2 get new lease on life
Displaced by fire, they find home thanks to housing group
THEY WERE left out in the cold when a raging blaze destroyed their Hamilton Heights apartment — but friends and coworkers opened the door to a new home.
Roommates Richard Peralta, 19, and Nelson Claure, 48, only had the shirts on their backs when a Nov. 17 fire tore through their W. 144th St. building.
The two were subleasing a room from a tenant in a rent-regulated three-bedroom apartment, but by the time firefighters put out the last lick of flames, they were searching for a place to stay.
Initially, Claure’s boss at the Harlem liquor store where he works let them sleep in the basement of his home. Then a friend who was going to Bolivia for the month allowed them to crash at her apartment.
But Claure and Peralta knew these acts of kindness were only a temporary solution.
The two wanted to find their own place to stay — so they could start replacing all the clothes and electronics they lost in the blaze and so Peralta could get settled again so he could go back to school.
Before the fire, Peralta had been attending Manhattan Community College. But he missed midterms immediately after the fire and decided not to go back for the rest of the semester.
“I was so depressed I couldn’t even go,” he said.
Luckily, word of their plight spread through the neighborhood.
A longtime customer at Claure’s store got wind, and she in turn told her friend Elsia Vasquez, the founder of local housing advocacy group PA’LANTE Harlem.
Vasquez reached out to her contact list of landlords to see if they had any openings.
She was able to find Peralta and Claure a one-bedroom apartment at an affordable housing high-rise on W. 117th St. that’s owned by L + M Development Partners.
“They helped me when I needed help in the worst moments,” Claure said. “I’m grateful for everything — my boss, PA’LANTE, everything.”
The new digs — which they moved into in January — are an upgrade from their old place.
Peralta and Claure paid $800 a month to rent a room from the tenant with the lease at the W. 144th St. building. Another person rented the third room in the apartment for $700.
Peralta and Claure later learned that the tenant on the lease was only paying $450 a month for the entire rent-regulated three-bedroom.
Now they have their own lease and the space to rebuild their lives.
“It’s really about giving this guy a new lease on life — a new beginning,” Vasquez said. “They lost everything. Now they are securely in a really nice building.”