These bandits value a Brooklyn household $100,000.
Romping raccoons that ran wild in Alice and David Zaslavsky’s $1.2 million Brooklyn dwelling pooped and peed all over the place, chewed by means of wiring and terrified the couple’s 9-year-old daughter earlier than they had been lastly banished.
And whereas the flea-bitten critters at the moment are gone, the Zaslavskys are nonetheless not out of the woods.
Contractors estimate the ninja furballs induced $100,000 price of injury to the three-bedroom, 1,930-square foot dwelling, and the household’s insurance coverage firm gained’t cowl the mandatory month’s price of repairs.
“We’ve this tiny little clause in our house owner’s insurance coverage that claims they don’t clear up wildlife secretions which they deem poisonous. Raccoon poo,” an exasperated Alice Zaslavsky instructed The Submit of the AmGuard coverage.
The issue started greater than two years in the past after the town slapped a stop-work order on a neighbor two doorways down at 194 Minna St. in Kensington. The proprietor, Majestic Holdings, was allegedly doing work with out permits.
The corporate left the home, which had been vacant for over a yr, in a state of disrepair, with “quite a few holes . . . to the skin,” the Zaslavskys stated in court docket papers.
“One night time, [the couple] wakened staring into the face of a raccoon hanging down from one of many entry panels pushed open by the raccoons,” in response to a Brooklyn Supreme Courtroom lawsuit filed in September 2023 and settled a month later.
An exterminator discovered the critters had been coming into by means of 194 Minna, creeping by means of the related homes and ending up within the Zaslavskys’ two-story dwelling.
The raccoons chewed by means of new HVAC ductwork, new electrical wiring, ate insulation, and defecated on and stained the ceiling, the household stated.
Residing with the fixed scent of poisonous animal feces and understanding there have been wild animals above their heads gave the household PTSD, they stated.
“It got here to a head early one morning in September 2023, when the raccoons got here busting by means of the HVAC entry panel in our main bedroom and we determined it was time to take authorized motion,” Alice Zaslavsky defined.
“Three appeals, and greater than $30,000 in authorized charges later, the ultimate choose dominated the house owner needed to shut up any entry factors,” she stated.
Nonetheless, no damages had been ponied up and the Zaslavskys ended up paying $1,000 for an exterminator.
The exterminator caught 5 child raccoons and their mother within the attic crawlspace. “They had been . . . launched again into the wild on Lengthy Island,” Alice Zaslavsky stated.
in Sept. 2023, the household stated. Courtesy of Alice Ann Gentry Zaslavsky
So as to do the longer term repairs, the Zaslavskys must briefly relocate.
“We’ve to pack up the second ground of our home as if we had been transferring. Every thing has to go to storage. We can’t stay in the home throughout that point due to the toxicity,” she stated.
“We’re left holding a reasonably large bag of repairs. We’re nonetheless paying off our authorized payments from final yr,” she lamented.
“We will’t do the repairs till insurance coverage agrees to pay. We don’t have $100,000 liquid to foot the invoice,” Alice Zaslavsky defined.
“We’ve already appealed twice. We’ll proceed to attraction till they do the proper factor,” the house owner stated.
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