A Bronx building where a young DJ pioneered hip-hop in the 1970s has been saved from a plan that would have moved it from affordable to market rate housing, Sen. Charles Schumer said Monday.
Last year, tenants of the building reached out to DJ Kool Herc after receiving word that the owner planned to leave an affordable housing program that would have opened the door to rent increases.
During the 1970s, DJ Kool Herc began spinning records at parties in the basement recreation room of the Sedgwick Avenue building. The hip-hop movement then spread around the world.
The 100-unit apartment building has been deemed eligible to be listed on national and state registers of historic sites.
The affordable housing program, known as Mitchell-Lama, offers owners incentives such as low-rate mortgages and tax breaks in exchange for charging tenants low to moderate rents for a certain period of time.
Schumer said the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development rejected the proposed sale to developer Mark Karasick because current rents could not be sustained if the sale had gone through.
“This very positive development is the first step toward preserving affordability” for all endangered Mitchell-Lamas housing, Schumer said.
The HPD’s decision paves the way for tenants to negotiate directly with the owner, the senator said. The tenants are working on a plan to buy the building.
DJ Kool Herc, on left, gathers with tenants and U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer in the rec room where hip-hop was born.
Efforts To Save Hip Hop Birthplace Stepped Up
On a mission of a very different kind than what used to draw him to the ground-floor recreation room that he made famous through music more than three decades ago, legendary hip-hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc returned to the Sedgwick Avenue apartment building in the Bronx last week in a bid to save the soul of the building itself.
As he stood alongside U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer to support an effort by the building’s residents to purchase the property and preserve it as affordable housing, Kool Herc emphasized that similar battlegrounds over fair housing exist elsewhere. “We need to recognize this building,” he told the tenants, activists and officials assembled. “But we’re seeing all throughout New York City how people are losing affordable housing.” (Meanwhile, he noted, storage facilities have sprouted all over the borough – “They got places to store your stuff, but not to keep you,” he said.)
It’s a message that resonates with housing advocates who hope that the well-publicized Bronx case will not only highlight a growing problem, but help spur state legislation to protect the city’s dwindling stock of reasonably priced apartments in the statewide Mitchell-Lama housing program.
Mary Fountain, a resident of 1520 Sedgwick in the Bronx is fighting to keep the building affordable to tenants. 1520 Sedgwick is credited as the birthplace of hip hop
Residents Fighting To Save Hip-Hop Birthplace
A new beat may be coming to the Bronx building where hip-hop was born.
Residents of 1520 Sedgwick Ave., the place where in the mid-1970s a young D.J. later known as Kool Herc started spinning records at parties in the basement recreation room, are announcing today their plan to buy the building — for only a few thousands dollars per apartment — from private interests, and keep it affordable.
“It’s like Graceland or the Grand Ole Opry, it’s the birthplace, where it all started from,” Herc said. “It’s a piece of the American dream and we just want to preserve it.”
The Morris Heights building is a designated affordable-housing Mitchell-Lama property, but last year BSR Management, the property’s owner, announced plans to sell the 100-unit complex to Mark Karasick, a private equity investor. Long-time residents immediately feared that they would be pushed out in favor of high-end renters. Read more..
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