By Joe Lamport
Managing Editor

About 250 residents called on landlords to repair their buildings at a rally organized to improve community safety on July 16.

The rally was part of "Community Action for Safe Apartments" organized by New Settlement Apartments housing staff.

Residents at the march said they were fed up with broken intercoms, broken front door locks, broken lights and graffiti in their buildings.

"They don't clean up the building, there is no security and there are big rats," said Daisy Ruiz of 1325 Grand Concourse.

"We are fighting to have safer housing," said Cleopatra Alvares of 1475 Grand Concourse. "We have a landlord who does not fix anything."

Alvares is not alone. A survey conducted by the organizers who have mounted the campaign showed that almost half the buildings in a four-block area of Mount Eden had serious "personal safety" violations - problems like very poor lighting and broken intercoms that contribute to crimes like assault and robbery.

Deputy Inspector James Essig of the 44th Precinct, who spoke at the rally, agreed with organizers that the housing violations contributed to higher crime rates.

"If the hallways are dirty, if the lights are out, if the intercoms are out, it gives an impression that people don't care and people who are up to no good will take advantage of that," Essig said in a recent interview. "They can get easy access to the place. There's no lighting so they can do drug sales or whatever they choose to do."

Essig said making simple repairs like fixing front door locks and outside lights would help reduce crime.

"If you take care of the small things, the big things go away," he said.

But getting landlords to fix the problems has been difficult, tenants said. Tenants can sue their landlords in housing court to make repairs, but those suits require great persistence.

"That doesn't work," Alvares said of taking her landlord to court for repairs. "(Landlords) promise and promise and nothing ever happens."

The tenants might get some help from a new housing inspection program officially launched in July by the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Under the program, city inspectors will do comprehensive inspections of buildings identified by housing advocates and City Council members as being worst violators of the city's housing codes.