1000+ Tenants In 10 Dilapidated Bronx Bldgs Get New Hope As City Squeezes Bank To Sell Sour Loans To Responsible Landlord; Deal To Affect 548 Units

In The Bronx, New York, the New York Daily News reports:

• Mayor Bloomberg's administration pressured banks holding mortgages on foreclosed properties to sell them to responsible landlords, and not let them rot into slums. The Bloomberg administration is finally stepping in to protect New Yorkers in foreclosed apartment buildings that are turning into slums.
• The city pressured the bank that held a $35 million mortgage on 10 Bronx buildings to sell them to a responsible landlord, even if it meant losing money. That new landlord, Steven Finkelstein, stood alongside Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn Tuesday at one of the buildings getting repairs - as residents cheered wildly.
• "In six to eight weeks, we will have 80% of the violations corrected," said Finkelstein, new windows his crews have already installed clearly visible. "Once I get them up to par, I'm going to be able to provide affordable housing to people and, you know, keep things going in a very positive manner."
• Finkelstein's firm paid $27.75 million for the buildings and expects to spend another $7 million to fix 548 apartments. The buildings seem to have been falling apart after California-based Milbank Real Estate bought them in 2007 at the height of the housing bubble, then lost them when the market crashed.
• Tenants' lives have been hell since LNR Partners of Florida, which ended up with the mortgage, stopped taking care of the properties. The city has written more than 4,000 housing code violations as more than 1,000 people suffered through leaky roofs, backed-up sewers, winters without heat or hot water and prostitutes and drug dealers roaming their halls.
• "It was a state of hopelessness," said Malikah Rasheed, president of the tenants association at one of the rotting buildings. "We had mushrooms growing in people's apartments. That's how bad it was."
• City officials hope to bring the new aggressiveness to thousands more apartments endangered by landlords caught up in the housing crunch - and the banks that hold the mortgages.
• "If you are a bank who held a mortgage and the building is in foreclosure, wake up - you own the building now," Quinn said. "You will be held accountable. That is the message today."

Source: City pressures bank holding mortgage on Bronx buildings to sell to responsible landlord.

See also, The Wall Street Journal: NYC: Deal will fix buildings ailing in foreclosure (More than 1,000 tenants who lived in declining conditions as their buildings fell victim to the foreclosure crisis now have a new landlord who is promising to make millions of dollars in repairs, city officials announced Tuesday).