Finding quiet time on a noisy day

While the J’Ouvert West Indian Day Parade rages through Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Labor Day, Pastor Robert Gahagen works in his quiet office just a few blocks away. Gahagen has been the Pastor and Headmaster of Epiphany Lutheran Church and School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn for 29 years. He says he loves working on Labor Day because, despite the distant sound of bass bumping, it’s a quiet day in the office for him to can get a lot done.

Aside from his pastoral duties, Gahagen works heavily with local advocacy groups like East Brooklyn Congregations to help his parishioners find affordable housing, crisis housing, senior living apartments, even legal representation for housing-related disputes.

He explains that the main problem his community faces right now is housing. “We’ve gone from being a poor community to being an excessively high-priced community that prices everybody who’s lived here out of it,” he says. “The children that grew up in this congregation can’t afford to live here unless they live with their parents, and eventually their parents have to move out because of the high prices of everything,”

According to a 2018 StreetEasy report, Crown Heights rental increases were among the highest in all of New York City, rising 39% between 2010 and 2018. “Gentrification has changed the very nature of it,” Gahagen says of the neighborhood.

Even the church has suffered from the rising cost of living. Gahagen explains that the congregation is tearing down its nearly 100-year old building due to the cost of insurance and utilities, which have more than doubled since he started. Epiphany is constructing a building directly across the street, which he says will be smaller and easier to maintain, yet capable of providing better services to its people. And the lot the current building stands on? That will be turned into affordable housing.

Though Gahagen says he works every year on Labor Day, he tries to go out to the parade 4 or 5 times throughout the day to take part in the fun. And maybe next year, he’ll be sitting pretty in his new office right across the street.