It is to get our money and keep poor people in the apartments. Jiggetts does that. If Jiggetts is powerful throughout the city, it reigns supreme in the poverty-stricken Bronx. For a borough with only 15 percent of the city s population, the Bronx got nearly half of the Jiggetts money doled out in 1997, according to court statistics. Because so many Bronx tenants fit the Jiggetts profile, this relief has become the very lifeblood of the Bronx s dysfunctionally functional low-income housing system.
Landlords love it.
Tenants can t afford to lose it. She doesn t have the money to pay her debt, and like 93 percent of the tenants who appear in the court, Collazo doesn t even have a lawyer to cut a deal. Collazo is nervous, and rightfully so. She looks at her watch as she ponders the day ahead. When you come to Housing Court, you got to be prepared to be here all day, she says.