On September 25th, MMPCIA hosted the Community Forum: Understanding the Faith-Based Affordable Housing Legislation at Refettorio Harlem, located within Emanuel AME Church. We were excited to have a packed room full of people who came out to learn and contribute to this important conversation.

Our moderator, Cathleen McCadden-Benjamin, led a thoughtful discussion with Senator Cordell Cleare and a panel of local experts: Beatrice Sibblies, Claudette Brady, and William Allen.

Together, we contextualized the legislation and unpacked its various parameters to better understand the potential local impact on Harlem and the Mount Morris Park Historic District. Through the expert panel discussions and Q&A, several major themes emerged:

“Affordable housing” and AMI as defined in the legislation is not truly affordable for our community.

“The AMI is wrong—the AMI does not fit the communities that we are doing this in. So we have to actually use neighborhood median incomes and make sure we are creating housing that fits what people can afford. Otherwise, you’re always going to be looking for people from outside, and there will always be a pushing out of the people who are inside.”

— Senator Cordell Cleare

Organizing must be a priority, especially among faith-based organizations.

“As we talk about this legislation, we really have to talk about how organized we are—and how organized our congregations are. I don’t think we are that organized. We’re not organized like we were in the 1980s, when HCCI and so many ministers came together to save a whole lot of housing. My focus will be on how to get us organized again.”

— William Allen

Legislation must be understood in context, not in isolation.

“We have the City of Yes for Housing, we have the Manhattan Plan, we have the proposed change to the City Charter, we have 485x… so we cannot look at legislation as a single unit. We have to look at how all these pieces of legislation interact and how they will affect this neighborhood.”

— Claudette Brady

The points above are just a few of the many insights shared during the forum. You can watch the full recording on our Instagram page @mmpcia.

If you’d like to review the presentation shown during the forum—which breaks down the bill and includes links to additional educational resources—you can find it here. The final slides include a table provided by Beatrice Sibblies comparing this legislation to existing policies.