Homes Crumble As Owner Spends On BK Community Space With Violent Past

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — For Ralph James, shoddy security at his Chauncey Street apartment complex isn’t just a serious concern — it’s life or death.

It was in the lobby of one of the complex’s four buildings where in 2019 James’ brother, Jamel Horne, was fatally stabbed as a security guard stood only feet away, according to James.

“He had to run out of the building, holding his neck, into the arms of an officer," said James, whose family has lived at the Fulton Park Plaza complex since the 1970s. "He ... died in his arms."

The murder of his younger brother haunts James as he says the complex’s landlord, Bushburg Properites, ignores broken locks and — despite repeated violence — won't increase the complex's security detail. Meanwhile, he says mold grows in his bathroom, brown water drips from his faucets and rodents scurry inside the walls.

That frustration only grew when James saw the same landlord — which did not respond to both emails and calls requesting comment — start making repairs to a long-shuttered community center late last year, while leaving the shabby security and other dire repairs in the dust.

The repairs, new cabinets and repainting, were to prepare for reopening the community center, once known in the neighborhood as a party spot that exacerbated long-standing violence on the block, according to neighbors and officials.

"If they can find a way to do those renovations and still do the work in the apartments I'm cool with that ... but not when I have to chase mice all around my house or when there's rats in the lobby," said James.

"I could give a s--- about the community center — what I care about is quality of life."

'Bound to Repeat It'

No matter the type of event, parties held at the Fulton Park Plaza community center devolved into violence nearly every weekend, according to Chauncey Street Homeowner’s and Block Association President Renee Sheffey.

"This community center was the hub of just about every shooting that occurred on this block," said Sheffey, who has lived across the street from Fulton Park Plaza for 22 years. "Whether a baby party, a birthday party — it would always end up in some level of violence and extreme, extreme noise."

The community center, which served as an event space rented out to the public, closed back in 2015 when luxury developer Bushburg took over Fulton Park Plaza, Sheffey said.

Sheffey, a pastor who counsels tenants in Fulton Park Plaza, said her first fear when she noticed construction at the community center last December was that the parties would return.

So far, it seems parties are not on the agenda — the Brooklyn Public Library and state monitors of the subsidized complex told Patch reopening events in April include bi-weekly story-times, grab-and-go craft kits and visits from a book-mobile. But concerns linger.

Sheffey said she supports the center being used for children's programs, but she wonders what the warm weather months will bring during a season when gun violence is known to spike and rowdy crowds already usually gather on the sidewalk around Fulton Park Plaza.

Aside from a single flyer she saw months ago, Bushburg has not told the community explicitly about its long-term plans for the center, Sheffey said.

The pastor hopes to safeguard her neighborhood by taking grassroots action, she added.

Her current goal is to form a committee focused on community center programming that includes the Fulton Park Plaza tenant association (which Patch was unable to reach for comment), her block association, landlords and other community members.

"I don’t want to focus on the negative, I only want to remind people of what can happen," Sheffey said. "If we don’t fix a particular situation, we’re bound to repeat it."

A Long Road

Among the fixes James and Sheffey think Bushburg should prioritize are security shortages that have left some residents afraid to walk the corridors of the Fulton Park Plaza building unescorted.

Broken locks and cuts to security staff over the years— where once there were eight guards, only four remain — mean Sheffey and James, often with his 10-year-old daughter by his side, regularly find questionable outsiders in the complex's hallways, staircases and lobbies, they said.

"You never know who’s there," said Sheffey, who won't visit tenants without an escort.

"Sometimes it's not a tenant who’s crazy, sometimes it's someone else who comes into the building to get high on the steps, defecate, or urinate."

Under Bushburg’s management, James said it's common for locks on front entrances to stay broken for months at a time, allowing anyone to enter the building without a key or fob.

Even when the door at James’ 94 Chauncey St. building was fixed, he said the new handle is so small, "if you yank it, it will come open.”

Elderly women James grew up with frequently ask him to walk them through the halls at night as they fear of what they might run into, he said.

It didn't always used to be this way, James noted. Back in the 1980s and 90s, security guards would monitor hallways and had a strict ticketing system to prevent loitering, he said.

“You could eat off the floors in this building back in the day," he said.

Tenants and neighbors, Sheffey among them, have engaged in a years-long saga of asking landlords to beef up security at the complex as violence and gang activity on the block abounds.

James’ brother was stabbed as revenge for a 2017 murder on the same block, though James and his family maintain that the since-arrested killers blamed the wrong man, according to police and reports.

“My brother was no type of saint — he was a gang member — but he was still a human,” James said. “He was in a building that should have been secured.”

Then, in 2020, back-to-back gang-related shootings left a 22-year-old dead and two others injured, according to police. Neighbors drafted a letter at the time pleading for help, but say despite visits from elected officials, police and Bushburg, little came of it.

Not long after, neighbors decided to take safety matters into their own hands and started a fundraiser in early 2021 aimed at creating a safe space for the block in neighboring Jackie Robinson Park.

Later that year, a tenant in a market-rate Bushburg building across the street refused to sign his lease until the landlords answered for the lack of progress at Fulton Park Plaza.

Bushburg has since taken the tenant, Jacob Gordon, to court to have him evicted, he told Patch.

Gordon’s situation is part of the reason most complaints and organizing around Fulton Park Plaza come from neighbors, not tenants, who fear similar retaliation, according to James and Sheffey.

“Who wants to speak up when you have a tentative living situation?” Sheffey said.

James — who told Patch he “only fears God” — said he’s spoken up in the past for tenants who told him they were afraid of eviction. (Those efforts, about a parking space, still aren’t resolved, James said).

“Nobody wants to complain,” James said. “I report stuff, but I’m only one person.”

'Not a Bandaid, A Distraction'

Security is far from the only concern for tenants facing a myriad of other problems they say Bushburg Properties has ignored despite starting on the community center repairs, James and Sheffey say.

"Imagine having mold, rusty water and dirty water and all these other repairs and they do this expensive repair on the community center?" Sheffey said. "[It's like saying], 'Let me give you that and then you’ll shut up about everything else.'"

The landlord has not disclosed how much the community center upgrade cost, but it’s likely less than $100,000 as the project was qualified as "minor repairs," and not a major construction project by the state department for Housing and Community Renewal, which oversees Fulton Park Plaza.

"I wouldn’t even call that a bandaid — that’s a distraction," said James.

Fulton Park Plaza had 86 open violations for mold and mice, among other problems, filed with the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development as of April 5.

One apartment was vacated after a recent fire, records show.

James shared images with Patch that show brown water in his tub and sink, garbage pile-ups at the building's compactors, rats in garbage near the building and what he says is mold in his bathroom.

Asked about the conditions, an HCR spokesperson told Patch the department "continues to work closely with the Fulton Park Houses tenants’ association, local elected leaders, and the community to ensure management is accountable to residents in providing required security and services, as mandated for all state-supervised Mitchell Lama developments."

Mitchell Lama developments are those built under a 1955 program aimed at increasing housing stock for moderate-income families and are overseen by either HPD or HCR, according to city records.

Fulton Park Plaza is far from the only complex under the program to run into management problems. A 2015 study found that five Mitchell-Lamas were among the top 12 subsidized developments with the worst mold and vermin violations, according to an analysis.

The 12 properties accounted for nearly 20 percent of pest and mold violations across all 2,528 subsidized developments in the city.

“This filth is scientifically connected to asthma and other respiratory illnesses, which also leave residents at a higher risk for Legionnaires’, and numerous other diseases,” said state Sen. Jeff Klein.

“Unscrupulous landlords are giving these tenants squalor for our dollar and it’s unacceptable.”

In Bed-Stuy, the fight for better conditions at Fulton Park Plaza has only grown more frustrating as money pours into other parts of the gentrifying neighborhood, James and Sheffey said.

Sheffey told Patch that two houses on the same block recently sold for more than $2 million. Bushburg's market-rate building across the street lists one-bedrooms for $3,250.

"They would never let this happen in Williamsburg or Crown Heights," James said. "The way I see [it], this neighborhood is changing and we’re getting left behind."