The Bronx Ink

By Jose Leyva

The tenants at 1636 and 1640 Martin Luther King Blvd. in Morris Heights share the same architectural design and the same entrance, along with the same complaint about their landlord. They say the company connected to Hunter Property management that currently owns the buildings is neglecting maintenance of them.

Since November, 2008, the tenants of the two buildings have filed 297 complaints with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).

According to 10 of the residents, most of their demands for improvements have not been met. Last winter, the 50 apartments in the two, five-story buildings that were built in 1915 did not have hot water or heat for two weeks, according to HPD records.

“That was my main complaint and it’s my main worry for this winter,” said Luis Correa, a 33-year-old former superintendent at 1640.

Correa stopped paying his $340 monthly rent recently. Five other residents followed suit.

Since Sept. 21, 2009 to now, Correa has filed more than 20 complaints with HPD about everything from water leaks, holes on the ceiling, unusable electrical wiring and a rat infestation.

“They simply don’t care about the building.” said Melinda Thompson, who lives in apartment 2A. Thompson’s main concern is the mold in her bathroom and kitchen. She offers complaints to the current superintendent, but nothing gets fixed.

From the street, the two buildings look as if they are in good condition. On closer look, their entrance doors are unsecured. One is missing a glass pane. The two buildings have 30 open violations with the city’s Department of Buildings.

“We are now forming a tenants’ association to try to get the landlord to court,” said Miriam Maldonado, the leader of the group that represents both buildings.

By Alex Abu Ata and Alex Berg

Vivian Blanco chokes back tears when she remembers the last winter she spent at her 1663 Eastburn Avenue apartment in the East Tremont section of the Bronx.

“To sleep we had to wear socks and scarves and coats,” said Blanco, who lives in one of the 43 apartments in the six-story building. None of the apartments had heat last winter. “It was so uncomfortable to sleep with all those clothes and blankets on top of you because it’s heavy, you can’t even move.”

Most of the apartments suffer a variety of damage, including mold, broken window frames, cracked walls and ceilings, and occasional rodent infestations. The tenants say the building’s decay accelerated after OCG IV – a company linked to Ocelot – bought it for $3.175 million in February of 2007. Ocelot abandoned its holdings less than two years later.

From the tenants’ perspective, Ocelot’s disappearance was a relief.

“We didn’t have any service,” said Blanco, a 55-year-old hospital unit assistant whose grandchildren cannot visit her because of her apartment’s condition. “At least now I can call someone and they’ll pick up the phone.” Blanco said she got the contact information for city workers who were fixing the building and hired them to fix her apartment. But problems keep popping up in the old building. In the last 12 months alone, 295 violations were reported.

Tenants have often had to do the repairs themselves, at their own expense. When the management refused to repair the living room ceiling in Blanco’s apartment, she hired workers and purchased the material herself. The total cost amounted to $2,000 and Blanco had to take a week off work to supervise the repairs.

But maintenance isn’t the only problem. Hector Melo Ramos, a third-floor resident, said in Spanish that his apartment was robbed and there are drug dealers in the building.

By Maia Efrem

From a distance, the building at 2254 Crotona Ave. looks like all the other dwellings in the surrounding blocks. On closer inspection, however, the lock is knocked out on the front door, the windows on the first floor are boarded up and graffiti covers concrete slabs that block the entrance to many apartments in the building.

An Ocelot entity bought the Crotona Avenue building along with four others from Loran Realty X Corporation in July 2007 for almost $7 million. Since then, the six-story, 28-unit structure has gone through three management companies: Ocelot, Hunter Property Management, and now JLP Metro Management, Inc.

Large swaths of graffiti covered the hallways and apartment doors until they were painted by JLP Metro several weeks ago. Tenants are pleased to see the graffiti gone, but they said they still suffer from moldy walls and plumbing problems.

When Ocelot, and later Hunter Property Management, stopped providing maintenance services for the tenants, the conditions swiftly deteriorated. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) has 859 open violations for the building, 738 of which are either “hazardous,” or “immediately hazardous.” Complaints include exposed electrical wires, faulty and leaky plumbing, and lack of a working carbon monoxide detecting device.

According to the current superintendant, Victor Garcia, the building had no landlord for roughly six months. Rent was not collected during that period, and the building deteriorated because of lack of upkeep. There was no heat and hot water. “It was chaos, every man to himself,” said Garcia. “There was no one to complain to or answer to.” According to Garcia, some tenants owe as much as $20,000 in unpaid rent.

Altagracia Rogers has two holes in her bathroom, one in the ceiling and one in the floor; both offer her a view of her neighbors and them of her. “We try to cover it up with bags but it doesn’t always work,” she said, pointing towards the ceiling where the gaping hole reveals a blue bathroom upstairs. She has endured several floods in the last year. “No one helps us, we have to help ourselves,” she said.

Because there was no one to pay for the repairs in the building, there was also no one to pay Garcia for his work. “Everything I did I did for free,” he said. “I even bought a five-gallon can of paint, walked away for a minute and a tenant had stolen it to paint her own apartment. I couldn’t even be mad, I just laughed it off.”

By Wanda Hellmund

Additional reporting by Donal Griffin

Residents at 621-627 Manida St. have had a rough year. The list of complaints includes no heat, no hot water, cracks in the ceiling, mold everywhere. More than 3,000 similar conditions have been reported so far. A court-appointed receiver has been slowly carrying out repairs and restoring basics like running water, residents are facing an uncertain future.

The buildings, known locally as the “House of Horrors,” are primed to be sold to a new landlord.  But residents don’t know if that will improve their living conditions. “I won’t believe it, until I see it,” said Carmen Rodriguez, a 35-year-old mother of five who heads the newly formed tenants’association.

Rodriguez and her neighbors have been disappointed in the past. “This building is a mess,” said Asia Ezmonds, 30. “Many apartments are vacant and now they’re occupied by drug addicts.”

All they have to do is kick in a door of an empty apartment.

Building residents formed the tenants association because they said they have had enough. Jill Roche from the Hunts Point Alliance for Children heard about the conditions on Manida Street and is representing  residents as a legal co-counselor with Urban Justice Center since early March. “Living conditions were awful,” Roche said. “Some of the children were not going to school because they could not even take a shower in the morning.”

Parents like Tamara Taylor, 48, worry about their children’s health. Taylor did not have gas in her apartment for a year, making it impossible to cook for her 12-year-old daughter. “The landlords just don’t care about us,”she said.

Residents have stopped paying rent and say they won’t pay again until their complaints have been addressed. “Everything should be gutted,” said Rodriguez. “Otherwise these issues will be coming back again and again.”

This leaves the receiver, Howard Vargas, who is managing the properties until Fannie Mae can unload them, with the task of trying to improve conditions in the building without rent money. Fannie Mae contributed only $100,000 for repairs, $20,000 of which Vargas used to repair the leaking roofs.

Nonetheless, he and his team have so far dealt with over 700 housing violations. “It’s certainly better than it was,”he said. But there is also still a long way to go.

Now, the residents of the Manida Street apartments are hoping to hear that a non-profit organization might come in and buy these buildings. Until then, the apartments continue to deteriorate around them.

How a New York real estate deal went bad, causing a housing crisis for hundreds of low-income families

View Ocelot in a larger map

A map of all foreclosed and bankrupt Bronx properties mentioned in the story. Click on a location to read an in-depth story and watch an audio slideshow for each individual property. If you encounter problems viewing the map, click on the links below to view the slideshows and stories.

= Ocelot buildings currently in foreclosure. On Dec. 1, 2009, Fannie Mae sold the debt to Omni New York LLC.

806 E. 175th St. 1528 Bryant Ave. 1744 Clay Ave. 2254 Crotona Ave. 1663 Eastburn Ave. 1512-1524 Leland Ave. 621-627 Manida St. 1269-1271 Morris Ave. 1804 Weeks Avenue

= Ocelot buildings sold to BXP 1LLC on May 13, 2009. The buildings are managed by Hunter Property Management LLC.

1585-1589 E. 172nd St. 1350 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd 1636-1640 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd 1268 Stratford Avenue

= Ocelot buildings sold to Bronx Apartments LLC on Aug. 26, 2009.

422 East 178th St. 4289,4301,4305 Park Ave.

By Donal Griffin

Additional reporting by Matthew Huisman, Wanda Hellmund, Sarah Wali, Connor Boals and Yoav Sivan

LOUISE ALVAREZ cannot remember who used to live in the abandoned apartment in the building next to hers on Manida Street in Hunts Point. The mother of four pushed open its unlocked door one morning in October to find cooking pots caked with old food strewn among sneakers, used hoodies and open bags of trash. The stench of stale urine wafted out into the hallway.

Nearly half of the apartments in the four decrepit buildings at 621-627 Manida St in the Bronx are empty. Like Alvarez, the remaining residents live with dangerous mold, vermin and only occasional heat in apartments that suffer from varying stages of decay. Most said their apartments began crumbling around them soon after the last owner vanished nearly one year ago.

Many like Alvarez cannot afford to leave.  She is asthmatic, and has arthritis in parts of her hands and hips. “I ain’t moving,” she said, “let me tell you.”

In less than two years, Ocelot had bought up nearly 800 apartments in the Bronx, including buildings on Manida Street which many of its low-income tenants refer to as the

A similar tale can be told by the tenants in 24 other buildings throughout the Bronx.  The aging apartment blocks have become known as “the Ocelot buildings,” named after the defunct real estate investment company that bought them between 2006 and 2007 at the peak of the housing bubble, only to abandon them in late 2008, as the market collapsed.

Some news outlets have called Ocelot a “phantom” and, indeed, the company’s president could not be contacted for this article. But the consequences of a bitter row between Ocelot’s principals are very real for hundreds of families across the Bronx.

Spending Spree

VETERAN real estate dealer Michael Edery was part of a group in early 2005 that bought 1744 Clay Avenue and 1633 Eastburn Avenue, two low-income buildings in East Tremont. His group paid five times the rent roll for the pair of buildings, and sold them nearly two years later for $6 million, seven and a half times what the rents would yield.

“The market was insane,” said Edery. “If it would have been marketed properly at the height of the market, we would have gotten eight times, eight and a half.”

Various entities surrounded the purchase, but Edery knew the buyer simply as Ocelot Capital Group.

Ocelot appeared to have endless capital, and an endless appetite for apartment buildings in the Bronx.  Backed by a $29 million loan from Deutsche Bank (a debt it later sold to Fannie Mae), the company bought the Manida Street buildings for $7.2 million, Edery’s two buildings for $6 million and 15 more low-income properties in Morrisania, Pelham Parkway and Crotona for nearly $23 million. The Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn then financed six more buildings in Highbridge and Soundview for $16.6 million.  In less than two years, Ocelot had bought up nearly 800 apartments all over the Bronx.

Inside Ocelot

OCELOT’S president was a respected New York attorney named Rachel Arfa, a graduate of Brooklyn Law School and a member of the New York State Bar since 1979. Arfa is a former partner of an international law firm called Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson and a businesswoman whose strength is her legal expertise.

Arfa’s father was a Hebrew scholar called Milton Arfa, who lectured in Yeshiva University and established the Israel Matz Fund to distribute grants to indigent Hebrew authors. Rachel Arfa, who lived on Riverside Boulevard in lower Manhattan during the Ocelot episode, is now a trustee of the charity along with Shlomo Sharan, an Israeli academic based in Tel Aviv.

While Arfa managed the buildings in the Bronx, the cash for this costly venture came almost entirely from an obscure Israeli company called Eldan Tech.  According to its annual report, this Tel Aviv-based investment group controlled 80 percent of Ocelot.

The police were recently called on the residents of 1585 E. 172nd Street when they attempted to organize against their poor living conditions. Photo by Matthew Huisman

From Tel Aviv to The Bronx

Arfa had close links to the Tel Aviv business world through her husband, Alex Shpigel. In 2002, the couple had raised $40 million from a group of Israeli investors for a major purchase in Harlem and the Bronx. Shpigel provided the financial fulcrum for the deal with his network of family and personal relationships in Israel, while Arfa used her legal know-how to set up its complex structure of real estate entities.

But in 2007, some of the Israeli investors filed a civil suit in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court alleging that the couple covertly siphoned off $5 million in “secret commissions” from the sellers of the properties. These commissions were then loaded onto the purchase price. According to the same court filing, Shpigel threatened to kill an associate who found out.

Arfa and Shpigel have denied all the allegations, and no criminal charges have been filed against either of them. The couple filed a counter suit in the same court against a former associate, whom they blame for the much of the mess. These tangled cases provide an unfortunate warning for disasters to come.

The Fall

BACK in the Bronx, the trouble began almost as soon as the couple sealed the deal on the Ocelot buildings. Many of their new tenants qualified for city and federal rent subsidies. This meant rent revenue alone would be too meagre to support the maintenance needs in these aging buildings. Money would have to come from elsewhere.

According to the Department of Housing and Development, it never did.  Basic repairs – the responsibility of Arfa and Shpigel – ceased to take place. Thousands of official complaints flooded the city’s housing files listing everything from rat infestations to collapsing ceilings.

Residents who had options began to abandon their apartments. Those who did not, endured a year and more of living in degrading conditions. The buildings racked up “immediately hazardous” violations. Six Ocelot buildings in particular ended the year on the city’s list of “most distressed.” By the end of 2008, nearly every one of the Ocelot buildings was in a state of serious decay.

In response, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) took Ocelot to Bronx Housing Court in June 2008. It secured consent orders compelling the company to repair nearly 3,000 violations in six buildings and pay approximately $60,000 in fines. HPD officials claim that Ocelot never addressed the violations—the kind of negligence that could result in a contempt of court ruling, i.e. jail time.

A clogged bathtub in an apartment at 1640 Martin Luther King Boulevard. The tenants of this building have filed 297 complaints with the housing department since November 2008. Photo by Matthew Huisman

Meanwhile, in October of 2008, Eldan Tech directors decided enough was enough. They voted to bail out. By then, the property market was collapsing on a global scale. The Ocelot costs had stung the company’s bottom line. In 2008, Eldan Tech reported “heavy losses of about 53 million shekels ($14.4 million) due to its real estate activities in the Bronx.”

The cost for the Ocelot residents, however, was of a different nature. Broken front doors meant drug addicts could freely roam the halls. In one building, pigeons took up residence on an abandoned baby’s crib.

Louise Alvarez and her children – and many Ocelot tenants all over the Bronx – lost their heat and hot water for the winter of 2008.

Who’s to Blame?

Arfa and Shpigel and their Israeli business partners are now locked in a vicious legal dispute to determine who is more culpable for this human and financial catastrophe.

The Tel Aviv investors claim in their civil suit that Arfa lied about the buildings’ physical condition and financial performance and “incessantly demanded” more cash.

Arfa’s lawyer, David Katz, countered that Eldan Tech failed to supply her with “millions of dollars” of needed maintenance money.   Katz also charged the Israeli company with bribing a senior Ocelot employee for confidential information about Arfa’s and Shpigel’s businesses elsewhere. The couple is now suing that ex-employee for $1 million in New York State Supreme Court.  The employee has denied the charges.

“They’re vindictive,” said Katz of Schlam, Stone & Dolan, referring to Eldan Tech principals. “They’re trying to avoid their responsibilities.”

Enter Sam Suzuki

While the legal squabble continued, Arfa began looking for a way out. Sam Suzuki, a long time property dealer based in the wealthy town of Port Washington, Long Island, emerged as a potential buyer. His company signed a no-cash deal in November 2008 and took on Ocelot’s debt with Fannie Mae.

But Suzuki’s company never made any bank repayments and a lawyer for Suzuki would not explain why. This caused the deal to collapse in early 2009 and Fannie Mae foreclosed on the loans. Court-appointed receivers took over, putting most of the buildings – and their tenants – into a legal no-man’s land, where they remain today.

A Fannie Mae spokesperson, Jon Searles, said that the bank is now “joining the receivers on inspections of the properties and funding much-needed safety repairs.” Such promises don’t wash with the tiny maintenance budgets that the receivers are currently struggling with. One receiver recently sought a court order to secure more cash from the bank for repairs.

Searles also said that Fannie Mae is looking to sell the loan notes on the buildings to “responsible new ownership.” Who that “responsible” new owner might be, remains to be seen. Katz said that Arfa now wants the buildings sold to a non-profit, because the only parties hanging on for a for-profit deal are Eldan Tech and Fannie Mae. One of the interested parties, as it turns out, is Sam Suzuki.

While Fannie Mae is looking for

Financial History

In 1998, a legal firm tried to force Suzuki to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy over a disputed $77,000 debt, a debt that was settled in 2001. Other trade creditors have also been forced to take Suzuki to court to get paid and one creditor even secured a judgment against him for over $2 million in the New York City Supreme Court in 2004. Suzuki paid the judgment off two years later.

Suzuki has still managed to find the cash to donate thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians around New York over the last eight years, including $6,200 to former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, $7,450 to U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman and $9,000 to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer.

And despite the earlier deal collapsing, a company linked to Suzuki did manage to buy six of the Ocelot buildings in May of this year, including three in Soundview that were not part of the Fannie Mae foreclosure buildings. Conditions in many of them remain appalling.

Residents recently gathered in the lobby of 1585 E. 172^nd St, to protest its dilapidated conditions but their meeting was interrupted by police, who were called by an employee of Suzuki’s. A lawyer for Suzuki said that her client had no problem with the tenants organizing but that the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board members at the meeting were not invited and thus trespassing.

A resident of 1268 Stratford Avenue displays a live mouse caught on a glue trap. Many of the low-income residents have dealt with rats, leaky ceilings and faulty wiring. Photo by Connor Boals

In another Suzuki-owned apartment building on Stratford Avenue, a family of 10 lived without heat for a year before it was only recently restored.  The superintendent at 1636 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. has filed 20 complaints since September of this year, spotlighting everything from water leaks and holes in the ceiling to faulty electrical wiring.

One mother in an Ocelot building at 1585 E.172 St. has to keep her infant son out of her kitchen because of rodents. “No puedo vivir con las ratas,” said Ana Almonte. “I can’t live with the rats.”

The Wait

On Manida Street, Louise Alvarez stays put, waiting for a new landlord and hoping the nightmare may soon be over. She sleeps in her living room so her children can share the bedrooms. “We’re here struggling,” she said. “I guess I’m going to be struggling until God answers my prayers.”
dbg2114@columbia.edu

How a New York real estate deal went bad causing a housing crisis for hundreds of low-income families

By Donal Griffin

Additional reporting by Matthew Huisman, Wanda Hellmund, Sarah Wali, Connor Boals and Yoav Sivan

LOUISE ALVAREZ cannot remember who used to live in the abandoned apartment in the building next to hers on Manida Street in Hunts Point. The mother of four pushed open its unlocked door one morning in October to find cooking pots caked with old food strewn among sneakers, used hoodies and open bags of trash. The stench of stale urine wafted out into the hallway.

The entrance to Manida Street buildings. Photo by Wanda Hellmund

Nearly half of the apartments in the four decrepit buildings at 621-627 Manida St in the Bronx are empty. Like Alvarez, the remaining residents live with dangerous mold, vermin and only occasional heat in apartments that suffer from varying stages of decay. Most said their apartments began crumbling around them soon after the last owner vanished nearly one year ago.

Many like Alvarez cannot afford to leave.  She is asthmatic, and has arthritis in parts of her hands and hips. “I ain’t moving,” she said, “let me tell you.”

A similar tale can be told by the tenants in 24 other buildings throughout the Bronx.  The aging apartment blocks have become known as “the Ocelot buildings,” named after the defunct real estate investment company that bought them between 2006 and 2007 at the peak of the housing bubble, only to abandon them in late 2008, as the market collapsed.

Some news outlets have called Ocelot a “phantom” and, indeed, the company’s president could not be contacted for this article. But the consequences of a bitter row between Ocelot’s principals are very real for hundreds of families across the Bronx.

Spending Spree

VETERAN real estate dealer Michael Edery was part of a group in early 2005 that bought 1744 Clay Avenue and 1633 Eastburn Avenue, two low-income buildings in East Tremont. His group paid five times the rent roll for the pair of buildings, and sold them nearly two years later for $6 million, seven and a half times what the rents would yield.

“The market was insane,” said Edery. “If it would have been marketed properly at the height of the market, we would have gotten eight times, eight and a half.”

Various entities surrounded the purchase, but Edery knew the buyer simply as Ocelot Capital Group.

Ocelot appeared to have endless capital, and an endless appetite for apartment buildings in the Bronx.  Backed by a $29 million loan from Deutsche Bank (a debt it later sold to Fannie Mae), the company bought the Manida Street buildings for $7.2 million, Edery’s two buildings for $6 million and 15 more low-income properties in Morrisania, Pelham Parkway and Crotona for nearly $23 million. The Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn then financed six more buildings in Highbridge and Soundview for $16.6 million.  In less than two years, Ocelot had bought up nearly 800 apartments all over the Bronx.

Residents of 1585 E. 172nd Street are organizing against their poor living conditions. Photo by Matthew Huisman

Inside Ocelot

OCELOT’S president was a respected New York attorney named Rachel Arfa, a graduate of Brooklyn Law School and a member of the New York State Bar since 1979. Arfa is a former partner of an international law firm called Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson and a businesswoman whose strength is her legal expertise.

Arfa’s father was a Hebrew scholar called Milton Arfa, who lectured in Yeshiva University and established the Israel Matz Fund to distribute grants to indigent Hebrew authors. Rachel Arfa, who lived on Riverside Boulevard in lower Manhattan during the Ocelot episode, is now a trustee of the charity along with Shlomo Sharan, an Israeli academic based in Tel Aviv.

While Arfa managed the buildings in the Bronx, the cash for this costly venture came almost entirely from an obscure Israeli company called Eldan Tech.  According to its annual report, this Tel Aviv-based investment group controlled 80 percent of Ocelot.

From Tel Aviv to The Bronx

Arfa had close links to the Tel Aviv business world through her husband, Alex Shpigel. In 2002, the couple had raised $40 million from a group of Israeli investors for a major purchase in Harlem and the Bronx. Shpigel provided the financial fulcrum for the deal with his network of family and personal relationships in Israel, while Arfa used her legal know-how to set up its complex structure of real estate entities.

But in 2007, some of the Israeli investors filed a civil suit in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court alleging that the couple covertly siphoned off $5 million in “secret commissions” from the sellers of the properties. These commissions were then loaded onto the purchase price. According to the same court filing, Shpigel threatened to kill an associate who found out.

Arfa and Shpigel have denied all the allegations, and no criminal charges have been filed against either of them. The couple filed a counter suit in the same court against a former associate, whom they blame for the much of the mess. These tangled cases provide an unfortunate warning for disasters to come.

A resident of 1268 Stratford Avenue displays a live mouse caught on a glue trap. Photo by Connor Boals

The Fall

BACK in the Bronx, the trouble began almost as soon as the couple sealed the deal on the Ocelot buildings. Many of their new tenants qualified for city and federal rent subsidies. This meant rent revenue alone would be too meagre to support the maintenance needs in these aging buildings. Money would have to come from elsewhere.

According to the Department of Housing and Development, it never did.  Basic repairs – the responsibility of Arfa and Shpigel – ceased to take place. Thousands of official complaints flooded the city’s housing files listing everything from rat infestations to collapsing ceilings.

Residents who had options began to abandon their apartments. Those who did not, endured a year and more of living in degrading conditions. The buildings racked up “immediately hazardous” violations. Six Ocelot buildings in particular ended the year on the city’s list of “most distressed.” By the end of 2008, nearly every one of the Ocelot buildings was in a state of serious decay.

In response, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) took Ocelot to Bronx Housing Court in June 2008. It secured consent orders compelling the company to repair nearly 3,000 violations in six buildings and pay approximately $60,000 in fines. HPD officials claim that Ocelot never addressed the violations—the kind of negligence that could result in criminal charges.

Meanwhile, in October of 2008, Eldan Tech directors decided enough was enough. They voted to bail out. By then, the property market was collapsing on a global scale. The Ocelot costs had stung the company’s bottom line. In 2008, Eldan Tech reported “heavy losses of about 53 million shekels ($14.4 million) due to its real estate activities in the Bronx.”

The cost for the Ocelot residents, however, was of a different nature. Broken front doors meant drug addicts could freely roam the halls. In one building, pigeons took up residence on an abandoned baby’s crib.

Louise Alvarez and her children – and many Ocelot tenants all over the Bronx – lost their heat and hot water for the winter of 2008.

A clogged bathtub in an apartment at 1640 Martin Luther King Boulevard. Photo by Matthew Huisman

Who’s to Blame?

Arfa and Shpigel and their Israeli business partners are now locked in a vicious legal dispute to determine who is more culpable for this human and financial catastrophe.

The Tel Aviv investors claim in their civil suit that Arfa lied about the buildings’ physical condition and financial performance and “incessantly demanded” more cash.

Arfa’s lawyer, David Katz, countered that Eldan Tech failed to supply her with “millions of dollars” of needed maintenance money.   Katz also charged the Israeli company with bribing a senior Ocelot employee for confidential information about Arfa’s and Shpigel’s businesses elsewhere. The couple is now suing that ex-employee for $1 million in New York State Supreme Court.  The employee has denied the charges.

“They’re vindictive,” said Katz of Schlam, Stone & Dolan, referring to Eldan Tech principals. “They’re trying to avoid their responsibilities.”

Enter Sam Suzuki

While the legal squabble continued, Arfa began looking for a way out. Sam Suzuki, a long time property dealer based in the wealthy town of Port Washington, Long Island, emerged as a potential buyer. His company signed a no-cash deal in November 2008 and took on Ocelot’s debt with Fannie Mae.

But Suzuki’s company never made any bank repayments and a lawyer for Suzuki would not explain why. This caused the deal to collapse in early 2009 and Fannie Mae foreclosed on the loans. Court-appointed receivers took over, putting most of the buildings – and their tenants – into a legal no-man’s land, where they remain today.

A Fannie Mae spokesperson, Jon Searles, said that the bank is now “joining the receivers on inspections of the properties and funding much-needed safety repairs.” Such promises don’t wash with the tiny maintenance budgets that the receivers are currently struggling with. One receiver recently sought a court order to secure more cash from the bank for repairs.

Searles also said that Fannie Mae is looking to sell the loan notes on the buildings to “responsible new ownership.” Who that “responsible” new owner might be, remains to be seen. Katz said that Arfa now wants the buildings sold to a non-profit, because the only parties hanging on for a for-profit deal are Eldan Tech and Fannie Mae. One of the interested parties, as it turns out, is Sam Suzuki.

Financial History

In 1998, a legal firm tried to force Suzuki to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy over a disputed $77,000 debt, a debt that was settled in 2001. Other trade creditors have also been forced to take Suzuki to court to get paid and one creditor even secured a judgment against him for over $2 million in the New York City Supreme Court in 2004. Suzuki paid the judgment off two years later.

Suzuki has still managed to find the cash to donate thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians around New York over the last eight years, including $6,200 to former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, $7,450 to U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman and $9,000 to U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer.

And despite the earlier deal collapsing, a company linked to Suzuki did manage to buy six of the Ocelot buildings in May of this year, including three in Soundview that were not part of the Fannie Mae foreclosure buildings. Conditions in many of them remain appalling.

Residents of 1585-1589 E. 172nd Street gather in protest against poor living conditions. Photo by Connor Boals

Residents recently gathered in the lobby of 1585 E. 172^nd St, to protest its dilapidated conditions but their meeting was interrupted by police, who were called by an employee of Suzuki’s. A lawyer for Suzuki said that her client had no problem with the tenants organizing but that the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board members at the meeting were not invited and thus trespassing.

In another Suzuki-owned apartment building on Stratford Avenue, a family of 10 lived without heat for a year before it was only recently restored.  The superintendent at 1636 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. has filed 20 complaints since September of this year, spotlighting everything from water leaks and holes in the ceiling to faulty electrical wiring.

One mother in an Ocelot building at 1585 E.172 St. has to keep her infant son out of her kitchen because of rodents. “No puedo vivir con las ratas,” said Ana Almonte. “I can’t live with the rats.”

The Wait

On Manida Street, Louise Alvarez stays put, waiting for a new landlord and hoping the nightmare may soon be over. She sleeps in her living room so her children can share the bedrooms. “We’re here struggling,” she said. “I guess I’m going to be struggling until God answers my prayers.”
dbg2114@columbia.edu

The day after losing their jobs when the factory closed, about 50 former employees of the Stella D’Oro cookie manufacturer in the northwest Bronx were back at work, not yet ready to end the labor battle that they have been waging for over a year.

A crowd of about 75 former employees, local politicians, union leaders and community supporters congregated inside a ring of police barricades on the eastern sidewalk at the factory’s entrance on the corner of 237th Street and Broadway Avenue on October 9. The tears of yesterday were replaced by determination to hold onto a Bronx icon that began here 77 years ago.

“Right now I would say I’m too old to go look for a job,” said Emlia Dursu, 58, a former table packer who placed the cookies into their packaging. She began working at the factory in 1979. “ I’m going to wait and live on the little bit that I have and depend on my children to survive.”

Some protestors stuck to the perimeters, leaning lazily against the barriers and making small talk with fellow strikers. Others marched in a slow circle, chanting and holding handmade signs scrawled with slogans of protest. They spoke disparagingly about the factory’s former owner, Connecticut-based private equity firm Brynwood Partners that sold Stella D’Oro to North Carolina-based snack manufacturer Lance, Inc., known for its assortment sandwich crackers and cookies, potato chips, nuts and candy.

“We’re still going to stay strong,” said Mike Filipou, who worked as a lead mechanic for over 14 years and is orchestrating much of the rally efforts on the behalf of the workers. “We’re still going to fight Brynwood and Lance because they are union busters.”

Lance and Brynwood Partners did not answer multiple calls made over the two weeks following the plant’s closing.

Filipou and the rest of the former workers at the factory in the Kingsbridge neighborhood in the Bronx are members of the Local 50 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. There were more than 130 people who lost their jobs, most likely for good, on Thursday.

“There’s no jobs around here anymore,” said Filipou who worked at another Bronx fossil, Farberware, which was bought up and moved from the South Bronx in 1996. “We’re going to have to move out of the Bronx, there’s no jobs anymore, no manufacturers.”

The union-busting accusation stems from a long labor battle with Brynwood Partners that purchased the brand from Kraft Foods, Inc. in 2006 for $17.5 million. In August of 2008, the workers went on strike because of concessions that Brynwood brought to the negotiating table. Among the negotiations, were a lowering of wages and higher premiums for the workers’ health insurance. The strikers picketed for months and eventually Brynwood conceded last June after a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled they had negotiated in bad faith. But the battle was far from over.

“We started more than a year ago with negotiations and we went on strike,” Filipou said. “The judge forced them to take us back and as soon as they took us back, they announced they were going to close the place.”

Lance, Inc. announced its interest in the brand in June 2009. With the purchase of the brand this week, Lance is planning to move the machinery and the brand–but not the workers–to a nonunion factory in Ashland, Ohio.

Many at the rally spoke of the repercussions that will reach beyond the employees and into the rest of the Bronx.

“The Stella D’Oro factory bakery has been here 75 years it’s the backbone of this community,” said Bill Talen, known as “Reverend Billy,” a bouffant-adorned activist costumed as a revivalist preacher who ran as the Green Party candidate in this year’s mayoral election. ”It’s a very sad day, especially because we would think that we would know better by now because of the economic downturn that was caused by this kind of attitude toward human labor.”

Talen pledged support to the freshly unemployed by providing publicity and holding fundraisers for them.

“As we say when we are out here on the sidewalks, ‘we are all Stella! Stellallujah!’” he said.

Walking alongside Talen in the circle was Jonathan Tasini, a labor activist and 2010 Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senate. He said that Stella D’Oro was an example of corporate recklessness that has plagued the U.S. for over 30 years.

“When a plant shuts down that’s been the lifeblood of the community, it affects the entire community, it affects every single person that lives in the community,” Tasini said. “Businesses have to make a profit but we also have to value the community and value the workers that make this company work.”

Dursu said that the workers “were like family” at Stella D’Oro and remembered the compassionate approach the original owners brought to the negotiating table in the past. The current owners, she said, lack the compassion that she once expected from the company.

“Brynwood partners don’t care about their workers,” she said. “It makes me feel very angry that they can be human beings and not care about other human beings.”

In a last-ditch effort, the workers and local politicians tried to pressure the city’s finance department to put a restraining order on the removal of the equipment to the Ohio factory because the equipment was purchased with hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax abatements from the city.

The department has already said there is no provision regarding this type of situation in its abatement program and will not attempt to pursue holding onto the equipment.

As the future of the Stella D’Oro workers looks more hopeless, Filipou said they will do what they have been doing for so long: continue to fight.

“We have a lot support from a lot of unions and a lot of politicians and we still hope something is going to happen,” Filipou said. “Stella D’oro is like a landmark in the Bronx.”

by Fred Dreier

Video by Wanda Hellmund

Bronx voters told BronxInk.org reporters yesterday they voted for Democratic challenger William Thompson by a 2-to-1 margin over incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg because they believed two terms was enough for the city’s most powerful office.

Most voters surveyed yesterday insisted the billionaire businessman bought himself a third term, spending a record $90 million of his own money on the campaign— making Bloomberg’s the most expensive campaign in the history of New York City’s mayoral races.

“He changed the term limit, that’s something a third world country would do,” said Luis Peterson, a tailor for Calvin Klein who lives in the Fordham neighborhood. “The arrogance of having money and buying yourself a seat in this day and age is beyond me.”

It’s nothing new for the city’s northernmost borough to vote against the mainstream. The Bronx is the poorest congressional voting district in the United States and owns a long history of leaning left. This is the fifth consecutive time the Bronx has sided with a Democratic candidate who failed in New York City’s biggest political race.

“It’s crazy, it feels like Bloomberg’s had a dictatorship,” said Lee Heath, 42, who voted at P.S. 59 in the East Tremont neighborhood. “Two terms is long enough, it’s time for a change.”

The 2009 election is a blow to the Bronx army of Bloomberg opponents, who snubbed the Republican turned Independence candidate en masse in his successful 2001 and 2005 campaigns. In 2005, Democrat Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx Borough President, gobbled up 65 percent of the Bronx vote. He was crushed by Bloomberg in the citywide vote by 20 points.

Thompson fared much better than Ferrer in the general vote. Despite early predictions of his disastrous defeat, the 56-year-old former city comptroller lost only by 40,000 total votes.

Complaints against Bloomberg’s administration dominated the survey, which targeted 39 polling sites spread throughout the borough’s 10 voting assemblies. Of the 171 voters interviewed, 112 said they cast their vote for Thompson and 57 for Bloomberg. One voter cast his ballot for Green party candidate Billy Talon.

The lion’s share of Thompson supporters admitted they voted against Bloomberg, not because of Thompson’s achievements as comptroller.

“Eight years is enough — it’s someone else’s turn,” said Nathaniel Holloway, a truck driver who lives in Mott Haven. “Everyone else gets two [terms], why should he get three?”

In addition to campaign finance and term limits, voters listed a wide range of gripes  with Bloomberg’s administration, from higher transportation costs to rent prices, unemployment and the mayor’s education reform.

One voter had a more specific complaint. Pamela Thomas in Kingsbridge Heights said she was not fond of the mayor’s treatment of former New York Giant’s Super Bowl MVP wide receiver Plaxico Burress, who was sentenced to two years in jail by the State Supreme Court in Manhattan for criminal possession of a handgun dating from an incident in 2008.

Bloomberg publicly called for Burress to be prosecuted under the full extent of the law during his trial in September of this year.

“That was too harsh,” Thomas said. “Plaxico shot himself — that’s enough punishment.” 

A surprisingly large number of Thompson supporters, however, admitted they knew very little about their candidate.

Both candidates received criticism in the lead-up to the election for neglecting the Bronx. The neglect could have cost Thompson Democratic votes in the borough.

According to Mott Haven resident Sharifa Mohammed, a Democrat who hails from Trinidad, Thompson did not define himself as a candidate in the election. Mohammed voted for Bloomberg. “He didn’t make a stand on what he’s done or what he wants to do,” Mohammed said. “I have seen what Bloomberg has done. I saw what he did in the schools.”

Mohammed’s vote was among the minority in Mott Haven, where 22 of 29 surveyed voters said they cast their ballots for Thompson. Nearly half the residents of the 84th assembly district that includes Mott Haven live in poverty. The median income is just over $20,000.

In the wealthier sections of the Bronx, Bloomberg supporters were in the majority. In Riverdale, in the northwest edge of the Bronx, 7 of the 12 surveyed voters said they favored Bloomberg. The neighborhood boasts a median income of $51,000. Its poverty rate is 25 percent.

“I know people are sketched about the term limits,” said Amit Elhanan, a law school student. “But I don’t see a reason if the person is doing a good job.”

Just east of the neighborhood in Kingsbridge Heights, the citizens split along party lines. Thompson supporters held a slight advantage over Bloomberg. But it was the Bloomberg supporters who said they voted for their candidate based on his actions, not on those of his opponent. 

“I voted for Thompson for comptroller — I got nothing against him, I think he’s done a good job,” said Jeff Sternberg, 60. “I’ve been around the city and seen the economic development Bloomberg has done and I support it. If you go to Williamsburg or Greenpoint, those places have really changed.”

Turnout for the election was not known by press time, but numerous polling stations reported lighter turnouts than last year’s presidential elections. Voters who came in the mid morning enjoyed short lines and limited waiting time.

Arthur Marhs, a volunteer manning the polling site at P.S. 59 in East Tremont, said all seven of the lever-action polls were in use. 
“Everything’s running OK in there,” Marhs said. “There’s hardly anyone inside right now. It’s a good time to vote.”

Stay tuned to www.bronxink.org for more news and updates from the 2009 New York City mayoral election.

by Alex Berg

It is easy to see why “Conde Nast Traveler ” magazine named the Samaná peninsula in the Dominican Republic one of the top destinations in the world eight years ago. One photograph at the Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture exhibit featuring this unique landscape with its even more unique cultural heritage shows lush palms snaking along the pockets of sand lining the bright blue ocean water of Rincon Beach.

Another photograph in the Bronx center hints at the tension that underlies this would-be private paradise: Row after row of empty white beach chairs line the shore, reminders that foreign corporations have abandoned plans for development when the global recession hit. The news of stalled development for many locals was greeted with a mix of worry and relief.

Founded by former slaves from Philadelphia in the 1820s, Samaná has a rich legacy that many of its descendants in the Bronx and elsewhere are bent on preserving, said Wallace Edgecombe, director of the Hostos center.

“The locals are not trying to escape development,” Edgecombe said. “They just want it done right without displacing people and impoverishing people.”

The photos in the exhibit that is expected to run through Nov. 7 were taken by about 15 students and six professional photographers, faculty and staff who studied in Samaná last August and July. Students studied the eclectic aspects of this Afro-Dominican culture in Samaná, where English is the spoken language. The cuisine of choice includes American Southern food like Johnny cakes, for example. And the people are mostly practicing Methodists, Edgecombe said.

The area recently became coveted real estate after a road was constructed to the capital Santo Domingo, which cut the commute from eight hours to two, according to Carlos Sanabria, director of the Hostos Community College humanities department.

Edgecombe described one photo of a resort’s pastel façade – a block-long row of differently shaped attached houses with yellow, lavender, green and red paneling. It looked more like a Disney World imitation of a tropical bungalow than an authentic dwelling – “an insult” said Edgecombe.

But most of the exhibit is dedicated to the rich cultural scenes of Los Afro-Americanos, as the locals are called.

“The idea of the photo exhibit is to inform people about these traditions so that they can have more of a sense of Afro-Dominican culture,” said Carlos Sanabria. In fact, the exhibit is part of Quijombo, a biennial festival celebration Afro-Dominican culture.

In one photo taken after a Methodist church service, adults and children join hands in a large circle on a field in front of the red and white paneled church. The women’s dresses, which are mostly blue, flow in and out the as their arms swing back and forth. The sun shines through trees creating shadows in the middle of the circle.

The circle is a variation of ring around the rosy, part of a series of games played after church services by the original Methodists who came to Samaná, according to Ryan Mann-Hamilton, a graduate student writing his dissertation about the area.

For Mann-Hamilton, the study abroad trip to Samaná resonated on a personal level. Mann-Hamilton is a descendant of Afro-Americanos and did not know anything about their history as former slaves until recently.

“My family was one of the families that migrated there in the 1800s,” Mann-Hamilton said. “I didn’t really understand what that migration entailed and how my family got to the Dominican Republic.”

Mann-Hamilton was surprised by the friendly reaction the locals had to the cameras and remembered one particularly poignant shot.

“There’s one of a young fellow, a child, really bulky, kind of strong,” he said. “I was just driving down the road with two other students and we stopped and he sort of came over to us.”

“We took a picture of him. He asked us to bring back the photo and bring back a bike. This is just the middle of nowhere. He just wanted something basic for himself.”