In the early 1980s, East Brooklyn Congregations, an alliance of neighborhood churches — including St. Paul Community Baptist — and aided by Metro-IAF, a faith- and community-based organization network, convinced Mayor Koch’s administration to sell empty parcels used as landfills and build 5,000 units of affordable housing.
At the time, the neighborhood had been labeled the “murder capital of the state,” and few wanted to bet on the project. Even residents weren’t enchanted by the prospect of buying property there. After years of advocacy, the city administration agreed to sell 16 square miles of the abandoned parcels to the churches for a dollar per lot.
The complex was baptized Nehemiah Homes, in reference to the Old Testament character who spearheaded the reconstruction of Jerusalem in the fifth century BCE.
Some houses went for $40,000, allowing families to buy who had previously been excluded from homeownership opportunities by banks’ redlining practices.
Brawley, now the co-chair of Metro-IAF, the nonprofit that developed the Nehemiah homes, believes the same tools that helped build those first homes can be useful in solving the current housing crisis: “urgency, imagination, and will.”
“The one thing that I know God’s not making more of, and that’s land. And so when you have opportunities, you got to maximize those opportunities if you want to make sure that you can provide the supply for New Yorkers,” he said.
This article originally appeared here.
