Why South Bronx Savior Majora Carter Was Deemed “Sellout”

As the city’s recovery from the “bad old days” continued during the Bloomberg administration, neighborhoods either gentrified or were left behind. That raised a question: Which is worse?

To readers of The Real Deal, the answer is obvious. Who wouldn’t prefer a place where restaurant orders are taken by servers rather than cashiers behind counters — or Plexiglass? Or where new homes aren’t exclusively for tenants with extremely low incomes?

Quite a few people, actually. To them, community improvements mean cultural change and displacement of the poor.

“Some people cringe when they start to see doggie day cares and cute coffee shops appear in communities of color because they assume that these are White-owned and … not for them,” writes Majora Carter in her book “Reclaiming Your Community.”

Carter has spent more than a decade trying to improve her native South Bronx, only to be opposed by many of her own neighbors and the nonprofits that serviced the poor. She came to conclude that they perpetuated the status quo, quite intentionally.

I reached the same conclusion, but from an ivory tower. When I advocated for getting higher earners into poverty-stricken areas (“Gentrify East New York,” I headlined one editorial), some critics objected to a white person telling Black people what’s good for them.

That made sense, but it turns out they didn’t want to hear it from Majora Carter either, although she was a proud daughter of Mott Haven and was investing time, money and elbow grease to build it up.

Carter, who became a media darling by starting Sustainable South Bronx and winning a MacArthur “genius award” four years later, was called a traitor to the Bronx for such horrible acts as turning an abandoned building into a cafe.

In my view, it wasn’t the messenger that bothered the critics as much as it was the message.

Her book has all the gory details, but to hear them in person, cancel your plans for Thursday evening and RSVP to TRD’s Salon Series 6 p.m. event. In a conversation with me at our office, 450 West 31st Street, Carter will tell The Real Deal subscribers how she went from star to alleged “sellout,” as well as make a case for what the real estate industry should do in the South Bronx and other communities like it.