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A FEW months after the Republicans took control in Washington in 2001, Keith Boykin, a writer and former aide to President Clinton, decided to pull up stakes in the capital and begin a new life in Harlem, in search of affordable rent and connections to his African-American roots.

He found a charming one-bedroom floor-through on the second floor of a narrow 15-foot-wide brownstone on West 131st Street, just off Fifth Avenue, that was only $1,000 a month, with a living room facing the street, a bedroom in the back and room for a tiny but neat kitchen in between.

At first, everything seemed fine. He signed a one-year lease with the building’s managers, Blanchard & Markus, and in June 2001, he moved in and painted the apartment in shades of ocher and brown. A helpful handyman, Clarence Wade, lived downstairs and took care of the building.

But four months later, the illusion of normality was shattered when the hallway lights were shut down because neither the mysterious owner, a fraudulent offshoot of a defunct California church, nor the managers had paid the electric bill. Power was restored, but it happened again and again.

That was just the beginning of four frustrating years of living in an apartment that was plunged into foreclosure and then taken over by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His building was caught up in a notorious mortgage scandal in which shady mortgage brokers, engineers and appraisers used phony churches and other not-for-profit groups to buy more than 500 deteriorated brownstones in long-troubled neighborhoods at inflated prices. They got federally guaranteed mortgages to buy and rehabilitate them, and then walked way with the money.

But five years after the scandal first came to light, it continues to tear at the fabric of life in Harlem and in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick in Brooklyn. Many tenants continue to live in these buildings and wait for an ambitious but slow government plan to rehabilitate them, while their neighbors fume over the presence of such run-down buildings in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods.

Through years of court hearings and bureaucratic delay, many tenants have lived in a state of uncertainty, surviving with little or no services. Some never paid rent but were forced instead to collect money to pay for heating oil and utilities and take out the trash themselves. At the same time, a variety of management companies, some with no clear connection to the buildings, others hired and replaced by banks or by HUD, sought to collect rent and sometimes cobble together services in broken-down buildings.

Mr. Boykin, who edited the college newspaper at Dartmouth and graduated from Harvard Law School, is hardly typical of the low-income tenants, some living in single rooms, who occupied most of the brownstones caught in the scandal. A special assistant to the president who worked in the White House press office in the early years of the Clinton administration, he was once considered a prime suspect as the anonymous author of "Primary Colors," an unflattering portrait of a presidential campaign (written, it turned out, by Joe Klein).

But his story shows both the desperate lengths New Yorkers will go through to keep a good deal, and the lasting damage that abusive housing practices can have on the lives of individuals and the stability of a neighborhood, despite significant efforts by city and federal housing agencies to begin to undo the damage.

That is not to say that, for some tenants, the scandal did not have both good and bad sides. On one hand, Mr. Boykin (and his neighbors) have paid little or no rent for years, because there seemed to be no one to pay it to, and no penalty for not paying. It was a subsidy as valuable to him as a grant, helping him to make ends meet while he researched his new book, "Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America," published in February by Carroll & Graf.

On the other hand, last February, an electrician, called in to clean up wiring in the building, disconnected the power to his apartment, which remained dark for four months. It went on again recently only after a reporter called Consolidated Edison for comment; the utility had previously turned aside Mr. Boykin’s requests for help.

When the power first went off, Mr. Boykin had been traveling on a publicity tour for his book or staying with a close friend. But with his friend’s lease about to expire, he was increasingly desperate to get back to his home.

"If you can imagine a building where crook after crook came in claiming to own the building and they didn’t and then HUD comes in as your savior and they do this, you would be very disappointed too," he said.

Before power was restored, he was caught in a Catch-22. C.on Edis.on would install a new meter only if an electrician hired by the building owner certified that the wiring met standards. HUD would not call an electrician unless Mr. Boykin paid more than $5,000 in back rent, including payments for the period in which he had no electricity. It insisted he sign a month-to-month lease, which he worried would give it the right to evict him as soon as he paid the back rent.

And when he went to Housing Court, in a case that is still pending, lawyers for HUD argued that he had no right to sue the federal government in a state court. But a few days later, it sent him an eviction notice, citing the provisions of state housing law.

Joseph Petta, a spokesman for Consolidated Edison, would not discuss Mr. Boykin’s account, but he confirmed that getting the power turned back on was the responsibility of the building owner, in this case HUD. "The owner of the building needs to get an electrician to come in," he said.

Adam Glantz, a spokesman for HUD, said that Mr. Boykin was one of many problem tenants who have to face the possibility of eviction for refusing to pay rent at properties taken over by the federal government. "He is basically considered a noncooperative tenant," Mr. Glantz said. "He paid no rent or electric bill for four years."

When the scandal began to unravel, the building, along with about 50 others, was taken over by a group with a connection to a trustee of St. Stephen’s Baptist Church, a defunct church that had obtained what investigators said were illegal HUD mortgages.

There were Lew Markus and his firm, Blanchard & Markus, which ran the buildings, until it was removed by the courts in foreclosure proceedings, and tried to collect rent, and Burton N. Pugach, a 78-year-old former lawyer, who tried to delay the foreclosures, and to this day insists the church trustees were "dupes" who were tricked by other shady characters.

Mr. Pugach was disbarred in the 1960’s after hiring three men to throw lye in the face of his girlfriend (whom he married after serving a 14-year prison term). And Mr. Markus was convicted and served time in federal prison last year in connection with an unrelated mortgage fraud in New Jersey.

Mr. Markus said they were brought in by a church trustee, Edward McDonald, who got in touch when he was facing potential criminal charges. In exchange for helping him defend himself, they said, they got to run the buildings and keep the proceeds of any sales to cover their costs.

Together, Mr. Markus and Mr. Pugach, who describes himself as a paralegal, carried out a relentless campaign to stop foreclosures at the buildings, hoping to sell them at a high enough price to make a profit.

By fighting the foreclosures on behalf of St. Stephen’s, they hoped to undermine the government’s claim that the church’s mortgages were fraudulent. Charges against Mr. McDonald were later dropped, while three figures in the scandal were sentenced to prison. (Investigators say some prosecutions were undermined when key documents were destroyed in HUD offices at the World Trade Center.)

While other groups of owners dropped out as soon as the scandal was uncovered, Mr. Pugach went from court to court trying to stop or at least delay the St. Stephen’s foreclosures. When Blanchard & Markus was removed as manager by the courts, it sued to be reinstated, and Mr. Boykin has a file of letters from a variety of management companies that claimed to manage the building and sought rent payments.

So far, Mr. Markus and Mr. Pugach have been able to sell 13 buildings, for a profit, after paying off the mortgages and foreclosure fees, Mr. Markus said. Mr. Pugach said the sales were made with the cooperation of the original church trustees. While they made some money, "it did not make us rich," Mr. Markus said.

Asked why the management company did not provide more services in the buildings, Mr. Markus said, "In a lot of these buildings, there was no one paying rent."

One of the more active tenants in Mr. Boykin’s building was the handyman, Mr. Wade, who took the lead in organizing tenants to collect money to pay the hallway electric bills when power to the common areas was shut down, now and again, for nonpayment.

But one day, Mr. Wade disappeared. Mr. Boykin later learned that he had been arrested and convicted of molesting neighborhood children in his apartment. Mr. Wade was sentenced to 61 years in prison after several children testified against him at his sentencing hearing. It turned out that Mr. Wade, like Mr. Boykin, had moved to New York from Washington - in Mr. Wade’s case after he had served seven years in prison for molesting children there.

The brownstone on West 131st Street, like many buildings caught up in the scandal, had been in trouble before. In 1977, at a time when the city was in a deep economic decline, a bank foreclosed on the property and turned it over to the federal government. Four years later, HUD sold it for $10,000 to Milton Robbins, an aircraft mechanic, who in March 1999 sold it for $150,000. It was resold the same day for $370,000 to the St. Stephen’s Community Development Corporation, which obtained a $369,000 mortgage guaranteed by HUD. By flipping the property and working with shady appraisers, the conspirators were able to obtain bigger mortgages, law enforcement officials said. By the following year, foreclosure proceedings had begun against the building.

Mr. Boykin chose the neighborhood, and his block, in part because of its central role in African-American culture. Next door was the home of Philip A. Payton Jr., a black real estate broker who has been depicted as "the father of Harlem."

After a foreclosure sale last September, the building was turned over to HUD, which had guaranteed the mortgage to buy and rehabilitate the property. Nevertheless, Mr. Boykin said he was completely ignored by HUD and the managing agents it brought in for months, until he complained about the power shutdown.

They then offered him a lease but had no idea how much rent he paid or that he had once agreed to pay $1,000 a month. "I asked the other tenants how much they were paying, and they said $650, so I said $650 and they said yes," he said.

But they wanted back rent, too. The stalemate continued until late last month, when C.on Edis.on decided to send its own inspector to look at the wiring, after a reporter called to ask about the issue. A meter was installed and the power turned back on in late June, and Mr. Boykin began paying rent but has not yet signed a lease.

Both sides are looking to settle. Mr. Boykin worries about being forced out, but still holds out slim hopes that he and his neighbors could benefit from the ambitious but much-delayed plans worked out by HUD and the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development to rebuild the scandal houses and preserve them as affordable housing. Some of the scandal houses - not all of them in Harlem - have already been painstakingly rehabilitated.

On Halsey Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Alfred Faber rented a room 30 years ago in a rooming house, then got two rooms and finally an entire floor. When the building became caught up in the scandal, he collected money from other tenants to buy heating oil and pay the electric bill.

Mr. Faber, who works in the garment industry, has signed a contract to buy the four-story building for $410,000. It has been renovated by the Pratt Area Community Council, which preserved its huge mirrored fireplaces, and has been appraised at more than $900,000.

"I had to fight for it," Mr. Faber said. "I had been there too long and I wasn’t going to let them deny me the right to purchase."

In all, Mr. Glantz of HUD said that several dozen houses have been completely renovated, while nearly 191 others have been turned over to developers. Another 220, including Mr. Boykin’s building, are now owned by HUD, awaiting transfer to developers.

Mr. Boykin has been examining city home-ownership programs and would love to see his building converted into a limited-income co-op, or find a way to buy it himself. But Mr. Glantz said his building is scheduled to be rehabilitated by a private developer, who would offer below market rents, and who, despite Mr. Boykin’s fears, would be required to protect the current tenants.

Mr. Boykin originally went to Harlem to research a book about the perils of gentrification. But after he moved in and lived in the neighborhood, he came to the conclusion that gentrification had some pluses - for example, bringing banks, groceries and services to a neighborhood. Now he finds himself making inquiries about buying other buildings on his block, as newcomers have done. "I realized," he said, "it was a lot more complicated than I had thought."

Source: NY Times