Posted on: Friday, March 18, 2005
Booming real estate resurrects Harlem
By Michael Powell
Washington Post
NEW YORK — The woman in the black dress trots up with that bug-eyed, hello, are-you-ready-to-buy-now look so favored by real estate brokers in Gold Rush Harlem.
"I'll show you this beautiful place in two minutes!" She's momentarily mistaken a reporter for her customer. "These two men" — she nods at two older gentlemen standing in the doorway — "are going to be leaving tonight.''
That's not really true. Samuel Ragland, 80, and Eugene Norwood, 65, have rented single rooms on the top floor of this broken-down and now-unheated brownstone on 120th Street for two decades and have a court order prohibiting their eviction. But that does not mean they won't be departing next week or the week after.
"We haven't had heat or water in two weeks, and they want us out," said Ragland, a soft-spoken Army veteran and retired truck driver. "I expect we'll leave soon enough.''
The transformation of this historic capital of Black America has taken an amphetamined step or three beyond a Starbucks, a Body Shop and former President Clinton taking an office on 125th Street. Officials have broken ground on a glass-enclosed, 204-room Courtyard by Marriott. And housing prices have soared into the stratosphere, threatening to leave behind thousands of Harlem's poorest.
Four years ago, the advent of the $400,000 brownstone in central Harlem was met with whoops of disbelief. Today, the average brownstone shell in Central Harlem sells for $1.1 million, and median sales prices of co-ops and condos in Harlem have jumped to $309,000 from $60,000 in 1995.
Over near Eighth Avenue, known to a generation of junkies and hipsters as Heroin Alley, a maroon-colored Corcoran real estate banner hangs off the side of a freshly refurbished apartment building at 117th Street, advertising "Luxury Condos." The two-bath, two-bedroom condos retail at $1.6 million and feature stainless steel kitchens with Miele dishwashers and Brazilian cherrywood floors. The wood-burning fireplaces are optional.
"Things have gotten a little out of hand, yes, they have," said James Lewis, a tenant organizer and Harlem resident. "I love all the great things. But so many people endured the bad times and can't afford the good."
Developers continue to build affordable housing; at least three such towers are under construction in Harlem. Developers rent or sell some units at market rates while using profits to subsidize apartments for working and middle-class residents.
But a real estate market on steroids threatens this strategy. Lately, private developers have outbid nonprofit groups for land. In a neighborhood where the median family income is $24,000 — half the citywide median — disorientation attends.
The Great Depression began Harlem's long decline, which accelerated in the 1960s and '70s. Now the new renaissance has whites — and well-to-do African-Americans — moving uptown. A Swedish couple lives in a condo on Malcolm X. A French filmmaker purchased a brownstone on 120th Street, three doors from where Ragland and Norwood are being pushed out.
"Once upon a time, you only saw white people in Harlem if they were buying drugs or they were lost," said real estate broker William John Wooten, who is black and has worked in Harlem for eight years. "Now they are walking their dogs or going for a jog."
Some low- and middle-income Harlemites have mined their own vein of gold. Some teachers, bus drivers and social workers scooped up hundreds of city-owned brownstones for a pittance. Others obtained deeply discounted condos.
This has boosted black home ownership by three full percentage points in the past decade, though it still stands at just 10 percent, compared with 33 percent citywide.
The downside is that rents have jumped and Harlem's low-income residents spend an average of half their income on rent. Demand remains fierce.
Maybe the housing market tanks and Harlem enters a new valley of shadow.
Or maybe the neighborhood that the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. called "the promised land" finds a new resurrection. Karen Phillips, the planning commissioner, recalls a decade ago when friends asked, half embarrassed: Is it safe to move there?
"I'm an optimist — Harlem has a chance to be one of the few neighborhoods where you have a true mix of races and incomes," she said. "The challenge is to keep the housing affordable and to remind people that we live in a neighborhood with a heritage of struggle.'"
