For residents of the A. Philip Randolph Houses, the view across the street is not a pretty sight.
For at least five years, public housing residents of this New York City Housing Authority complex have stared at a row of 22 boarded-up five-story brownstones. Now, some tenant leaders are saying that they don’t want to wait any longer for the deteriorating structures to continue to get worse.
The Randolph Houses are comprised of 36 buildings on both the northern and southern sides of 114th Street between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. According to NYCHA spokespeople, in 2006, 159 families had to vacate their homes on the south side of the street. Sixty-four of those families moved across the street to other Randolph Houses apartments in an “intra-project” transfer, and the remaining moved into other NYCHA developments.
The move came on the heels of a citywide public housing renovation initiative that Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in 2005. “We are undertaking the most aggressive efforts to build and preserve affordable housing for more New Yorkers and today’s announcement further demonstrates our commitment,” Bloomberg said in a 2005 press release, adding that this project would preserve housing for more than 420,000 residents of the development.
As part of the project, 22 of the 36 Randolph buildings would be completely gutted and renovated. But despite promises from city officials to modernize the south side of the complex, years later, the deteriorating structures are sitting idle in a worse condition.
“The buildings were all in dire need of entire renovation,” said A. Philip Randolph Tenant Association President Robertus Coleman who has lived on the north side of the street since before the move. “The ground floor apartments were sinking, pipes needed to be repaired. To tear down the whole thing was the best way, so residents had to be relocated,” she added.
A press release in 2007 that said the final phase of the renovation would be complete by December 2009, but it appears that there has been no progress.
NYCHA declined to comment on this discrepancy, but wrote in an e-mail statement that it was “currently reviewing available funding options that are in alignment with the project, the needs of our residents, and that are in compliance with local codes, zoning and any historic district status that has been granted to the area and/or the buildings. NYCHA remains committed to the rehabilitation of Randolph Houses.”
Coleman said that she has been in touch with NYCHA about the boarded-up structures, and she is hopeful that the city will finish the renovation as promised. “Each time they tell us they are doing something, they claim that they run into problems … It is very, very frustrating,” she said.
The task of cleaning up the blight must fall to the city, she said, adding, “We’re low-income—we have no money to rebuild this place.”
Coleman said she was upset that they lost so many residents on the close-knit block, and feared that after so many years, some wouldn’t even want to move again and return to 114th, if the renovation actually finished.
“They broke up the family composition we had here, and we are no closer to a solution,” she said. Coleman also claims that residents vacated well before 2005, though NYCHA maintains that the move happened that year.
The tension is increased by a new condominium on the rise at 114th and Frederick Douglass, called “Harlem’s Savannah.”
Some tenants fear that the city’s inaction is an indirect effort to encourage low-income public housing residents to move out and leave the blighted block.
“They want to clean up the area and put some rich people in here because it’s close to Central Park,” Nebiyu Clette, a resident on the block, said. “The city can’t just move people like they did 25 years ago,” Clette said.
Other residents echoed these sentiments, fearing that the new development and lack of renovation may be a strategic move to push poorer residents out in order to usher in higher-income tenants. “They’re trying to get people out of there so they don’t have to fix the buildings themselves,” Malika Lopez, a 114th Street tenant, said. “I just want it to be so that families who have been in there for generations can’t get kicked out.”
Coleman said that she is going to call a meeting in early February with NYCHA, to ensure that the renovation is on track. She said she is giving time for the new chair of NYCHA, John Rhea, to take a stance. But, she added, the angry tenants are reaching their limit.
Though she hopes the renovation would kick off in February, she said, “If that doesn’t happen, you’ll see the tenants in the street.”
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