A borough on fire
Liberation for a city in struggle
There is a fire almost every day this month here.
In just one week, there were two fires on January 17, one on Seward Avenue in Castle Hill and one on Decatur Avenue in Norwood. There is one on Arnow Avenue (1/16) in the Parkside Housing Project in Allerton and another on Heath Avenue (1/15) in Kingsbridge.
Another, on Friday, the 10th, burns on Wallace Avenue in Allerton for 12 hours. This fire displaces 252 people, including 58 children. Eight people were injured. Their building is owned by Ved Parkash, who community members describe as one of our city’s worst landlords.
In reporting for The City, Jonathan Custodio, Samantha Maldonado, and Mia Hollie wrote that Parkash is part of a Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) program that “requires landlords with the most violations and complaints to put monitors in each apartment that automatically send temperature data.” Last year, Parkash tried to get removed from this list by suing NYC’s housing agency.
From The City:
Nearby, in an adjacent Parkash building also enrolled in HPD’s program, residents said they also contend with inconsistent heat.
“We struggle with heat a lot. We don’t got no hot water right now. Yesterday, we had no heat; the day before, we had no heat,” said one tenant, Shaquille Cassanova. “The water been going out since winter started. Every now and then you get hot water.”
Before I see reports for some of these fires, I hear from friends and comrades who smell smoke or witness the flames; other times I smell the smoke myself, standing outside my home. Community members believe that many of these fires are caused by landlord neglect, from their refusal to fix faulty wiring to their refusal to provide adequate heat in the winter.
The structures that we pay to live in are burning. We are sick and cold, displaced and dying, our rents rising, yet structures burn and burn and burn while greedy landlords get richer.
Last year there was at least one fire every month in the Bronx.
My reporting on fires here, which began in late 2023, pulls from articles, videos, various fire blogs, official FDNY and city statements, including statements from the office of our borough’s president, and community witness accounts. I have studied these sources for the last two years, and below is a digital map I created in late 2023 listing some of the Bronx fires that year.
I looked through every fire incident for 2024 on the fire blog NYCFIRE.net, which features reported fire incidents and appears to be run by current and former firefighters. The blog lists at least 224 fires in residential buildings from January 1 to December 31. For my research and reporting, I have only included fires that I confirmed with news stories. I confirmed and recorded 72 of the blog’s incidents. 1 There were at least 10 fires in Bedford Park, 6 in University Heights, 8 throughout Fordham Manor and Heights, and 4 fires in Belmont. Communities with the least number of fires include Riverdale, Morris Park, Pelham Bay, and Eastchester.
Sometimes, certain communities have multiple fires in a matter of days or weeks. In October, two fires occurred on Belmont in under 48 hours. In September, in a two week period, there were 3 fires on Bedford, and in June, there were 4 fires in 12 days. Sometimes, I come across buildings that had at least two major fire incidents in previous years.
Our green spaces are also burning.
In November, our city’s first drought in 20 years was declared. From October 29 to November 12, the FDNY dealt with more than 200 brush fires throughout the city.
At least 67 brush fires occurred in the Bronx, including a November 17 fire at the Williamsbridge Oval on Bainbridge.
How does this connect to previous decades of the Bronx burning? How did our communities resist and fight against the violence of settler/landlord displacement, from indigenous communities to Caribbean New Yorkers?
What is liberation in a borough always on fire?
Our borough is the most underfunded. We have the highest eviction rates and food insecurity. We continue to have some of the highest COVID and asthma rates, and many people in my community are struggling with the pandemic’s long term effects. Our hospitals are full. Benefits offices here are closing, and it takes months to get any kind of support for food stamps or housing. Food costs, along with recalls, rise. There is lead in our waters.
We are squeezed and squeezed in virtually every aspect of our lives while greedy landlords evict us, raise our rents, and deprive us of heat and water. They do not live with us in our buildings, cold structures filled with pests and broken laundry machines and elevators, under these conditions, and they work with police and marshals to remove us from or surveil us in our homes. They sell to developers who buy up old buildings and houses, destroy them, and then build “affordable” structures that are empty for years that we cannot afford. Alongside the roads of these buildings, our houseless population increases.
Our borough is on fire, all around us.
Our communities are angry, more and more of us displaced, hungry. All last year Bronx tenants organized against their landlords and protested against the inhabitable conditions in their buildings.
In November, residents in a building in Fordham Heights also owned by Ved Parkash, spoke to News 12 and described the difficulties in moving throughout and outside the building. The elevator stops working for weeks, and many of their apartments have rats. One tenant, 92-year-old Evangelista Santana, told a reporter that “rats ate through the wires in her stove and that she can’t use it anymore.” And in Soundview, tenants on Ward Avenue held a rally and march around their neighborhood to raise attention to the landlord neglect in their homes.
In September, community members at another residence in Mount Hope filed a lawsuit against the owner of their building. They say, “for years, missing stoves, broken fridges, rat infestations, mold and leaks have gone without repairs.” The building has over 561 open violations with the HPD. Through their lawyer, community members stated: “We’re not asking for the yellow brick road. We’re just asking for a decent place to live for our tenants.”
In June, tenants in a Norwood building on Decatur formed a tenants’ association, and 170 tenants in a Belmont building talked to The City’s Custodio about water leaks throughout their building, falling plaster, faulty doors, and no heat or hot water. From resident 62-year-old Melanie Jackson, who has lived in the building for 9 years: “We desperately need help here for 480 East 188th Street. We cannot wait for tragedy to happen for the landlord to be accountable.”
Residents at Tracey Towers, which last year celebrated its 50th anniversary, held an action protesting the building complex’s conditions. From reporting in Norwood News:
“People are traumatized by the conditions…We’ve had rats running through the building, water leaks in some of the apartments, the pipes are breaking down. We need a full modernization of our elevators because Tracey Towers is 50 years old, and we need to make sure we have space for our tenants to live comfortably.”
In April, outside the Bronx Supreme Court, Bronx Tenants United, residents from 333 East 150th Street protested following the sale of their building on auction. One tenant, 42-year-old Adriana Florencio, who has lived in the residence for 10 years, told Mott Haven Herald’s Carla G. Colomé: “The building is still in bad condition. We don’t have cleaning, the sinks need to be fixed. We have communicated this situation and they usually don’t pay attention to us.”
Throughout our communities and amid all kinds of infrastructural collapse, we resist. Building and fighting for our homes, inflamed and energized in struggle.