{"id":114,"date":"2016-05-13T09:27:53","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T13:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/?page_id=114"},"modified":"2016-05-17T11:48:42","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T15:48:42","slug":"housing-woes-harlem","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing woes in Harlem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Amina Srna<\/p>\n<p>With the west side of Harlem rapidly gentrifying, big name realtors are buying up apartment buildings while landlords of prior low-income housing units, like Zamira Abdelhady\u2019s, struggle just to keep up with repairs.<\/p>\n<p>Utilities like electricity, heat in cold winter months, and safe drinking water are the pillars of tenant\u2019s rights, and Abdelhady and her neighbors feel like they\u2019ve got a strong case against the landlord.<\/p>\n<p>So, what happens to a building when a landlord can\u2019t make repairs?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/263248636&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Flor Sanchez and the vacant bus depot<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The easternmost block of 126th is home to New York City\u2019s oldest bus depot. Flor Sanchez,80, moved across the street as a child with his family from Puerto Rico in the 1950s. Back then, it was a bustling trolley yard. As an adult, Sanchez capitalized from the business of the MTA employees, building a restaurant and a club on the small dead-end street.<\/p>\n<p>Today, aside from the congested exit ramp of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, the area remains largely deserted. The site of the bus depot will be turned over to the city, which has plans to develop residential opportunities, the value of the site having <a href=\"http:\/\/nypost.com\/2014\/06\/22\/bus-depot-to-become-memorial-for-slaves-found-buried-there\/\">doubled in price since 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As the city determines how to profit off of the vacant lot, Sanchez waits for NYC Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to approve an estimate for boiler repairs. Once the budget is approved, the contractor has asked to deal directly with the city.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI get disgusted calling HPD,\u201d he said. \u201cImagine if the temperature is real cold. By the time HPD gets ahold of them, we\u2019d all be freezing ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is one of the many responsibilities Sanchez has as the president of his building\u2019s tenant association. When his landlord passed away in 1986, this area was of no interest to real estate developers, so the city turned over the building to the tenants under what is called the Tenant Interim Lease Project (TIL).<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_119\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-119\" class=\"size-full wp-image-119\" src=\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2016\/05\/26961808015_4da06f86a1_z.jpg\" alt=\"Flor Sanchez, 80, sits in the kitchen of the apartment he has shared with his mother since the 1950s. Photo by Amina Srna\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2016\/05\/26961808015_4da06f86a1_z.jpg 640w, http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2016\/05\/26961808015_4da06f86a1_z-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-119\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flor Sanchez, 80, sits in the kitchen of the apartment he has shared with his mother since the 1950s. Photo by Amina Srna<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Those who stayed in the foreclosed apartment buildings could form associations that lease directly from the city. TIL would provide educational services for tenant associations in building management, maintenance and financial recordkeeping. Once the associations proved to be stable, the tenants could buy their apartments outright for $250.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe essence of TIL is that they\u2019re supposed to get trained, and then they\u2019re supposed to engage in self-management and then eventually become a coop,\u201d says Valerio Orselli, the founder of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association. \u201cThe training was available, but people were not up to it. They were poor, in some cases desperately poor. It was a pig in a poke. \u201c<\/p>\n<p>Orselli says that when people are struggling with wages being depressed, in addition to having to worry about the day-to-day management problems of their buildings, of course some people can do it, but it\u2019s a burden. Especially for Sanchez, who will be turning 80 this May.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of times that I do work on the boiler,\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cI\u2019m always with the boiler. I don\u2019t want nobody to freeze here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Few buildings owned by the City ever make it to the stages of complete renovation. In fact, the results of the TIL program inadvertently the second largest public housing system in the country, including 2,422 residential units, 897 of which <a href=\"http:\/\/gothamist.com\/2016\/03\/09\/nyc_affordable_housing_vacancy.php\">have remained vacant<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s valuable housing stock that could have been really developed as permanently affordable housing,\u201d said Orselli. \u201cDuring the Giuliani administration there was policy trying to dispose them as much as possible, wholesale. Regardless of whether or not the residents could create a viable cooperative. They encouraged speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When city officials asked Sanchez to relocate his tenants to another building further up in Harlem so that they could do repairs, he refused.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince the city took over, they did one repair in the building to put up bathrooms real nice and big,\u201d said Sanchez. \u201cMeanwhile they didn\u2019t give us no bathroom and no showers. For six months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the repairs, the bathrooms were smaller than when they had begun renovation. The elderly tenants of the building have to side step their way in between the toilet and the bathtub. Recently, Sanchez\u2019s elderly mother fell trying to come out of the bathroom, breaking her hip.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the condition of the building, this is the home that Sanchez and his extended family have known for over half a century. With the looming threat of speculation looming from as close as across the street, he wants to stay here as long as he can.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I would have let HPD convince me, and I would have had to convince the few tenants we have here,\u201d said Sanchez. \u201cThey would have taken our building and sold it to the developers. They would have pushed us out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Take a look inside Flor Sanchez&#8217;s apartment.\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>\n<em><em>(View in Virtual Reality by using the Chrome Browser<\/em>)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qg92e6Uu-GE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Amina Srna With the west side of Harlem rapidly gentrifying, big name realtors are buying up apartment buildings while landlords of prior low-income housing units, like Zamira Abdelhady\u2019s, struggle just to keep up with repairs. Utilities like electricity, heat in cold winter months, and safe drinking water are the pillars of tenant\u2019s rights, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":116,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Housing woes in Harlem - Voices of Harlem<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Housing woes in Harlem - Voices of Harlem\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Amina Srna With the west side of Harlem rapidly gentrifying, big name realtors are buying up apartment buildings while landlords of prior low-income housing units, like Zamira Abdelhady\u2019s, struggle just to keep up with repairs. Utilities like electricity, heat in cold winter months, and safe drinking water are the pillars of tenant\u2019s rights, and [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Voices of Harlem\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-05-17T15:48:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2016\/05\/26893349321_2fcdf75547_z.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/\",\"name\":\"Housing woes in Harlem - Voices of Harlem\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-05-13T13:27:53+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-05-17T15:48:42+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Housing woes in Harlem\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/\",\"name\":\"Voices of Harlem\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Housing woes in Harlem - Voices of Harlem","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/projects.nyujournalism.org\/voicesofharlem\/housing-woes-harlem\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Housing woes in Harlem - Voices of Harlem","og_description":"by Amina Srna With the west side of Harlem rapidly gentrifying, big name realtors are buying up apartment buildings while landlords of prior low-income housing units, like Zamira Abdelhady\u2019s, struggle just to keep up with repairs. 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