Views from the Northwest Bronx

UNHP is sharing the northwest Bronx views of neighborhood residents, community leaders, Bronx community development professionals and UNHP board members.

The Bronx is under construction: cranes, excavators, scaffolding, and green demolition fences are everywhere. For long-time community staffers and residents in the northwest Bronx, the building and demolition we see as we walk to work, lunch, or the train is unprecedented.

​Judi Kende, Vice President and New York Market Leader for Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., authored this post. Enterprise creates and preserves quality affordable homes, incubates programs, and scales these solutions through policy change.

Mayor Bill de Blasio recently released a plan for tackling the rise in homelessness in New York City. While the City’s shift in approach may manage to reset expectations and encourage communities to shoulder their fair share of shelter housing, it glosses over the high concentration of homeless housing in low-income communities, especially in the northwest Bronx.

On Wednesday, November 30th, UNHP organized a Tenant Housing Fair providing information and assistance with eviction prevention, legal services, rental subsidies and other services to help Bronxites remain in their apartments, understand their rights and available resources.

For most Bronx residents, affordable housing means the housing that they live in now, but many Bronx residents are on the verge of becoming homeless; struggling to get by, facing high rent burdens and compensating through overcrowded living situations.

Cuts to Section 8 would severely impact the Northwest Bronx.

Federal budget sequestration threatens Section 8 subsidies and, in turn, our neighborhoods.

There will be a Prayer Vigil for Unique Thrift Workers this Thursday, June 6th from 3:30-4:30pm at Unique Thrift Store in Kingsbridge (218 West 234th Street). This is an opportunity for the community to support the workers who are forming a union to ensure dignity and respect, wages they can live on, and improved benefits including paid sick days.

A week ago we held our 30th Anniversary Forum at Fordham University and released our report, Nowhere to Go: A crisis of affordability in the Bronx.