Rooming House Returns

OVER the last decade, the image of Harlem as a place of vacant brownstones and broken-down rooming houses has faded, as many buildings have been turned into apartments and single-family homes.


But now Stanley McIntosh and his wife, Rosalinda Cooper, who live in the restored brownstone on West 132nd Street that he grew up in, are worried that the old days might be returning: A developer, caught short by the plunging real estate market, is converting a nearby 18-foot-wide brick row house back into a rooming house.


Mr. McIntosh, the president of the Neighbors United of West 132nd Street Block Association, has begun a campaign against the rooming house. The developer, Gerald Migdol, said that the rooming house was legal, and would provide needed housing “for the working poor and working lower-middle-class people who couldn’t afford a market-rate one- or two-bedroom.” He confirmed that the Department of Buildings was reviewing the permit.


Plans for the house, at 228 West 132nd Street near Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, show eight single-room-occupancy units, each one about 150 square feet, with bathrooms but not kitchens, on the second and third floors. A ninth single room will be in the basement, along with a two-bedroom apartment. The parlor floor will house a two-bedroom apartment and a communal kitchen.


The plan for the rooming house began in adversity. Mr. Migdol, a longtime Harlem developer, had bought up five town houses on the block, renovating and selling them to families. He sold one house in 2005 for $1.5 million, but in July of this year he sold another for only $1.05 million.


He paid $875,000 for No. 228 in 2005 and filed plans to convert it to a two-family house, but soon realized the numbers didn’t work.


Neighbors became alarmed when they noticed 16 toilets being delivered to the house, and alerted city officials. The work was stopped, but not before neighbors noticed a new partition in the middle of a large arched window on the parlor floor facing the street.
Last year, Mr. Migdol filed new plans showing the rooming house units. He says that the city no longer permits residential property owners to create rooming houses, but that they can restore rooming-house units previously on the property. The window partition has been removed.


Federal Section 8 rent subsidies could make the rooming house very profitable. City officials say the government pays monthly subsidies of up to $930 for each small unit, and $1,500 for each two-bedroom apartment, for a potential rent roll of more than $11,000 a month.


Mr. Migdol said he hoped to rent to veterans and the elderly. But city officials note that the homeless, people displaced from their homes and victims of domestic violence get preference for the vouchers. The property awaits a certificate of occupancy, Mr. Migdol said, though building records show a stop-work order on it.