The annual Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build 2007 took place this Saturday, May 12th on Halsey and Marcus Garvey where fifty-two women, aged 16 and above, took part in the construction of affordable homes. Each volunteer has committed to raise $250 helping to finance the contruction. The women volunteers raised $40,000 in this year’s event. Homes will be completed in the fall. For information on applying for one of these homes, contact Habitat for Humanity or call (212) 991-4000. Wonder if these development plans are in light of the hope-to-soon-be-passed rezoning plans. Probably not, since construction started awhile ago. Kudos for affordable housing, though.
Photos courtesy NY1.com.
This is not on topic but I didn’t know where to post. A while back we had talked about Myrtle Ave and improving Myrtle east of Classon, perhaps with the help of the BID or MARP. Changeling, I thought you would be interested in the note I just received from MARP. It’s very discouraging to hear that it is the business owners who are witholding from being a part of making the street better:
“We apologize for the long delay in responding, as it appears that a number of our general inquiry emails have been routed to a junk mail folder for some time now.
To answer your question, MARP had begun providing assistance all the way to Bedford Avenue back in 2002 or so. But raising money to provide services for the entire area proved difficult, so the creation of Business Improvement District (BID) was spearheaded, by where the retail property owners on Myrtle Avenue contribute to an annual budget for supplementary services such as sanitation, graffiti removal, marketing, etc. Â The BID was originally planned for Flatbush to Bedford, but the property owners between Classon and Bedford organized against it, so we had to cut it off at Classon.
All of that being said, if small businesses from that area specifically reach out to us for assistance, we rarely turn them down, but we simply do not currently have the resources to be proactive in that geographic area.
Thanks for reaching out to us.”
Zengine, is this affordable housing promoting ownership or is it another rental? If it is the former then I’m extremely happy to see it being built. I’ve always assumed that Habitat built homes so that people will become homeowners (a great purpose), but I could be wrong.
And dh, I’m disappointed to hear that the business owners were not enthusiastic about joining a BID, but I’m not surprised. My guess is that it involved some sort of fee to join, and judging by the upkeep of some of the storefronts, the cheapskates didn’t want to shell out.
As far as I know, Habitat dfoes not build rental properties.
Habitat for Humanity builds affordable homes to purchase, not rent. They have very specific qualification criteria, including need (living in substandard housing and paying more than 50% of household income for rent); willingness to partner (applicants must provide “sweat equity” – volunteering 300 hours per adult on building their honme and their neighbors’ homes) and income requirements. Click here to read the full list of criteria. To apply for the Halsey/Marcus Garvey condos, click here. There are only one and two bedroom units still available. What I can’t find, however, is the price of these condos.
Then this really is a wonderful development. I wonder why Habitat hasn’t been able to build more in Brooklyn, esp. Bed-Stuy.
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