By The newspaper
02 Mar 2024, 09:21 AM EST
A man died yesterday when flames swept through a single-family home in the Bronx (NYC) that was illegally divided into 17 small apartments rented to low-income people, city officials and residents of the building said.
The fire broke out around 2 p.m. Friday at the three-story home on Grand Ave. between W. 190th and W. 192nd Sts. in the Fordham neighborhood, he indicated DailyNews.
The deceased has not been identified. The Red Cross has offered emergency shelter to residents left homeless, the city’s Department of Buildings (DOB) said.
A man died when flames roared through a single-family Bronx house that was illegally divided into 17 tiny apartments rented cheap to low-income people.https://t.co/QkpFC5FBSG
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) March 2, 2024
“We had fire on three floors and in the attic,” said FDNY Deputy Chief William McCormack. Firefighters found the man dead in the attic, where he was sleeping on an air mattress, although the space did not appear “livable.”
“That’s where I lived. “She worked at a car wash,” said a tenant who did not give his name. “He was a good, hard-working guy.”
McCormack said that although the building was already divided into several small spaces, its owner was in the process of building more. The new construction may have been where the fire started, the cause of which has not yet been determined.
“They are all rented rooms,” added the tenant. “We have lived there for years. The rents are $200, $250 and $300 dollars a month.”
City officials had been told the building was divided into many separate apartments. A complaint on the DOB portal in February 2021 states that a resident reported that he was living in what he believed was an illegal basement apartment. “I didn’t know it was illegal when it was rented to him,” the record says.
Similar complaints about the building were filed in 2008, 2011 and 2018. DOB officials say they are investigating and “additional enforcement actions are pending that investigation.”
In two similar cases, this week firefighters found dozens of immigrants living crammed among high-risk electric bicycles in the basements of furniture stores in Queens and the Bronx, both owned by the same person.