Landlords of Bronx building were buying up affordable housing in New York

The three companies that own the 19-story apartment building in the Bronx where a smoky blaze killed 17 people Sunday have all been aggressively acquiring apartment complexes with many lower-income tenants who used rental vouchers.

The three companies — LIHC Investment Group, Belveron Partners and Camber Property Group — purchased the building, Twin Parks North West, along with seven other affordable housing buildings in the Bronx in 2019 for $166 million.

LIHC and Belveron own buildings in New York and elsewhere, and control a combined 80% of the Bronx building, but it was Camber that was responsible for day-to-day operations.

The fire was started by a space heater that had been running for several days in the bedroom of a third-floor apartment, fire officials said. As residents fled, the apartment’s front door should have closed automatically but did not, allowing smoke to spread and engulf the building.

Officials are investigating if a maintenance issue with doors in the building contributed to the high death toll.

One of Camber’s founders is Rick Gropper, who served as a housing adviser on Mayor Eric Adams' transition team. After starting in 2016 with a six-unit property in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the company now owns more than 5,800 residential units, most of them in the city.

City building records show several violations at the Bronx building over the years, some that predate the current owners. Between 2014 and 2019, the city Housing Department had issued violations for problems with self-closing doors involving four apartments and one stairway. Records show another complaint about a problem with a self-closing door in an apartment in 2021. Those complaints and violations were resolved.

Residents also complained about a lack of adequate heating at the Bronx tower, including three complaints in 2021, according to city records. Those were also resolved.

Two tenants who survived the fire filed a lawsuit Monday against the building’s owners, arguing that the self-closing doors in the building malfunctioned, that there were issues with the fire alarms frequently going off, and that the owners failed to provide adequate heat to the building.

“This was a totally preventable tragedy,” said Robert Vilensky, a lawyer for the tenants. “Had the landlord and city done the things that they are required to do, 17 people would be alive and scores of others unharmed.”

In a statement, Kelly Magee, a spokesperson for the building’s owners, said, “We are devastated by this terrible tragedy and are cooperating fully with the Fire Department and other agencies as they continue to investigate.”

Magee had earlier said that all the building’s doors had self-closing mechanisms. She added that last summer a maintenance worker had repaired a lock on the door of the apartment where the fire broke out and it had been closing properly. She also said residents sometimes smoked in the hallways, triggering fire alarms.

The purchase of the Bronx tower was part of a rapid expansion for Camber Property Group, particularly in the borough.

In December 2018, the group purchased a 50% stake in 722 units in two public housing projects in the Bronx, the Baychester and Murphy houses, for $90 million as part of a joint venture with L+M Development Partners and MBD Community Housing Corp.

Earlier that year, Gropper attended a fundraiser and made a political donation to Adams, who was then the Brooklyn borough president and gave his approval to a development project Camber was pursuing.

In the days before the fire, Camber, LIHC and a nonprofit called Settlement Housing Fund announced an $85 million deal to buy a nine-building complex in Harlem.

Gropper declined requests for an interview.

He has said in published accounts that he became interested in real estate about two decades ago after striking up a conversation with the director of Columbia University’s real estate development programme on a train ride. He graduated from the programme in 2008.

Gropper interned that year at L+M Development Partners, one of the largest affordable housing developers in New York, and in 2016, he started Camber Property Group with Andrew Moelis, the son of L+M’s CEO. Camber now owns 24 projects — a mix of market-rate developments, mixed-income properties and buildings where tenants receive rental vouchers.

“The main thing that we’re focused on is just quality projects, both financially and physically,” Gropper said in 2019. “Doing the right job is one of the most important things that we can do.”

Some real estate firms have recently expanded their investments in affordable housing properties nationwide, hoping to turn a profit when low-cost housing is in high demand and many of the tenants can pay with rental vouchers.

Camber Property Group has been taken to court by city housing officials in recent years to enforce building repairs, legal filings show.

A building that Camber owns in Brooklyn was the subject of five complaints about a lack of heat and hot water in 2020 — all of which have been resolved.

At another building in the Bronx, city inspectors found two violations related to a lack of adequate heat at the building in 2020 that were also resolved.

A spokesperson for Camber said the company inherited violations at the Brooklyn building and made repairs to the boiler to address the heating issues. After acquiring the Bronx building in 2018, Camber made repairs to the building’s heating system, the group’s spokesperson said.

During his real estate career, Gropper has contributed more than $11,000 to the campaigns of local lawmakers, records show. He also attended a fundraiser for Adams, who was then the Brooklyn borough president, in May 2018, at the home of a real estate developer named Jamie Wiseman.

About 50 guests, many of whom were in the real estate industry, were at the gathering, according to a spokesperson for Camber. At the time, Gropper was awaiting a recommendation from Adams about developing two residential buildings in Bushwick — a project that faced local opposition and had been voted against by the local community board.

Adams had held a hearing on the project about a month before the fundraiser. Gropper made a $400 contribution to Adams on May 22, 2018 — the maximum amount allowed for people who do business with the city.

A week later, Adams recommended that the project should move forward.

A spokesperson for Camber said the developer had worked to win Adams' approval by increasing the level of affordable units in the project. Max Young, a spokesperson for Adams, said Gropper’s contribution played no role in Adams' decision-making.

Camber’s lobbyist on that Bushwick project was Tiffany Raspberry, who Adams named as a senior adviser for external affairs last week. Lobbying disclosures show that Raspberry worked for Camber in 2018 and 2019.

When Adams was elected mayor, Gropper also served on the transition team advising him on housing. A spokesperson for Camber said Gropper participated in two Zoom meetings as part of the 56-member housing group’s work, and neither meeting included Adams.

Young said Gropper was one of about 700 people on the transition team and has no current role in the administration.

Last year, Camber started a new venture to develop a homeless shelter as part of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s initiative to open dozens of new shelters. Camber purchased a 13-story building in Manhattan with a partner in May for $40.3 million, according to building records.

The group is redeveloping the building, including upgrading the elevator, sprinkler and fire alarm systems, to open as a shelter for 100 families with children in the spring, according to the city Department of Social Services. The nonprofit group affiliated with that project, Westhab, was awarded a $90 million contract from the city last year to operate the shelter, according to the city comptroller’s website.

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