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Abyssinian’s Real Estate Resolution

Last month the Wall Street Journal published a piece on the effect the rapid real estate development in Harlem is having on long time residents. Many of these residents endured the area during the worst of times but can no longer holder as the better days become a reality in the once ravaged community. Residents like Mrs. Agnes Barrett, a 42 year Harlem resident, wonder how they will maintain their affordable apartments in the shadow of luxury condos cropping up around them?

“I love the beautification,” Mrs. Barrett says, “but if you can’t afford it, where are you going to go?”

Churches have always played a large role in the real estate holdings around Harlem. St. Philip’s church was one of the major forces that facilitated the migration of African Americans to the area. Abyssinian has since followed in their footsteps and is now a major player in direct competition with private developers. The Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC), headed by CEO Sheena Wright, uses the funds from real estate dealings to help keep housing affordable for Harlem’s elderly citizens.

ADC, the 17-year-old not-for-profit real-estate arm of the famed nearly 200-year-old Abyssinian Baptist Church, is a community-development and human-services organization that controls $299 million in property assets in booming central Harlem. Last year, ADC had a net gain of $73,593, says an Abyssinian official, citing financial statements. Now, it is using its resources to create a social, psychological and economic sanctuary for the community’s elderly and poor residents, pumping proceeds into social-service projects while enabling tenants in Abyssinian-owned housing to pay low rents.

The church began buying up real estate there nearly 20 years ago when the city was willing to sell abandoned properties for as little as $1 to anyone willing to manage them. “No one wanted to develop anything in Harlem — housing or commercial — and groups like Abyssinian took that risk,” says Ms. Wright.

Ms. Wright is now running a real-estate empire comprising more than 1,000 rental dwellings, the bulk of them in buildings inhabited by the poor and the elderly. The development corporation also controls several commercial properties, and it is developing condominium apartments in five vacant lots now inhabited by stray cats on Mrs. Barrett’s block, a venture aimed at middle-income, first-time homeowners.

The church sees no conflict between their social mission and the fruits of their lucrative real estate holdings:

“Doing God’s work, fulfilling the mission — you have to do it responsibly, you can’t set out and promise services to people in need without a plan for sustainability, or have services for a year and then run out of money,” she says.

As far as the abandoned and decrepit site of the old Renaissance Ballroom on the corner 7th Avenue, plans have been in the works for a mixed used development of housing and a cultural center. The Landmarks Preservation Commission is also debating whether to declare the site a landmark.

Link: ADC Website

Quotes from Post-Gazette
Photo: Sheena Wright courtesy of Columbia Magazine