Harlem's Project One45 Update

Remember Project One45 that we were protesting to make truly affordable?

For months, we have reached out to the Mayor’s Office and the Governor’s Office and gotten nothing back about the Black housing subsidy Harlem needs to stop displacement. Over the past five years, more than 60,000 Black residents have been pushed out because of the economic choices made by today’s elected officials.

I cannot lay out every detail of what comes next, but there is a strategy to make land and capital serve the people of Harlem instead of pricing them out. It builds on speeches I’ve given across the last few months, including the one below at Canaan Baptist Church. We have done this before in Northern Manhattan. In Inwood, we proved that a building can be deeply affordable and beautiful at the same time. Now Harlem is next.

Aside from this update I wanted to address some economic realities of Harlem.

Harlem Cannot Survive on Market-Rate Fantasy Project One45 is supposed to bring roughly 1,000 new homes to Harlem. Fine. But the real question is simple: homes for whom?

Harlem does not need another sermon about “the market.” Harlem needs housing priced for the people who actually make this community run. At Project One45, that means housing for people earning between $35,000 and $65,000 a year.

Why? Because Black people are not entering this housing fight on equal footing. We are systematically paid less, face deeper employment discrimination, and get pushed out of the workforce faster when the economy turns. In 2025, by my calculation as a labor economist, Black workers are in a recession. Black women have been hit especially hard. I estimate that roughly 600,000 Black women have been displaced from the workforce nationwide this year, and about 20,000 of them live in our area .

So when people say we should just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and somehow manage high market-rate housing, what they are really saying is that Black families should absorb discrimination quietly. They are saying people should survive lower wages, weaker job security, and higher rents all at once. That is not economics. That is denial.

You cannot solve income discrimination with unaffordable housing. You cannot solve employment discrimination with luxury pricing. And you cannot claim to care about Harlem while designing 1,000 new homes that do not fit the incomes of the people most at risk of being pushed out.

This is not just about displacement from a neighborhood. It is about displacement from work, from stability, and from the future. If Harlem is going to remain Harlem, then the housing built here must reflect the real condition of the people who live and labor here. Right now, “market rate” is not neutral. It is a polished way of pricing Black people out.

How To Help Join the Defend Harlem Coalition and/or NAACP Labor Branch to work on housing and/or economic equity.

Join Defend Harlem

and/or

Join NYC (Harlem) NAACP

Feel free to reach out to speak@jamesfeltonkeith.com