On a sweltering Wednesday morning, tenants of 480 E. 188th St. were stuck in the elevator and started to ring the fire bell, bang on the walls and yell, “We’re on the 11th floor.” The Bronx Times called 911, but the elevator began to move again and asked the dispatcher to cancel the call. All this occurred in the midst of a rally tenants were holding to speak up about the deplorable living conditions of their homes.
On July 17, the Tenant’s Association of the rent-controlled Fordham Towers, the North West Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) and the Legal Aid Society held a rally at the entrance of the building on 188th Street to protest the allegedly negligent management and ownership of their 16-floor housing complex nearby Fordham Plaza.
“I love to be along with neighbors and with community members who organize to make sure that landlords understand that they cannot be scumbags forever,” said state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who represents the area and translated his speech to Spanish. “These tenants are not asking for anything that we all don’t want in our own homes. They want heat in the winter, they want hot water, they want their windows to be taken care of, they don’t want to live in rat infested or roach infested apartments.”


Under the city’s Tenant’s Rights & Responsibilities, “tenants should expect to live in safe, well-maintained buildings that are free from vermin, leaks and hazardous conditions.” Yet, that is not the case at Fordham Towers.
Tenants clad in yellow NWBCCC shirts held several signs, among them, “Mickey and Minnie Mouse need to be evicted,” rhetoric that could be considered funny because it’s true, but it’s really not funny at all.
“I had a mouse fall through that hole,” said tenant, Melanie Jackson, as she was pointing to the decaying ceiling above the threshold that led to her terrace. “Thank God it fell in the bucket.”
The bucket in question is one Jackson uses to collect water from leaks every time it rains.
The former Mitchell-Lama houses, was taken over by the Fordham Fulton Realty Corporation, owned by Karan Singh and Rajmattie Persaud, in 2009. According to tenants, that’s when the quality of life at Fordham Towers began to plummet. Currently, the building has more than 500 open violations, 147 of which are classified as “immediately hazardous,” according to the Legal Aid Society. This is also not the first time the realty corporation has been brought to court.
In April of this year, the Legal Aid Society filed a separate lawsuit against the duo for negligence at 530 and 540 E. 169th St., quoting similar conditions that the residents at Fordham Towers are fighting now and have been fighting with legal assistance since October 2023.


“At this time, there are at least half a dozen cases pending against this owner brought by the city, brought by legal aid and brought by the tenants,” said Zoe Kheyman, staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society. “This owner knows exactly what they are doing.”
Kheyman added that Singh and Persaud have never appeared in court themselves and had lawyers do their bidding.
The Bronx Times called five phone numbers associated with the landlords and left a message and is waiting for a response.
Edmond C. Gerald, who has been living in the building since 1974, has filed lawsuits of his own against the landlord and won, as indicated by several papers he laid out on his living room table. The 83-year-old lives on the 11th floor and has to take the one working elevator of the two, up to the 16th floor and walk down because the elevator won’t stop anywhere else. At the time of the rally, both elevators were working, until they weren’t, which led to people crying for help.
Despite listing operating hours 0f 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, no one answered the door at the management office.
As residents of Fordham Towers have become more vocal of the injustice they are facing, they said that they have been received letters that warning them of calling 311 or joining the tenant’s association and have subjected to amounts of money they don’t owe.
The Legal Aid Society will continue to represent the tenants in court until a verdict is met.
“This is a classic example of landlord harassment and we promise you that this landlord will not get away with that,” said City Council Member Oswald Feliz.
Reach ET Rodriguez at etrodriguez317@gmail.com. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes