1987 NY Times article about Harlem Gentrification

Read this 1987 article from the NY Times: 20 Years Later and all of the exact same issues remain regarding gentrification in Harlem. August 16, 1987 Harlem's Hedge Against Gentrification By LISA W. FODERARO It is not the first struggle over the gentrification of Harlem and it certainly won't be the last, but new battle lines in the war were drawn last week when David N. Dinkins, the Manhattan... [more]

Read this 1987 article from the NY Times: 20 Years Later and all of the exact same issues remain regarding gentrification in Harlem. August 16, 1987 Harlem's Hedge Against Gentrification By LISA W. FODERARO It is not the first struggle over the gentrification of Harlem and it certainly won't be the last, but new battle lines in the war were drawn last week when David N. Dinkins, the Manhattan Borough President, condemned a city plan to turn over 45 empty buildings there to a white construction company to develop 900 units of new housing. Mr. Dinkins said the proposal ''opens the way for widespread gentrification of Harlem with no promise of improvement for present residents.'' Even without that political flare-up, the gentrification of this black community has been in the minds of many residents during Harlem Week - actually, 13 days of celebration and introspection that ends today. In seminars and meetings, the issues of housing and economic development have received even keener scrutiny than usual. Whether the threat of gentrification is real or illusory, many blacks, who still make up 95 percent of the population of Central Harlem, are gearing up to defend themselves against the harsher side effects of a ''rediscovered'' community, namely rising rents and displacement. And one of their chief weapons is home ownership. For increasing numbers of black families, owning an apartment or town house in Harlem has, in fact, become a hedge against an uncertain future and a way of digging in against the specter of gentrification. And though the number of Harlemites living in housing units they own still is far smaller than the number living in rentals, moderate- and middle-income black families have been signing up by the thousands to get first crack at apartments now under construction in new condominium projects. In addition, a few classy old apartment buildings, once hollowed out and forgotten, are being renovated into condominiums to tap the growing home-ownership market. And in yet another sign of this growing trend, the sponsors of Central Harlem's first private co-op conversion, the Hillview Building on 145th Street at St. Nicholas Avenue, have found enough buyers to ask the Attorney General to declare the plan effective. ''Almost everybody in Harlem is talking home ownership,'' said Margaret McNeill, president of the West Harlem Community Organization, a nonprofit group concerned with affordable housing and economic development. ''That's the only way blacks are going to remain in Harlem. They have to own a piece of the land.'' At the same time, more and more college-educated, affluent blacks are settling in Harlem and bidding up housing prices. Whether they are working couples with children or young, single professionals, these residents could afford to live on the Upper West Side or in Battery Park City, but choose not to. Neighborhoods of choice include the elegant and arbored Striver's Row, Hamilton Heights, Mount Morris Park and Jumel Terrace. All are areas of well-maintained town houses and apartment buildings, many with architectural distinction. They are nothing like Harlem's cliched image of decayed and abandoned tenements. ACCORDING to a 1984 study, ''The Gentrification of Harlem,'' written by Richard Schaffer and Neil Smith of Columbia University and presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, black professionals in Central Harlem climbed from 10 percent of the population in 1970 to 16 percent in 1980. Local real-estate brokers and community officials say the increase has been significantly sharper in the 1980's. Some doomsayers are forecasting the displacement of poor blacks by rich blacks, but many Harlem residents find the influx encouraging. They believe it will generally strengthen the community's economic foundation and could mean the eventual improvement of a host of services, benefiting everyone, from transportation and shopping to schools and sanitation. ''There's a whole younger generation of blacks today in Harlem who were the militants of the 1960's,'' observed G. Joyce Hamer, who owns her own advertising concern in midtown Manhattan and has just bought her apartment in the Hillview cooperative. ''They are not necessarily militants anymore, but they are the aggressive, successful blacks of the 80's who still have a cultural consciousness that says it's all right to live in a community where people look like me,'' she said. ''It used to be that if you were able to move into a white neighborhood, it was a sign that you were intelligent and wealthy. Now it's so turned around that it's actually in vogue to say you live in Harlem.'' At Lido Hall and Semiramis, two abandoned apartment buildings on Central Park North that are being turned into 70 market-rate condominiums priced from $100,000 to $200,000, the waiting list is filled with black professionals seeking park views and a Harlem address. ''Many inquiries are from blacks in the suburbs who are eager to come back,'' said Judith B. Smith of Myers, Smith & Granady, a Harlem-based real-estate concern that is undertaking the renovation with private financing. ''They have children who have graduated from college, they are ready to sell their houses and they are caught up in the Harlem renaissance.'' One clear sign of confidence in Harlem has been the successful sale of apartments in the first building to go co-op under private sponsorship, the Hillview in the Sugar Hill neighborhood. The noneviction conversion attempt got off to a dubious start, with few tenants, many of whom are elderly, purchasing their apartments. But as of last week, 54 apartments in the 236-unit building had been sold - 25 to outside buyers and 29 to ''insiders,'' placing the number of purchased units above the 15 percent needed by the Attorney General's office to declare the plan effective. ''The area is obviously on the way up, and this building has been one of the stabilizing forces,'' said George M. Brooker, president of Webb & Brooker, the Harlem real estate company that sponsored the conversion in a joint venture with the Georgetown Group. Apartments in the 11-story brick building, which has a 24-hour doorman, ranged from $18,000 for a studio to $72,000 for a three-bedroom unit. Existing tenants, who were able to buy at the ''inside price,'' received a 49 percent discount on the market price. By far the largest owner-occupied housing development is Towers on the Park, a $77 million high-rise condominium complex under construction at Frederick Douglass Circle. The shiny glass facades on the two towers overlooking the northwest corner of Central Park are nearing completion. Developed by the New York City Partnership, a nonprofit organization of civic and business leaders, the 599 apartments, mostly two-bedrooms, will sell for $65,000 to $130,000, with 70 percent reserved for families making up to $48,000 a year, 20 percent for households earning as much as $34,000 annually and the rest to be priced at whatever the market will bear. Already, 1,200 applications have piled up, and the process is not over. While a thorough look has yet to be taken at the applicant profile, at least half are believed to come from the black community. ''Before 1982, virtually all the housing that went into Harlem, as in other so-called low-income areas, was public or deeply subsidized,'' said Kathryn Wylde, vice president for housing at the Partnership, which develops affordable home-ownership opportunities. ''Our program represents the first private investment in new residential construction in as long as anyone can remember, decades.'' Ms. Wylde attributes the market for this kind of housing in Harlem to a number of factors, including the general housing pressures in New York City, the relatively strong employment picture in this decade, the increasing earning power of middle-class minorities and the often untouchable prices in the suburbs. But most important, she said, was the fact that the Harlem community itself asked for it. ''The Partnership only goes where it's invited to by the community,'' Ms. Wylde said. ''And the fact that we have such a large presence in Harlem is in response to that community's demand. A lot of people said, 'Don't go.' But we've had enormous support the whole way. It's absolutely critical for the black community to share in the appreciation of Harlem, to control its destiny.'' In conjunction with local churches and the Harlem Urban Development Corporation, the New York City Partnership is spearheading several other projects as well. Construction is scheduled to begin next year on 100 moderate- and middle-income condominiums on 138th Street near Frederick Douglass Boulevard, a 40-unit rehabilitation of moderate-income owner-occupied housing on 131st Street near Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 45 renovated condominiums on 117th Street near Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Upgraded, market-rate rentals are also in the works. Lloyd E. Dickens, a black real-estate broker and developer in Harlem and a former State Assemblyman, recently renovated a four-story, 1892 apartment building on Striver's Row, patterned after an English mews, into 16 one-bedroom units renting for $650 a month. Called Dickens Garden, the building, at 201 West 139th Street, had been abandoned and occupied by squatters before the $900,000 renovation started in 1984. Now, it has a serene interior courtyard with white gravel, geraniums and benches, and the roomy apartments are occupied entirely by black professionals. THE properties that could most dramatically determine Harlem's future are now held by New York City, the owner of 900 vacant buildings there. Some in the community are convinced the city is hanging onto these desolate structures, that stretch for block after lifeless block, with the intention of eventually releasing them to the ''Donald Trumps and Harry Helmsleys.'' ''There are a lot of wild rumors running through Harlem,'' said Mr. Brooker, of Webb & Brooker, ''and I haven't been able to confirm any of them. Of course, the preference would be to have blacks developing Harlem.'' But the reality, said Mr. Brooker, is that few black development companies now in Harlem have the financing and organizational structure to handle sizable projects. Nevertheless, in the first of three rounds of requests for proposals put out by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in May, about half of the awards went to developers based in Harlem or to minority development concerns from other parts of the city. The new vacant building program, as it is called, is expected to yield 1,500 units for low- and moderate-income singles and families in 126 buildings that now stand abandoned, the majority in central Harlem. The buildings are clustered at 17 sites, ranging from three structures with 30 units to 15 structures with 186 units. The idea, explained Robert K. Davis, deputy commissioner for the Office of Rent and Housing Maintenance at the housing agency, is to sell the sites to the designated developers for $1 and then lend them up to $43,000 per apartment at a 1 percent interest rate to contribute to the building renovations. Although this effort does nothing to increase the stock of owner-occupied housing, the plan will require a ceiling on apartment rents. A two-bedroom apartment, for a low-income family making $14,000 a year, will rent for $350 a month, while a two-bedroom for a moderate- to middle-income family, earning between $22,400 and $43,000, will rent for $477 to $650 a month. Twenty percent of the apartments will be affordable to low-income families, and the rest will be for moderate- and middle-income families. The other major initiative by the city this year has been to target 47 vacant buildings from 139th to 147th Streets, between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, for a mass renovation by one contractor. About 900 units would be created under the plan, with 30 percent earmarked for the homeless, 45 percent for families making up to $16,000 a year and 25 percent to households with incomes as high as $24,000. The city selected Tishman Construction to do the $70 million job, subject to approval by the Board of Estimate. Once the renovations are finished, the buildings are to be turned over to New York City Housing Authority for operation as low-cost housing. AS have other local political and business leaders, Borough President Dinkins took issue with the contract, as drafted, between the city and Tishman, contending it snubbed community participation and failed to provide housing guarantees for current Harlem residents. Mr. Dinkins said he had no problem with Tishman Construction as the city's designee, acknowledging that few, if any, Harlem-based contractors could handle a project of this scope. But he said he wanted the contract to stipulate that 25 percent of all the subcontract work would go to minority- or female-owned businesses, that 50 percent of the jobs and job-training opportunities created by the project would be given to minorities and that a ''significant number'' of apartments would be reserved for people now living in Harlem. ''The residents of Harlem who have struggled through the hard times now deserve to reap some of the profit of an economic upturn, but this contract as now written does not assure local residents any of those benefits,'' Mr. Dinkins said in a statement issued Monday. ''Instead it opens the way for the widespread gentrification of Harlem with no promise of improvement for present residents.'' But the housing agency staunchly defended both of its new housing programs. ''This represents unquestionably one of the biggest commitments made by the city of New York in the last decade,'' Mr. Davis said. ''We've always had the buildings, but we didn't have the money. Now we have the money, a dismal vacancy rate and an urgent need to quickly produce as many housing opportunies as we possibly can for low- and moderate-income families. If it works well, then we can repeat it, provided there's money.'' Responding to Mr. Dinkins' charges that the contract was inadequate, Paul A. Crotty, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said ''there is not sufficient capacity out there in the smaller contractors to do this business. This is a $70 million project. You can't do that by breaking down every contract into small parts.'' Although Mayor Koch refuses to use minority quotas in handing out subcontract work, Mr. Crotty said, 15 percent of the jobs were to be given to ''locally based enterprises,'' which are small subcontractors located in all five boroughs and many of which are owned by minorities and women. In addition, the construction manager ''will package bids to increase local participation, as well as patronize local suppliers and vendors, including banks and insurance agents,'' Mr. Crotty said. On the issue of housing preferences for current Harlem residents, Mr. Crotty said the disposition of these units has to go back before the Board of Estimate, once construction is completed and before the buildings are turned over to the Housing Authority, for a six-month Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. ''Why do we have to discuss these issues two years in advance of the units being finished?'' Mr. Crotty said. The city has also fostered home ownership, according to Mr. Davis, citing more than 2,300 units sold to tenants and nonprofit community groups in the last eight or nine years under the housing agency's Division of Alternative Management Programs and 2,500 more about to be sold in West, Central and East Harlem. Moreover, almost 90 brownstones have been sold by the city since 1985, 67 of them to people who live in Central and West Harlem, who were offered purchase-money mortgages as well as low-interest rehabilitation loans. ''These are real anti-gentrification measures that go a long way toward stabilizing the neighborhood and giving residents a feeling of pride,'' Mr. Davis said. Alexa Barnes Donaphin, a partner in an architectural firm in White Plains, was an early brownstone buyer in Harlem. Overwhelmed by the rents in Manhattan, even in the 1970's, she told brokers to ''point me toward the affordable property.'' They pointed to Harlem. In 1976, she bought an 1889 brownstone on West 144th Street, off Hamilton Terrace. ''I enjoy living in a black neighborhood because sometimes it's nice not to forget what your roots are,'' Ms. Donaphin said. ''The funny thing is my roots are actually middle-class American. My parents, who live in Shepherd Park in Washington, D.C., were aghast when they heard I was moving to Harlem. Even friends said, 'You're moving where? Are you crazy?' '' TODAY, of course, Ms. Donaphin is not alone. ''In my neighborhood, there are many upwardly mobile black professionals who have a lot of ideas and enthusiasm,'' she said. ''There's a community spirit, and when we need to band together for some common cause, we do. I could move, if I wanted to, to Westchester or anywhere else, but Harlem's an energized environment. It's charged, colorful and full of life.'' But there can be drawbacks, as well. Wallace L. Ford, an alumnus of Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School, bought a four-story limestone townhouse on West 144th Street off Hamilton Terrace in 1984. Although he loves his immediate neighborhood, the services are woefully lacking, he said. ''Typically, grocery stores in Harlem will have inferior and higher-priced products than ones in the same chain elsewhere in Manhattan,'' said Mr. Ford, who is a first vice president at Drexel Burnham Lambert, an investment banking concern. ''I've done surveys myself through comparison shopping, and it's absolutely clear. You can do your grocery shopping cheaper a block away from Jackie Onassis than you can a block away from a welfare mother.'' So far, there are only a few whites moving into Harlem, but they tend to choose the same historic neighborhoods sought out by affluent blacks. On Ms. Donaphin's block alone, for instance, a white Italian-American family has just bought the house next door to hers and three white families are already living across the street. ''If you talk to 10 different people in Harlem about white gentrification, you're going to hear 10 different versions,'' said Mr. Brooker. ''I don't see a white takeover. There are isolated incidents of whites buying brownstones in certain neighborhoods, but they are limited in numbers to such an extent that they in no way could be considered a gentrification threat. It's inevitable that you're going to see whites moving in, as the area stabilizes itself, looking for the bargain that Harlem is. That's just good economic sense.'' Still, while the city and churches and civic-minded development companies struggle to refurbish and erect affordable housing, be it condominium or rental, other owners and investors continue to play the real-estate speculation game. Both blacks and whites are holding privately owned buildings off the market or flipping them repeatedly in anticipation of that gentrification potential that has made many local residents at once hopeful and scared. ''I have mixed emotions,'' said Inez Dickens-Russell, who, with her father, owns Lloyd E. Dickens Real Estate, a successful family business based in Harlem since 1925. ''Economically, it will raise our base, yes, but how many of us will be able to stay? I feel safe in Harlem. I don't know if I'd feel safe in a white neighborhood.'' [less]