Apartment Envy: Survivor

Combined two-bedroom rental. Nine-ft. ceilings, southern and western views, sixth-floor walk-up. $865 a month. Alphabet City.

New York Today Real Estate, February 26, 2001

SLIDE SHOW (9 photos)

Norman Y. Lono for New York Today

"That's when the fires started," Jared Kotz says nonchalantly, a few minutes into the story of his apartment. By this point, he's already mentioned the drug dealers, the thigh-high mounds of garbage, the broken windows and the lack of heat and hot water, all of which vividly describe the state of the sixth-floor Alphabet City walk-up he began renting 19 years ago. It's evident that Kotz (pronounced "coats") has told the story many times, because he seems numb to its sensationalist details. When I ask him if he has any "before" pictures, he says, "No. It was too dangerous to have a camera."

In 1982, Kotz's artist friend Slim was already living in the building on 12th Street between Avenues A and B, and Kotz had been eyeing the 10-windowed apartment (made up of two smaller units combined) across the way. When the landlord was finally willing to rent it, Kotz asked to see the unit one more time. "The superintendent came up with a candle and a mace," he says, (meaning a medieval pipe with a chain and ball on the end of it). "There was garbage all over and the windows were broken, but I could see the sky and the views and I said, 'I'll take it! I'll take it!'"

Kotz, his roommate and the three friends who took other units on that same top floor of the building spent a year and a half making their apartments livable -- repairing the leaky roof, putting bars on the windows and laying tiled floors. Until January 1983, Kotz and his roommate slept at work because the apartment was too cold. In 1984, the building was sold to the New York landlord Harry Skydell, who renovated the Puck Building and the Christodora, also in Alphabet City. Skydell talked of making it a co-op, and "we all had visions of buying our apartments," Kotz says. That's when the fires started.

From September 20, 1984 to September 20, 1985, the fire department put out 14 fires, Kotz says, "and after that I stopped counting." Kotz surmises that Skydell wanted to push out tenants, who were mostly Puerto Ricans, but he has no proof. During many of the fires, the fire department made holes in the ceiling and broke windows in order to help ventilate the smoke. Since Kotz's apartment was the least charred after the first fire, his friends moved in with him. The next morning, during a hard rain, Kotz woke up to a stench. Many tenants walked their dogs on the roof and now a river of rain and waste poured into his home through one of the slanted roof's holes.

Kotz has many more tales of life in the building. Once, a resident caught a would-be arsonist as he was stuffing paper under a door and lighting it. Another time, Kotz saw the superintendent, "who was a junkie," unscrewing the bars on his window. A different superintendent also had a pit bull, with which he killed people's cats. Another tenant, the actor Richard Edson, chased a thief up the fire escape to the adjacent building and to the robber's apartment, where his mother opened the door. She was wearing Edson's jacket and her son was pretending to be asleep, but he was breathing like he had just run for his life.

In 1985, the building was sold to Cooper Square Realty, but little improved. Despite repeated complaints to the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, "we weren't getting anywhere," Kotz says. Later on he learned that the man in charge of the harassment complaints was taking bribes to dissolve the cases. "I became obsessed with getting my rights as a tenant," Kotz says of this time, during which he was president of the building's tenants' association. After an out-of-court settlement in 1987, the building got a boiler, a new roof and new windows and plumbing. By 1988 everything was finished.

Sort of.

Kotz lived in Vermont from 1992 to 1996; when he told his (former) friends who were subletting that he was returning, they said, "If you think you're getting this apartment back, you're crazy." It took a year, but he finally moved back into his place, which now had a wall dividing the living room that he would still like to tear down. Slim and his family still live across the hall, as does Janice Sloane, another friend from the early years.

Kotz has fought hard to keep the tremendous space, spectacular views and low rent that he so enjoys. Still, he seems to miss the "excitement" of the building's former days. As if to make up for it, he keeps photos of other buildings on fire. When asked if he has any of his own building, he says, "I never took photos of this building. I was always just running for my life."

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