SAVING HILLSIDE HOMES

Rick Aidekman on Saving Hillside Homes a true revival of a Bronx property from disaster to home for a couple thousand people.

One of the most interesting real estate jobs I ever had was when my partner and I were to become engaged to manage what was then called Hillside Homes.    Hillside Homes was a five square block residential complex in the North Bronx.   In 1996 the owner of the complex was being foreclosed upon by the lender.    My partner and I were contacted by the lender and were asked to interview to manage the complex for the newly appointed receiver.   Although we were eminently qualified to be appointed, we were in competition with some of the largest management companies in New York City.     

As I learned, Hillside Homes  was a sprawling complex with 1408 apartments in mostly four-story walkups in a unique area of the Bronx.   Surrounded by single family town houses that were well maintained and entirely middle class occupied.   Hillside Homes was not only mismanaged for years, but in utter turmoil.  At the time of our first interview, about 1/3 of the units were vacant; 1/3 were occupied by squatters with no rights to the units; and 1/3 with single mothers below the poverty level.

The buildings were in the worst condition of any I had looked at in the 10 years in the business.   The windows were old and in poor condition with 20% broken; the roofs were leaking in almost every building; most front doors of the buildings, did not have locks; even the gas lines, which were underground, were lying in accumulated water that was totally engulfing them and putting at risk the entire properties.   Rats outnumbered people.   Drug dealers outnumbered rats.

This property was beyond anything we had handled before, but we believed we could handle it and decided to stay in the running for the management job.    Not to mention the fees were really enticing.

It would have been easy for the Lender’s team to appoint a large well-known management company, but my partner, Robert pushed us deep into the competition.   By the way, the Lender had an office on Park Avenue with an entire floor cafeteria,  which enticed us to have our meetings around lunch time.

In any event, as it got close to their decision, Robert called me on a Sunday and said he wanted to call the lead man at the Lender to give one last push to appoint us.   I told Robert, he was probably with his family and Robert shouldn’t bother him on a Sunday.   Robert said that I was right.    An hour later Robert called me and said he called him anyway and convinced him to give us the job.    Robert would never let go of an opportunity without a fight.    His tenacity was well known and brought us much success.

On our first day on the Hillside Homes site, we brought the staff into the office for a meeting.   The staff, which was about 25 people, including managers, repairmen, porters and leasing agents gathered for us to let them know that we were now in charge, and we were here to clean up the location. We told them that our two primary objectives were to provide safety and better living conditions for the residents. While we were discussing the issues of safety and security, we heard gunshots as clear as if they were in the room. We ran outside (not too bright a move) and saw a young man lying face down on the street in a pool of his own blood. We had not bargained for this. We went inside and waited for the 47th Precinct to send officers to investigate and remove the body.   It turned out that he was a dealer that had apparently cheated a gang in Washington Heights out of their share of the proceeds of a drug deal.   He was lured to Hillside Homes, by the gang, on the expectation of a big score.   They executed him at Hillside Homes, far away from Washington Heights, to keep the police from thinking it was their gang.
Hillside Homes was rife with drug dealers and they, not us, controlled the complex. We did not have much experience in dealing with the level of crime and violence. At this time, we had about 3,000 apartments in about 75 buildings under management, but none like this. We decided that we needed help. We were well received when we asked for a meeting with the captain at the four seven (as they called the 47th Precinct). He agreed that we really did need help. As luck would have it, one of the men from DLJ,  knew a man that would change it all and was a real-life crime fighter. This man was, who I will refer to as D, at this time, the head of all drug enforcement for the City Housing Agency that ran thousands of housing projects throughout the City. He was an ex-detective and had the experience, drive and personality to help us save Hillside Homes.
We don’t know how it happened, but the city put him on loan to us for one year to clean up Hillside Homes. Sitting with D was an incredible learning experience. He put a plan on the table that was clearly tested in years of his experience. It required a combination of cooperation between us, as managers, the 47th, the tenants with D in the lead.
The plan was detailed, the tactics brilliant and the work hard.
The first step was to get the tenants organized and behind the plan and a part of the commitment to save their community.
Later in this article, I will describe the plan and its implementation. The first steps were to change the locks on every building door, to register the tenants and give them new keys, paint the building numbers of each building on the roofs of each building, (there was about 40 different addresses) to enable police helicopters to know which building a drug dealer was running through to escape.   As a side note, when we registered the tenants, we gave them all new keys to the new locks that were the type that were hard to copy.   This was a big help in controlling access.

 Very early on, we began to understand the importance of security to the success of the complex.    As I mentioned, we were able, through a variety of connections and the importance of the complex, due to its size and the amount of violence, to gain the assistance of the City of New York.     

D arranged a meeting with the Chief of the 47^th Precinct, which had jurisdiction over the complex.   The meeting was a terrific success in that we gained the full cooperation of the Chief, and he believed our sincerity that we wanted to “clean up” Hillside Homes.    At the meeting he agreed to the following assistance, with the proviso that we do our share:

1. He would assign a 24-hour foot patrol to the complex to walk the entire site.
2. He would arrange for evening patrols to perform “verticals,” which meant officers walking up and down each of the 40 buildings that were a part of the 1408-unit complex.
3. He would join us in a monthly meeting with the Tenants at the complex to gain their support.
4. They would no longer “catch and release,” but would pursue charges on even the most minor of crimes committed at the complex.
5. In return, we would do the following:
   1. Change all front door locks and require Tenants to come to the office, present identification and sign for the keys, as well as identifying all people living with them.
   2. We would paint the building addresses on each property on the roofs so that police helicopters could assist the foot patrol officers in chasing the drug dealers.
   3. We would install locks and alarms on each roof that could only be turned off by the police or our guards.
   4. We would increase our guard service to 24 hours per day with at least three guards, with one armed, through the contracted guard service.
   5. We would add lighting to each entrance.
   6. We would add cameras to each entrance that could be monitored by our office.
   7. We would commence eviction actions against anyone who did not have a lease for the apartment that they were occupying. This led to dozens of “John Doe” eviction actions.

With all this in motion, my partner’s most brilliant idea was to upgrade the destroyed and unused playground.    We raised $50,000 from vendors, friends and the owners to do just that.    New playground equipment was purchased, the ground repaired, the field resod, the basketball court repaved with new backboards and nets.    When this was complete, we introduced it with a July 4^th party, which included a cookout and a number of local college basketball players to sign autographs.

We now had the Tenants, the police, the owners and the City of New York on our side.

When all of this was in place, D, who had unlimited courage, started to walk the streets at night, by himself, and approached the drug dealers.   He pointed to one tall, skinny young man whom he called “the Statue.”    He explained to us, that he was the primary lookout and was directed to not move from the spot he was assigned, unless it was to notify his “crew” that there were cops or other trouble coming.    He told us that when he was gone, that would be the demonstration of the change of control.     Further on, I will discuss the “cat and mouse” game between D and the Statue.

We now had a plan to wrest control of the site from the drug dealers and other petty criminals.   As D said, when the Statue is gone, it will mean the rest of them have left as well.   We were concerned that the officers who walked the site at night might be intimidated by the overwhelming forces on the other side.   But to our amazement and delight, these officers, one of which was a woman, were serious and courageous.   They really cared about the lives of the decent residents, their children and the community.    In fact, there were moments when I actually heard mothers with children applaud when they saw one of these patrol officers walk by.    After years of fear and feeling alone (we are talking about close to a thousand people feeling alone amongst dozens of “hooligans”, the cavalry had arrived.    I decided to see for myself, what life was like on foot patrol, so with the permission of the 47^th Precinct Sergeant,  I spent the night walking with Officer G.   This officer had been on the force for about 5 years, he was slight of build, but fearless.    I was fine walking the streets with him, but once he started the Vertical patrols, I had to fight my intense fear.   Officer G was as calm as could be.   It wasn’t walking up the four flights to the roof that caused my fear but opening the roof door made me shake.   Anyone could have been there.    It could have been a trap.   I held back a few steps as he opened the door and walked in as though he was entering his own home.    Fortunately, the night was uneventful and although we saw some young men hanging out in various spots, they left when we were within site.    New lighting at key locations made it hard for them to hide, cameras at the usual escape routes were monitored by the private security in the office.    Control was within sight and the good guys/gals were winning.  

As progress was being made, we felt it was time to hold a community meeting with the “real” tenants.    We asked D to speak and invited the team from the four-seven.    We had a few of the officers join us and had a large crowd of mostly women (which was very common in low income and lower middle-income buildings), with many having children in tow.    The meeting was held in the auditorium that used to be an active meeting place when Hillside Homes was first erected.    In passing, I think it is important to understand that Hillside Homes was built in 1934 with funds from the Federal Public Works Administration during the recession to as much create jobs as to create decent housing.

The tenants were very active in the meeting and extremely engaged.    They wanted to help us take their community back, were excited about the progress and looking forward to the capital improvements we had in our plans.    Some of their suggestions, included the following:

1. Activities for the children.
2. Adult activities in the auditorium.
3. Getting rid of the graffiti was very important to rid them of the reminders of the “bad days;” as the graffiti was usually signs marking territory.
4. They were tired of people saying that they lived in “Homicide Homes,” not Hillside Homes, at which time a change of name was suggested, and we agreed to hear suggestions.

Now came the complete overhaul of the physical plant, eviction of the squatters, upgrading the vacant and occupied apartments, and more work than we had anticipated.

It’s funny how a name can make such a difference. For years, most people who lived at Hillside Homes felt there was a stigma associated with where they lived, their home. It was, as I have said before, known as “Homicide Homes.” Who wants to tell people that they live at Homicide Homes? We discussed for a few hours, all sorts of suggestions for a new name. Do we leave the Hillside part of the name, or the homes part? We decided to drop both and start from scratch. We felt we needed a name that sounded positive and sounded like an established quality community. A name that would be easy to remember and would make it easy to forget the Hillside Homes name. Several descriptive names were tossed into the ring, such as Garden Apartments of the Bronx, Park Apartment Complex. It’s hard to come up with a name, especially one that will cause you to forget the previous name. You don’t want people to say, “Oh, that’s the old Hillside Homes.” Finally, a suggestion was thrown on the table to use one of the main streets of the complex as a name identifier. The main street running through it was Seymour Avenue. No one could see it being named Seymour Housing. Sounded like a senior citizen home. Eastchester Road was a main street that ran on the Northern side of the complex. Also, Eastchester, New York is a small town in Westchester County, New York and is a well-regarded community. Perhaps some of that would rub off and give Hillside Homes some panache. Now, we felt we needed a second word to go with Eastchester. Someone said let’s come up with something that sounds uplifting. Being located at the top of a hill on Eastchester Road, Eastchester Heights was proposed. We all sat for a moment, and it just seemed right. So, welcome to Eastchester Heights. Homicide Homes was gone forever, and Eastchester Heights was born. Sounds classy. Now we had to make it worthy of the name. The hard work was about to start.

Now we had a name and a facility that we could start to be proud of operating. The tenants were behind us, the staff was with us, and the police were our anchor for maintaining what we had achieved. With the the rest of the team we now planned what needed to be done to improve the quality of life. Safety was relatively secured, but the property was still a shamble. The kickoff was the July 4th party. Thousands of dollars were raised from our vendors, such as the heating oil company, the security company, and others that we had relationships with throughout the rest of our portfolio. Spearheaded by my partner, and as mentioned above, we had raised enough money to rebuild the basketball court, the ball field, add some picnic tables and a barbecue pit. As mentioned before, several local college basketball stars gave a clinic and signed autographs. Hotdogs and hamburgers were plentiful. At the start, we announced the most important part of the day’s festivities. I announced to the gathered tenants and staff, that we were embarking on an enormous upgrade of the property. New windows, new entry and front doors, new gas lines, new roofs, new boilers. Eastchester Heights would be delivering on its name. As we progressed, we started renting the beautifully renovated vacant units with new families. The occupied units received new kitchens and all repairs made to create a true middle-income apartment building. A property that was foreclosed upon because it couldn’t even sell for $20 million, sold for over $30 million and within a few years sold for $100 million plus.
We and our team were proud of the results achieved. It was as though we created a city out of ash heaps.  0The Bronx was on its way back to be the great City within a City that it had once been.