Metro

Building is reborn as haven

A nasty foreclosure fight emptied out some Brooklyn apartments — but Sandy is filling them back up.

The sunny streets outside a Marine Park apartment complex were crowded recently with the cars and moving trucks of Rockaways residents forced from their homes by the storm.

The 144-unit complex at 1865 Burnett St. lost half its tenants during a four-year foreclosure suit, but a judge’s recent order allowed more than 50 families to find a safe haven this month.

“It gives me back some sort of a life,” said Joy Walsh, 76, who moved into a one-bedroom apartment with her bulldog, Belle, after fleeing her burning Belle Harbor home in a kayak. “I’ve never been homeless before, and it’s a terrible thing to say.”

Walsh obtained FEMA assistance and signed a month-to-month lease because she vows to move back to Belle Harbor once the neighborhood is rebuilt.

But for now, she is thankful to have found a temporary home.

“It’s very nice, very clean,” said the grandmother, who lost everything she owned, from her toothbrush to her jewelry, when her home burned.

The foreclosure battle began with a 2009 suit that claimed the apartment complex’s owner, Victor Dedvukaj, 37, had missed four monthly payments to GE Commercial Mortgage Corp.

A federal bankruptcy court ordered the foreclosure and handed the property to GECMC, but this summer, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Yvonne Lewis ruled GECMC failed to prove it owned the mortgage and had no standing to foreclose.

On Nov. 7, she ordered that the empty apartments could be rented.