Coney Island Avenue is a free piece of audio theatre – available for folks to stream from wherever they are, but designed to accompany an individual listener's self-guided walk down the Brooklyn avenue's 5-mile span. Home to a rich multitude of cultures and communities, Coney Island Avenue connects Park Circle at Prospect Park to the boardwalk at Brighton Beach.
Units in the Serrano Apartments, a high-rise housing complex on Columbia Pike, have three things going for them: they are spacious, have nice views, and are affordable.
“But if you go inside those units, the reality is totally different,” said Janeth Valenzuela, who has been advocating for better living conditions for Serrano tenants for two years.
Mice and rat infestations. Balconies with broken glass and rust. Dirty HVAC units with water damage underneath. Shoddy maintenance.
These are just some of the problems inside the 280-unit apartment building at 5535 Columbia Pike, not just according to Valenzuela, but also the Arlington NAACP, immigrant and tenants’ rights group BU-GATA, interfaith clergy group VOICE Arlington, and the Asian American Pacific Islander Civic Engagement (ACE) Collaborative.