A rowhouse once owned by Cory Booker, Newark’s mayor and Democratic nominee for U.S. senator, has become a squatter haven.
Residents on the block are complaining that the property has fallen into disrepair and that squatters took up residence soon after it change hands.
“He bought it and promised to be a good neighbor, but that hasn’t occurred,” Robert El, who owns an attached row house, told North Jersey’s the Record.
Booker’s Court Street House is “inconsistent with his image,” Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, told the Record.
“If there are neighbors that are being deleteriously impacted because there are squatters who are living in the property, that, I think, is an inconsistency. Here is a mayor who has talked about urban blight,” she said.
Booker, who purchased the home in 2009 for $175,000, sold to his nonprofit Newark Now in March for $1.
The organization’s president, Lavar Young, told the Record the nonprofit is trying to decide what to do with the building. [NorthJersey.com] — Julie Strickland