UWS Church Raises Over $200,000 for 107th Street Fire Victims: ‘Everyone Lost Everything’

By Lily Seltz

By the time about 150 people gathered at Ascension Roman Catholic Church on Sunday afternoon for a Christmas concert, the church had raised over $208,000 to support residents made homeless by last Tuesday’s four-alarm fire at 201 West 107th Street.

That was nearly ten times the church’s initial goal of $22,000, or $1,000 for residents in each of the building’s 22 units.  

The money, distributed at Sunday’s gathering, will be a “real and tangible help as people begin this long, laborious work of rebuilding their lives,” said Reverend Daniel S. Kearney, pastor of  Ascension, which is just down the block at 221 West 107th Street. 

Factoring in the additional money that Ascension expects to raise between now and Christmas, Kearney was able to hand a $10,000 check to residents of each of the building’s units. 

That came after an hour-long musical program—including a Latin rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” for which the choir wore red foam noses. Kearney told the Rag that Ascension’s leadership chose to distribute the funds evenly among the units, regardless of the number or income of their occupants, because “I can’t sit and judge who needs what.”  

“Everybody lost everything,” he said. 

Like many New York City buildings, 201 West 107th Street draws tenants from a range of income levels and backgrounds. In the wake of Tuesday’s fire, the New York City Department of Buildings issued a vacate order for the entire building. The Red Cross offered residents who needed immediate accommodations a two-night stay in hotels outside of Manhattan, according to Bella, one of the tenants, who asked to be identified by her first name only. 

But since Thursday, residents have had to make other housing arrangements. Anne, a public high school teacher who lived in 201 West 107th Street for six years, is staying with family friends in the area. (She declined to provide her last name.) Bella is staying with friends who, like her and her two roommates, are students at Columbia University. Originally from Germany, she had been living in the building for a year and half when the fire began.

“I’m lucky enough; I’m a student,” Bella told the Rag. “I can go home. [But] this was home for most people.” 

“A lot of people in this building have nowhere to go,” she added. 

Kearney told the Rag that one trio of tenants from the same unit planned to return the money they received on Sunday to the church, so that it could be redistributed to neighbors in greater need. 

On Sunday, some residents recalled the moments when the fire forced them to leave their homes. Anne was in her apartment on Tuesday morning when she heard a smoke detector beeping in an adjacent unit. Her neighbor’s alarm often sounded when someone was cooking, so at first, she said, “I didn’t really think anything of it.” But when she saw black smoke curling under the front door, she woke her roommate and evacuated the building with only her backpack, wallet, and the clothes on her back. 

Anne told the Rag that what she needed most now was information. “I don’t know the condition of my apartment really at all,” she said. 

Alejandro Castro, a longtime resident and a member of the family that has owned the building since the 1980s, painted a bleak picture of the potential state of the residents’ possessions. “I don’t want to be negative, but it appears that everything has been lost,” he told the Rag, speaking in Spanish. 

Castro said someone was able to retrieve a suitcase of papers and a bag containing his medication from his apartment on the first day. But the papers were soaked through, and the pill bag—although it had been well-sealed, Castro said, and stored in a closed cabinet—was full of black water; the pills had turned the texture of sand.  

In addition to the physical loss, said Castro, people were losing a source of community. “The building was like a person. It offered so much shelter, so much love; it held us in its embrace,” he said.

Bella, the Columbia student, told the Rag that she’s gotten to know many of her neighbors for the first time in the days following the fire—standing outside the building as it burned, waiting for Red Cross assistance at the Ascension Church that same day, or via the many group chats that have sprung up for residents to share resources with each other. “In New York, people don’t really know their neighbors,” she said. “In the future, I would like to know my neighbors better.”

Ascension continues to solicit monetary donations and plans to distribute another round of checks in the coming days. The church is no longer encouraging donations of food or clothing.

Despite Tuesday’s tragedy, among the residents interviewed for this article, gratitude prevailed.

Castro saluted the firefighters who had urged him and other residents out of the building during the fire and praised the community’s generosity in the days to follow. Anne concurred. “I’m hopeful that everyone who really needs the support gets it,” she said. 

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