Rendering of Crotona Senior Residences to be built within 3 years and geared towards the LGBT community. (Rendering and architectural firm of record is Magnusson Architecture and Planning PC)
Announced at a press conference today, The Bronx (along with Brooklyn) will be the home of a new development of New York City’s first senior housing development with services benefiting the elder LGBT community.
The 82 unit Crotona Senior Residences will be developed by NYC Housing and Preservation, HELP USA, NY State Homes along with Community Renewal and SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders).
In a press release issued earlier today by SAGE, Michael Adams, CEO of the organization said, “For too long, our LGBT elder pioneers in New York City have lacked access to housing where they are welcomed for who they are. Ingersoll and Crotona are a critically important step toward righting that wrong.”
The press release goes on to state that:
On-site SAGE Centers at both locations will be modeled after SAGE’s highly successful Innovative Senior Centers located in Chelsea, Harlem, the Bronx, Staten Island (in partnership with the Pride Center of Staten Island), and Brooklyn (in partnership with GRIOT Circle). Residents and community members will have access to wide-ranging programming and social engagement opportunities.
Crotona Senior Residences will be made possible through a partnership with HPD, New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) and other development partners. Crotona Senior Residences will be financed in part by the New York State Homes and Community Renewal’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, Housing Trust Fund Corporation and the Community Investment Fund. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. and New York City Councilmember Ritchie Torres also provided capital support for the development.
100% affordable senior housing;
A range of supportive services designed to help tenants achieve health and wellbeing;
Apartments conducive to safe and active aging;
On-site access to SAGE Centers, which will provide LGBT culturally competent services to older adults who live in the buildings and surrounding community; and
Hot meals and high quality programming every day.
Ingersoll Senior Residences and Crotona Senior Residences build upon precedents of LGBT-inclusive senior housing that has been built in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago and Minneapolis. All of these developments respond to needs that are well-documented by research. This includes a 2014 report by the Equal Rights Center, with support from SAGE, which found that 48% of LGBT older people applying for senior housing as part of a national test were subjected to discrimination. This high level of discrimination makes it extremely difficult for LGBT older people to find appropriate housing as they age.
The Bronx development is expected to cast $38.4 million to develop with construction anticipated by 2019 and will be open to all qualifying seniors regardless of their sexual orientation (so yes, that means that LGBT and non-LGBT seniors can qualify).
This is indeed amazing news for our borough and the LGBTQ community. For far too often, our needs are rarely met especially for our seniors. Hopefully this will eventually expand to more, similar developments and adoption of such policies for other, existing senior housing and centers.
Today, NYC announced the first ever LGBT Senior Housing to be constructed in The Bronx and Brooklyn. Also, a short while ago, the ban on our transgender family has been lifted by the military and will be able to serve openly.
In the face of adversity, our LGBTQ family continues to make strides against inequalities and injustices marching towards a more perfect union where people can simply be themselves without hatred because love will win in the end.
How many of those who came before us would be overjoyed at these announcements but more importantly, how many died for us?
How many paid the ultimate sacrifice living in secret?
I hope that in my lifetime I’ll enjoy a world where people don’t have to cower in silence.
‘The Get Down‘, Baz Lurhmann’s latest project which will be released on Netflix on August 12th, 2016, is a drama based in the South Bronx during the 70s just as Hip-Hop was emerging amidst the burning years and strife. But during those years there was plenty of life going on in our neighborhoods.
We are hoping that the series is done right and gets the picture of that era correct as per those who lived it and not by those who just wrote about it.
Headstone found by Nilka Martell belonging to Pearl Sternberg who passed away in 1929 at the age of 10.
If you live in The Bronx, chances are you know Nilka Martell or know of her and if you do, you know she won’t stop questioning things until she gets an answer that satiates her curiosity and inquiring mind.
First off, let me add the disclaimer that Nilka is a friend I love dearly so if you detect any bias in this post, it’s simply because I love her and I think she’s awesome. Simply put, SHE IS THE BRONX!
Recently at a meeting on City Island for The Bronx Council for Environmental Quality (BCEQ) she decided to take a break to go to the private beach on Bay Street to take some pictures. Nilka Martell, holding the sign "Loving The Bronx" leads a historical tour of Hunts Point
While standing on the shore she immediately noticed something out of place—a tombstone of a young Jewish girl named Pearl Sternberg who passed away at the age of 10 on August 5, 1929 just laying there on the beach.
Nilka being Nilka asked another BCEQ board member,who was hosting the meeting about it but he wasn’t too sure stating that it had been there and might have been a tombstone with an error on it and was since then being used as a stepping stone for getting up from the shore. Nilka sent out a few emails and the curiousity increased.
Someone even suggested that perhaps somebody knew her history?
One thing they all agreed upon was that the stone should be moved and handled with care according to Jewish law on such things but that it was ultimately up to the owner of the property.
Anthony Pisciotta wrote in an email:
“I spoke to the director of the organization that I am involved with at Bayside Cemetery. She is very interested in helping get this stone either returned to its proper location or disposing of it consistent with Jewish law ( Jews have very specific ways of dealing with religious articles) She reached out to the president of Riverside cemetery to see if they can shed some light on this. Since she is a known person in the Jewish cemetery community, they may be more willing to speak with her.
“I also visited Bay St and spoke to a resident. She told me that the stone has been there as long as anyone can remember. I gave her my name and told her that we are interested in helping get it returned to a more dignified place. She didn’t think anyone would object to that. She took my info and said she would pass it along to the persons who take care of the beach.”
Finally, five days after the investigation began in what turned to be a group effort by amazing Bronxites, Tom Casey of the East Bronx History Forum found a Pearl Sternberg buried in a cemetery out in Saddle Brook, NJ.
Once this information came to light, Anthony reached out once again to his contact, Jamie Cotel at the Community Alliance for Jewish Affiliated Cemeteries (CAJAC) and wrote back to the group:
“Jamie Cotel from CAJAC reached out to Riverside Cemetery in NJ and spoke to the executive director and Pearl Sternberg is indeed buried there. He searched the records pertaining to the grave and discovered that there is nothing about the stone being removed or replaced so its possible that it was removed unlawfully. She was told that the cemetery has quite a bit of downed stones in the area of the grave so thats why it went unnoticed . How it got on the Bay St beach is anyone’s guess. In any event, the cemetery wants to return it to the grave if we can get permission to remove it. I am waiting to hear back from the people in charge of the beach.
“If they give us permission to take it, myself and Jamie will return it to Riverside. ”
But shortly afterwards, a supervisor for Riverside Cemetery went to Pearl Stenberg’s final resting place and found that a monument was there making the mystery of the duplicate headstone even stranger.
According to details provided by the cemetery, both monuments appear to be from the same time period and the Hebrew inscription was “basically the same.”
Whatever the case may be, Anthony mentioned that it must be treated as a religious article as per Jewish law and disposed accordingly. CAJAC is attempting to get in touch with Pearl’s family to see how they would like to proceed being that they still technically are the owners.
This is what it is to be a Bronxite, this is what The Bronx is all about. It’s about folks coming together and getting things done simply because it is the right thing to do. This was a group effort that started out with one woman’s curiosity that led to a literal rainbow coalition of people to help someone perhaps forgotten in the gulf of time.
Pearl Sternberg, you were beloved and may you rest in eternal peace.
זיכרונה לברכה
zikhronah livrakha
עליה השלום
aleha ha-shalom
May her memory be a blessing
May peace be upon her
In a neighborhood and borough on the edge because of gentrification, the fight continues and this time it’s taken a personal face against someone once seen as our hero.
Someone has begun placing stickers calling Majora Carter a traitor and associating her with the hashtag #ColumbusSyndrome, a term that is often used when talking about gentrification and how people approach gentrifying areas with a colonizer’s mentality.
Once upon a time in the Hunts Point neighborhood of The Bronx, she was a community leader who many, myself included, looked up to as a positive role model.
Through her tenacity and ferocity at bringing attention to environmental injustice in Hunts Point, she quickly became an oft sought out voice by other leaders including giving TED Talks.
But for the past four or five years Ms Carter began to seem more self involved and no longer truly helping the community—unless she was paid as was the case when we, as South Bronx Unite, reached out to help us fight against FreshDirect’s wanting to move to our waterfront bringing over a thousand trucks which would further exacerbate our above national average of asthma rates.
We were told, “Majora would be happy to speak for $500 per hour to consult.”
We were shocked. Wasn’t this what Majora did? Didn’t she help fight for our communities?
Little did we know that she was already being courted by FreshDirect and eventually paid her to convince Bronxites that this was a good thing when clearly it was an environmental disaster for our neighborhood and borough.
Even the organization she founded, Sustainable South Bronx, and The Point, went against Majora along with over 50 community based organizations condemning the FreshDirect deal especially on the grounds of it being a poor environmental step backwards for the South Bronx.
People, myself included saw that Majora Carter was no longer a friend but a traitor to our communities.
Ms. Carter’s meteoric rise also made her a polarizing figure. Many former allies and neighbors say that Ms. Carter trades on the credibility she built in the Bronx, while no longer representing its interests. They say she has capitalized on past good deeds in the way that politicians parlay their contacts into a lobbying career, or government regulators are hired by the companies they once covered.
“You can’t have it both ways,” said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. “Either you’re an honest broker and accountable to the community, or you’re working for a business interest and accountable to that.”
And that’s precisely what she’s doing now with the new Birch Coffee Shop in Hunts Point of which she is involved in.
Rather than supporting our own local coffee entrepreneurs, she preferred to help bring in a company from Manhattan and Long Island City with no connections to our borough.
Many residents have expressed concern and distaste of her actions and is often called and agent of gentrification.
Which leads to the latest attack on her character.
“And why should Manhattan have a monopoly on macchiato? “We like to see the work that we do as self-gentrification,” Ms. Carter said. “People in low-status communities like nice things, too.”
What us self-gentrification? It’s nonsense and just trying to whitewash what she’s doing to the community.
People no longer are blind or enamored by those who betray our borough and people. We know when we’re being used and folks will not remain silent.
To Majora and those like her we say, “Keep your gentrification agenda out of our borough and let us support our own to grow a better community.”
Welcome2TheBronx’s intern, Isaiah Keaton, contributed to this reporting.
Summertime is one of my favorite times of the year but more importantly, at least for myself, is that it’s the beginning of farmers market season.
Most begin during June and July and go straight through November across The Bronx and each one has their own distinct culture as well as slight differences in what they sell.
Some, like the South Bronx Farmers Market which is entering its 3rd season, offers sustainably sourced and raised meat products, baked goods, and even tasty local Morris Perk—The Bronx’s premier coffee of choice by many local institutions!
This year, The South Bronx Farmers Market is offering cooking classes for kids and is one of only a handful in New York City that actually offer this program so we’re lucky to have them.
Last Tuesday, we took our high school intern Isaiah Keaton to the Borough Hall Greenmarket at 161st and Grand Concourse in front of Joyce Kilmer Park where he learned a little bit about the history of the Greenmarket program.
Greenmarket is an organization founded in 1976 to provide all New Yorkers fresh produce from local farms within a 200 mile radius. It’s essentially a trade off; slightly higher prices for an immensely higher quality. Juice drinks sold have natural flavor, meaning no sugar or chemicals added. That’s not all, the cows are fed more organic food resulting in a more purified milk. Farmers markets are more organic, healthier, and even provide recipes for delicious dishes utilizing ingredients from the markets.
Low-income residents of New York who qualify for SNAP/EBT food benefits are encouraged to buy at farmers markets through a program called Health Bucks. Health Bucks provide customers who use SNAP/EBT with $2 vouchers$5 they spend in at participating farmers markets. The program runs from July through September.
So where can you find your nearest Greenmarket or farmers market in The Bronx?
Well, we have you covered with this handy interactive map that shows you locations, hours, and days of operation! If there’s a market not listed, please let us know so that we can update it!
It’s not every day a Bronx fashion designer gets a boost from major entertainer like Beyoncé and her mother Tina Knowles who’s famous in her own right as a businesswoman and fashion designer too.
And that’s precisely what happened toJerome LaMaar who recently plucked roots in Port Morris right next door to Wallworks NY Gallery by the legendary graffiti artist Crash.
Jerome LaMaar with Tina Knowles
According to fashion news outlet WWD, Jerome got a text from Beyoncé just before her concert at Citifield asking him to join her backstage.
WWD writes:
“It was very cool. I was at home getting ready for bed when I got the text. I had to get my energy going again and get over there. It was about 15 minutes before the show. It was amazing,” LaMaar said. “Miss Tina had seen some of the pieces I’d done for Beyoncé backstage. She fell in love with it and wanted to know if it was possible to turn that into a jumper.”
That would be “yes.” And Knowles repaid the favor, so to speak, by Instagramming a photo of herself wearing Jerome 5:31 and suggesting fans “check out this young talented designer.” They have and, as a result, LaMaar has been fielding e-mails, orders and calls. He added, “That Bey, I have to say just changed everything.”
Beyoncé has been commissioning pieces from Lamaar for a few years. Stylist Zerina Akers connected them after checking out the 5:31 Jérôme collection in his store 9J in The Bronx’s emerging Port Morris area. After Beyoncé was photographed wearing one of his coats to the Billboard Awards and a Taylor Swift party on the same day, Patricia Field caught a glimpse of it, contacted Lamaar and later hooked him up with Dover Street Market for a collaboration.”
And Jerome LaMaar is in good company as a son of The Bronx with fashion icons and legends such as Bronx born and bred Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Jennifer Lopez, and the late Lauren Bacall.
This young man is off to a great start to continue a legacy of fashion that our borough continues to set the world afire. Whether it’s Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, or the many urban and Hip Hop clothing lines, The Bronx will continue to produce it while the world wears it.
“I’m in the South Bronx so how girly can you get? But my space is so polished it relays to people what I’ve been trying to say for a long time,” he said. “We keep pushing ‘Streetglam for the Hyperfemme’ — you know, the hair is done, nails are done, looking pretty, smelling good, feeling good.”
Join us tomorrow, Wednesday June 15th from 5PM to 7PM as Bronx Academy of Art and Dance (BAAD) hosts a vigil, ‘The Bronx to Orlando With Love’, on the steps of The Bronx County Courthouse in memory of the victims of the LGBTQ massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando in the early hours of this past Sunday.
My heart aches for the victims, their families, friends, and our LGBTQ community.
The LGBTQ community is a big small one where the degrees of separation between individuals is small but for those of us that are well-known and travel in wide circles, it becomes miniscule and inevitably when a tragedy strikes, we either know the individual or have friends to do. This makes Orlando even more personal for me, watching my friends suffering.
For over 3,000 years since the time of antiquity, our communities have been persecuted and victims of violence.
Since the Stonewall Riots in 1969, life for self-identified LGBTQ has progressively gotten better through the fights and sacrifice of our fearless queer leaders but sadly, everyday we are reminded that we have such a long way to go.
The Orlando massacre on Sunday is a terrible reminder of just that.
The deaths of these innocents are the end result of hate propagated by religion and religious leaders whether Christian, Islamic, Jewish, or any that singles out our community as a sinful one.
Their hands are bloodied along with other hate groups including our Republican party in the United States that has an all-out campaign against the LGBTQ residents of our country.
The NRA and fanaticism for firearms and the 2nd Amendment along with their lobbiests and elected officials who allow such weapons to be purchased easier than buying cigarettes or alcohol and even automobiles are responsible for the tragedy on Sunday.
America is supposed to be a beacon and haven of freedom but it is apparent that if you don’t belong to the status quo, you have to fight for those rights whether you’re Black, Latino, Asian, women, or any person of color, and if you are a member of the LGBTQ community and any of the aforementioned, you face an even steeper hill to climb are more difficult battles to fight.
When we look back upon our history, our country has been built upon violence and oppression of others. From slavery, to the the theft of Native American lands and their slaughter, lynching of Mexicans, Chinese, and Italians.
Remember Matthew Shepard or the many other LGBTQ victims of lynching? I do. How about all our transgender victims of violence and murder? I do.
Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 African-American men, women, and children were lynched in twelve Southern states along with 1,297 whites who supported their rights and freedoms.
Let’s not forget the Tuskegee Study where 600 African American men were used by our government to study untreated syphilis, or the one-third of Puerto Rican women on the island sterilized by our government in the early 20th century.
So many acts of hatred in our nation.
Is it a wonder that so many are rising up against the presidential campaign of Donald Trump which is inciting violence and is a campaign of intolerance and xenophobia?
It is incumbent upon us to stand against hate in whatever form it takes, it is our responsibility to stand up to our leaders who attempt to restrict and criminalize our lives. If you don’t stand up, your silence makes you an accomplice in the ensuing hatred and violence.
Your silence makes you complicit in these persecutions.
Your silence against hate is deadly.
Your intolerance is killing us.
Join us tomorrow against hate, against the powers that be that allow such easy access to firearms that make it so easy to commit such heinous acts as the Orlando massacre.
We must force change and act up for justice and liberty for all.
La Central Affordable Housing development slated for Melrose in the Bronx.
In the 2009-2015 Bronx Annual Development Report by the office of The Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr, investment in The Bronx hit a high of $2.4 billion ($2,385,476,138 to be exact) in 2015 representing an 85% increase over the prior year.
Community Board 1, which covers the South Bronx neighborhoods of Melrose, Mott Haven, and Port Morris represented almost half of that amount to the tune of $1.1 Billion ($1,115,959).
The largest, single investment in The Bronx was also in CB1 for $418 million for the proposed development of La Central in Melrose, the 992 unit, 5 building 1.1 million square feet “affordable housing” project that counts a 10,000 square foot television studio for BronxNet and a 40,000 square foot YMCA among its many features.
CB1 and Melrose were also the location of the top commercial development of 2015, Triangle Plaza on 149th Street across from the Opera House Hotel.
Investment in Community Board 1 was four times higher than the second highest which was the adjacent CB3 with $250,320,932 (CB3 also covers parts of Melrose which has been the epicenter of construction and development for almost a decade now).
Community Board 1 also leads with number of new residential units in 2015 for a total of 3,062 accounting for 44% of 6,974 residential units developed in 2015, with a good portion located in Melrose.
Although the number of government subsidized units developed rose by 107% in 2015, of the 6,974 residential units developed in The Bronx in 2015, 66% (4,589 units) were developed by private developers accounting for an 84% increase from 2014. This is important to note, because, for a long time, most residential developments in The Bronx were subsidized as there was zero to no confidence in constructing in our borough without major incentives and subsidies from the government.
Since 2010, there has been a significant incremental increase in unsubsidized residential units. Gentrification anyone?
Highlights by Community Board:
Community Board
Real Estate Investment 2009-2015
Real Estate Investment 2015
Residential Units Created 2009-2015
Residential Units Created 2015
1
$2,227,431,864
$1,116 Billion
5,734
3,062
2
$242,100,334
$82 Million
535
150
3
$946,930,730
$250 Million
3,737
804
4
$918,431,840
$105 Million
1,804
343
5
$409,562,398
$30 Million
1,430
178
6
$680,125,705
$184 Million
2,410
518
7
$650,888,315
$207 Million
2,041
534
8
$638,009,819
$80 Million
1,134
389
9
$561,632,814
$211 Million
1,476
475
10
$559,744,898
$27 Million
963
86
11
$1,196,387,419
$57 Milion
500
264
12
$410,429,936
$37 Million
2,060
171
Total Units:
23,824
6,974
Other key highlights from the report are:
-From 2009-2015, $9.5 billion has been invested in The Bronx:
$5.8 billion invested in residential
$2.4 billion invested in institutional properties
$1.3 billion invested in commercial properties
-23,824 new residential units have been constructed between 2009-2015 (10,789, or 45%, subsidized, 13,035, or 55% unsubsidized)
All this can be yours for $1,100,000…if you have cash on hand. Images via Fillmore.com
120 West 180th Street, across from Bronx Community College, is a beautiful, 3,723 square foot mansion (as per public records) has been listed for sale for a mind-blowing $1.1 million. By the way, the real estate agent chose to say that the house is across from the “former” NYU campus rather than saying it’s across from Bronx Community College.
There’s no question that this Univeristy Heights mansion, which according to the listing has been in the same family for over 60 years, is gorgeous and has been well maintained throughout the years but $1.1 million is far more than is supported by the local market in the neighborhood.
In fact, in a 2-mile radius, there haven’t been any sales of single family homes to support this value in the past 2 years. The only transaction was a mansion in Riverdale and clearly we can’t compare Riverdale to University Heights.
The University Heights home is reminiscent of the single family mansions that once dotted the area of which so few remain. There are many large houses such as this one but none in such pristine condition and two-four family homes making this home an outlier in the area.
“If you compare the house to other properties in the University Heights section of the Bronx, the asking is high. However, the condition is significantly better than most of the other homes that I have seen listed in the area,” said Richard Garey, local resident and architect.
Garey went further into detail about the house and the market and said, “While property shopping in 2014, I looked at 2194 University Avenue. It was listed at $400K. The former NYU fraternity house had been converted to an SRO (Single Room Occupancy)..the house had been essentially run to the ground and required a full renovation. The cost to do a proper renovation would probably start around $500K+. Finally, there is the time and headaches of renovation versus having a move-in ready property. ”
In another era and neighborhood, this house would easily sell for the asking or near asking price but we predict University Heights won’t see these prices like these for another 15-20 years.
1982 Morris Avenue, a two family home which is actually landmarked and in a historic district, sold in March for $438,000 with similar square footage to 120 West 180th Street not to mention comparable condition per the photographs. 2-4 family homes tend to sell at higher prices in the market area.
Richard made an excellent point about the neighborhood.”If you take the Mount Hope, Morris Heights, University housing stock, you can basically put it into three categories: (1) Historic wooden houses that need to be torn down because they have been neglected so long and most aren’t worth fixing (2) Historic masonry houses that require full renovations (3) New construction that is new but lacks character and original details. This house is an outlier in the market, it has actually been maintained” said Richard
“If you take the Mount Hope, Morris Heights, University housing stock, you can basically put it into three categories: (1) Historic wooden houses that need to be torn down because they have been neglected so long and most aren’t worth fixing (2) Historic masonry houses that require full renovations (3) New construction that is new but lacks character and original details. This house is an outlier in the market, it has actually been maintained” said Richard
So folks, would you pay $1.1 million for this house if you had the money?
Today, Friday June 3rd at 5pm, please join us atThe Bronx Documentary Center for one of my favorite shows: The Bronx Junior Photo League year end exhibition.
This exhibition is the culmination of an intensive yet free after school photography class where the kids, who range from 11 to 18 years, display their photography and multimedia projects.
Through the hardworking volunteers and staff at the BDC, coupled with our youth’s thirst for knowledge, throughout the past several years, they have churned out quality and professional work that’s beyond impressive for their age.
This event is such a wonderful moment where we can see and experience the world around us through the eyes of our children and I can’t stress enough how important it is to come out and support them.
The Bronx Documentary Center is located at 614 Courtlandt Avenue at East 151st Street in Melrose just a couple blocks from the 2 and 5 line at 3rd Ave and 149th Street.
More from the Bronx Documentary Center:
Details
ON VIEW
June 3 – 19, 2016
Thursdays and Fridays 3-7PM
Saturdays and Sundays 1-5PM
FEATURING
Rozlin Ahmed
Tajonnie Amoah
Amber Castillo
David Delgado
Fanta Diop
Nailea Dominquez
Keven Estrella
Samantha Fajardo
Alejandro Flores
Fritzi Garcia
Melanie Genao
Brenda Hernandez
Janet Hernandez
Janet Lozano
Tianna Maldonado
Tamara Mitchell
Harry Montas
Isis Negrón
Nicholas Noriega
Georgianna Oyola
Joseph Pacheco
Ethan Perez
Chloe Rodriguez
Shianne Williams
The Bronx Junior Photo League is a free after-school program where Bronx students learn how to utilize the power of documentary photography and storytelling to explore their community.
The class, comprised of 11-18 year-olds from our Bronx community, will be displaying their final photo and multimedia projects at the Bronx Documentary Center on June 3rd.
The Bronx Junior Photo League was taught by Bianca Farrow, Cynthia Rivera, Elias Williams, Kholood Eid, Jon Santiago, Michael Kamber and Groana Melendez.
This program was generously supported by Fujifilm USA.
