Rezoning Forecasts Concern NYCHA Residents in East Harlem
Christopher Smith, 26, has lived in an apartment in East Harlem’s Jefferson Houses for most of his life. Before that, his family lived in a rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper West Side. Rising rents pushed the Smiths out of the rapidly diversifying West Side neighborhood and into an NYCHA apartment in East Harlem.
Smith now fears that decades of neglect, gentrification, and the city’s planned rezoning of East Harlem will uproot his family once again.
“The neighborhood is changing. It’s more noticeable now that the rents are starting to rise. Harlem’s expensive now. That’s one way of changing,” he said. “The first time I recognized that my neighborhood was changing was when I looked out of my window and saw not only different faces, but also new construction across the way in Jefferson Park.”
Thomas Jefferson Park, located between East 111th and 112th streets on First Avenue, has long been a recreational staple for East Harlem residents like Smith. During the summer, the scene in Jefferson Park is one of family cookouts, a packed public pool, amateur soccer games, and loud music — all cultural signifiers of East Harlem as el barrio.
El Barrio, the colloquial name for East Harlem which means ‘neighborhood’ in Spanish, was a mostly Italian and Irish neighborhood in the early 20th century. Following waves of Puerto Rican and West Indian migration to the area in the 1940s, Spanish Harlem was born and so was a cultural and racial lineage current East Harlem residents want to preserve.
Fear of displacement has motivated East Harlem community groups like Community Voices Heard, El Barrio Unite, East Harlem Preservation, and others, to organize against the gentrification they believe will change the neighborhood’s identity.
Marina Ortiz of East Harlem Preservation says that it’s important to hold the city government accountable for not only the defunding of NYCHA buildings, but for the widespread displacement bound to impact lower-income residents in East Harlem.
Ortiz says, “[The city] needs to stop rezoning, or we will displace these politicians when they run in 2017.”
Like Ortiz and several other East Harlem residents, Smith worries that the structural changes the city has proposed in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s East Harlem rezoning plan, will further transform the neighborhood by displacing the lower-earning, predominately Hispanic and black residents that define el barrio.
In September, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, or LISC, hosted a series of forums on displacement and equitable development at the NYU Furman Center. One of the forum’s guest speakers was the Commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Vicki Been. When asked to define displacement, Been said, “The cause of displacement is when the housing supply does not meet the housing demand.”
Apparently, that phenomenon has hit East Harlem. The city estimates that East Harlem rezoning could displace about 500 residents from the neighborhood, but Smith believes rezoning will displace many more, including his family.
Smith has seen the rent in his Jefferson Houses apartment rise, a rent increase he suspects is directly correlated to gentrifying trends observable throughout East Harlem. Smith believes rent increases like those his family has dealt with, is motivated by the growing appeal of the neighborhood. He explains, “My brother had to move out. He went to college in Buffalo. When he came back and started working, his income boosted our rent. We couldn’t afford to have him living with us.”
Smith is currently self-employed, working as a technical assistant, and he worries that if he begins earning more money, his family’s rent will increase yet again, forcing them to leave East Harlem. Smith says the “fear of earning more” is a burden unique to NYCHA residents — a fear he doesn’t believe is is felt by the neighborhood’s newcomers.
“I’ve seen different types of people. Different faces — new faces. People that are not my skin tone. I don’t think they’re thinking or scared for this neighborhood like I am.”
Nearly 130,000 people live in East Harlem, and unlike other Manhattan neighborhoods like SoHo and Tribeca, the neighborhood’s population hasn’t increased much in the last two decades.
East Harlem is still a predominately Hispanic neighborhood, but demographic shifts have seen the Hispanic population decrease from 53 to 48 percent between 2000 and 2014. Within the same time span, East Harlem’s white population has increased five percent.
The rapid gentrification endemic of neighborhoods like Williamsburg and the Meatpacking District, hasn’t yet occurred in East Harlem. One possible reason: The high concentration of public housing in the neighborhood. Nearly 30 percent of East Harlem residents live in NYCHA apartments — residents who represent nine percent of the city’s entire NYCHA population.
The city’s rezoning proposal includes a promise to focus on housing preservation. Preservation that was emphasized in the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan — a series of scoping workshops led by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and local community organizations like Community Voices Heard, which is an East Harlem based organization that advocates for affordable housing across New York State.
The final East Harlem rezoning proposal, released in October, includes some mentions of preservation, but the visible focus appears to be in new commercial and residential development. Much of that new development is concentrated within NYCHA complexes — within the green spaces (walkways, playgrounds, parking lots, etc.) the city currently owns.
Housing and commercial development on these green spaces, part of an ongoing infill initiative spearheaded by the Bloomberg administration, will be leased to developers compelled to adhere to the city’s affordable housing plan. New residential development in zoning areas must include a certain percentage of affordable units, as required in the City Council’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing proposal. MIH aimed to quell local concerns that new residential development would only be available to higher-earning residents, or that mixed-use and private development would spur free-market housing in East Harlem.
Eugene Woody, a documentarian and youth organizer at Community Voices Heard, believes that NYCHA offers their residents few options. Speaking of a November public forum NYCHA hosted in Brooklyn, Woody says, “They’re talking about the infill initiative and all the good things that could come of it, but they’re not answering simple questions about people’s concerns right now. What are they going to do to improve the current living conditions in their buildings?”
Under the city’s rezoning plan for East Harlem, green spaces and thoroughfares within NYCHA complexes, including those within Jefferson Houses, would be zoned for commercial and mixed-income residential development. NextGen NYCHA — the Housing Authority’s 10-year plan to generate funding for the financially-strapped organization — promises that their plan to build on NYCHA green space is different from the contentious infill plan the Bloomberg administration proposed.
The professed difference between NextGen NYCHA and Bloomberg’s infill program: Mayor de Blasio’s plan includes more affordable housing development, and some of the project’s revenue will go to improving living conditions in existing NYCHA buildings. For the concerned residents Woody confronted in Brooklyn, NextGen’s green space development plan may be one of the sole funding options for NYCHA’s disinvested properties.
Green space development projects are already underway in East Harlem, with at lease one having been completed in 2015: DREAM Charter School on 104th Street and Second Avenue. Above DREAM Charter sits an 11-story housing complex, Yomo Toro Apartments — a housing development purported to be 100 percent affordable, with all 80 apartments units going to low to middle-income residents.
DREAM’s school and apartment complex was built on what was the parking lot of NYCHA’s Washington Houses, and 50 percent of the charter school’s enrollment seats were made available to children living in Washington Houses. Priority enrollment was also offered to children living in Yomo Toro.
Aldida Martinez, 29, a resident of Yomo Toro Apartments, believes NYCHA facilitating new housing growth is a good thing. Martinez says, “[The apartments] are truly affordable. There was some concern in the beginning — the cameras weren’t working like they’re supposed to. There was a rumor about the super stealing, theft in the building — But, overall it’s been great. Everyone really likes it here, and can finally afford a nice place.”
Monthly rents for studio to three-bedroom apartments in Yomo Toro range between $421 and $1,206.
Martinez says she hasn’t felt any neighborhood tension since moving into Yomo Toro, adding that the DREAM project is a good thing for nearby Washington Houses residents. “The walkways are cleaner now, and the lights are always on. There’s added security because of the school, and it just looks better now. I haven’t heard any complaints,” Martinez said.
No complaints, as Martinez claims, but fears about mysterious development projects, evictions following arrests, smoking bans, and other theories on the ways in which NYCHA may displace current residents are plaguing communities like East Harlem, where new construction generally aligns with perceived gentrification.
In July, a rumor spread through social media claiming that Polo Grounds Houses, Alexander Hamilton Houses, and Harlem River Houses — NYCHA complexes all located in Harlem — were to be demolished with luxury housing built in their place. The rumor stemmed from a blog post by Jeff Rubenstein, a Harlem resident, which was shared on Facebook over 10,000 times, prompting NYCHA to respond that the claim was untrue. The proliferation of the rumor reflects the sense of distrust that several Harlem residents feel towards NYCHA authorities.
Smith says it’s easy to believe the demolition rumors, adding that he thinks the city is purposely failing the current crop of East Harlem residents, in favor of profitable new development.
“I would say this is more neglect. I’m a child of this neighborhood. I’ve lived here for 24 years. The only assumption I can make is that this is neglect, and it’s personal.”
The personal quality of the neglect Smith perceives is what drives his commitment to preserving the neighborhood he grew up in. Weary of the current rezoning proposal for East Harlem, Smith believes that the city should redirect their efforts into ensuring the livelihood and perpetuity of the neighborhood’s longtime residents.
“I see this new building across from where I live, it’s not in-house, it’s not infill, but it used to be an auto-parts place, where I saw people I know come in and out. Now, you see only one person going into these new buildings. There’s no unity here.”
New Harlem World covers stories related, but not limited to displacement, gentrification, and social unrest in Upper Manhattan and the South Bronx. You can follow Martika Ornella on Twitter @martikaornella, or email her at martika.wilson@journalism.cuny.edu.
