There were things Ricardo Santiago would have rather been doing last Saturday afternoon—like spending some scarce free time with his wife shopping for a baby stroller for their two-year-old daughter. Or catching up on his sleep, since his late-night work schedule as a security guard at a Manhattan office building and daytime child care responsibilities permit him only three hours of shut-eye a day.

But Santiago, an articulate 32-year-old father of three who has lived on the same Park Avenue block in the Bronx his whole life, had a more pressing responsibility—to get his apartment back into livable shape, especially for his son, whose asthma is exacerbated by the lack of heat in the apartment.

So, Santiago and about 40 other residents organized by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, boarded two yellow school buses on the Grand Concourse for the 30-minute ride to the Westchester village of Newcastle for an unannounced visit to their landlord, Frank Palazzolo.

Each had a litany of complaints about the conditions in their building and all the tenants said the trouble started when Palazzolo and his agents, who control more than 60 buildings in the Bronx, bought many of the buildings five or six years ago. Santiago has had holes and leaks in his bathroom ceiling since July. The lock doesn’t work on the lobby door and the intercom is out of service. The landlord never hires a contractor and expects one super to do repairs in all four buildings in the complex, Santiago said.

Joseph Rampersad, a driver for New York Bus Service, who has lived at 2710 Bainbridge Ave., another Palazzolo building, in North Fordham since 1976, had similar complaints. His ceilings are collapsing, all his faucets are leaking, and the soap water from washing machines in other apartments backs up into his kitchen sink and overflows.

Julio Cruz, who works at a Kawasaki train manufacturing plant in Yonkers, also lives in the Park Avenue complex. He has many of the same problems and said there is no lighting on the exterior of his building.

“The old landlord sold the building to these slumlords,” Cruz said. “It’s been hell for us.” He added that prior to the sale of the complex, his building was clean and well taken care of. “Things would be fixed right away,” he said.

Others had tangled with Palazzolo and his associates before. Marilyn Finchum, a resident of 15-19 West Mosholu Parkway North, took CPR Management, which is affiliated with Palazzolo, to court and won repairs.

“I’m here in a supportive role, as a tenant who has been through what they’re going through,” Finchum said. Asked about the tactic of demonstrating at the landlord’s house, Finchum said, “We’ve asked to speak to him in his place of business and he’s refused. This is a way to make him aware that people are dissatisfied and we want action.” (The Norwood News could not reach Palazzolo by press time.)

Palazzolo is under intense city scrutiny for the conditions in his buildings, and not just from tenants. The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development is preparing “package litigation” against him, so that he can be taken to court for the violations in all of his problem buildings. And the city’s Law Department has filed a civil racketeering suit against Palazzolo’s companies and others involved in a scam to steal Jiggetts funds (emergency money for poor tenants in danger of eviction) from the city. One of Palazzolo’s buildings, now in the hands of a nonprofit administrator, is 3569 DeKalb Ave., where Jashawn Parker died in August in an electrical fire. In December, the Norwood News reported that 57 Palazzolo buildings had racked up a total of 16,047 housing code violations.

Up in front of the gate of Palazzolo’s palatial home at 7 Kingdom Ridge Road, the Bronx protesters marched in a circle with signs chanting “No Service, No Rent!” and “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!” A policeman in a patrol car quickly arrived on the scene to monitor the protest, but let the Bronx residents continue with a warning not to violate the village’s noise ordinance. After boarding the buses about 30 minutes later, the tenants’ next stop was a nearby strip mall to distribute leaflets that explained their beef with Palazzolo.

Residents vowed to keep the pressure on Palazzolo and also meet with officials of the bank that holds mortgages on his buildings.