Affordable Housing in NYC for Black Women Is a Crapshoot
Single mothers and those who do not make at least 40 times their rent often bounce between several homes with no luck of finding stability
There’s nothing “affordable” about many of the lottery apartment options in New York City. In Harlem, a historically Black neighborhood, renters would need to earn around $73,000 to qualify for a one-bedroom (on average $2,149 a month) in one of six new buildings; two bedrooms can go for $2,799 per month. The median rent for the rest of the surrounding neighborhood is a little over $2,000, according to a Winter 2019 report in apartment search website, Zumper. If you’re a New Yorker making six figures you can afford these “affordable” dwellings.
Who are these apartments truly for? Surely not for most of the people who live in Central Harlem where the median income is less than $50,000, according to the NYU Furman Center. Nearly 60% of New Yorkers are one paycheck away from homelessness, according to a 2016 report by the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development. Most of us are just scraping by. Simply put, this is what gentrification looks like.
“It doesn’t feel good to be a mom and to not be able to provide a home for…
