We invite you to hear directly from our reporters about the stories that drive our Syracuse community on The Daily Orange Podcast, hosted by Ghael Fobes. Subscribe now to get our newest edition every Tuesday morning at 7:44.

This week’s show features:

“For Syracuse activists, state housing law represents a shift in power,” from asst. news editor, Emma Folts.

From asst. copy editor, Adam Hillman, “4 years since being medically disqualified, AJ Long reflects on self-doubt from football.”

“SU’s underground music house, The Ark, to shut down indefinitely,” from asst. copy editor, Christopher Cicchiello.

A special thank you to WAER for the play-by-play and the musicians from The Ark.

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From 744 Ostrom Avenue, I’m Ghael Fobes, and this is The Daily Orange Podcast. It’s Tuesday, September 3rd, 2019. Today, bed bugs, evictions, and changes to the law and city initiatives that may tamp down on both. From the starting line to the sidelines, reflection and recovery from a former quarterback, and a cornerstone of SU’s underground music scene is now buried.

Ghael Fobes: In front of me now is a print copy of The Daily Orange and the headline for the A1 reads “Shift in Power.” The byline is Emma Folts, who’s an assistant news editor for The DO. Hello Emma!

Emma Folts: Hello. Thank you for having me.

GF: Perhaps it’s best if we begin just as you did in your piece, that is with Tawanda O’Neal. Could you tell me a little bit about who she is?

EF: Absolutely. So Tawanda is a tenant who lives in the north side neighborhood of Syracuse. She lives in an apartment with her three children and her grandson and she’s dealt with a lot of code violations and just problems with her property that her property manager has not addressed or has inadequately addressed in the years that she’s lived there.

GF: What sort of problems has she had with her property?

EF: Starting in July 2018, she has dealt with bedbugs in her property and there has been a hole in her roof and her ceiling that caused rain to pour into her son’s bedroom for some time. She’s dealt with broken windows for about two years and she’s had birds that have gotten into the walls of her apartment and they’ve died in there and rotted it in there. But she can also hear the live birds in the walls, so there’s just been a lot of problems with her property that have not been addressed.

GF: And has she reached out to the landlord? Has she tried to find any sort of resolution with the landlord to try and address, I mean the birds and the walls, the leaking ceiling and roof? What has she tried to do to mitigate those problems?

EF: Yes she has. She has contacted her property manager, who she only knows by his first name, Sam, to notify him of the bedbugs and originally he sent over a person with bedbug spray, and she was not satisfied with that solution because bedbugs is an extensive fumigation process to exterminate them completely. So at that point she made the first call the code enforcement in July of 2018. And since then she has contacted Sam about the hole in her ceiling and all the other issues such as that with the property. And she’s also contacted code enforcement again to follow up on the issues that still exist but she was told that she cannot make another complaint on the existing open complaints that are still unaddressed. And every time that she has notified her landlord of the bedbugs or has called the Department of Code Enforcement, she has received an eviction notice.

GF: The title, of course, “Shift In Power.” I take it that things have been changing recently that may help Tawanda and her situation.

EF: So there has been a shift in power from landlords to tenants both at the state level and the local level. Most notably at the state level, there was the passage of the Housing Stability Tenant Protection Act of 2019. And so what this law does is it gives a lot of tenants protections from landlord exploitation—most notably unlawful evictions are now a crime. So if a landlord was to change the locks on a tenant or to use force to evict them, that is now classified as a misdemeanor. It can carry a fine between $1,000 and $10,000 per violation, and blacklists are also banned as well. So if Tawanda was to be evicted that would not be able to follow her into another property, and landlords would not be able to use her previous eviction records against her in deciding whether or not to accept her as a tenant in their property.

GF: If I heard you correctly someone like Tawanda, just for notifying the landlord about these code violations, she got an eviction notice to dissuade her from pushing any further to try and fix these problems of her property.

EF: She said that she got her first eviction notice as soon as she called the code enforcement department to notify them of the bedbugs. She had been living in that apartment since May of 2016 and had never received an eviction notice until she made that call to code enforcement. And every time she’s called codes to follow up on the problems that still exist on her property or she’s called Sam to ask him to address anything there’s been another eviction notice. So it’s been a kind of continuing process and now with this new law, if you were to evict her it would actually be able to be thrown out in court if it was found that she called the code enforcement within a year of receiving an eviction notice.

GF: I think this will be important for listeners to understand too. I guess I’ve normally associated evictions with people who have missed payments on a rental property. Has that been the case with Tawanda?

EF: No. This most recent eviction court appointment that she went to in July of 2019 was actually classified as a holdover eviction which is when a landlord is suing for the right to evict a tenant regardless of whether they paid their rent. So even if Tawanda paid her rent, he still would like to have her out of the property.

GF: I take it it’s not just the law. Key to your story are Palmar Harvey and Jaime Howley. Who are they? What are they trying to do here?

EF: Palmer Harvey and Jaime Howley are two of three co-chairs and co-founders of the Syracuse Tenants Union and a third founder is Mary Trainor who is a lawyer with Legal Services of CNY. And that with the Syracuse Tenants Union, they are getting monthly tenant teach-ins which are used to educate tenants in a variety of issues but the most recent one has been about this new law. And so both Palmer, Jamie, and Mary are trying to inform tenants of their new rights and the new protection that they have under this law so they can empower tenants to fight back from unlawful evictions or landlord exploitation and neglect.

GF: It’s not just the tenants that need support. Some of the landlords—some of the smaller landlords I guess—don’t quite know that they need resources. What sort of things are there to help them out in these sorts of situations?

EF: Well the city has recently unveiled 11 new initiatives to address housing stability in Syracuse and this also plays a factor in the new shift in power between landlords and tenants. But one of the initiatives is hosted by the division of code enforcement and that is a healthy housing one-on-one event, which is used to educate both tenants and landlords about what constitutes healthy and safe housing.

GF: It’s probably best if we look back toward Tawanda. Where is she at now? What is she looking to do with her property? Where is she at?

EF: Well the bedbug extermination has really been what’s holding her back from leaving and finding sufficient housing for her and her family. Essentially she went back to court on July 22 after the latest eviction which was the holdover eviction. And at that court appointment the judge, Judge Vanessa Bogan, ordered Endzone Properties, who owns Tawanda’s home, to exterminate the bedbugs by August 5th, which was the appointment when both Tawanda and Endzone would reconvene in court. And Tawanda was saying that once that second and third bedbug extermination goes through she’ll hopefully be able to leave that apartment and find somewhere else for her family to live, because she doesn’t want to bring the bedbugs to another home. She’s contemplated going to a homeless shelter, but she doesn’t want to bring the bedbugs there either, so she’s kind of stuck in this place that has all of these code violations and problems and she can’t get out until the landlord fixes them. But thankfully the second round of exterminations for the bedbugs did go through by the time they reconvened in court and the third extermination was set to be completed.

GF: Perfect thank you so much Emma. You can catch Emma’s story, “Shift in Power” on The Daily Orange website.

•••

AJ Long: I was by myself, I didn’t want to be around anybody. Nobody would want to be around me at that point. It was me in a dark room with nobody. I remember my roommate Cole knocking on the door to see if I was there, and I just didn’t answer. I just sat there. 

Ghael Fobes: That was AJ Long, a former Syracuse quarterback. His story of reflection and recovery is currently featured in The D.O. sports section. Assistant copy editor Adam Hillman got a chance to speak with Long. Hey Adam.

Adam Hillman: Hey, how’s it going?

GF: Could you tell me a little bit about who AJ Long was here at SU?

AH: AJ Long was a quarterback in 2014 and 2015. And he came into SU and he was a four-star recruit. Pretty highly touted, got recruited by a few schools you know, Kansas State, Cincinnati, Rutgers, and came in that first year and was a backup pretty early on, which is expected with true freshman. And once starter Terrel Hunt got hurt, played the Florida State game—very next game—against Wake Forest, became the first ever true freshman quarterback for Syracuse to win his first game.

WAER: Long out of the shotgun, low snap. Catches it. Launches one near sides… Caught made for a Touchdown. Steve Ishmael 23 yards. First score of his career. One freshman binds another and the Syracuse fans can look forward to the future.wasn’t the last but he was the first.

AH: So it’s pretty impressive. And then by the end of that year he threw for about 900 yards.

WAER:  Long rolls out to pass. Pressure comes now he’s rolling right of the far side. Long’s looking towards the end zone. He dives in. Touchdown! Syracuse!

AH: …four touchdowns, eight interceptions. And going into that second year, he was expected to compete for the starting job, or at least be the backup behind Hunt, who was now healthy. But that’s kind of where things went wrong.

GF: That winning streak. He’s a true freshman, one of the first to win a game as a freshman that didn’t last long, though.

AH: No, no. So entering that sophomore year, he had a couple…he had a wrist injury got moved down the depth chart. The coach, who he’d basically came to Syracuse for, Coach McDonald, was fired and went to NC State, they hired Tim Lester, who really didn’t see Long as his prototypical guy. He liked true freshmen who a true freshman then Eric Dungey, who just graduated who many, many people know. And he went into that year and he wasn’t, he was kind of feeling down. Some of the anxiety started to really begin. And then, October he’s playing on a scout team. He’s playing against South Florida that week, he’s playing against Tre Flowers and he gets hit in the head by a defensive lineman as his syllabi, and that would be his third concussion in two years. And a week later, after all the concussion symptoms have gone away. He’s medically disqualified. And he’s not allowed to play football at Syracuse anymore.

GF: What did that medical disqualification do to his morale, to his mental health? How did it affect him?

AH: Oh, it crushed him. I mean, he’s talked about that day that he went back to his room and he just…he sat in his room the rest of the day. And his roommate Cole Murphy, who used to play kicker here was like knocking on the door saying, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” And he just, he just didn’t want to be around anybody. And that last week, so he was there for three months after that to the end of the semester. And he said it was just one of the roughest times of his life, because he called Syracuse his dream school. And it was all of a sudden just been taken away from him. So it was a really rough time for him.

GF: So he transferred to Wagner. What happened to his football career at that point?

AH: Let me preface this by saying that one of the main reasons he went to Wagner was because at that time, not a lot of schools were too happy about having a kid who would have just been medically disqualified by an ACC school on the roster. Remember the movie “Concussion?” It was around that time that came out, and from his observation, a lot of schools were a little scared of it. They either were open to it, and then the medical team denied it or they just were not open to it at all. So Wagner was one of the few schools that was open to it. And it’s I-AA so it’s a step lower than Division I than your ACC, SEC schools. And he went there, and he really hit it off with their offensive coordinator, Coach Custavious Patterson, who ran the kind of a spread offense that really worked with his ability to run the ball, throw the ball, do different things. But about a month in there, the same thing that happened at Syracuse happened to Wagner where the offensive coordinator was fired, because Custavious Patterson was demoted from offensive coordinator to quarterbacks coach, and all of the sudden Long was like, “Well, what do I do now?” They brought in this new guy, Rich Scangarello who’s actually now the office coordinator for the Broncos. And he didn’t he didn’t like Long, you know, Long was the fast guy. Not that not that biggest quarterback, but you know, he’s athletic, he can use his arm, can use his legs. And he liked this other guy, Alex Thompson, he was a tall guy, not very mobile, but has a big arm. And so he thought that fit his system best and so when he started doing it, he knew that Thompson was his guy, and just only would pay attention to him in meetings. So he’d only talk to Thompson. Long and Luke Massey, who was a starting quarterback for Wagner last year, got no attention. And so Long started to get those same feelings of, you know, that he was left out in the cold, just like it happened at Syracuse. So those same types of anxiety and self doubt really started to come back to bite him again.

GF: Did he end up staying at Wagner? What would happen at the point when he felt like he was no longer really valuable to the Wagner team?

AH: So about midway through that season, he hadn’t played at all. He had he had a back injury in the offseason from lifting, and he’d gotten healthy, and then he just hadn’t really worked out. So about halfway through the season, they were on the road to Bryant, and he said something like, “We should have won this game,” or like “We shouldn’t have lost,” and the coaching staff didn’t take a liking to it. And he’s a free spirit. He likes to speak his mind. He’s very direct, and that really got on his nerves. And so at that point, he said, you know, “I’m not playing here. What am I doing here?” And so he just decided at that point, it was a good time to leave. So he left there and then transferred to West Chester, which is D-II in Pennsylvania. And that seemed to work out better, because he actually got playing time there.

GF: Because of the medical disqualification, because he was sort of moving down the tier of schools that he could actually play for he obviously couldn’t go pro. What did he do at that point?

AH: After he graduated college, he’d always had this plan of going back and coaching. It has always been his plan for basically is what he said, as long as he you know, as long as he can remember, is that his father coached too and it’s just, it’s just something he loves. So he wanted to be around the game. So he went back to his hometown of Bethlehem. And he had been working with a couple quarterbacks for a few years at this point, just like kids around the area. So he started this thing called Diamond Athletics, which is a position training coaching program where they work with kids from front seven, offensive line, defensive line, receivers, corners, safeties. They have a bunch of different guys who work with them who have experience in college, semi-pro, and they coach these kids in Pennsylvania who really, there’s not a lot of, you know, not a lot of elite football training programs there. So he’s doing that with a couple of his colleagues. And he’s also now a quarterbacks coach of Whitehall High School, which is a local high school around there. So he’s not really sure which one he wants to do more. You know, just kind of feeling it out right now. One thing he did say was that with Diamond Athletics really taking off more, he does see a future with that hopes that that can be his day job.

GF: How did you come across him? What brought you to that story? Why does he feel a need to speak out now?

AH: I actually started working on this my sophomore year, last year. And I just was thinking I was looking through some Syracuse football records, and I saw a bunch of guys had been medically disqualified in like, a couple years. That’s really weird. And I looked into him because he was really the most famous one getting started a couple games for Syracuse, and I wanted to do a story about the medical disqualification as a whole, but getting some people to speak was a little difficult. And I think for him speaking out about this, you know, I can’t really get inside his mind. But he’s really been through a lot. He’s been through some tough times. And I came there and I asked him these questions. I think that, you know, he thought that it was the right time. And that I was treating it seriously. Because a lot of times in you know, football and sports in general, they just kind of push this stuff aside. And they said, you know, mental health doesn’t really matter. And you know, you’re a player, you play, and then go home and do your thing. He saw someone was taking stuff seriously and is willing to share it.

GF: All right. Thank you so much Adam.

AH: Thank you.

•••

Ghael Fobes: As a new Arch opens this school year with the Barnes Center, another ark took an unexpected final bow. The headline is “SU’s Underground Music House ‘The Ark’ to Shut Down Indefinitely.” The reporter is Christopher Cicchiello, who is an assistant copy editor for Pulp. Hey Chris.

Christopher Cicchiello: Hey.

GF: So if one were to walk into 917 Lancaster Avenue on a weekend night last semester, what might they hear?

CC: Walking up to the door, you’re definitely going to start hearing some muffled guitar and drum sounds. But then, as you pay your way in and walk down the stairs, the energy in there is infectious.

GF: What sort of atmosphere is it? So you’re walking into a basement? What do you see? What do you hear?

CC: It’s not the most conventional of venues. You walk down, you’re in kind of old basement. It’s low ceilings. You can see all the piping and whatnot. You know, the stage is right there. You’re five feet away from these local and touring bands. All college kids playing their hearts out.

GF: So it should probably go without mentioning but, these concerts happened in a house that people actually lived in. Who are Ryan McKeown, Noah Steinberg and Kyle Smith?

CC: Ryan McKeown and Noah Steinberg, are sound technology majors. They’re current seniors. They did the music, and they founded the house together. And Kyle Smith was more of a journalist, and he really documented the shows and took it upon himself to capture what The Ark was.

GF: Talk to me a little bit about how they got the idea to host these concerts. There’s a bit of a history of houses hosting concerts in Syracuse, isn’t there?

CC: Definitely. Absolutely. I would say that Big Red, one of the fraternities on campus, Delta Chi, definitely had a part to play. He was friends with a lot of the marching band kids his freshman year, and he went to a lot of these shows and really enjoyed them and was not really expecting the live music scene to be as vibrant as it was.

GF: One of the details in your piece that I couldn’t stop thinking about was this idea of having 60 people for a show, once and sometimes twice a week. What effect did that have on Ryan, Noah and Kyle?

CC: Yeah, it definitely put a great strain on their relationship. A big part was that they were constantly cleaning from the weekend. They were getting ready for shows. There was just a lot of preparation and sometimes, you know, that took a toll on them, in regards to their schooling, their own music endeavors. McKeown was part of FLOTUS and had to drop out as their keyboardist to start The Ark. And Noah Steinberg was part of The Thursday Nights who is actually the house band, basically, they performed there a lot.

GF: They wanted to make sure that most of the profits that they had from their admission would go to the bands. And not only that, but they would invite them to stay in the house too. Talk to me a little bit about that.

CC: Yeah, so it wasn’t most of the profits. It was all of the profits. They gave all the money to performers. Because they experienced times where they would go to house shows on their own respective tours and get paid very inadequately. McEwen and Steinberg both agree that they didn’t want any band to feel that way. So they definitely took a hit in starting up The Ark and giving away their profits.

GF: They closed this venue that they started themselves, in no small part for the strain that it put on them. How do they want people to remember their venue? Was there something they wanted people to make sure that they knew now that they’re closing shop?

CC: I definitely think The Ark, while it might be closed, you know, I think they want it to be a symbol for the success that you can have in running a music venue. Kyle Smith is actually…they talked about potentially writing a book and documenting their success, and kind of a how-to guide on how to run a music venue. So I definitely think in that sense, they want it to be a symbol.

GF: Thank you so much, Chris. You can catch Chris’s story, “SU’s Underground Music House ‘The Ark’ to Shut Down Indefinitely” on The Daily Orange website.

•••

Ghael Fobes: Thank you so much for tuning into The Daily Orange Podcast. A special thank you to Emma, Adam, Chris, the folks over at WAER for the play-by-play sound, and the artists from The Ark. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And we’ll see you next Tuesday.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Published on September 3, 2019 at 7:44 am