After more than three months of no hot water, cooking gas, heat or answers, tenants at a deteriorating building in University Heights rejoiced last Friday evening. Finally, Con Edison restored gas lines and fired up the building’s boiler. Finally, a hot shower was no longer a distant fantasy.

“Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, God is good,” exclaimed Caroline Loja over the phone at 5:30 p.m. last Friday, happily reporting that hot water had returned to her building, 2285 Sedgwick Ave.

Just an hour earlier, Loja remained skeptical, having endured months of broken promises and makeshift living conditions. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said.

Happy ending aside, the story of 2285 Sedgwick serves as an extreme example of what can happen to a good building run by a bad landlord in a struggling economy.

Before Juan Romero took over as owner of the building, a six-story, 54-unit complex just south of Fordham Road, it was a shining star in a nice neighborhood. While the block remains stable, 2285 Sedgwick has steadily deteriorated.

For years, residents say Romero skimped on maintenance efforts and patched together repair work using unlicensed workers.

Stephen Hawkins, a 20-year resident, said a man fixing his toilet once asked him for a quarter, which he then wrapped around a tube with plumbing tape and then pronounced the job done. Another time, he walked in on painters who were using one of his blankets as a drop cloth.

“That’s how [the landlord] does things,” he said, “if they get around to it.” 

Earlier this year, Romero began falling behind on the building’s mortgage payments. In June, Capital One, the bank holding his mortgage, initiated foreclosure proceedings, which meant Romero could no longer receive rent checks. Tenants, many of them immigrants with little English skills, began receiving letters telling them to send rent checks to someone set up by the bank as the “receiver” of their money.

While Romero was battling in court to keep his building, tenants say he was also trying to keep rent checks coming in, even threatening some immigrant tenants with deportation. Meanwhile, the building continued to deteriorate. [The Norwood News tried to contact Romero, but the number he was using had been disconnected.]

On the morning of July 26, a fire ripped through a first floor apartment being used as a yoga studio. The blaze was contained to the yoga studio, but the building’s gas lines were damaged, prompting Con Edison to shut off the building’s gas supply until repairs were made.

From that day forward, the building lacked hot water, gas and heat.

“In July, it was ok taking cold showers, but not now,” said tenant Marsharie Vaillant, three days before hot water returned to the building.

After the fire took place, Romero made at least one attempt to repair the gas lines, but again used unlicensed workers who didn’t do a proper job, according to tenants and confirmed by the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD). This was followed by a cascade of tenant 311 complaints, followed by Romero telling HPD that he would do the work and then not doing it.

Tenants and housing advocates mostly laid the blame on Romero for his desperate attempts to hold onto the building, while allowing his tenants to suffer.

“The landlord’s always about to lose the building and then he somehow gets it back,” said Tandra Engles, who has lived there for 12 years.

“This is about a really bad landlord,” said Sally Dunford of West Bronx Housing, which specializes in helping distressed tenants. “He sucked the building dry. He knew he was going to be losing the building and he got whatever he could out of it.”

Dunford said 2285 Sedgwick is an extreme case, but buildings all over the west Bronx are suffering from landlords running into financial problems. “I’ve seen more bad buildings in the last six weeks than I have in the last six years,” she said.  

At one point, 2285 Sedgwick had 763 building code violations. Vaillant said she blew out two microwaves after using them to continually heat water for cooking and baths. Engles’ apartment was littered with space heaters and her kitchen dominated by hot plates and crock pots. “My electric is sky high,” said Engles, who works at a police precinct in Brooklyn. “I have to get up two hours earlier than normal just to feed my daughter and be able to get to work on time.”

Finally, three weeks ago, tenants, led by Loja, began organizing themselves. They draped big poster boards and sheets out of their windows and from their fire escapes calling for help and telling the world of their plight. The whole building took on the air of a sinking ship lost at sea throwing out desperate distress calls.

Two Sundays ago, dozens of tenants carrying signs marched to a rally held by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition at St. Nicholas Tolentine Church, just a few blocks away on Fordham Road and University Avenue. There, they received some badly-needed attention from the media and local politicians. Last week, Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., Assemblyman Nelson Castro and State Senator Pedro Espada, Jr. all stopped to offer their help.

Finally, last Thursday, HPD sent out licensed workers to make all the appropriate repairs. On Friday, both the Buildings Department and Con Edison gave the repairs the green light and, finally, Loja was able to launch into her own personal Hallelujah chorus.