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Fed up with sporadic heat, backed-up sewage, infestations of rats, piles of trash in the hallways, crumbling ceilings and unlit and unsafe hallways, Allen and dozens of fellow tenants organized in the mid 1990s and convinced HUD to investigate Continental Wingate, a billion-dollar company owned by Gerald Schuster, a major Democratic party contributor. It all began when a few women, tired of covering broken windows with plastic sheets, knocked on their neighbors’ doors and, with the help of a tenant organizer, began meeting and agitating until they couldn’t be ignored.

As City Limits reported in an award-winning series [“Anatomy of a Sweetheart Deal,” November 1997, and “Reversal of Fortune,” December 1997], the feds’ probe uncovered negligence, fraud and buildings run like a bank machine. Critics of the Clinton Administration also found ammunition to accuse then-HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo of giving a major break to a politically connected developer.

But the agreement, and the tenants’ ambitions, were sidetracked from the start. Continental Wingate was not just a financial liability for HUD, but a political one, too: General partner Gerald Schuster and his wife, Elaine, were devoted Democratic Party fundraisers, raising millions for President Clinton’s campaigns and the Democratic National Committee. When details of the deal were made public by City Limits in late 1997, it looked an awful lot like a $40 million bailout of a wealthy and politically connected slumlord. HUD’s inspector general concluded at the time that the deal “rewards a landlord who may bear responsibility for the deplorable conditions of the projects.”

The IG had worse in store for Continental Wingate. In early 1998, the office found that the company had done more than run Beekman into the ground--it also may have misappropriated $1.4 million of federal money intended for the buildings. For HUD to go ahead with the original plan could have meant more bad press and more embarrassing investigations into Schuster’s company. HUD put the Beekman deal on hold.

That June, it asked Continental Wingate to increase its contribution to the bailout, to $6.4 million. Wingate refused, and HUD, eager to get Continental Wingate out of the picture, seized the Beekman deeds in May 1999. Continental Wingate, which did not return calls from City Limits , has yet to pay a cent toward the rehabilitation of the buildings it bled.