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Affordable Housing Builds Wealth: Time to Change the Narrative! The Karen Hunter Show
Kirk Goodrich – Affordable Housing Developer
Rev. David Brawley – St. Paul Community Baptist Church
Rev. David K Brawley, pastor of St. Paul’s Community Baptist Church in East New York, Brooklyn, and co-chair of the community organizing group Metro-IAF, talks with THE CITY’s Executive editor Alyssa Katz about what it takes to build lasting community power, the homeownership legacy of the Nehemiah Homes, what Mayor Eric Adams should know about mobilizing faith in politics and much more.
The conventional wisdom declares that, after four decades of renovation and new construction, the only way to increase the number of affordable housing homes and apartments in New York is to maximize density.
A program organized more than 40 years ago by East Brooklyn churches helped build a community within a destitute neighborhood, and has since enabled hundreds of first-time homeowners to build equity - and hope for the future.
An affordable housing building for seniors opened in East New York last week, one of the final pieces of a long-awaited development project. Located at 516 Schroeders Avenue, the building is the sixth phase of the Nehemiah Spring Creek development, which includes the transformation of 45-acres of undeveloped wetlands and landfills into mixed-use, mixed-income Brooklyn community. Designed by SLCE Architects , 516 Schroeders Avenue is a 7-story building with 80 units of housing. The rental units, all of which are one-bedrooms, serve low-income seniors with incomes at or below 50 percent of New York City’s average median income. The brick building, which faces the entrance to the massive retail complex the Gateway Center, includes a community room, on-site laundry, exercise room, and a landscaped rear yard.
The project will bring 240 affordable apartments into the neighborhood
When Mayor de Blasio held a press conference in May 2014 to debut his new affordable housing plan, his full-color presentation touted a project called Spring Creek in Brooklyn. Spring Creek was flagged as a "case study" partnership between the city and developers to "create a strong, vibrant and self-sustaining neighborhood." But on Friday, the bulk of that project remained a big, ugly vacant field of weeds and abandoned roadway in East New York. More than 1,500 of 1,803 planned affordable units are now in a bureaucratic Twilight Zone — and may become less affordable as a result. "There is no progress from the progressive mayor," said the Rev. David Brawley, a leader of East Brooklyn Congregations, one of the groups sponsoring Spring Creek. Brawley said the delays to Spring Creek caused by the de Blasio administration are particularly ironic given that the mayor cited the project in his promise to build or preserve 200,000 affordable units over 10 years.
