West Harlem community members and officials are not giving up critical healthcare services without a fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are people here who have children, there are people here who are uninsured, there are people here who are migrants, there are people here who are on Medicaid and people who are uninsured and they have no other place to go,\u201d Alexa Donaphin said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here as families and we want to make sure that we have the best health that we can have next to us. That\u2019s what America provides. They provide health,\u201d Mordechai Tazem, a local resident, said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the community members sued the city over plans to redevelop a city-owned lot at 1727 Amsterdam Avenue into affordable and supportive housing.<\/p>\n
Currently, the location houses two healthcare facilities: Heritage Health and Housing Inc. and Emma Bowen Community Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The group claims that the project failed to go through the proper public review process that would\u2019ve shown the plan would result in the loss of a critical healthcare center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sort of spent the last four years asking the city to take a look at the loss and those concerns went unaddressed,\u201d Andres Orejuela said.<\/p>\n
Once the project is complete, the Bowen Center, which provides mental health services, will return to the site.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While Heritage, which is federally funded and provides health services to low-income and uninsured New Yorkers and those with Medicaid, will move two blocks south.<\/p>\n
Residents, however, say that location is not ready yet and would lead to the displacement of some of the current supportive housing tenants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s downsizing, and when Emma Bowen, which they have included in the project, comes back, it comes back at half the size it is right now. So how do you say that\u2019s equal to what we currently have? It\u2019s not equal, and it\u2019s not just, and it\u2019s not fair,\u201d Donaphin, a plaintiff in the case, said.<\/p>\n
Notably, the local City Councilman Shaun Abreu supports the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people of Harlem want their leaders spending more time making housing affordable and less time trying to stop every attempt at change. It\u2019s time we listen to them,\u201d he told NY1.<\/p>\n
The project is one of 100 listed on the new Land Inventory Fast Track Tracker, or LIFT Tracker, that Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled on Thursday. He touted the projects as a sign of his efforts to keep the city affordable.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt a time when too many New Yorkers are being priced out of our city, projects like this move us closer to building a more affordable New York. We are reviewing the lawsuit,\u201d Casey Berkovitz, a City Hall spokesman, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Among the plaintiffs are three local officials, including State Sen. Coredell Cleare.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is about a community wanting to have a say, and they also want to be included. You look at a lot of what\u2019s going up in our neighborhoods in northern Manhattan and Harlem. These are units that are pushing people out,\u201d Cleare said.<\/p>\n
Cleare and the other plaintiffs say they aren\u2019t against the new housing, but they want the health services to stay. They believe both can co-exist.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an opportunity to do this right. Oftentimes it\u2019s like we have to give up air for water. We can have air and water. It doesn\u2019t have to be that kind of a choice,\u201d Cleare said.<\/p>\n
The final project, called the Hill Top Apartments, is expected to produce nearly 200 units of affordable housing \u2014 120 of which would be dedicated to formerly homeless individuals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Harlem community members and officials are not giving up critical healthcare services without a fight. \u201cThere are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,25,6348,9,24,11,10,12,108,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-311274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-kelly-mena","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}