Building supers have lives, just like everyone else.
And since the new, later trash set-out time took effect in the city’s ongoing crusade against rats this spring, some have been miserable. As of last April 1, trash must go to the curb at 8 p.m., rather than 4 p.m.
As the live-in super in a 60-unit Chelsea condominium, Dominick Romeo extends — or interrupts — his workday three days a week for trash duty, sometimes finishing around 9:30 pm on a recycling night.
Supers traveling among several small buildings, he said, used to start trash duty early, finishing around 7 p.m. But now, as the Sanitation Department cracks down, those supers are ending their workday at around 11 p.m. or taking a break and then returning, not finishing until after midnight.
“It’s always been extensive, but now it’s exhausting,” Romeo said.
Romeo is now organizing a grassroots movement with the goal of rolling back the trash set-out time.
A rally is scheduled for noon on Monday, Oct. 9, at City Hall Park, with details online at NYC Building Supers. Romeo urges the participation of supers, porters and anyone who supports them.
He also plans a protest — “our act of defiance,” he calls it — with supers setting out trash at 4 p.m. until Nov. 7, the day of City Council elections.
The new trash schedule was badly thought out, said one live-in super of a 25-unit Midtown rental building who requested anonymity.
Big buildings are staffed. “They have porters on shift work, so when one guy leaves at 4 p.m., another guy comes in,” he said. “But I am a one-man operation.” He has daytime working hours, and is on call for emergencies.
“I was always able to handle it, but now, three times a week during dinner time, I have to put out trash and get dirty again,” he said. “After taking out trash, I need to take a shower.”
What’s more, “it is costing me money out of pocket because three nights a week I can’t even cook dinner,” he said. “I have to order takeout. So it’s really screwing me badly.”
Another super, who also requested anonymity, tends two small condo buildings in Greenwich Village. He lives in Queens — an hour away by subway.
On trash nights, when he hoists dozens of 30-pound bags up two flights of stairs, he sticks around rather than spending two extra hours traveling home and returning.
“The new schedule has thrown our lives out of whack,” he said. “My girlfriend is not happy. Forget about supper together. I feel we’ve gone back to the 1800s where workers have no rights and the city does not consider people who work in these jobs.”
Work scheduling is an underappreciated issue that causes snowballing effects, Romeo said.
He finds that building managers often remain hands-off. Co-op and condo boards may be reluctant to pay overtime or hire part-time help.
He has heard that supers should start their day later — an untenable suggestion “knowing that we have vendors like plumbers and electricians who come early in the morning.”
Supers are reluctant to complain, he said. Not only are their jobs at stake, but for live-in supers, their housing is at stake, too.
The old 4 p.m. hour was “the earliest set-out time of any major city in the world,” a Department of Sanitation spokesman wrote to the Post. With mounds of black bags lining the sidewalks, “rush hour became trash hour,” with rats relishing an early-bird dinner special.
“It is unacceptable, unhealthy, and gross to allow 44 million pounds of trash to sit on New York City’s streets all hours of the day,” he wrote. With 20% fewer 311 service requests for rat sightings citywide, “the changes are working and they were long overdue.”
But rat sightings are still higher than they were a few years ago. Supers blame the rat explosion on the city’s COVID budget cuts for sanitation services and the proliferation of outdoor dining sheds.
“Bad management is what swelled the rat population — not us supers throwing our trash out at 4 p.m.,” Romeo said. “City officials don’t want to see trash on the street when they’re walking home.”
Trash can go out earlier, at 6 p.m., if it’s in a sealed container.
But few buildings have space to store containers. Containerization also adds work — the super must retrieve them in the morning and hose them down when dirty. Theft is another risk, and they don’t come cheap. The wheeled, lidded 50-gallon containers that Romeo favors cost $170 apiece.
“The supers have some very legitimate points,” City Council Member Erik Bottcher, who is on the Sanitation Committee, told The Post in a statement. “We have asked the Department of Sanitation to come up with some pragmatic solutions. I see no reason why there can’t be a reasonable compromise that maintains clean sidewalks and allows building superintendents to have a good quality of life.”
One of Romeo’s letters to city officials drew a response from a Sanitation Department community affairs rep. It suggested that supers solicit volunteers to help with the trash.
“You may want to reach out to your local community board, senior center or a community-based organization to explore opportunities where volunteers may be available to assist you with placing trash at the curb for collection,” the response said in part.
Romeo was incredulous. “So they want me to ask old ladies in muumuus to volunteer to take out our building trash?” he said. “It’s buffoonery.”
The Sanitation Department spokesman said the response was misunderstood.
“It’s clear from the context that we weren’t suggesting that senior citizens help take out the trash,” he wrote to The Post. “Rather, that a local senior center — just like a Community Board or community-based organization — would know a network of people who might be able to assist, as Sanitation Workers collect from the street, not from on private property.”
Romeo has offered an alternative plan that includes a 5 p.m. trash set-out time. Under his proposal, the city would also expedite its food scraps and yard waste program (which includes curbside composting), and allow food-free cardboard to go to the curb unbagged.
“They should have had a plan for this before destroying superintendents’ lives,” he said.