The birthplace of hip hop, once home to pioneer DJ Kool Herc, has been saved from gentrification.
Tenants of the building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx approached Kool Herc last year for his
assistance
in disputing a real estate developer's plan to take the building out of
the Mitchell-Lama program (an affordable housing program in New York
City). The move would have raised the rent for the tenants to market
rate.
Senator
Chuck Schumer and other advocates for the building, helped get it added
to the State and National Registers of Historic Places, which will make it a historical landmark.
Kool Herc starteddoing parties at the building in the 1970s at the famed location in the
recreation room, creating the movement that became hip hop.
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