Lizzette Concepcion moved into the building in 2010, arriving after giving birth from a homeless shelter. Mr. Giddings sued her for unpa...
Lizzette Concepcion moved into the building in 2010, arriving after giving birth from a homeless shelter. Mr. Giddings sued her for unpaid rent. However, he changed his address several times, which made it impossible for her to get housing assistance for him, according to his lawyer at the time, Jane Li. Ms Concepcion estimated that she owed $20,000 in rent arrears, and some of those arrears could have been reduced if his housing subsidies had been received.
She is still worried about the precariousness of housing because she cannot work and receives public assistance for her disability; she and her son suffer from chronic asthma. “It was frustrating, it was an emotional roller coaster,” she said. “I thank God I’m still here, there are days when I feel like, how long can I stay in this apartment?”
Ms Concepcion, 50, felt helpless, but tenants with low-paying jobs and those like her who depended on public assistance were the group’s greatest strength. The group would not have qualified for the free legal aid that was essential to their victory, said Mr Hankins, 51, who was unemployed when Mr Giddings first acquired the building and was one of the tenants whose income was quite low. to get help. He is now a housing advocate for people experiencing homelessness.
But Mr Hankins initially doubted the group would go very far, and he was in disbelief when Mr Stone, who works in banking, suggested they buy the building, after he and Ms Waterton attended a conference on gentrification with a session on home ownership. in March 2017. “We looked at it like it had two heads,” Mr Hankins said, recalling how he and other tenants had dismissed the idea.
Although incomes varied among the tenants, most of them are black and Latino and they shared an understanding of the long redlining story and housing disenfranchisement in black communities. The property was elusive and unimaginable. “We’re almost conditioned not to see the big picture, not to believe the big picture, like ownership isn’t for us,” Mr Hankins said, sitting in his fifth-floor apartment a recent afternoon in March, surrounded by the records and recording equipment he uses to produce hip hop. “We’re not used to being in a position of empowerment.”
Ms. Waterton tapped into another story: An immigrant from Guyana, she moved with her family to an apartment building in Brooklyn that her grandfather owned and which served as a staging post for other relatives. “It was a haven for us,” she said. “When all of this happened, that we could buy the building, I was like, ‘Oh my God, come full circle. “”
In 2019, Ms Burnham introduced tenants to the Urban Property Assistance Commissiona non-profit organization that supports HDFCs and also helps to convert them.
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