Join us on Saturday June 24th at the Bronx Documentary Center as we officially launch the Bronx Queer Forum, an independent organization providing monthly screening events of LGBTQ films and documentaries.
The Bronx is home to a large, vibrant, and diverse LGBTQ community but we have been lacking a center since 2012 and safe spaces for our communities to meet in on a regular basis are extremely limited.
We believe that there is absolutely no reason that we have to always leave The Bronx and head into Manhattan or other boroughs to be able to spend time together and it was this that led us to begin the Bronx Queer Forum as a monthly event and unite us under one roof even if it’s just once a month to start with.
Our first screening on Saturday June 24th will start at 7PM and will feature ‘Pariah’, the story of a black teenage lesbian from Brooklyn leading a double life hiding her identity from her family all the while exploring it with her peers.
These events will always be free and we hope you can join us for this special evening!
The Bronx Queer Forum will launch with 3 events throughout the summer at The Bronx Documentary Center in the months of June, July, and August.
The Bronx Documentary Center is located at 614 Courtlandt Avenue at 151st Street and is easily accessible by subway at the 2/5 line to 3rd Avenue/149th Street and by many buses including the 2, 4, 41, 19 and several others.
We are extremely grateful for the Bronx Documentary Center and their generosity in allowing us to hold this event at their space.
For more information on the Bronx Queer Forum or sponsorship opportunities, please contact Ed Garcia Conde at 917-532-7504 or info@welcome2thebronx.com
On Thursday, June 15th, The Bronx Junior Photo League will host the opening reception from 4PM-7PM of ‘Journeys: Immigration Stories‘ including a multimedia presentation at 5PM by the students.
This exhibition is the culmination of the 12-18 year old students’ photography and journalism after school program at the Bronx Documentary Center where the exhibition will be on view from June 15th through June 25th.
As part of their instruction, the students photographed and interviewed members of The Bronx’s immigrant community including a Vietnamese nun, “…an exiled Russian journalist…” and a Dominican artist among others.
Last year, Bronxite and New York Times journalist and photographer David Gonzalez wrote:
“This is not a feel-good exercise about some imagined naïve childhood vision. Programs like the Bronx Junior Photo League and ICP at the Point show that young image-makers are keenly aware of the world around them and how they wish to portray it. They know an outsider might see only menace or pain. They see a neighborhood.
Older, more experienced photographers might learn a thing or two from these young people. I did in 1979 when I returned to the Bronx after graduating from Yale and taught photography to fourth-grade students at Community School 61, which loomed over the mountains of rubble on Charlotte Street in the South Bronx. The images my young students took were not of the despair and destruction outside, but guided by the love and hope that still beat in their hearts. They showed everyday scenes decades before “Everyday” became a staple of Instagram.”
Please come support our youth, especially tomorrow during their opening reception!
The Bronx Documentary Center is located at 614 Courtlandt Avenue at East 151st Street in Melrose.
Views from the balcony overlooking the Grand Concourse. The apartment has East and West exposures/Image via StreetEasy
A co-op apartment at Executive Towers on the Grand Concourse has shattered a record on the famed boulevard as it cracked the half million mark and sold for $510,000 back in April after only being on the market for a little over a month.
The large 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom unit with a balcony was originally listed for $595,000 by Halstead and closed at almost 15% below asking but it wasn’t the first apartment to list above $500k.
Back in October, we wrote about a 2 bedroom apartment in the same building that was listed at a ridiculously unsupported price of $575,000 which was soon taken off the market. Maybe our reporting on the utter greed had something to do with it?
1020 Grand Concourse aka Executive Towers/ Image courtesy of HGMLS / Douglas Elliman Real Estate
But at $510k, this apartment isn’t the highest selling in the general Grand Concourse area.
With these two sales, the benchmark has been set for 3 bedroom units along and around the Grand Concourse below E 167th Street within the 78 building Grand Concourse Historic District which was designated back in 2011.
The $500k mark was once exclusively the domain of Riverdale up in the Northwest Bronx for cooperative apartments but now the South Bronx is beginning to chip away at its
And of course, what would this post be without mentioning the obvious gentrification issues.
With these prices, more and more Bronxites can no longer afford to buy an apartment in the general area and in the ultimate act of irony after decades of decay and neglect, the Grand Concourse is once again returning to its former roots of excluding certain demographics, this time not policies based on race but of economics.
For decades, people of color were denied the opportunity to rent an apartment on the Concourse and it was something that even went on during the 70s with my parents being told there were no vacancies when all signs said there were.
Will the future of the Grand Concourse be as diverse as it is now or will it succumb to the disease that is gentrification that has overtaken NYC?
It’s that time of the year again when farmers’ markets open up across our borough and this year we have a new addition at Fordham Plaza and expanded days at the South Bronx Farmers’ Market!
These markets are an extremely important resource for our communities providing additional places to get great produce grown locally (as in within 200 miles generally).
You get to connect with farmers and find out more about the produce and how its grown, watch cooking demos and pick up great recipes too.
Check out our interactive map below and if there’s anything we missed, let us know and we’ll add it!
According to the Furman Center, almost 1.7 million New Yorkers were living below the poverty line between 2011 and 2015, numbers unseen since 1970.
And The Bronx leads the city with over 52% of our neighborhoods in high or extreme poverty.
Coupled with more residents that are facing homelessness and are rent burdened than any others in the city, we are facing an epic crisis in The Bronx at a time when gentrification is plowing ahead and more luxury housing is being built in the South Bronx.
This is the poorest congressional district in the nation and flooding our neighborhoods with luxury housing isn’t going to solve existing problems for existing residents.
Rather, it will solve the poverty problem by pushing out existing residents and changing the economic demographics of our neighborhoods.
The Furman Center lists several key findings of the report such as:
The poverty rate is higher in New York City than it is in the nation, especially for children and seniors.
In New York City, 30% of children were poor in 2011-2015 compared to 22% nationally.
About 18% of senior New Yorkers lived below the poverty line in 2011-2015, twice the national senior poverty rate of 9%.
Poverty rates by racial and ethnic groups do not mirror national trends. In New York City, 20% of Asian New Yorkers were poor compared to 14% nationally; 22% of black New Yorkers were living below the poverty line compared to 27% nationally; 29% of Hispanic New Yorkers were more poor compared to 25% nationally; and 12% of white New Yorkers were living below the poverty line compared to 11% nationally.
Between 2006-2010 and 2011-2015, over 17% of neighborhoods saw a 10 percentage point increase in their poverty rate.
64 neighborhoods in New York City (home to 2.6% of the population – about 216,000 New Yorkers) saw a decrease in their poverty rate of 10 percentage points or more; 356 neighborhoods (home to 16.5% of the population – about 1,366,000 New Yorkers) experienced an increase in their poverty rates of 10 percentage points or more.
Neighborhood conditions vary significantly based on the level of poverty in a neighborhood. Higher poverty neighborhoods have higher violent crime rates, poorer performing schools, and fewer adults who are college educated.
In 2011-2015, high- and extreme-poverty neighborhoods experienced more than three times as much serious violent crime as low-poverty neighborhoods (7.5 serious violent crimes per 1,000 residents versus 2.2 serious violent crimes per 1,000 residents).
52% of residents aged 25 or older in low-poverty neighborhoods had a college degree compared to 13% in extreme-poverty areas.
Poor black and Hispanic New Yorkers are much more likely to live in higher poverty neighborhoods than poor white and Asian New Yorkers.
Over half of poor black and poor Hispanic New Yorkers lived in a high- or extreme-poverty neighborhood in 2011-2015. About 23 percent of poor Asian New Yorkers and about 30 percent of poor white New Yorkers lived in a high- or extreme-poverty neighborhood in 2011-2015.
While more than half of fourth grade students in 2014 performed at grade level in math in low poverty neighborhoods, a quarter or less were at grade level in schools in high- and extreme-poverty neighborhoods. There are similar disparities for English language tests.
Children are more likely to live in higher poverty neighborhoods than adults or seniors.
30% of all children in New York City lived in a high- or extreme-poverty neighborhood in 2011-2015. 54.1% of poor children in New York City lived in a high- or extreme-poverty neighborhood in 2011-2015.
Children were the least likely to live in low poverty neighborhoods (21% of children live in a low-poverty neighborhood).
Sorry Brooklyn, but according to AOL’s Lifestyle section, The Bronx’s New York Botanical Garden is one of the 17 most beautiful gardens in the world but this isn’t surprising for us who enjoy the beauty of this world-class gem in our home borough.
In fact, AOL must have loved NYBG so much that they chose it as the only garden to write about as an introduction to their list while all others were just noted in photographs.
“There is, however, a peaceful, green oasis in the city complete with lush rain forests, towering cacti and orchids elegantly dripping from hanging pots — and it can be enjoyed even during the most dreary winter days.
Today, the 250-acre estate offers a little bit of everything to visitors. There is a garden home to over 650 varieties of roses, filling the summer air with pure perfume. The rock garden, which trims a meandering stream with alpine blossoms, feels like a piece of Switzerland, instead of a subway ride away from Times Square. There is also a perennial garden filled with an ever-changing kaleidoscope of vibrant flowers.”
Location of York Studios property in Soundview which was purchased by the company in October of 2012 for $7.2 million in a foreclosure.
Soundview―The Bronx is Filming.
Two years after announcing their expansion to The Bronx, York Studios finally broke ground for their 350,000 square foot studios in our borough on Lafayette along the Bronx River in a 10 acre lot purchased for $7.2 million by the company in 2012.
Construction will be done in two phases with the first including five sound stages with a combined total of 170,000 square feet and an expected completion date of October 2018.
Rendering of York Studios in Soundview
Once completed, York Studios will join Silvercup Studios located in Port Morris which opened up last year in a borough that last had film and television studios in the 1970s.
All of this great news for The Bronx but only if it actually will directly benefit our residents with jobs and our local mom and pop shops can benefit from the millions being poured into our borough, otherwise, it’s just the same old deal where big business sets up shop in our borough just to save a few bucks vs doing business in Brooklyn or Queens.
When the news was first announced that York Studios was coming to The Bronx, Edwin Pagán, filmmaker and former board member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) told Welcome2TheBronx, “Film production has deep historical roots in the Bronx and the concept of a major film studio being built in the borough is a very intriguing proposition, and could, potentially, become a catalyst for long-term economic revitalization in the region.”
As like many others who have been talking about York Studios settings shop in our borough, Pagán raises the important issue of how such a project can really impact our youth and community. He says:
“The creative medium of film, with its varied disciplines and vocations, would provide an excellent opportunity for apprenticeship programs for the local community, especially youth and the many filmmakers who call the Bronx home. It would be great to see the studio create “shadow” training initiatives where young people are linked with mentors and receive hands-on production experience in set-building, lighting, makeup, wardrobe and other production crew responsibilities, with the ultimate goal of having them become part of the related unions and can build careers in the industry. We hope the investors have this kind of vision purpose-built into their overall long-term plans.”
We know how our borough is full of talent and the arts in all disciplines and not least of all the television and film industry with Woody Allen, Joy Bryant, Alan Alda, the late Lauren Bacall, George A Romero, Penny Marshall, Tracy Morgan, Regis Philbin, Sonia Manzano, Kerry Washington, Jennifer Lopez, Stanley Kubrick, and so many others either born here, raised here, or both.
Let’s hope this can be an important catalyst for all.
A new study released yesterday by the Association of Housing and Development (ANHD) documented the variety of risks to affordable housing throughout all of New York City’s neighborhoods and The Bronx takes the lead with Community Board 4, home to the Jerome Avenue Rezoning Plan.
But it’s not just confined to the West and South Bronx. East Bronx neighborhoods of Morris Park, Bronxdale, Parkchester, Baychester, and Soundview are on the list. (Only two Bronx community districts/boards had little to no risk: CD 8 covering Riverdale, Fieldston and others and CD 10 covering such neighborhoods as Throggs Neck, City Island, Westchester Square, Country Club–all neighborhoods with high homeownership rates versus
The ANHD study looked at risk factors such as unemployment, percent with rent burden, percent with severe overcrowding, families with children applying for shelters, price per square foot change in residential sales, and number of affordable units set to expire within 5 years.
Boricua Village aka The Northrose. Over 700 apartments across several buildings and a 14 story building for Boricua College.
7,928 apartments are at such risk of losing their affordability status in The Bronx between 2017 and 2023 as Low Income Housing Tax Credits begin to expire. Once this happens, building owners can rent out these units at market value.
As Mayor de Blasio’s administration seeks to steamroll through neighborhoods across the city and rezone for higher density, these neighborhoods are already experiencing increased pressures as speculative purchases are driving up values artificially based on the possibility of the zoning actually being approved.
CityLimits points out that out of the 11 neighborhoods currently under proposed rezoning or have been rezoned, 4 are in the top ten with the most threats to affordable housing (Jerome Avenue and Southern Boulevard included).
Four zoning neighborhoods—parts of Southern Boulevard, Jerome Avenue, East New York, and Inwood—are among the top ten neighborhoods in the city with the most households using housing vouchers. East Harlem, Bay Street, and Far Rockaway are among the top 20. ANHD considers a high rate of voucher holders a threat because dependency on vouchers means residents could be vulnerable to federal budget cuts.
Of all New York City neighborhoods, Jerome and East New York are home to the most residents applying to live in shelters. The explanation is simple: If you’ve been priced out of East New York or Jerome, where can you go next?
East New York, the Lower East Side, and the Rockaways rank among the top ten neighborhoods with the most at-risk Mitchell Lama Units; southern Jerome Avenue and the Lower East Side rank among the top neighborhoods with expiring Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) units; parts of Southern Boulevard, parts of Jerome, and East Harlem rank at the top for at-risk HUD units. Such statistics might be useful in determining what kinds of housing assistance each of these neighborhood will need to prevent a loss of exiting affordable units.
Despite the Bronx’s reputation as the last haven for affordability, ANHD’s metrics place the Jerome Avenue neighborhoods at the top of the charts, with the most housing risk factors in the city. It’s home to some of the city’s most severe rent burdening, overcrowding, and housing litigation rates (though the last could be a sign of strong tenant organizing). It also ranks among the highest for small-home foreclosures and tax delinquency.
Neighborhoods like East New York and Southern Boulevard also have some of the highest number of threatening factors, suggesting that the triple problem of rising rents, increased demand from renters displaced by elsewhere, and historical disinvestment makes for a perfect storm of housing instability in these neighborhoods.
It is clear that the city has a lot of work to do to actually make an impact on the affordability crisis and when we say affordability, we’re talking about TRUE affordability for we already know that the housing built in Bronx neighborhoods are anything but affordable for the residents living in the area who need it the most.
We cannot afford to continue displacing the most vulnerable (or anyone for that matter) as gentrification continues to march its way into The Bronx.
So the New York Daily News has issued a 5 minute challenge to see how many of The Bronx’s 62 neighborhoods can you name in 5 minutes.
We’ll be honest, a bunch of them aren’t actual neighborhoods per se and just some random weirdness from City Planning but overall still a good test of your skills so click the link and see, “How many neighborhoods in the Bronx can you name?”
PS, thanks to Bronxite Nick Leshi for the heads up on this quiz!
But for months we’ve known that Citi Bike has been in talks with Bronx organizations to finally bring the service to our borough and we’re finally glad that we can share the news with you.
Each year as Citi Bike announced future expansion plans, The Bronx was never a part of their plans and to add insult to injury, New Jersey got them before us.
Let that sink in: New Jersey.
Now, there are plans for as many as 2,000 bikes to hit our streets after much pressure from our communities, politicians, and organizations such as The Third Avenue BID which has been in discussion with the company for several months now.
149th Street and Grand Concourse / Image via Claudia Corcino via Twitter
“The entire Bronx, and more specifically the South Bronx, deserves transportation equity.” said Michael Brady, executive director of the Third Avenue BIDin Melrose.
“For decades our communities and neighborhoods have suffered from community disinvestment, now we must rally and demand equal opportunities for transportation alternatives. The Citi Bike program has proved that if communities are given access to transportation alternatives that are operated by a consistent and safe bike share company those same communities become healthier and thrive. The conversation surrounding Citi Bike expansion is exciting and the Third Avenue BID welcomes it to the South Bronx.” added Brady.
And indeed it’s about equal opportunities for our neighborhoods and for the residents of the South Bronx who are in the poorest congressional district in the nation, this may be an economic relief for many who are seeking alternatives to public transit.While annual membership is $163 per year for unlimited access with the first 45 minutes of your trips at no extra charge, residents of NYC’s public housing at NYCHA pay only $5 a month or $60 for an entire year.
Considering the cost of a ride on the bus or subway system with ever increasing failures, riding a bike becomes much more attractive.
As for the health aspects, The Bronx already suffers from the worst health outcomes in the state putting us at the bottom as the 62nd and unhealthiest county of New York State.
Bicycles aren’t all that affordable especially when you start to factor in basic maintenance so for low-income New Yorkers and especially NYCHA residents, this is an excellent opportunity for them to be able to enjoy the health benefits that come with bike riding along with the convenience for a fraction of the cost.
And to the people who immediately complain about their “tax dollars subsidizing” such programs, think of the long term: Better health. The Bronx has been stuck in a rut as the unhealthiest borough in NYC and county in the state!
Further north in Fordham, Daniel Bernstein, Deputy Director of the Fordham Road BID told Welcome2TheBronx, “Fordham is the largest shopping district in the Bronx with so many stores and people coming here by different modes of transportation like the subway, bus, and with a bike lane along The Concourse, it makes 100% sense for Fordham and other areas to have access to Citi Bike. I’m very excited to see it happen for The Bronx. “
Fordham BID / Image via Paul Goebel on Twitter
Transportation Alternatives, an organization founded in 1973 to promote bicycling, walking, and public transportation over automobiles has been extremely active in creating a broad coalition across not just The Bronx but NYC to make sure everyone has access to this service.
In a statement issued to Welcome2TheBronx, Transportation Alternatives Bronx Organizer Erwin Figueroa said, “We’re pleased to learn that Motivate, operator of Citi Bike, is in discussions with the de Blasio administration in regards of expanding Citi Bike to all 5 boroughs. The proposal to bring 4,000 bikes to the Bronx and Staten Island would help provide a foundation for the system to expand to currently unserviced areas and will help address the transportation inequities faced by these two boroughs. Making cycling more accessible to residents of the Bronx will also help improve the borough’s health outcomes and gives residents another transportation option.”
At this moment, exact locations of where the service will be available has yet to be made public but we do know that they have been actively scouting locations and meeting with local organizations, including the Third Avenue BID in Melrose.
When asked further about the what Citi Bike would mean for the Third Avenue BID at The Hub, Michael Brady added, “Imagine a future that efficiently and safely connects Randall’s Island to Mott Haven and Hunts Point, to the bustling commercial district of the HUB, to community assets like Lincoln Hospital, Hostos Community College, and the Bronx County Court Offices. It should be noted that the Bronx will not be a pawn in a NYC experiment where a lower grade operator facilitates bike shares in the outer boroughs. We will not accept anything other then the high quality bike share program that is currently offered to our Manhattan and Brooklyn peers. ”
“This is not the time for City government to dilute the quality of bike share programs by bringing in currently illicit bike share operators for the sake of closing a better deal. The South Bronx will not accept anything less then our equitable right to transportation services.”
While clearly the entire Bronx will not be covered in the first phase, this is a step in the right direction so that we can eventually have an entire city covered with this alternative means of transportation.
For the past 15 years Henry Weinstein, the owner of the landmark Beaux-Arts Old Bronx Borough Courthouse in Melrose, has been searching for the right tenant. Deals have come and gone but none stuck but after 2 years of negotiations, he told Welcome2TheBronx, the building is set to re-open in late Summer 2018 as a charter school.
Success Academy High School of the Liberal Arts has signed a 20 year lease for the entire property at 161st Street and Third Avenue where the borough of The Bronx was born in 1914 as the 62nd County of New York State as the mainland officially split with New York County aka Manhattan.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal was made possible thanks to a large contribution by John Paulson, a billionaire hedge funder and philanthropist.
“Forty years ago, this building housed prisoners waiting for trial,” Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, said in a statement. “That space will be transformed into beautiful, modern classrooms and a historic house of learning. Success is quite literally transforming the school-to-prison pipeline to a school-to-college-and-prosperity pipeline.” posted Curbed.
In 2015 the art organization No Longer Empty, which creates art installations in vacant or underutilized spaces that speaks on community histories and issues held their 3 month residency at the space bringing thousands of community members and youth through the doors of the landmark building for the first time in since its closing in 1977.
The transformation of the Old Bronx Borough Courthouse is the one of the last pieces of the puzzle in the urban revitalization set forward by Nos Quedamos in Melrose as WHEDco’s Bronx Music Heritage Center is rising just 2 blocks away on the last large remaining track of land in the Melrose Commons area of the neighborhood.
We Stay/Nos Quedamos fought hard to acquire the property in the 1990s but in typical former Mayor Rudy Giuliani petty fashion, his administration instead chose to sell the property off at a city auction to spite then Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer with the organization—and The Bronx ending up the ultimate losers.
Although many in the community would have much rather seen the building turned into something that the entire community could utilize, at the very least it will no longer be a derelict, vacant monument to government failure and neglect and will instead serve to as an institution of teaching rather than incarcerating our youth.
Make no mistake: New York City’s attempt to take away land dedicated and mapped as parkland in The Bronx that was slated for Mill Pond Park expansion on Pier 5 will set a precedent that will make it only easier for NYC and New York City Economic Development Corporation to take away parkland anywhere in the city.
That’s why we MUST take a stand regardless of where you live because this is something that will impact our city of over 8.5 million residents and our precious green spaces.
If this were Manhattan, we wouldn’t be having this discussion because parkland would not be taken away but because we are The Bronx and more specifically the South Bronx in a community of color in the poorest congressional district without access to monies for expensive attorneys, NYCEDC and the City think they can just do whatever they want with OUR PUBLIC LAND.
This is not private land, this is public land that New York City DEDICATED as parkland and since Welcome2TheBronx caught them with their pants down last year when they announced their intentions to turn over the land for “affordable” housing that’s not affordable for our community, they began a campaign of DELETING any mention of Pier 5 as part of their expansion.
But unlucky for them, we kept a record of everything.
NYC Parks includes the extension’s 4.7 acres in the total 15 acres of the park. As it stands, only 11.3 acres have been improved as park land.ZoLa, NYC’s zoning and land use site shows the area mapped out as parkland as well. It even categorizes it as open space/recreationAs you can see, NYC Parks has removed the land from the map and the acreage.Mill Pond Park map at the park itself shows the southern parcel as part of future expansion of Mill Pond Park.
