Not too long ago, Sophia Ross and her two children lived in a distressed building in the South Bronx. The building was dilapidated, in a high crime area, and had inadequate, unreliable plumbing. “I remember that I only had two kitchen cabinets and I always had trouble finding space to put our food and pots and pans,” she recalled. All of that changed in March 2008, when Sophia, who currently works at a group home for girls in Riverdale, was selected for Monterey Apartments as part of New York City’s Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) Section 8 referral program. Affordable housing has made a major difference in the lives of the Ross family. Sophia notes that her family is a lot happier in this neighborhood and she has noticed several new small businesses opening up. Her new two-bedroom unit has ample kitchen cabinet space and good plumbing.
“There is no way I could afford market-rate rents. If I didn’t have this opportunity, we would be forced to double up with family or, in the worst case, face being homeless.”
Monterey Apartments was developed in 2006 by Phipps Houses with funding from HPD’s Mixed-Income Rental Program (MIRP) and the New York City Housing Development Corporation’s (HDC) Low-Income Affordable Marketplace Program (LAMP). Located at 4278 East Tremont Avenue in the Bathgate Section of The Bronx, Monterey Apartments is a rental building with 96 affordable units.
Monterey Apartments was developed under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's New Housing Marketplace Plan (NHMP), an $8.4 billion initiative to finance 165,000 units of affordable housing for half a million New Yorkers by 2014. To date, the plan has funded the creation or preservation of 110,390 units of affordable housing across the five boroughs with 34,343 of those in the Bronx.
To learn more about New York City Housing Development Corporation, please visit their website.
For more information on the Section 8 program, see our advocacy page.
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