How Gentrification Saved Harlem
Author of Home Girl -- Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block
Recently
homeowners in my corner of Harlem held a soiree in someone's garden. We
form a warm group of 130 people who represent the changing neighborhood
-- black old-timers with a growing number of whites. Everyone brought a
dish or bottle and the talk over the macaroni was cheerful. Did anyone
know a good contractor? How did the Little League do this summer? A
door prize, a box of Godiva chocolates, was awarded to the longest
resident -- Dina Morrison, 93, who has lived with her older sister in
the same place for 67 years. No one mentioned foreclosures.
Foreclosure crisis? What crisis? Not in Harlem.
Harlem
is full of the sort of people who are losing their properties all over
New York City, namely little old ladies and working-class
African-American families. But the nation's black capital has been
insulated from the sub-prime meltdown by the very thing usually blamed
for destroying communities of color -- gentrification.
While the
dreaded G word has priced some residents out of the 'hood, we've seen a
paradoxical upside. The house values that have skyrocketed over the
past 15 years in Harlem scared off many predatory lenders who targeted
other black areas. These $1-million-plus price tags have also given
homeowners who are struggling to keep apace with mortgage payments the
option of selling out before the bank closes in.
"There tends
to be a tight connection between property values and foreclosures,"
explains Josiah Madar, from the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban
Policy at New York University.
He and other experts understand
little about the mechanisms of abusive lending, other than the stark
racial component. Eight of the ten top neighborhoods hit by
foreclosures in the city are overwhelmingly non-white. A map
representing the worst afflicted areas -- among them
Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, North Bronx, South Jamaica -- says
it all. Each filing is a dot, and the aforementioned areas resemble
solid metastasizing cancers, with several hundred foreclosures each.
Yet
the area comprising Hamilton Heights, which claims some of Harlem's
most prized Victorian brownstones, had just eight foreclosure notices,
so few one can discern the individual specks.
It appears that
the conmen who besieged other black neighborhoods steered away from
Harlem, wagering that anyone who lived in a valuable townhouse would be
too financially sophisticated for their tricks. Unlike in the outer
boroughs where the racial demographic is similar but house values
lower, Harlem residents didn't report a barrage of flyers pushed
through mail slots that promised zero interest rates. The scam artists
who solicited people to over-borrow just didn't approach Harlem as
aggressively. Take a look at the numbers. Only 0.8 percent of all
home-purchases mortgages in the Hamilton Heights area in 2006 were
sub-prime, versus 34 percent in Bedford-Stuyvesant and 39 percent in
East New York. (EDITORS -- These are the latest available figures.)
Refinancing loans from risky lenders were likewise lower here.
"It
was all a matter of the assumptions of the predators," said Dwayne
Jones, lending director of the Parodneck Foundation, a housing advocacy
group. "They did not come to Harlem." He credits the large
concentration of organizations like his, as well as social networks
like our homeowners' association, for raising awareness among less
savvy member of the community.
Those Harlemites who did borrow
more than they actually owned could take the money and run. That's what
our next-door neighbor did. Literally a week before the bank jumped to
possess her 1888 row house, she sold the property for a nice packet to
a white family and found something cheaper. Granted, it's disruptive to
move but she was spared financial ruin.
The added positive
effect is that properties like hers do not sit vacant during New York's
long foreclosure process. We see a vicious cycle in foreclosure-hit
areas, where empty houses sink the cost of those nearby. As anyone who
lived through Harlem's dark ghetto days knows, no one wants to live
next to a boarded up building that tempts drug dealers to loiter.
Moreover, few people want to buy a boarded up building with a leaking
roof, which is often the case as banks rarely maintain the properties
they seize.
This is not to say that gentrification is great for
everyone. Of course it has a bad side. Most Harlemites rent apartments
and do not dwell in fancy mansions. The locale is losing its status as
the last outpost of affordability in Manhattan. Those suffering are
victims not of the white professionals who buy shells and fix them up.
No, the destructive forces are the big developers who scoop up
rent-stabilized apartment buildings and then try to force out tenants
by doing improvements and jacking up the price. Some of these investors
borrowed more than the value of their properties, and now risk default.
Then what happens to the residents living on the premises?
For
the time being, though, homeowners like Dina Morrison are in a good
place. There's talk among the homeowners of a jolly Christmas party,
just like every year of plenty.
©2008 Judith Matloff
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