Will This Building Provide Affordable Housing In Harlem?

This building at the corner of Lenox Avenue and 116th Street in Harlem has been empty of tenants for years. Recently, scaffolding has been erected around it. So maybe (I hope) it will soon be turned into affordable housing, especially for longtime Harlem residents. We'll see. The one thing Harlem doesn't need is another luxury apartment building charging sky-high rents.

Blaming Long-Dead Architects For Creating Inaccessible Buildings

Alice L. Givan, an 80-year-old Brooklyn resident, wrote a letter-to-the-editor that was published in the New York Times (January 2, 2023) in response to an article on the paper's website about a 200-year-old Greenwich Village building that was demolished.

In her letter, Ms. Givan stated that she had "two points of view" on the matter. "I see beautiful, historic houses, and I feel dismay that one will be torn down." On the other hand, she "see[s] houses that are inaccessible" to the elderly and to "parents carrying children and groceries." 

She ends her letter by asking, "What were the architects who designed these houses thinking?"

Ms. Givan has made the mistake of projecting twenty-first century sensibilities, needs, and ways of doing things on to those who lived a century or more ago. When those "beautiful, historic houses" were built, the elderly more than likely lived with their family members who could assist them up and down the stairs and parents, particularly the well-to-do ones, could hire servants to handle the groceries and nannies to look after the children. Plus, there were deliverymen (presumably able-bodied) who brought the milk and butter, coal, blocks of ice, and other necessities to these residences.

Using The Word "Unhoused" Instead Of "Homeless" Removes Stigma And Prejudice

Listening to a newscast on WNYC-AM, a public radio station in New York, the announcer used the word "unhoused" in referring to those lacking a place to call home. It's a reasonable substitute for "homeless." The last syllable of that word ("less") carries with it judgment, stigma, shame. It makes people feel that they are less than others.Whereas "unhoused" has a more sympathetic feeling and sound to it.

The word "homeless" conjures up images of people who wound up that way because of some character flaw, whether true or not.

The ways people lose their shelter are various and not always their fault such as a fire, illness, unemployment, or an unscrupulous landlord.

By referring to those unlucky to be without a home as "unhoused" allows them to be treated with civility, respect, humaneness, and dignity.

When New York Rents Were Cheaper

It's hard to believe sometimes that at one time people in New York City paid, at least by today's standards, much more affordable rent. They weren't paying two-thousand or three-thousand-dollar rent to keep a roof over their heads.

In author biographies that I recently read, I learned, for example, that Shirley Jackson and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, in October of 1943, in Greenwich Village, were paying $75 a month for a second-floor apartment.

Howard Fast, his wife, and one-year-old daughter moved into a 13-room duplex apartment on Central Park West, where the rent was $154. (Imagine that!)

Allen Ginsberg paid one-fourth of his monthly income as a newspaper copy boy (which was $120) for an apartment on the Lower East Side that he shared with fellow scribe William Burroughs. His rent payment was $30.

Robert Gottlieb , the book and magazine editor, lived on the top floor of a brownstone on St. Mark's Place, in Greenwich Village, with his wife and young son. Their monthly rent was $96.

James Baldwin, when he lived on Horatio Street, also in Greenwich Village, according to his biographer David Leeming, "paid $100 a month for three large rooms."

I'm sure that back then those rents weren't considered cheap since people didn't make as much money as they do now. But if current rents were comparable to those in the 1940s and 1950s, there would be much less homelessness in New York City.

James Baldwin's Former Home In Greenwich Village

Last month, I went to Film Forum to see I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck's extraordinary Oscar-nominated feature-length documentary. It is based on James Baldwin's outline for a book that was never completed. The book was to be about the civil rights movement, American race relations, and the assassination of his friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

After seeing  I Am Not Your Negro, I went to the men's room. On my way out, I saw several pieces of film-related literature. The only exceptions were some cards distributed by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. In the center of each card was a color photograph of the bronze plaque placed by this organization on the facade of 81 Horatio Street. The plaque commemorates James Baldwin, who lived in the building from 1958 to 1961.

One of Baldwin's biographers, W.J. Weatherby, mentioned this residence in the biography and wrote that "Baldwin's apartment was two flights up in a rather drab building." Despite the building's drabness, this was one of the places where he wrote the novel, Another Country, published in 1962.

This townhouse, noted the card, "is a touchstone to Greenwich Village's history as an artist incubator, a progressive refuge, and an inclusive haven."

There is a Google map on the reverse side that has a long red line that extends from Film Forum's location on Houston Street to the Horatio Street building."Visit today," encouraged the historic preservation society via the message on the card, "and pay your respects to one of the Village's greatest and most influential residents." (www.gvshp.org)

I haven't visited the site yet, but I intend to when the weather gets warmer.

Turning Church Property Into Condos

According to the New York Daily News (February 4, 2017), two churches in Harlem that merged  years ago--Mount Calvary United Methodist Church and St. Mark's Methodist Church--sold Mount Calvary's former (and now rarely used) worship site to a developer for the hefty sum of $7.5 million.

Pastor John Carrington stated in the paper that selling the building, located at Edgecombe Avenue and 140th Street, "enables the church to have money to do more service for the community, as well as for itself."

Here's the problem: the developer plans to turn the church building into condos instead of affordable housing, something urgently needed in Harlem, which is becoming more and more gentrified.

The pastor may want to use the money "to do more service for the community," but if all the churches in Harlem sold their properties to developers, there won't be a community for them to serve.



Happy Valentine's Day!

Photographing Poverty In America

Lining the stone wall outside the grounds of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in Morningside Heights, on the 110th Street side, is a gallery of a dozen photos, all of them in black and white, that were taken by photographer Matt Black. Between each group of three photos is a plaque with a quotation from an impoverished person from one of the towns visited by Black, like this quote from a worker in the strawberry fields of Santa Maria, California, in Santa Barbara County: "I had no shoes when I worked in the fields. I used to sleep by a tree. I barely made money for food." (Ten thousand people work in the strawberry fields of Santa Maria, earning $1.25 per box picked.)

These photos are reminiscent of those taken by famed photographer Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression.

Called "Geography of Poverty," Black, a native Californian, allows passersby to "see not only what America looks like to the 45 million living in poverty," notes the mission statement  posted on  the wall at the beginning and end of the photo exhibition,"but also that poverty is inextricable from issues of migration, land use, industry, and the environment."

"Geography of Poverty" is a project that Black and the cable news channel MSNBC have collaborated on. Most of the photos on display outside the church were taken in California, while the rest document poverty in such places as Hosmer, South Dakota;York, Pennsylvania; and El Paso, Texas.

One photo that was striking is of a long black arm wrinkled by age. Attached to it is a hand clutching the top of what looks like a sawed off telephone pole or tree. What really intrigued me is where the caption said the photo was taken--Allensworth, California, in Tulare County. I first learned of this town in a Washington Post article published more than twenty years ago.The article revealed that Allensworth was founded in the early twentieth century by African Americans, some of whom were teachers, doctors, and other professionals.(This is a part of California history I was never told about when I attended school in Los Angeles and its suburb Compton.) Today, according to the caption, the population is 451 and 54 percent of its inhabitants are living below the poverty level.

It is very fitting that these photos are on display where they are. Just a few feet away are a group of mostly homeless Hispanic men, who have formed a camp along the side of the church.

Also worth noting is the church's construction of two 15-story residential towers on its 113th Street side.The new buildings will have 320 luxury apartments and only 80 affordable ones; the church's first residential building was built about six years ago and faces Morningside Park, at 110th Street and Morningside Drive.

In 2012, plans to construct the two buildings sparked a neighborhood controversy and a petition drive* was started by area residents who feared that the buildings would block their view of the cathedral. Apparently the church administrators took heed. The buildings are now situated so that the cathedral, which is a tourist attraction, on the 113th Street side, can be viewed between them. Not a perfect solution, but better than not being able to see that side of the cathedral at all.

Could it be that the church administrators have self-consciously mounted this photo exhibition to remind their critics of their awareness of and concern for the poor, especially those who are literally at the church's doorstep each night?

*Disclosure: I live near the cathedral and signed a petition opposing the new construction.

Note: This is the full text of the previously abbreviated version.
Matt Black's photos can be viewed at www.geographyofpoverty.com.