Willie Suggs: Real Estate Maven
I remember when I first started looking for an apartment in Harlem, Willie Suggs was pretty much the only agent in the area. I never made contact with her because as she states in a recent New York Magazine article, I don’t fall into the category of her core client. Since then the biggies like Corcoran, Elliman, and others have moved into the neighborhood giving her plenty of competition. Read the six page spread on Suggs in New York Magazine.
Add to Google
When Ms. Suggs related how she felt when she was mistaken for the maid in her East Side apartment building elevator, and mistaken for a whore in another “white” neighborhood, then decided to move to Harlem, she was delineating EXACTLY and PRECISELY what it is about Harlem that MUST be preserved for ALL Harlemites, regardless of their means: a welcoming, ACCEPTING haven in a sea of racial indifference, insensitivity, or worse. I believe the affordability of the property Ms. Suggs purchased in Harlem was secondary to the fact that she felt UNWELCOME elsewhere in the world, and needed to live where she felt AT HOME. Harlem’s people, culture and sense of community ARE the reasons she felt that way; the reasons she can feel at home here… NOT her money. Now she feels the people who shaped this welcoming haven which she’s been lucky enough to find her way into… are EXPENDABLE… subject to market forces… and that’s it? The fact that she could afford to purchase her way into Harlem in 1984–while her new Harlem neighbors can only rent–should not invalidate their need to keep and hold onto what they’ve BOTH been looking for… one spot on Earth where they feel they belong. She had money, and felt unwelcomed by Whites… what does she expect the long-time Harlemites without the means to stay here, will find once they’re forced out? Ms. Suggs couldn’t “hang” in a place that didn’t feel like home… Harlem, with it’s projects, bodegas, renters, financially unenlightened (as she seems to think) masses, etc…. was HERE for her. Harlem is not just the buildings standing ready to be snapped up… the BUILDING is not why she felt welcome here; the BUILDING is not why she felt out of place on the East Side… it was the PEOPLE there who rejected her; it was the PEOPLE here who welcomed her…. don’t make it all about dollar signs, Ms. Suggs, when your search for sanctuary began with shouts of “maid” and “whore” elsewhere. It’s about the PEOPLE. And Harlem’s PEOPLE–rich or not–deserve to keep what they’ve worked so hard to nurture: a SENSE of PLACE like no other on the planet. No, we weren’t the first; No, these buildings weren’t built for us… but in a city of neighborhoods, a city of villages, a city with a Chinatown, a Little Italy, Little Odessa, El Barrio, etc.– all worthy of presevation and respect–why would you deny your own people their well-earned niche? ESPECIALLY since there is no actual “old country” for us to identify with. My brownstone was built in c. 1895; we’ve lived here since 1930. So no matter WHO it was built for, or WHO was first… my family’s been here the LONGEST. Our people’s jazz, our food, our laughter, our stories, our clothes, our roots are HERE now. Show some respect for the spiritual, cultural, personal side of this community, Ms. Suggs; THAT’S what constitutes this haven you’ve run to with your tail between your legs… NOT that empty building, or the cash you used to buy it.
yeah,
i want to know about these grant programmes that she is talking about also. Notice she doesn’t elaborate or give names. Perhaps its true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Does anyone know what program Suggs is referring to when she says “take four classes… sponsored by the Harlem congregational churches … and get up to $70,000 free.” Thanks!
I agree, jai. She’s definitely hilarious. I also loved her comment about Harlem never losing its black population because it will always have those living in public housing. Wow.
this woman is HIGHlarious! reading the article, i laughed and cried; i became agitated and calm again. this willie suggs character is, er, a character — she is delusional!
as a new resident to harlem, i was quite appalled at her arrogance and ignorance.
If NY Mag will allow me: here’s one of suggs’ gems:
“I want the new people who come in to [Harlem] be doing well. … Not in Harlem, but in the Bronx. Maybe Cambria Heights in Heights. Eh, Brooklyn’s kind of dicey. People want what they can’t have, and they can’t have it because of choices that they make.”
that was her response to the writer’s question about whether harlem should remain black and where the blacks, or those who are fighting to keep it black, should then move to because of skyrocketing rents and sales.