These NYC Tenants Fought Their Landlord—Now They Might Own Their Building

It was all smiles, hot pastelitos, and a palpable sense of pride on Tuesday morning, as residents, tenant advocates, and local officials gathered before 2201-05 Davidson Avenue in the Bronx. In the shade of the 6-story, 49-unit towers in the biting cold, they were there to announce that the city had removed their negligent landlord as owner of the building, a move not seen in New York City for seven years.

For a decade, the residents of 2201-05 Davidson Avenue in the Bronx have endured perpetual leaks, caving ceilings, cockroach infestations, rotting floors, and mysterious cracks in the walls, all while fighting their landlord for basic maintenance.  

Last week, their landlord, Romad Realty, was removed by the City through foreclosure proceedings after years of ignoring urgent repairs. 

Now, the tenants have cleared a path for themselves to take over their building, working with property manager and developer Lemle & Wolff to turn it into a Housing Development Fund Corporation co-op (HDFC).

"In these last years, we were totally abandoned, it was completely uninhabitable," Arturo Miranda, who has lived in the building for 21 years, told Hell Gate in Spanish. "But from the moment the landlord dismissed us and we started making moves to get this building for ourselves, I believed [ownership] was possible."

The long journey of the residents at 2201-05 Davidson Avenue highlights the uphill battle many New York City renters face forcing absentee-landlords to do bare-minimum maintenance and repairs. After more than a decade of negligence, Romad Realty and its investors owed more than $27 million in overdue taxes on the property, according to City records. The company is also responsible for over 630 open hazardous housing code violations at 2201-05 Davidson Avenue, including 245 deemed "immediately hazardous," like 10-square-foot patches of mold, apartment-wide roach infestations, and peeling lead paint.

The issues got so bad the City was forced to place the building in its Emergency Repair Program, in which taxpayers foot the bill for urgent repairs neglected by a landlord.

Last year, as a last resort, residents and local officials petitioned the City to have the case proceed under the controversial Third Party Transfer program (TPT), which was suspended in 2019 after hundreds of Black and brown homeowners were stripped of their properties by the City when they only owed a negligible amount in City property taxes. They argued that the Davidson Avenue building should be grandfathered into the program because it was on an earlier list of buildings to seize before TPT ended. The City agreed, and last week, the building was turned over to nonprofit developer Neighborhood Restore as interim owner, along with property manager and developer Lemle & Wolff. Since Romad Realty was booted from the property, Lemle & Wolff has been going door-to-door assessing urgent repairs, and will then plan a major rehab to convert the building to permanently affordable, cooperatively-owned apartments for the current residents. 

"It's something we've been waiting for a long time, and it feels good to finally have some type of control slash ownership," said Action Vasquez, a resident since 1997 and now the de facto superintendent of the building. "We're just happy that we've gotten to this point." 

The news signaled a potential change in the willingness for the City to punish absentee landlords. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams congratulated the tenants at the Bronx event Tuesday, and said more landlords need to go to jail or have their buildings taken from them if they are not providing basic services and repairs. "Landlords, take notice," he said. "We're coming for you."