Community-Board-9

Community leaders and West Harlem residents huddled in front of an empty lot on Amsterdam Avenue for a press conference to protest the proposed construction of a homeless shelter at 1763-1771 Amsterdam Avenue. Knowing that the building is likely to be converted into market-rate apartments after the seven-year lease, they instead called on the city to build permanent, affordable housing at the site.

Thousands of Columbia and Barnard students are returning to New York after Columbia partially reopened on-campus housing this semester. For the majority of these students, it has been almost a year since they’ve lived at Columbia, and for some, it will be their first time stepping foot on campus. While students are eager to return to a “normal” college experience, some Morningside Heights and West Harlem residents worry that Columbia’s reopening plan may put Morningside Heights residents at higher risk for COVID-19.

Learn about the mission and story of board game cafe Hex & Co. as it moves into its new and much larger space where the historic West End Bar once stood.

Columbia College sophomore Vivian Jackson shares a one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen with her family. When Columbia went remote last spring, she struggled to attend Literature Humanities while her mother, a ballet teacher, taught plies and how to stand en pointe a few feet away from her laptop. While the commute would have been easy, the opportunity to have her own room, reliable Wi-Fi, and an on-campus job compelled her to live in the dorms this fall. As one of many students who requested on-campus housing this fall, Jackson identifies as a first-generation, low-income college student. On August 14, Columbia reversed its initial decision to bring up to 60 percent of undergraduates back to campus and instead opted for a semester entirely online. Only students who needed on-campus housing to “pursue their academic programs successfully” were provided dorm rooms; Jackson was one of them.

As students head into another semester which will have an all-virtual component,  many are again faced with the question of where to spend it. Time zones, convenience, community, and finances all factor into the decision. For some students in the fall, neither staying at home nor living near campus was ideal, so instead, they chose to live in new areas. A few gave insight into how their semesters went.

As unrestful as 2020 has been, many of us spent much-needed time bonding with loved ones over food this Thanksgiving. But what about those whose financial capacity to provide and maintain adequate sustainable food has become worse during the pandemic? Food insecurity is an issue for many School of General Studies and graduate students, and poverty more broadly has been a major issue for many people of color in New York who were surviving from paycheck to paycheck pre-pandemic. The sudden loss of employment coupled with entrepreneurship-straining public health orders makes it even more difficult to pay bills and keep the same amount of food on the table as before. Unemployment compensation is a temporary benefit and is hardly enough money for many who are depending on it today. The recent surge in positive COVID-19 test results shows no sign of financial relief in sight, and opportunities for establishing sustainable economic independence continue to be scarce while living expenses remain the same.

Kofi Boateng, the first executive director of the West Harlem Development Corporation, is leaving the organization, according to a statement released by the WHDC on Nov. 20. WHDC board member and treasurer Zead Ramadan will serve as the interim executive director while the board searches for a permanent one.

Barnard President Sian Beilock announced the cancellation of the college’s nationwide search for a new executive director of Public Safety in an updated safety plan released on Dec. 3. Instead, Barnard will restructure the role of Public Safety to focus on community safety under an umbrella organizational unit titled Community Accountability, Response, and Emergency Services, according to Beilock’s email.

In an almost unanimous decision, Community Board 9—a local advisory board for Morningside Heights, Manhattanville, West Harlem, and surrounding communities—adopted a resolution calling upon Columbia and other institutions within the district to preserve rent-regulated units of housing in their buildings during its November general board meeting.