Views from the Northwest Bronx

The FDIC Chair, Martin J. Gruenberg was the featured speaker at a Manhattan College lecture co-hosted by UNHP. Mr. Gruenberg discussed his long tenure in public service and his journey from a child living in a Bronx apartment building to his current focus on Bronx multifamily buildings again as the Chair of the FDIC.

Forty years is an accomplishment for any community organization and one that University Neighborhood Housing Program (UNHP) does not take lightly. Check out the UNHP timeline with pictures and highlights of our history and accomplishments.

UNHP's founding executive director looks back at our creation with the two people who were there at the beginning; Jim Mitchell then Director of BUILD and Brian Byrne a key player from Fordham University. Fordham played a key role in UNHP's creation.

On Thursday, January 26th UNHP hosted a lively bilingual zoom called ASK the Banker connecting Bronx residents with Chase Bankers. As UNHP reflects on our 40th anniversary it struck us that UNHP and Bronx residents have been “asking the banker” for more than forty years.

“Only in the Bronx,” says someone in the crowd, reflecting on the celebratory official launch of the Bronx People’s Federal Credit Union. The atmosphere is celebratory and festive, but the deep commitment and heartfelt passion held by the Bronx residents and community groups in attendance for financial inclusion, access, and growth was also in the air.

The UNHP Multifamily Research and Action Center has collaborated with the LISC Research and Evaluation team to investigate the effects of speculation in multifamily housing on tenants. Here we share a bit about the process and the role UNHP and our BIP played in this research.

In this post, we will focus on financing trends among owners and investors in private, rent-stabilized housing in New York City. Below is an attempt to capture some of the changes in the housing finance landscape over the past number of months and particularly since the beginning of the current public health crisis. Without predicting the future, we hope to raise a number of questions as to where that market is headed and how tenants might be affected, with an emphasis on data and  examples from the Bronx. 

We always understood that some people had a hard time with the Community Reinvestment Act, which passed in 1977.

On Friday, December 13th, Fordham University celebrated the 15th Anniversary of the Paul D. Coverdell US Peace Corps Fellowship Program at the University. UNHP as a community partner and internship site was invited and acknowledged at the luncheon.

The NWBCCC Reinvestment Project and UNHP are featured in this essay by Gregory Jost, a former UNHP staff member, and valued colleague. The essay was originally published by Urban Ominibus and developed out of Greg's research for a book on redlining in the Bronx. It demonstrates how data was an important organizing tool in the early days of the Community Reinvestment Act and remains important today as displacement and speculation threaten the Bronx and other low-income neighborhoods in NYC.