Zxavier Simpson moved from Harlem in 2016 into 2985 Webster Ave., one of two buildings in a complex dubbed “Bedford Park Manor.” Less than two years later, he’s fed up with the flooding, broken elevators, loose wires, and squatters that plague his building. Simpson wants more effort from his landlords, but he says they have been nonresponsive and unhelpful.

“No one ever answers the calls,” Simpson said. “The maintenance [workers] come in and take the garbage out. They don’t mop. They don’t clean… It’s like we’re just here and they’re just collecting money.”

Shoddy living conditions and uncommunicative landlords is hardly abnormal for some Bronx apartment buildings, dilapidated by neglect and time. But Bedford Park Manor opened just three years ago and is run by The Stagg Group, an omnipresent construction and realty firm with over 150 properties in the Bronx alone. The Bedford Park Manor properties were built with partial funding from the state’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

Community stakeholders have their own concerns with The Stagg Group, who have become increasingly active in Bedford Park and Norwood. The firm is set to open “Norwood Gardens” on East 203rd Street and Webster Avenue.

When Mark Stagg, CEO of the Stagg Group, called the Norwood News to comment on this story, he was at a construction site at 150 Van Cortlandt Ave., E., a mile away from Bedford Park Manor. “This isn’t a typical Bronx landlord story,” Stagg said. “There’s no lead paint… We’re good. We show up. We’re there.”

On a tour of the 2985 and 2987 Webster Ave. properties, Simpson showed reporters from the Norwood News signs of water damage in hallways, evidence of squatters in the basement, and examples of low-quality repairs to broken appliances and fixtures in apartments. While Stagg concedes his company needs to “improve the lines of communication” between management and tenants, he argues that many of the issues are the result of tenant neglect, not landlord negligence.

“People are people and some people are disruptive and some aren’t,” Stagg said. “Any New York City building is going to have some tenants who are quieter than others.” Stagg promised that a new, online portal called Yardi would be launched within the next week to handle tenant complaints.

Security is a major concern for Simpson and others. Last winter, Simpson said that squatters frequently inhabited the building, breaking into apartments and living in the basement. In a letter to the Norwood News, Five Star Management – the in-house realty group that manages all Stagg Group properties – wrote that they are aware of and have worked hard to combat the problem of squatters and homeless in the building.

“We have made numerous attempts to keep the squatters and homeless out of the building and the basement,” senior vice president of management Cristanir Arroyo wrote. “We have changed all entry front locks on the front entry to magnetic/manual mechanisms to prevent illegal entry.”

Shannon Terrell lives at 2985 Webster Ave. with two of her children, an 11-month-old and a three-year-old, and is a domestic violence survivor. For her, security is incredibly important, which is why the shortcomings of the building are frustrating and jarring. Instead of window guards, maintenance workers screwed her windows into the frame with a small chain, limiting circulation and doing little to secure the window. “They’re supposed to have window guards and all of them were broken when I got here,” Terrell said. “I kept asking them to fix it and they didn’t.”

Terrell said that the locks on apartment doors are easily breached and that many tenants believe thieves enter apartments and take their belongings. Arroyo said the Stagg Group only received one report of theft and they worked with the police to resolve the matter.

When the Norwood News visited the buildings, in many dimly lit hallways and stairwells, loose wires hung out of the ceiling where security cameras used to be. Stagg said the missing cameras were a problem, but were the result of tenant vandalism and not removed by management. “We’ll certainly address the camera issue,” Stagg said. “One guy clipped eight to 10 cameras in a night.”

Simpson disputes that claim. He showed the Norwood News a photo of a pile of cameras and accessories in the basement of 2985 Webster Ave. in December of 2016.

In an email exchange around that same time, another tenant requested security camera footage from The Stagg Group to use to press charges against a woman who robbed the tenant. Despite an immediate promise to produce the footage, a Stagg Group employee dragged his feet for two months before informing the tenant that the cameras only record a month at a time and that the cameras were not recording at the time of the incident.

Despite their differences, both the tenants and The Stagg Group share a similar solution.

“Tenants would work with them if they were willing to work with us,” Simpson said. He organized a tenant meeting this summer and invited The Stagg Group. No one showed.

Now, Stagg told the Norwood News he plans on hosting a meeting with residents of Bedford Park Manor to hear their concerns. As someone heavily invested in the community financially, Stagg wants to make sure his tenants know their landlord is invested in their well-being, too. “We’re not hit and run,” Stagg said. “We’re here for the long haul.”

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.