Tyshia Earnest

Tyshia Earnest, originally from Flint MI, made their way to NYC by way of media. They’re trying to build a career in the city as a director and photographer. They described their relationship with the city as follows:

“ I started off living in East New York. Now, I live in the South Bronx, just one stop away from Harlem, where I can acknowledge that I see and benefit from the gentrification of this area. Of course, as a Black woman who grew up in Flint, Michigan, I have mixed feelings”.

Their point about acknowledging the benefit of gentrification is interesting considering the context of a photo they took of 575 Exterior Street in the Bronx. Previously a surface parking lot, 575 Exterior Street is now a mixed-use megastructure with 42 residences, 56,000 square feet of community facility space, 12,000 square feet of retail space, and the Universal Hip Hop Museum to top it off. Available on NYC Housing Connect were 432 units for residents at 30 to 120 percent of the area median income (AMI), ranging in eligible income from $18,515 to $198,600. On one hand, the project is admirable in the quest to build affordable housing while also honoring the rich cultural heritage of the Bronx.

At the same time however, the project has a bit of irony reserving units for people making almost $200k. Average income for individual New Yorkers is around $40k. Average income for a household is around $80k. The project is a good example of how the stakeholders around affordable housing development may have good intentions when they set out on to build something, but because of the restrictions, lack of incentives from the city and state, restriction on zoning and sometimes just greed, what has happened is that a lot of affordable housing is a compromise in comparison to the units that actually birthed the origins of hip-hop like 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx.

Built by the ever controversial and omnipotent Robert Moses through the NYS Mitchell Lama program, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue was part of an affordable housing project built along his Cross Bronx Expressway. It’s quite literally where one of the first hip-hop parties hosted by DJ Kool Herc happened. It’s maybe a counterexample to how things are done today that shows how it wasn’t necessarily the Courbusian design and concrete that caused the downfall of public housing in NYC and beyond, but the maintenance of them.

In the words of DJ Kool Herc’s own mother Geraldine Davis, “When I moved here it was like a hotel. It was beautiful. Now it’s down to nothing”. What she is referring to is the fact that 1520 Sedgwick Avenue was the site of predatory equity practices and property neglect through the 2000s and 2010s. That is until a non-profit and residents banded together to take ownership. Regardless, the effect on residents as well as the reputation of public housing has been damaged forever.