by Kenan Davis & Elizabeth R. Stark

Erin O’Connor spends her days battling despair by strapping a flashlight to her head and lugging debris down the charred stairs of her home on Sixth Street. She’s done the same thing almost every day since a fire ravaged the building two years ago. She said the Urban Homestead Assistance Board (UHAB), the owner of the building, has ignored it since the fire, and has done little to relocate tenants that the fire displaced.

O'Connor became a squatter more than 20 years ago, and in doing so became part of a community that sought to appropriate abandoned spaces and refurbish them. When O'Connor joined the squats, building residents pooled their expertise to make structural improvements to buildings, such as building staircases, installing electrical wiring and plumbing and throwing concerts for local bands or shows for local artists, many of whom lived as squatters.

In 2002, 11 former squats, including O'Connor's building, joined the UHAB, a nonprofit that helps low-income tenants become co-op owners, in a deal with the city because the residents feared eviction. UHAB bought the buildings from the city for $1 a piece and promised to renovate them and convert them to low-income co-ops. The nonprofit had 24 months to make needed repairs to the buildings, and the city Housing Preservation Department had the authority to extend this deadline, according to the agreement.

But now, more than five years after the city, the squatters and UHAB reached their landmark agreement, only two of the 11 buildings are poised to become co-ops, and a combined $5.5 million of mortgage debt has crippled at least nine of the buildings. As affordable housing disappears from the Lower East Side, the residents of these buildings, many of whom have grown older or raised children in the neighborhood, are feeling squeezed by skyrocketing property costs. Faced with the possibility of losing the homes they built with their own hands, many tenants question whether UHAB will carry through on the promise of leading them down the path to legitimacy.