Eddieberto Cruz pointed to the drops of blood on the wall, next to a fifth-floor landing at  1055 University Avenue. The blood, he said, was his, spilled more than two weeks earlier during a fall that required a visit to the hospital and several stitches.

As Cruz described his accident, he demonstrated how one could lift, and slide back and forth, the first step leading from the fifth to the sixth floors of the building’s east wing. Cruz said it was that broken stair that was responsible for his injuries: he was returning to his sixth-floor apartment from a nearby bodega around 10pm on April 26, when the stair popped upwards, flinging him backwards and resulting in his banging his head .  “I woke up, I was in bed in the hospital,” Cruz said, adding he continues to experience after-affects from the fall that include persistent headaches and dizziness.

Farooq Ali, one of the building’s managers for Highbridge Apartments LLC, said he was unaware of the incident when asked about it on May 12, and promised to inform the building’s superintendent of the broken stair.

Given the overall condition of the building, residents probably aren’t holding their breath that the step will be fixed.  Last month, the Horizon visited several apartments at 1055 University Avenue and spoke to tenants living with collapsed ceilings, water leaks, holes in walls, broken toilets, and a lack of hot or cold water.

Return visits to the building this month suggested little has changed so far.   On the positive side, Alfred Jones has seen significant improvements to the condition of his first-floor apartment. His ceilings have been replaced with sheetrock, repair crews are in the process of repainting his  walls, and the mold in his bedroom has been removed. 

“I’d say it’s about 65, 70 percent finished up,” Jones said of repairs to his apartment.
For others in the building, however, the percentage is much lower.

On the second floor of the building, John Brown’s bathtub continued to produce only scalding water. Cracks and holes in his walls and toilet seat persisted, as did peeling paint. A lightbulb still dangled from a hallway fixture.

At a third-floor apartment visited by the Horizon last month, cracked walls, peeling paint, and missing tiles remained unfixed. In the bathroom, there were still holes where a lightbulb should have been.  There were no lights in the tenant’s kitchen, either.

Managers at Highbridge Apartments LLC said they were not shirking their duties. “Our crew is working,” Ali said. “ It takes time to work on each on each apartment.”  But the city has not so far been impressed with the way management has addressed damages. At press time, the Deparment of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) was  pursuing a contempt order against the building’s owner, Hamid Kahn, with a date set at Bronx County Housing court for May 17.

HPD spokesperson Amanda Pitman said possible outcomes if the court rules against Kahn could include a court order to fix the damages as well as civil penalities.

But a property need not have accumulated an extraordinary number of violations, or court dates, to be plagued by adverse living conditions. As of  May 15, the 19-unit building at 1037 Ogden Avenue has a total of 168 open violations,, less than a tenth of the number racked up by 1055 University Avenue.

Still, many residents at 1037 Ogden are contending with some of the same problems as those at 1055 University. In April, the bedroom ceiling of Sharon Gardenhire’s third-floor apartment had collapsed, leaving only wood beams above her head in several places.

By the time of a return visit in May, the ceiling had since been replaced with sheetrock, but Gardenhire said these repairs were not adequate; that repair crews had used sheetrock to replace broken ceilings before, yet the damage reoccurred before too long.

“They just patched it up,” Gardenhire said. “They always just do stuff like that.”
A May visit to Gardenhire’s home revealed cracked, holy walls and peeling paint, among other damages.

At Harvetta Smith’s fifth-floor apartment, many conditions observed in mid-April remained unfixed as of the second week of May. Damages included: Cracked plaster on the kitchen wall, peeling paint on her kitchen windowsill and in her childrens’ bedrooms, and large holes in Harvetta’s bedroom and living room walls.

In between Gardenhire and Smith, on the fourth floor, Thomasina Alston was able to lift the sink of her fourth-floor apartment, and the back panel of her bathtub was coming loose during an April visit to her home.

Jack Huffman, property manager of the building for 1037 Ogden LLC, blamed the damages to the building on tenant negligence.“People beat up their apartments,” Huffman said. “ And then complain to me that I gotta fix it.”

Huffman said that complaints were referred promptly to the building’s maintenance crew, and that delays in fixing damages  were due to tenant failure to provide access to their apartments. At press time, Huffman was pursuing eviction proceedings against both Alston and Smith; according to court records, Huffman is suing Alston for $5,526 in back rent from the months of January through April 2007, while seeking $1,636.55 from Smith. In a document dated April 20, Alston said that she should not be evicted because necessary repairs to her home had not been completed; Smith made the same argument during an interview with the Horizon.
On May 7, a notice from the City Marshal was seen posted on Alston’s door indicating that the landlord has possession of her home. Smith is next due in court on May 17.
Still, many tenants at both 1037 Ogden and 1055 University seemed themselves eager to move sooner rather than later.

“I think the landlord should just close the building down,” Smith said. “And remodel the building all over.