Bushwick Residents Up In Arms Over KHAAAN!

A new luxury condo building in Bushwick was originally advertised as an upscale addition to the neighborhood, one that neighbors hoped would lead to gentrification—but a twist in the story has reduced those same neighbors to agonized cries of "KHAAAN!"

Instead of hipsters, helpsters or breeders moving in, a halfway house for drug addicts moved into the building on Willoughby Ave. And it's run by Ashley Khan, a 35-year-old ex-con who runs a for-profit company, Global Humanitarian Service (which doesn't have a website). Neighbors seem particularly steamed at the lack of oversight on the halfway house: "Nobody's watching what they're doing," said local resident Evett Villafane, 52.

Developer Benjamin Glasser invested $3.8 million in the condo project, which has floor-to-ceiling windows, balconies and roof decks. By 2007, he was selling each of the eight units for nearly $700,000 each, but between construction delays and the real estate collapse, many would-be buyers backed out. Instead, he leased it to Khan, who was on parole for robbery at the time. Khan has no staff and provides no support services, but claims experience running several halfway houses in the past, and administers drug tests to occupants himself.

The units are now filled with bunk beds; he rents an adjoining luxury penthouse to models in town for photo shoots. "I really want to help people. I want to save the world," he told the Daily News. The tension with neighbors has been palpable: "I'm very street. I've been that way the last couple months dealing with this block. They brought out something in me I didn't know I had in me anymore." But neighbor Villafane complained: "You need a license to get married. You need a license to drive a car. You don't need a license to open a halfway house?"

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By Ben Yakas in News on April 21, 2010 5:32 PM

Comments [rss]

Tower18

Actually this is right around the corner from that live/work art space on Troutman. That said, I don't think "fuck the hipsters" applies here, because it seems to be the old timer Hispanic neighbors that are getting screwed by this.

Michael

Personally as someone living in bushwick I can understand the frustration I live in an up and coming neighborhood but I think the bigger issue is the way its being managed there are many families in the area and they are getting pushed out with increasing rents its getting harder and harder to find affordable housing here already... now personally I dont think the issue is so much that its a half way house I think its more that its not being managed very well... yes its a good thing to have places like sober living and all such similar things but they should be well staffed and supervised or they are just a scam... if there is no staff and the owner is doing the drug testing its probably a scam its very easy to fake drug tests and then take the poor recovering addicts insurance money and let them continue to have a drug habit and then what are you doing but abusing the system... but personally I liked the hood as it was rough around the edges and true to its roots now a days its getting overrun by hipsters and quite frankly I think they need a shower and go back to willamsburg and for the record east willamsburg is in fact bushwick so dont go there either LOL

mingusahum

If it doesn't have a website than technically its not real

Magdaly

Ur right he has had 3 different companies so far. Eco concepts, Drive for success and now this. He keeps them until he gets sued then he find a new victim with good credit to get a new tax id.

Ralph Steadman

Not bad for Gothamist. 5 comments before morons showed up.

Wza (moron #1) - Interesting if slightly pathetic attempt to make this article about you, or at least who your online personae aspires to be. As tgg pointed out already, the fact that you think ¨the middle class¨ need housing more then, oh, you know, actual homeless people makes you either a troll, an enormous asshole, or a combination of the two.

LB (moron #2) - I know, itś fun to go on every thread you can find and shout an obscenity about hipsters. Pretending you are 12 must be great fun. However, read the article a little more carefully, shithead. Bushwick is a very large classification of a neighborhood, and the section the article concerns has few hipsters. Based on the articles point of view, they want hipsters to help increase their property values. They want gentrification, and what happened was the opposite due to the housing crash.

Whether itś true, as the article stated, that the neighborhood really wants such changes I´m not sure. But they (the neighbors) are not in any way hipsters. You either haven´t lived in NYC long, didn´t bother reading or understanding the article, or both.

Fucking idiots.

Wza

this moron is not a regular.

lolz @ calling me a troll.

LB

I love it ! Fuck them Hipster shit heads !

Wza

Sucks that people who need housing the most in this city, the middle class, can't seem to get housing.

You have to be rich, poor, or a felon in a half way house.

tgg001

So all of those homeless people are middle class?

Clarice City

Khan told the Daily News he had several years' experience turning private homes into halfway houses, and prison taught him how to run an institution.

It takes several years experience to run an otherwise normal home into a flop house? In Bushwick?

Magdaly

The funny thing is this is my 7 month old sperm donor and he is a coke addict and a woman abuser. Its fucked up that he is able to run a sober house when he is a drug abuser himself who suffers from bipolar disorder and self medicates with coke. He Made my father go bankrupt using his credit with the promise that he was going to establish his credit so that he could open up a sober house for him. This man is a con artist. He says we wants to save the world when he hasnt even bought my son a box of diapers.

tgg001

Its not the same type of "half way house" as the "article" alludes to. There is the type that we are all thinking of for criminals that are let out of jail and have to live in a supervised residence with all sorts of certificates required. A halfway house for drug addicts is a different animal. Its for people that leave a treatment center, and in an effort to remain sober, move into a place they hope will be a safe and conducive environment where....rather than move back to the old places they lived before..blah blah...