This is part of a series about New Yorkers who have recently relocated to the Bronx. It’s called The New Bronx.
José-Ramon Perez-Lopez stood at the West 79th subway exit in Manhattan handing out invitations to busy commuters inviting them to a community meeting at the public library on Amsterdam Avenue. As the community liaison for Senator José M. Serrano, he arranges meet and greets as his weekly routine.
Perez-Lopez sees his current work with ordinary citizens and the needy as a continuation of his old life where he used to be, believe it or not, a monk.
In another world, the 49-year-old Puerto Rican native was a minister to the Catholic faithful for 23 years in Taizé ecumenical brotherhood in southern Burgundy, France. That was before “hanging up his monk’s robe” and joining the secular world. The Hunter College graduate found his calling in New York and now helps the city’s poor to navigate the system in finding housing, applying for food stamps and other benefits. He lives in East Morrisania, the Bronx and works from the senator’s district office on Park Avenue.
Perez-Lopez relies on public transportation for his job, organizing meetings in Serrano’s district that includes the Upper West Side. Six years ago, his first apartment in the city was a $1000-per-month rent-stabilized unit in a ‘50s building in Forest Hills, Queens that he shared with two other friends. “We even had a doorman,” he remembered fondly. Perez-Lopez only paid $350 for his share.
One of his roommates had inherited the apartment’s lease from his grandfather. But when the friend decided to move to Florida last year, Perez-Lopez found himself in search of a new home after six years. “Everything had become so expensive since I last looked for an apartment.” In one year alone, the rents had risen by 30 percent.
With a maximum budget of $1,000, he looked for housing in Queens for months. But every one bedroom he wanted to lay his eyes on demanded $1,500 per month.
That’s when he got lucky. A colleague at work had an uncle who was renting in the Bronx. Perez-Lopez was familiar with the borough through his work there, but had never thought of actually living there. Six months ago he moved to a one-bedroom apartment in a three-story townhouse on Hoe Avenue in East Morrisania. He pays $1,000 a month.
“People said it was not the best address, but it’s good enough for me and I intend to stay,” he said.
Perez-Lopez admits that Morrisania is no Forest Hills. There are fewer restaurants and amenities — save for his two favorites, a Mexican eatery and a Chinese takeaway, Chen’s Kitchen, right in front of St. John Chrysostom Church on East 167th. But he thinks with its proximity to Freeman Street station on the number 2 and 5 lines, and bus service to Washington Heights, his neighborhood more than makes up for what it lacks. He is just 25 minutes away from his work at Park Avenue, as well as Times Square and Grand Central.
Perez-Lopez lives on the second floor of the townhouse on Hoe Avenue. Upstairs is a father-son family, while downstairs is occupied by the landlord and his three-member family.
On his street, several projects called “halfway houses” offer housing to former drug users, people out of jail, or those in transition like battered women and the homeless. “There are security guards and social workers around all the time,” he said. His compassion when he speaks about the needy is remarkable.
Every Sunday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. a farmers market enlivens Hoe and Westchester avenues near his house. People who cultivate communal gardens nearby sell their produce. But by the time the market opens, Perez-Lopez has already done his morning prayers, and is on his way to his favorite church, St Francis Xavier on 16th Street between 5th and 6th in Manhattan. “I have always been coming to this church,” he said, “ever since I moved to America.”
The church has guided his life and guided him to his new home.