Deadly Belmont Fire Points to Illegal Housing Dangers; City Launches Crackdown

Editor's Note: A version of this article first appeared in the May edition of the Tremont Tribune.

A fire at 2321 Prospect Ave. killed
three people in April (Photo by David Greene)

Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council announced yesterday that the city will be taking a new, more aggressive approach in identifying and inspecting apartment buildings suspected of being divided illegally.

At the end of April, a fire tore through an apartment building in Belmont and killed three family members who had been living there--Christina Garcia, 43, Juan Lopez, 36, and their 12-year-old son Christian Garcia.

The early morning blaze broke out on the top floor of a multi-family building at 2321 Prospect Ave., a space that had been subdivided into several rooms using partitions, according to FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer.

The tragedy has shined a spotlight on the proliferation of dangerous housing conditions in the Bronx, and across the city. Experts and elected officials say practices like illegal divisions, erected by both tenants and landlords alike, are frighteningly common and growing in number.

Sally Dunford, of the West Bronx Housing and Neighborhood Resource Center, called the problem “endemic.”

She described some of what she’s seen in the community in recent years: already small apartments portioned off into even smaller ones, blocking access to the fire escape or stationed dangerously close to the building’s heating source; five people living in a basement with no bathroom or kitchen; an elderly couple living in a closet; tenants moving back into a property immediately after the city ordered them to vacate.

“It’s just scary,” Dunford said.

Bronx News Roundup, March 24

Here's what's going down in the Boogie Down!

An autopsy reveals that Santiago Urena, the Bronx man who shot officer Robert Salerno on Monday, was killed by a police officer. Initially suicide was suspected as the cause of death.

Local residents are ready to have the Jerome Park Reservoir's fences removed but the city's not too sure about it.

Joshua Delarosa, the four-year-old who was left in critical condition after having a traffic pole fall on his head, is currently in stable condition at the New York Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

Reconstruction on the 74-year-old Henry Hudson Bridge will come to an end this summer, reopening the walkway between Inwood and the Bronx.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has been awarded $1.22 million from the National Institutes of Health to help fight childhood obesity in the Bronx.

The NYPD has been towing its own unmarked cars.

The city's former chief cranes inspector, James Delayo, from the Bronx, took a two to six year prison sentence after admitting he sold answers to the crane operator license exam and also sold actual licenses. Some of the companies he helped with illegal licensing were involved with cranes that have killed people in the past.

Return your census forms!! Only two percent of Bronx residents have returned their census forms giving us the lowest percentage in the state.