New York City Housing Immigration

Bronx Fire Relief Funds Finally Reach Families, Four Years After Catastrophic Blaze

After a New York Focus investigation, a Bronx charity distributed nearly $400,000 to survivors of a deadly 2022 fire.

Sam Mellins · May 15, 2026

Close-up photo of a man from behind wearing a suit, kufi, and mask. In the background, many other people attending a funeral.

Mourners gather at a funeral service for the victims of the Bronx fire at the Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx on Jan. 16, 2022. | Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office

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Nearly $400,000 in relief funds that a Bronx nonprofit raised after a catastrophic fire in 2022 have finally been distributed to the affected families, more than four years after the tragedy.

After the devastating fire killed 17 people in the Twin Parks apartment complex in January 2022, the Bronx Community Foundation raised over $400,000 to support the survivors, many of whom had been made homeless by the blaze.

Last year, New York Focus reported that almost all of that money was still sitting in the bank amid allegations of fiscal mismanagement at the nonprofit. In the three years after the fire, the foundation spent $56,000 on relief efforts, but more than $389,000 remained unspent.

That changed after New York Focus’s report, which led the foundation to work with Masjid Ar-Rahman, a local mosque, to distribute the money to the survivors.

In the year after the New York Focus report, the Bronx Community Foundation has “distributed the full amount of raised funds” to “victims and survivors of households impacted by the Twin Parks fires,” executive director LaToya Williams-Belfort told New York Focus. The money was spent on “direct financial assistance for the needs of the families,” Williams-Belfort said.

Split screen of two photos: On the left, Bronx residents as Eric Adams speaks to them following the 2022 fire. On the right, in black and white, a firefighter leans out of an empty window in the burned building of the Twin Parks apartment complex.

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The money “made a lot of difference” to those families, said Haji Dukuray, the secretary of Ar-Rahman’s charitable arm, who lost five family members in the fire. While he was initially frustrated to learn that the money hadn’t been distributed, “I got over that really quick, and just thought about the benefit the money will do for the people,” he said.

One family that was facing eviction used the money to pay their back rent. “They were able to pay a substantial amount, and that gave them some breathing room,” Dukuray said.

Dozens of eligible families who provided documentation of their needs were given no-strings-attached cash grants for things like rent, electric bills, and food, Dukuray added.

Until New York Focus’s report, the survivors weren’t aware that the foundation hadn’t distributed the money it had raised. After the findings were published, Salim Drammeh, president of the nonprofit Gambian Youth Organization, which worked closely with the survivors, told local television channel News 12 that he expected the Bronx Community Foundation to make sure the funds reached the impacted families. The fire decimated the Bronx’s small Gambian community, which is centered in the neighborhood where the blaze occurred.

A few months after New York Focus published the report, the foundation reached out to Drammeh and asked for his help distributing the money, he said. Over the rest of 2025, Drammeh and the foundation partnered with Ar-Rahman, a central institution of the Bronx Gambian community, to get the money to fire survivors.

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The foundation “wanted to partner up with an organization that was really close to the families, but also do their due diligence” to make sure that the correct families were getting the money, Drammeh said.

He spent months reaching out to the families, most of whom had relocated to an apartment building in the south Bronx managed by the same company that ran the Twin Parks complex. Drammeh helped them fill out an application that the foundation had created, indicating which needs they would put the money toward.

“It’s just the basic things we need to survive, but in this part of the Bronx, that’s what we struggle with,” he said.

The first grants went out last fall, and by February of this year, all of the money had been distributed, Drammeh said.

While he’s happy about that, he still wants to see accountability for the fire, which was caused by a defective space heater, while malfunctioning self-closing doors allowed fatal smoke to spread through the building.

“Someone was at fault here, and we’re tired of blaming the residents,” he said. “Every other month there’s a fire in the Bronx. How can we work on preventing that?”