This is part of a series about New Yorkers who have recently relocated to the Bronx. It’s called The New Bronx.
Last spring, Mott Haven resident Akiva Steinmetz-Silber stepped into a bodega on Third Avenue and 143rd Street to avoid a heavy downpour. A white man in his late 20s asked if he needed an umbrella. Steinmetz-Silber assured the man that he lived close by.
It was a forgettable exchange, but what the man said next stayed with him: “There aren’t too many of us in the neighborhood. We need to stick together.”
“Us” apparently meant Caucasians, and for Steinmetz-Silber, it was telling. The Manhattan native was aware of his minority status in the South Bronx, where less than 2 percent of the residents are white. And though Steinmetz-Silber found it offensive, the stranger’s comment reminded him of the potential racial resentments against newcomers such as himself.
“And that made me scratch my head and say, ‘OK, things are changing around here,’ ” he said.
These changes include a slew of proposed waterfront developments and high-rise apartments that could alter the demographics of Mott Haven in the next decade. A lifelong New Yorker, Steinmetz-Silber is familiar with gentrification. The 30-year-old spent many years in the Upper West Side, where he lived with a couple in a rent-stabilized apartment on 91st Street.
“It was already gentrified, but much of the oddball local character of the neighborhood is gone,” he said, citing the prevalence of “big-box stores” on Broadway.
Though the apartment was rent-stabilized, it still wasn’t cheap; more than half of the 46,000 rental units in the Upper West Side cost at least $1,500 a month. In 2013, Steinmetz-Silber decided to leave Manhattan. Brooklyn was too pricey and too far away from his office at The Laundromat Project, an arts nonprofit based in Harlem. So Steinmetz-Silber searched for housing in Harlem and the Bronx.
“I was open to either, but I ended up finding the right place in the Bronx that really suited me,” he said.
The right place for him was the Morris Court Apartments, a section of affordable housing units located on East 142nd Street between Rider and Morris avenues. Though Steinmetz-Silber makes what he calls a “modest” income, he is able to afford the rent, which costs him less than $900 each month.
While the price suited his lifestyle, the Naropa University graduate was also drawn to the culture and history of the Bronx.
“The Bronx has always been a borough of strong, working-class and ethnic communities,” he said.
But Steinmetz-Silber is worried about the local community. In a neighborhood where 40 percent of the population lives in poverty, some residents may not be able to afford their homes in the near future. Steinmetz-Silber said this could lead to a sense of “uprootedness.”
“Networks of family and community are what we all need to sustain ourselves,” he said.
Steinmetz-Silber said the existing community should have more control over which development projects are brought in, better access to the waterfront, more rent-stabilized housing, and more commercial and public spaces where people of different backgrounds can intersect.
“We want it to get better, but we want the changes to benefit everybody,” he said.
Some of his desired changes are already happening. Last year, Steinmetz-Silber was thrilled when he heard about Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s plan to use more than $1 million to upgrade St. Mary’s Park on East 149th Street.
“There is not a lot of green space in the South Bronx, so the ones we have are precious,” he said.
As for the brief exchange between Steinmetz-Silber and the stranger, he said the focus should be on bringing the working-class community together, regardless of racial lines.
“We should all be sticking together, because some people in this neighborhood are struggling,” he said.