Assemblyman Victor Pichardo has earmarked $3 million in capital funds for roof repairs at the Bailey Houses, a troubled NYCHA building in Kingsbridge. The news is the latest in a years-long fight by the building’s residents council to better conditions as a leaky roof continues to destroy property and harm residents.

“The roof is just absolutely in complete disrepair,” Pichardo, flanked by residents, said at a news conference on Dec. 4. “This isn’t something that’s abstract. People are living with this every day. If there is a leaky roof, it creates mold issues across the entire building.”

Pichardo said the water damage from the porous roof reaches down to the second floor of the 20-story building. And while the $3 million in state funding should help get the ball moving, the timetable for repairs is still unclear.

“I would be – how could I put this very lightly – I would be incredibly pissed if this takes a little bit more than a year,” Pichardo said. “I’m trying to, as soon as we get to January, to put a plan into action to get it done hopefully before the summer… so when the next cold season comes around, the folks here at Bailey Houses have a brand-new roof.”

The roof–offering a 360-degree view of the north Bronx, the Manhattan skyline and the New Jersey Palisades–currently sags and bubbles with water damage, crumbling in some places. Members of the Bailey Houses Residents Council said they hoped the new roof would include green space or solar panels.

For now, however, the tenants will just have to cross their fingers and hope the winter months leaves the roof relatively intact. Snow could exacerbate existing problems, as it did in November when the surprise snowstorm on Nov. 15 left the building without power for two days. Residents reported their fuse boxes were flooded by runoff from the snow.

“It was horrible,” Bailey Houses Residents Council president Tiesha Jones said. “It leaked all the way down to my apartment – I live on the 13th floor.”

While there have been some repairs to the building, including the roof, residents said the efforts have largely been ineffective.

“They patch up one side, it’ll stop, and then the other side is affected,” Jones said. “And then when they patch this side up, it goes back. It’s like Russian Roulette.”

With Pichardo’s $3 million allocation, residents are cautiously hopeful the repairs will happen, but they have enough experience with the beleaguered Housing Authority to feel skeptical as well. The Norwood News reported on the water damage and NYCHA’s mishandling of the situation back in April.

Jones felt positive about the new funding but said she would believe roof repairs are coming when she sees it.

“We don’t want to focus on negatives right now; we want to focus on the positives, on NYCHA’s strengths. And they have accepted some accountability,” Jones said. “And with this funding, I know NYCHA will move forward as fast as possible to get the roof fixed so that these residents can tackle their health issues.”

A Bronx jury awarded Jones $57 million in January after agreeing that NYCHA failed to inspect Jones’ apartment at Fort Independence Houses – the sister property just around the corner from Bailey Houses – for lead. Jones’ toddler was found to have lead levels 10 times the normal rate, leaving her developmentally delayed. Jones herself dealt with depression. Now, Jones wants to help her new neighbors improve the health conditions of the Bailey Houses.

“We have experienced asthma, mold and some mental illness coming home to the conditions that are arising here,” Jones said. An estimated 68 percent of the nearly 1000 residents in the Bailey Houses suffer from asthma, according to a yet-to-be-published joint survey by St. Barnabas Hospital and the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC).

“If you have to take days off from getting sick or your child getting sick… that could cause you to lose your job, which creates this cycle of poverty,” Pichardo said. “People might say we’re fixing the roof, we’re fixing a building, but what we’re trying to do is repair a lot of lives here and create more healthy conditions.”

Leah James, lead organizer for NWBCCC’s economic development team, said that the survey was part of the Bronx Healthy Buildings Program, an initiative linked to the Bronx Partners for Healthy Communities. The program’s goals include promoting community health “by addressing upstream causes of asthma-related emergency department visits and hospitalizations,” according to a presentation NWBCCC submitted to the New York State Department of Health in September.

As they toured the building, James and the Healthy Buildings team handed out hypoallergenic pillow cases, bedsheets, asthma machines and other materials to help combat asthma in the building. Residents were also taught to avoid asthma triggers while learning where they can go to get help should they spot the warning signs of asthma.

“We’re working as a collective and as a community to make an example to show that this can be done and have hope,” James said.

The health issues represent the string of systemic issues continuing throughout NYCHA’s network of 574 buildings.

On Dec. 3, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. called NYCHA the city’s worst landlord after touring the Patterson Houses, where tenants in the South Bronx NYCHA complex were without water over the weekend. Diaz Jr. called Mayor Bill de Blasio’s inability to improve NYCHA’s bureaucratic and physical infrastructure “the height of progressive hypocrisy.”