As he walks his two boys to Crotona Park each day, Leroy David passes through a neighborhood dotted with debris that never made it to the garbage barge. Then he gets to Charlotte Street.
Trash and litter disappear at the edge of the nine-year-old Charlotte Gardens development. The suburban-style subdivision of 89 split-level single-family homes, clad in aluminum siding, each with a spacious yard, manicured lawn and picket fence, have made Charlotte Street an address to aspire to. Plastic pink flamingos and ceramic gray squirrels are optional.
"Some people say this is like an oasis within a desert," said Raymond Gonzalez, a Charlotte Street resident since 1986. "Developers didn't think people would buy houses in the Bronx."
Despite its success, the rest of the borough is not following Charlotte Gardens' example. Other developers have shunned the single-family style, mostly because there's no space left for detached dwellings with large yards, explained John Dudley, district manager for Community Board 3.
"Open land area eligible for new home construction is just about exhausted," he said, adding that there isn't much existing housing stock left to be redeveloped either. "Now we're going to focus on commercial and economic revitalization of the area."
There's more emphasis on increasing the population density, said Ralph Porter, executive director of the MBD Community Housing Development Corp., a group instrumental in completing Charlotte Gardens. "There's a wide gap between the number of residents who now live on that piece of property versus what was once there," he said. Elsewhere in the borough, developers champion rowhouses and attached two- and three-family homes because they shelter more people per acre.
In Charlotte Gardens, Gonzalez said, homeowners have a strong sense of community pride.
"When you're paying off a mortgage," said Dudley, "you want to see to it that not only the house but the immediate environs stay up to par. Homeowner associations tend to be a bit more active" than tenant groups, he said.
Homeowner associations have also contributed to the significant decline in crime, Dudley said. Drugs, prostitution, gangs and illegal dumping are major concerns but not major problems for the neighbors, he added.
"The majority of people think there's a lot of crime but there's really not that much," said Gonzalez.
An unusual problem, said one lifelong resident, are the hordes of tourists who flock to Charlotte Street when the weather turns warm. Busloads come through to see firsthand the evidence of the South Bronx's revival.
"They're snapping pictures like we're in a zoo!" said the resident, who refused to identify herself. "I wish those people would look at us as human beings just trying to survive."
"I can see how someone would feel that way, but I don't think that it's really that much of a problem," said Gonzalez, pointing toward his back yard. "We can always go back there."