A once-abandoned church in Crotona Park is getting a second life \u2014 thanks to Habitat for Humanity NYC and a team of volunteers determined to turn the crumbling building into a multifamily home.<\/p>\n
Inside the structure, wires hang loose, insulation falls from the ceiling and rainwater leaks straight through holes in the roof. But the organization says that\u2019s exactly where their mission begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything from insulation to sheetrock to getting these floors down\u2026 that is all going to be volunteer, work\u201d said CEO Sabrina Lippman.<\/p>\n
The church sat empty for nearly 40 years. Now, Habitat says the new residence will be geared toward a working Bronx resident who earns too much to qualify for housing assistance, but not enough to purchase a home in one of the city\u2019s most expensive markets.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re excited to bring it back to life so a family could live their lives in it,\u201d Lippman said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s part of a broader initiative to expand homeownership in the Bronx, which has the lowest homeownership rate in New York City.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have more homeowners\u2026 they\u2019re more civically engaged\u2026 they have healthier homes\u2026 they\u2019re able to create and preserve safety in their neighborhoods,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
To keep costs low and preserve pieces of the original structure, volunteers are salvaging as many bricks as possible from the old church \u2014 dusting them off, scraping away decades of concrete or chiseling them free one by one.<\/p>\n
It could take two more years until the interior of the building is completely remodeled, according to the Lippman. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A once-abandoned church in Crotona Park is getting a second life \u2014 thanks to Habitat for Humanity NYC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-43506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43506","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=43506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}