Tony Carter remembers the New York City apartments of his youth: the cramped spaces, the flights of stairs he had to walk up, the rooms that were always too hot or too cold.

Now in his 60s, Carter’s current apartment has its own thermostat and air conditioner. He was the first tenant to move into Serviam Gardens, an affordable housing complex for seniors that officially opened May 3 in Bedford Park, on the campus of the Academy of Mount St. Ursula.

The stunning complex was designed to meet green building standards and boasts luxury amenities, including a movie theatre-style entertainment room, rooftop garden, fitness room and gym, library and a game room with billiards and ping-pong tables.

“No one, including myself, actually dreamed of having this quality of living and this quality of housing at this stage of our lives,” Carter said. “You wake up in the morning with a smile on your face. You don’t have to lock your doors.”

The Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, a local affordable housing developer, spearheaded the $68 million project, leasing the property surrounding an unused former convent from the Ursuline Sisters, a group of nuns who run Mount St. Ursula, a historic all-girls high school on Bedford Park Boulevard.

John Reilly, the executive director at Fordham Bedford, said the Sisters contacted him several years ago as they were exploring possible uses for vacant parts of their campus.“They thought senior housing met most closely with their vision,” he said. “It’s special for us, because it’s at the heart of our community, and because we feel it meets a need that’s dramatically under-met.”

The group received 5,000 applications for its 243 available units, Reilly said. The 296 tenants who now call the building home were selected via a lottery.

“The demand was certainly there,” Reilly said.

Affordable housing investment group Enterprise Community Partners helped finance the project, along with the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and its Housing Development Corporation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Chase Bank.

The complex is the first city-subsidized affordable housing development that meets certain “green” building criteria required by HPD for new construction projects, to minimize waste and maximize energy efficiency and water conservation. Tanks collect rain to water plants on the rooftop garden, which offers views of the nearby Botanical Garden, Fordham University and a Manhattan skyline off in the distance.

The three buildings that make up the development are all connected, so residents can visit their neighbors in bad weather without having to step outside. An “Intergenerational Garden” straddles the space between the complex and the high school next door, where students often stop by after class to help out.
“The girls love coming over here,” said Sister Mary Alice Giordano, a teacher at Mount St. Ursula.

“One of them said to me the other day, ‘I love learning about the old days from someone who actually lived through it.’”

Carmen and Carlos DeJesus, a still-beaming couple who just celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary in their new home, are among the building’s tenants. They had lived in the Bronx for most of their lives, they said, but fell on hard times last year and were forced to move in with a relative in Pennsylvania.

That was before they heard about Serviam Gardens. Carmen, a former art teacher, now leads a craft class for the other tenants once a week.
“For us, this has really been the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know what ‘home’ really means. But it’s everything.”

Ed. Note: For a photo slideshow of Serviam Gardens, click here.