The Bronx Ink

River Park Towers, a housing complex located in Morris Heights in the West Bronx, is home to more than 1,500 rental units. About 7 miles from Manhattan, the dual building complex is sandwiched between the Harlem River and the Major Deegan Expressway, with little else around it.  Residents of the 428ft tall buildings have relative access to one grocery store, one school and one subway station. 

“You have to leave an hour and a half, maybe two, early to get to where you got to go,” said Shandia Vasquez, who has lived in the area for six years.

The nearest subway station is 176^th street, almost a mile’s walk from the towers. Though the Metro-North railroad station is nearby and ridership is on a general upwards trend, numbers are still only at 44% of pre-pandemic levels. The community is also located on a steep incline, and so the bus system has become a crucial alternative for residents’ commutes.

There are three main routes that run through the community—the Bx18, Bx40 and Bx4. They are scheduled to arrive every 15-20 minutes during weekdays. But the demand on these routes within the Morris Heights neighborhood is high which has made relying on the service a challenge for some residents. 

According to New York City Transit Data, the Bx40/42 had a ridership of 10,399 on an average weekday in 2021, making it one of the more populous routes in the Bronx.

“It will tell you some time and then the bus that comes is not in service” said Charleilys Vierea, a student at Lehman College. “Even if you come early or late to the stop, it’s still passing.” 

Limited access to public transport is not a new issue for the occupants of the towers. A 2014 report from the New York City Department of Planning called the area “an isolated community”, citing the Metro-North rail corridor and the Major Deegan expressway as contributing factors, as they separate the community from the upland region. The report noted an ‘island effect’ between the community and the rest of the Morris Heights, an issue which persists today.

“The MTA is one of the best public transportation systems in the world,” said Tyreke Israel said, Deputy Chief of Staff for City Council District 16. “And that’s a horrible statement to say”.

 The community is a “transit desert,” he said. 

In the West Bronx, near River Park Towers, the MTA recently created new bus schedules and changed routes which were implemented this June in an effort to improve the reliability, speed and frequency of the service. 

“The redesign plan included a robust consultation process that incorporated the comments of elected officials, community organizations and riders,” MTA spokesperson Kayla Shuts said in an email.

Despite these changes, residents in the neighborhood say they continue to face problems on their commutes.

Vasquez said her son, who relies on the bus service to get to school, has to wake up two hours before the school day begins, and still sometimes arrives late.

Thinking about the months ahead, Vierea is worried about overcrowding on public transportation. 

“More people are gonna be on the buses and then it’s gonna become packed,” she said. “I’ll have to wait for the next one and the next one.” 

She is not alone. As the city moves towards colder months, temperature drops are cause for concern as commuters wait outdoors for public transportation.

Israel highlighted how difficult it is to overcome long-standing problems for the River Park Towers community. “It’s been this way for years,” he said. “Transportation deserts are a generational thing.”

River Park Towers’ south building recently got new windows, but the north unit may not be so lucky if funding doesn’t come through.(C.J. SINNER/Bronx Ink)

Artelia Powell’s brand new-windows do more than keep out a persistent draft as the chilly November air creeps in. For the first time in 10 years, the 41-year-old mother of four can actually see outside. If the River Park Towers resident looks north to the housing complex’s other building, she can also see how lucky she is. Her neighbors must contend with 30-year-old windows, many broken and held together with spidery patterns of masking tape or covered with plastic wrapping.

River Park Towers, a dual-building behemoth for nearly 5,000 west Bronx residents, is sandwiched on a sliver of land between the Major Deegan Expressway and the Harlem River. The south tower received new windows, boilers, faucets and other upgrades over the last three months thanks to subsidies from the Weatherization Assistance Program, a federally-funded nonprofit that works to increase energy efficiency in low-income households, but north tower residents may not be as fortunate.

The program was able to take on large projects like River Park Towers for the first time when stimulus funds tripled their budget in 2009. Now, the stimulus money is spent and the federal program that feeds weatherization program coffers across the country is facing additional budget cuts. As a result, construction on the north tower, and other subsequent large-scale projects, may not be possible.

“Right now, you’d need a crystal ball to figure out what’s going to happen to the lives of a lot of people,” said Fran Fuselli, who has been director of the weatherization program since it began in 1983.

Before 2009, the program operated on $2 million a year, Fuselli said. With stimulus funds, the program had $12 million to hire and educate new workers and provide energy efficient upgrades as many dwellings as they could in two years. Two years – that was part of the deal.

In that time, the program improved 1,800 homes, Fuselli said. The crowded program office features three whiteboards with charts and lists of addresses. Red check marks note which locations are complete.

Before their budget tripled with stimulus funds, they’d been able to do 300 apartments every year and their waiting list was three years long, partially because buildings with hundreds of units – River Park Towers has 1,600 apartments, for example – would have quickly eaten up the annual budget. Fuselli approximated the average cost of weatherizing one home or apartment at $6,500. For both buildings at River Park Towers, she estimated a total bill of around $5 million – more than one third of their entire stimulus allotment.

The proposed cuts to the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which funds programs like this in nearly every state – Fuselli’s program is one of three based in the Bronx – would bring their capacity to 150 units a year.

Since 2009, the federal program has received $5.1 billion to disperse among municipal weatherization groups nationwide. The 2012 budget proposal would cut 2012 funding in half, to $2.57 billion.

Less money also means fewer workers. Fuselli hired and trained 12 additional staff members in 2009, tripling the workforce. Taleigh Smith was hired as an outreach coordinator because of her experience as a community organizer in the South Bronx. She said she’s worried about the 19- and 20-year-olds who were specifically trained for “green jobs” like inspecting homes for inefficiencies.

“They got the training, but they didn’t get a career, which is what was supposed to happen,” Smith said. She paused. “I mean, I keep saying ‘they,’ but my job is on the line, too.”

Fuselli said she already laid off one person, with several more slated to be let go by the end of the year.

As for River Park Towers, Fuselli said they went into the deal knowing they’d only be able to do one building right away, but expected to get money to renovate the second tower from the state government, which was holding a few million dollars for leftover weatherization projects. What she didn’t plan for was a stipulation in eligibility that said the work already had to be underway. By the time Fuselli and her team realized the caveat, she said, it was too late to get started with building inspections, planning and contracting.

“We still did it because we figured doing half was better than not doing any,” Fuselli said. “Those people had needs, and it’s an impetus to do the other half. Walking away from all 1,600 units would have been a disservice.”

She said they’re looking for other partnerships with Con-Ed and various green jobs initiatives to piece the funds together to finish River Park Towers. Fuselli estimated the total cost to renovate both buildings at roughly $5 million, noting that with complexes this size, the owners commit to paying at least 25 percent of that cost.

It winds up being a good deal for landlords, Fuselli said, because they get the upgrades at a fraction of the price, energy costs go down and their tenants’ rent bills don’t go up. Otherwise, landlords can’t afford important fixes without raising rent prices and losing tenants.

“In the 70s, you could walk from Southern Boulevard to Crotona and not find an occupied building, all because owners couldn’t get mortgages and they had to triage what they’d spend their money on, and it became abandonment or arson for profit,” the born-and-raised Bronxite said. “I think what people don’t understand is how close we are again to that reality.”

Leon Johnson, president of the tenant’s association at River Park Towers, said north tower residents are already upset about the imbalance of the south tower’s 43 floors of perfectly identical, geometric windows and the north tower’s drafty and leaky ones. He said some residents came home after Hurricane Irene to find flooded apartments. Still, he said he’s confident that some form of funding will come through.

“Worst case scenario? I can’t even think about it,” he said. “It would be a travesty. We have 1,600 units. It would be a shame to leave 800-plus people out in the cold.”