A Town For Sale

In 2011, I learned that the State of Nevada isn't the only place in the United States that has ghost towns. There was an online article that said that Scenic, South Dakota, in the state's southwest corner, was up for sale for $800,000.

The town, fifty miles southeast of Rapid City, was (and maybe still is) owned by a Philippines-based church. 

At the time I read the article, a thought came to me--a  group of enterprising (and wealthy) LGBTQ people should consider buying the town and transform it into a thriving LGBTQ resort. And another thought came to me--if such a group approached the church with an offer to buy the town, would the church be willing to sell it?

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.

Philip Payton, The Father Of Black Harlem

Philip Payton, The Father of Black Harlem is a book on my to-read list. It's a biography, by the scholar Kevin McGruder, of the African-American real estate mogul Philip Payton, who played an important role in establishing Harlem as the capital of Black America. Any study of Harlem history must include his name. As a native son of Harlem, I am interested in his story.

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.

Rikers Island, New York's Next Hot Neighborhood?

Once New York City's Rikers Island correctional complex closes, the buildings will be torn down and developers will be falling all over themselves while salivating at the chance to fill the vacant land with high-rise condos, boutiques, restaurants, and pricey fitness centers. Thus turning the island into the city's next hot neighborhood or nabe, to use real estate lingo. Rikers Island will then become an extension of Manhattan--overwhelmingly white and wealthy.

Realtors will likely call it Rikersville, Rikers Manor or give it a hipper, trendier, jazzier name to lure the people with deep pockets and to cover up its unsavory past.

They won't have to worry about  displacing longtime residents and businesses. There are none. The only ones affected will be the ones currently incarcerated there. And the inmates will be dispersed to supposedly easier to get to, modern community-based facilities throughout the five boroughs.

Two Unbuilt Projects In The American West

There were two West Coast real estate projects that never saw the light of day.

In the mid-1980s, a gay interracial couple planned to establish a gay resort in a Nevada ghost town called Rhyolite. I was asked by a friend to interview them for a publication he was involved with. For whatever reason, the interview never happened.

The second project was announced in the New York Times in a two-page spread (no doubt costing a small fortune). It was to be called Beverly Springs and was going to be a city in California built exclusively for the rich and the super-rich. The person behind the project was a young black man who had been a professional football player.

After all these years, I'm still wondering why these two projects never materialized. Did they have trouble finding investors? Were they poorly conceived ideas? Was too much government red tape involved?

One day I hope to find the answer to those questions.

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.

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!

Bill Clinton, Gentrifier?

In Edward Klein's riveting nonfiction book, The Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas (Regnery Publishing, 2014), he wrote that when Obama campaign advisors David Axelrod and Jim Messina visited Clinton's Harlem office to get his support in reelecting Obama, Clinton "pointed out that Harlem had experienced a renaissance since he moved his post-presidential office there, and that he was largely responsible for Harlem's revived economy and gentrification."

The truth of the matter is that gentrification in Harlem was happening long before Clinton set foot there or in the White House.

New York magazine, in its July 23, 1979 issue, ran a story by James Mannion called "Who Will Inhabit Harlem?" The article stated that "as middle-class blacks have come to Harlem, so too have whites. Bankers and realtors report that over the past three years, young white families have begun buying homes in Harlem."

Furthermore, "Harlemites are asking themselves how many more whites are going to move in and what that will mean for the most visible black community in America."

For Bill Clinton to puff out his chest and claim that his presence in Harlem brought about its economic prosperity and gentrification is nothing more than hubris.

Real Estate Code Words

Whenever you see a sign on a building that attaches the words "boutique" or "luxury" to a description of a condo, a co-op, or a rental apartment, it's safe to say that those are code words for expensive, unaffordable.

Shilling For The Harlem Real Estate Industry?

Lauren Price's article, "What's Up in Uptown?" (Gay City  News, May 14, 2014), seemed more suited to the Real Estate section of the Sunday New York Times than the pages of a gay newspaper. In fact, the whole article made her look like a shill for the real estate industry.

I was very disappointed. I was expecting an article that was focused on how gays and lesbians were helping to transform the Harlem community, not an advertisement about what's available in Harlem for sale or rent.