Nehemiah Houses

The first phases of Nehemiah were born from a series of 100 house meetings involving close to 2,000 residents in East Brooklyn. The scale of the project and blighted conditions led most to believe that success was an impossibility. However, inpartnership with New York City, the first 1,100 Nehemiah homes were built in Brownsville beginning in 1983. Another 1,100 Nehemiah homes were built in East New
York beginning in 1987.

An additional 700 Nehemiah homes were built in the New Lots section of East New York beginning in 1996.
All homeowners are first time homeowners and the Nehemiah developments in East Brooklyn and the South
Bronx have created an estimated 1.5$ billion in wealth. In addition, less than a dozen of the thousands of the
original homeowners that bought Nehemiah homes ended up in foreclosure, as reported by the NY Times in
“In a Sea of Foreclosures, an Island of Calm.”