Mary Marsh

On April 3, 2019, the plastic chairs that lined the Broadway Room of Lerner were dotted with students ready to talk about the challenges of having a disability at Columbia. Dierdre Radigan, a senior in General Studies, opened the town hall by speaking about her experience as an undergrad at Georgetown 12 years earlier. “I sat there facing all these problems that I had no idea how to solve and couldn’t have any perspective on. I felt like my life was falling apart, and I didn’t know who to talk to,” she said.

In her time working at the Visitor’s Center, Alex Parkhurst, CC ’19, has rubbed shoulders with director Steven Spielberg, White Chicks actor Marlon Wayans, and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. “You don’t know who’s gonna come through that door,” she tells me.

Nathan Farrell arrived at Columbia with a vivid picture of what his life would look like. Like many Columbia students, Farrell, now a sophomore in Columbia College, had been heavily involved in extracurriculars in high school—he founded and led an a cappella group (“The Passing Notes”), played saxophone, was a member of student government, and was a peer leadership mentor, all while maintaining his spot in the top 1 percent of the class. But still, Farrell felt like his life would only truly begin when he got to college, where he saw himself “hopping around in all of [his] passions.”

The building at 3595 Broadway stands out from the neighborhood skyline. It was commissioned by Columbia—built to house over 100 neighborhood residents whose homes would be bulldozed by the University’s Manhattanville expansion.

Turn down the 600 block of West 136th Street, and the traffic quiets. The buildings on this block are stately—columns at the entrance, elaborate floral pediments over the windows, swirling iron fencing on the fire escapes. Building 601 stands out from the rest because of the ornate cast-iron gate over its front doors. A detail like this seems like it might belong to a co-op on Park Avenue with a doorman and a valet. But this building is a co-op of a different kind—a Housing Development Fund Corporation, sold by the city directly to tenants in order to provide an opportunity for homeownership to low-income New Yorkers. Walk farther down the street, and you’ll encounter another, at 607, and then another, at 611. All told, this block houses six HDFCs, a total of 141 units of affordable housing. It isn’t just this block, though. Our own Community District 9, made up of Hamilton Heights, Manhattanville, and Morningside Heights, is a hotspot for these buildings, home to about 150 buildings of some of the most affordable housing in New York City.