

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