Tenants Win Free Rent in Squalid Washington Heights Building

Tenants enduring abysmal conditions in their Washington Heights apartment building have been granted a one year rent reprieve in a settlement with their landlord, a deal orchestrated with help from the Community Legal Resource Network. Now if they could just get the landlord, Carmine Alessandro, to make the long-overdue repairs; after nearly a month since the settlement, Alessandro has yet to start the agreed-upon work. And there's a lot to be done: The six-story rat-infested building's elevator has been broken on and off for five years, residents have been without heat and hot water for most of the past year, and 77-year-old Julia Sepulveda has a 3-foot-wide hole in her ceiling that exposes her bathroom to her upstairs neighbor's apartment. "Whenever I shower, I have to do it under an umbrella," she tells the News. As for the elevator, which the Department of Buildings deems one of the worst in the city, Alessandro blames the tenants: "We fix the elevator frequently and they keep breaking it."