Brooklyn family blames neighbor’s construction for raccoon infestation

By Hannah Kliger

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    BROOKLYN, New York (WCBS) — A Brooklyn family says raccoons moved into their ceiling after a neighbor’s construction site sat exposed for months, and now no one wants to pay for the damage.

Both properties are part of a complex of attached row houses all under one roof.

“With raccoons, you’re on your own” Like a scene out of a nightmare, video from Alice Ann Gentry Zaslavsky’s phone shows tiny raccoon claws scratching to open the ceiling hatch. She says one night the family woke up to a raccoon hanging down from one of the access panels in their ceiling.

“We even had a set of five babies born above our bathroom in the winter of 2023,” she said.

The problem, she explains, began in 2022 when a new neighbor bought 194 Minna St., two doors down, and began construction.

When the city handed down a stop work order to Majestic Holdings NY LLC, the property owner, the house was left vacant and construction unfinished. But holes on the property became an access point for a family of raccoons who began nesting in the Zaslavsky’s ceiling.

“We called the buildings department. There was nothing they could do. We called our City Council person. It took a year for them to reach back out to us,” Zaslavsky told CBS News New York’s Hannah Kliger.

The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene tried to help, she remembers, but only works with animals like rodents or rats.

“With raccoons, you’re on your own,” she said.

Homeowner insurance company denies claim to make repairs Zaslavsky says she asked her neighbor to close the holes on his property, which is under construction, several times, but with no solution, she took him to court. In 2023, the judge ruled in a civil case that the defendant had to fix the issue.

“They’re not coming from a point outside of our house that I can go put a board over and it’s done,” she said.

Attorneys for Majestic Holdings NY LLC did not reply to multiple requests for comment. Since then, the Zaslavskys hired exterminators to get the family of raccoons out. But more than a year later, the signs, like stains from urine and feces, and cracks in the ceiling remain.

“Things have been chewed. We’re concerned about fire risk, and we have no insulation left in our ceiling because they’ve eaten it all,” she said.

Now the family is facing another challenge. Their homeowner insurance company, AmGUARD, denied their claim to make necessary repairs, saying their policy does not cover “nesting or infestation… or release of waste products or secretions, by any animals.”

AmGUARD did not respond to multiple inquiries from CBS News New York.

“Every policy is unique to every property and each policy, you know, they list certain covered perils,” said Michael Butler, a public adjustor with Rubin and Rosen.

He adds that raccoon damage is often difficult but important to address.

“All of their bodily fluids are all considered toxic,” he said.

Butler says that getting a public adjustor on board early can help negotiate and settle complex insurance claims, and lead to larger payouts.

For now, the Zaslavskys just want to clean up after their rowdy raccoon tenants, so their home is no longer where the wild things are.

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