Residents Sue UPS Over 30-Year Delivery Ban at Staten Island Apartments

Residents of two Staten Island apartment complexes are suing United Parcel Service over a delivery rule that has forced them to meet trucks outside for about 30 years, turning an old safety response into what plaintiffs say is a daily burden on mostly Black and Hispanic tenants.

The federal class-action complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on Oct. 8, 2024, targets Park Hill Apartments and Fox Hill Apartments in Clifton on the North Shore. It says UPS will not bring packages to the doors of residents in the complexes and instead requires them to collect deliveries at a pickup point outside 240 Park Hill Avenue, sometimes as far as a third of a mile from home.

The lawsuit says the system is especially punishing because residents must wait only during a narrow delivery window, often between 11 a.m. and noon, and must do so outdoors in rain, snow, heat or cold. The complaint says the policy affects more than 1,400 units in 11 buildings, where only 1% of residents are White. It also says UPS is the outlier on the block, because FedEx, DHL and Amazon deliver directly to the buildings.

The policy traces back to violent attacks on UPS drivers at Park Hill in the 1980s and 1990s. A 2023 report said the company adopted the non-delivery rule after five assaults, including one in which a female driver was beaten with a stick and urinated on, and another in which a driver was beaten, stripped, tied up, left on a roof, and had his truck stolen and burned with parcels inside.

Residents say the danger that justified the rule decades ago no longer matches present-day conditions, pointing to police data showing overall violence in the 120th Precinct has fallen sharply since the 1990s. They argue that UPS has left them with a second-class service standard that does not apply to other multifamily buildings on Staten Island.

The suit says the policy violates the New York City Human Rights Law and New York State Civil Rights Law by discriminating against non-White residents and creating a disparate impact. It also alleges that UPS treats comparable apartment buildings differently, including properties with larger White populations.

Among the named residents is Gordon Flowers, a Fox Hill tenant with limited mobility after an injury. Flowers said he began ordering necessities online because he needed a walker and could not easily reach the outdoor pickup point. He also circulated a petition demanding door-to-door service. Other residents named as class members include Madeline Brown, Aminat Fakunle, Yvette Perez, Dulcemaria Rivera, Prince Thomas, Jessie Torrence and Rochelle Torrence.

The lawsuit seeks damages and an order requiring UPS to provide the same level of service it gives other apartment buildings on Staten Island, a case that could test how far a decades-old security policy can go before it becomes a barrier to basic access.