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A Friendly Bustle, With Oases Nearby

IT was either the Bronx or Queens.

Jason Velez, 32, a financial adviser, and his girlfriend, RoseAnn Monterroso, 28, a consignment shop manager, had decided to move in together. He owned a one-bedroom in Bedford Park and worked nearby in Belmont. She owned a one-bedroom in Jackson Heights and commuted to Midtown.

They looked in Queens but decided they would get more for their money in Bedford Park — whose proximity to public transportation and major highways provides easy commuting to both Manhattan and Westchester.

“There’s the Bronx stigma,” said Mr. Velez, who grew up in Parkchester. “I thought it would be hard to convince her, but the more she saw, she started liking it.”

She sold her place, he sold his, and they bought a two-bedroom in his co-op on East 201st Street for $178,000. They plan to redo the bath and closets with a custom job, not prefab units.

“We’ll take the extra money,” Mr. Velez said, “and instead of buying something we don’t like, we’ll create something we do like.”

But Bedford Park is about more than affordability to Mr. Velez. It’s about friendliness. For instance three weeks ago his broker, David Abreu, who lives next door, visited a Manhattan comedy club to witness what Mr. Velez had billed as his first foray into stand-up. (In fact, Mr. Velez is no comedian: halfway through his “set,” he pulled Ms. Monterroso onstage, dropped to one knee and proposed. She said yes.)

Once heavily Irish and Jewish, Bedford Park in the 2000 census was 58 percent Hispanic, 17 percent white, 13 percent black and 7 percent Asian. There is a large mix of new arrivals, among them Guyanese, Albanian and Vietnamese. A Korean commercial strip occupies a block of East 204th Street.

John Dhauraj, a Guyanese immigrant who has owned a three-bedroom house on East 203rd Street for 19 years, was chatting one recent afternoon with a neighbor, Cholelle Miranda, who grew up locally and rents a place in a six-story brick apartment house two doors down. Their block is typical: tree-lined and backing up to the woodsy Mosholu Parkway, with early 20th-century single-family and multifamily houses sandwiched in among apartment buildings.

“This block is still a community,” Ms. Miranda said, and Mr. Dhauraj added, “We look out for each other.”

Like many in this middle-class area, both feel pinched by the economy.

“Let me put it to you this way,” said Mr. Dhauraj, 63, who used to work in building maintenance. “Since I retired, I got to look at the pennies. When I was working, I never looked at pennies.”

Fortunately, Mr. Dhauraj bought before the wave of subprime lending. The Bronx is the seventh-ranked county in the nation for foreclosure-related decreases in home values, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

But several factors insulate Bedford Park. Rental apartment buildings, which constitute a majority of housing here, are mostly immune. Typical homeowners have lived in their homes for a long time, so are less susceptible to the recent proliferation of risky loans.

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Foreclosures affect Bronx homeowners 

Devon Honeyghan spent $25,000 renovating the kitchen of his Bronx house in preparation for selling it and moving to Georgia.

But two “For Sale” signs and an abandoned house standing all in a row across the street have him doubting he will make any of his money back.

Honeyghan, a 42-year-old livery cab driver, lives in Wakefield, the working-class northeast Bronx neighborhood hit hardest by the mortgage foreclosure crisis.

Statistics released this month by the Center for Responsible Lending show the value of nearly 400,000 homes in the Bronx has dropped $4.9 billion because of surrounding foreclosed homes.

The foreclosure crisis began with missed mortgage payments and first-time owners losing their homes. It later hit banks and the financial industry, but its most recent victims are the neighbors who live on streets with abandoned homes.

Honeyghan, who bought his new house in Georgia at the market’s peak, is so desperate to sell his Bronx home that he offered to buy the abandoned house across the street, which has become an eyesore and is filled with stray cats. He could not because it is locked in a divorce case.

“I just don’t see myself getting my money back,” he said. “I was going to spend $10,000 on the bathroom, but it’s not worth it.”

Carmen Rosa, district manager of Community Board 12, says most foreclosed homes in the neighborhood have not deteriorated - just yet - but residents fear what is to come.

“You see the signs up - ‘For Sale, For Sale, For Sale’ - on every street,” Rosa said.

“At our board meetings, residents are very concerned about the impact the foreclosures will have on the value of their homes,” she said, “but they are also concerned if someone walks away from their home that people will break in and they will have to become watchdogs. There is a social impact, too.”

Paul Founsette, 54, a contractor who lives on Ely St. in Wakefield, for example, sweeps the sidewalk and driveway of the two-story brick house across from his. It was foreclosed and has been vacant for more than a year. The “For Sale” sign seems to have given up too, toppled over in the driveway.

“If it’s not clean, it’s going to blow across,” Founsette said. “It just looks bad for everyone. It’s a rough time.”

Two blocks from Founsette is a foreclosed home with an overflowing mailbox and a truck with blown-out tires abandoned out front.

And, posted on telephone poles on every corner throughout the neighborhood are flyers from land sharks calling out to those at their lowest point of desperation - “Wanted - Houses and Land, Bought All Cash, Top $$$.”

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