They should be prime local real estate — a line of 16 quaint bungalows in the Rockaways, right on the beach, decorated with sea air and sunshine.
Instead, like a growing number of abandoned and foreclosed properties around New York City, they are home to only squatters — eight Salvadorans who ripped away cheap plywood that sealed the doors and windows and set up camp.
The shacks are in bad shape, lacking water, heat and electricity. But the few that are habitable have been turned into adequate shelters, complete with front porches, buckets to collect rainwater, and small courtyard gardens seeded with jalapeno peppers and tomatoes.
“It’s nice and calm here,” said Roberto Escobar, a 53-year-old native of El Salvador who used to make his living as a day laborer until business dried up.
Unable to pay the $300 a month on his rented room, Escobar was out on the streets — until he heard from some construction buddies about the cluster of abandoned bungalows there for the taking. With no housing expenses to speak of, he and his countrymen live off redeeming recyclables.
Across the city, squatters like Escobar are becoming a familiar sight, as more tenants get evicted and foreclosed homes and abandoned construction sites provide ample vacancies for vagrants and vagabonds.
In Queens, where an average of 152 bank-enforced evictions of tenants happen every month, squatters have popped up in abandoned buildings and foreclosed homes.
They’re also seen in Brooklyn, where banks try to reclaim an average of 39 homes a month from tenants, in The Bronx, with 23 a month, and on Staten Island, with 21. Manhattan has had only one bank-enforced tenant eviction this year.
“As the economy deteriorates, people need a place to live, and they do target these boarded-up or foreclosed homes,” said Paul Luciano of Utopia Real Estate in Queens.
Along leafy, quiet 152nd Street in Jamaica, squatters illegally occupied a two-story house for almost three years — until the crew set fire to it.
“They have relatives somewhere in the area,” said a neighbor whose roof was damaged in the fire. “They knew the house was empty and moved in.”
Similar scenarios have played out in Brooklyn and in Harlem. Six complaints were made to the Department of Buildings on a West 127th Street property, but squatters stayed until a February 2008 blaze, which killed a woman.
Twenty blocks from the Salvadorans on the Rockaway shore, a former tenant now finds herself illegally occupying her foreclosed apartment.
“I’ve got no choice — I’ve got nowhere else to go,” said receptionist Yana Yusin, who admits she hasn’t paid her $1,500 rent in six months.
Yusin lives not far from “Karen,” another squatter, and Celeana Cuprill, who stopped paying rent on her house at 189 Beach 29th St. when it went into foreclosure.
The women are in the heart of what once was a working-class vacation resort. Developers threw up new houses, hoping to revitalize the beachfront community.
Now, of the 126 two- and three-family homes built in the neighborhood between 2004 and 2006, at least 76 percent have been foreclosed on or are currently in some stage of foreclosure, according to a custom analysis provided by PropertyShark.com.
The bungalows where Escobar and his friends live belong to VIP Development, which bought the property in 2005 for $800,000, intending to construct a row of seven three-family homes. The company took out a $1.3 million mortgage — and still owes $900,000 on it — but mothballed the project when zoning issues arose.
Now that the Salvadorans have taken over, Isaac Broyn, the vice president of VIP Development, hopes the neighborhood regrets its decision.
“I was going to build something gorgeous,” he said. “Maybe they’ll like the squatters better.”
Additional reporting by Ginger Adams Otis