An apartment building in the Bronx where hip hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc got his start behind the ones and twos has been deemed eligible to be listed on national and state registers of historic sites, reports the AP.
The decision by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development also prevents the building's owner from going through with plans to leave an affordable housing program and sell the building to a developer, which would have sent tenant rents soaring up to market rate.
Last year, tenants reached out to DJ Kool Herc after receiving word that the owner planned to abandon Mitchell-Lama, a program that offers building owners incentives such as low-rate mortgages and tax breaks in exchange for charging tenants low to moderate rents for a certain period of time.
Sen. Charles Schumer on Monday said the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development rejected the proposed sale to a developer because current rents could not be sustained if the sale had gone through, reports the AP.
The New York Democrat said: "This building, which housed hip-hop's founding father ... is a New York treasure that must be preserved as a bastion of affordable housing."
During the 1970s, Kool Herc began sowing the seeds of hip hop as a DJ for parties held in the building's recreation room.
1 comment:
One of our guys over at Highbrid Nation did a nice post on DJ Kool Herc saving the "birthplace of hip hop". How sad would it be to have such a historic landmark destroyed? It's so important that people of the hip hop culture don't lose our roots.
Post a Comment