For more than 20 years Dr. David Ores has treated the working poor and uninsured on the Lower East Side. He asks patients to pay what they can, and he's able to afford it because his office has a commercial tax abatement due to its non-profit status. Or at least he thought it did, until he received a bill for $30,000 in back taxes.
The abatement for his office on East 2nd between A and B was supposed to be secured by the building's owner, the Lower East Side People's Mutual Housing Association, Inc., but for reasons unknown, it was not.
I will challenge this in court, but I can get evicted in the meantime. With the help of a lawyer, I held off eviction one week ago and my new court date is July 29th. I need to pay all or most of these NYC taxes to stay here... and THEN I will research/investigate what happed to our J -51 tax abatement and why it went away. Or was never in place. Does not seem kosher to me. If I had that money, I would just pay it, but I don't.
The taxes were roughly $9,000/year for every year that he was in the space. Dr. Ores showed us a photo of an order from the city showing that he will be evicted unless he pays $30,917.76.
If a hypothetical cooler with a fucking Bluetooth speaker glued onto it can garner more than $7,000,000, surely we can support a physician who helped create a healthcare cooperative for restaurant workers and opened his office to anyone who needed it after Hurricane Sandy.
You can donate to Dr. Ores's fund here. A $100 donation gets you a checkup.
Below is an interview Dr. Ores gave to Sam Roberts of the New York Times in 2009.
