New York City’s decades-long housing crisis continues, and it’s hitting the northwest Bronx the hardest.

Fordham and Bedford Park were among the neighborhoods with the most evictions in the city, according to a report released by the office of City Council Speaker and interim Public Advocate Corey Johnson. From January 2017 through 2019, the Bronx led in evictions, in one eviction for every 79 units. That’s more than twice as much as in the next-most affected borough, Brooklyn, which saw one eviction in every 180 units.

The 10458 and 10468 zip codes, which encompass Bedford Park, Fordham and other neighborhoods, hovered around an especially high eviction rate of 4%–three times even the average for the borough. There were 986 evictions in the 10468 zip code and 1,214 in the 10458 zip code.

“[Bedford Park] has some of the highest levels of preferential rent in the city,” meaning rent control and rent stabilization, explains Sally Dunford, the executive director of the Beford Park-based tenant advocacy group West Bronx Housing. When the lease on a unit is up, Dunford says, landlords can raise the preferential rent to the legal rent, which can be an increase of several hundred dollars. In a low-income neighborhood, an increase of that amount prices tenants out.

Tenants can fight these rent increases, and the recent Universal Access law–which entitles any tenant facing eviction to free representation in housing court–has helped 21,955 New Yorkers facing eviction to keep their home, according to the report. But lack of awareness about these rights has stood in the way, as have other factors.

Some tenants may leave their apartments rather than mount a legal challenge, fearing they might end up on what the New York state Bar Association and others have called a tenant blacklist, simply for having gone to housing court.

Additionally, sometimes it is completely legal for landlords to raise the rent by a few hundred dollars through what is called a Major Capital Improvement, considered a significant renovation such as installing an elevator. Landlords can tack on a fraction of the renovation cost to the rent in perpetuity, for as long as the building is standing.

But why are these rent increases, whatever the reason, happening now? Bronx landlords who are evicting aggressively are eyeing a new market, Dunford says.

“People are being priced out of other areas and coming here,” Dunford says. “They’re a little higher on the income scale, and they can pay that higher rent.”

The housing stock in Bedford Park has increased due to the recent uptick in high-rise development, but that alone will not necessarily keep rents down across the neighborhood.

“Those tall buildings are filling up,” Dunford says, “but will it be sustainable?”