Harlem's New Rush: Booming Real Estate
Historic District Is Undergoing Transformation
By Michael PowellWashington Post Staff Writer Sunday, March 13, 2005; Page A03
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 Bill 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."
Such is the conundrum facing those who labored to save Harlem in the decades when AIDS, bank disinvestment, crack cocaine and crime descended like locusts. In those dark days, city officials, beginning with then-Mayor Edward I. Koch (D), made an extraordinary decision: They invested $1.4 billion over 15 years to rebuild Harlem. Together with community leaders, they rehabilitated 41,000 affordable and often handsome apartments, which house 200,000 people.
Developers continue to build affordable housing; at least three such towers are under construction in Harlem today.
Developers rent or sell some units at market rates while using profits to subsidize apartments for working-class 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.
"It's happened so quick, like a gold rush," said Sheena Wright of Abyssinian Development Corp., which has developed thousands of units of affordable housing. "The city did a great job of rebuilding, but if we're not careful, we're going to lose what we fought so hard to save."
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