History

The Manhattan Valley Development Corporation (MVDC) is a community-based not-for-profit, housing and services organization, incorporated under the New York State Membership Corporation Law on December 9, 1968, and tax exempt under 501(c)(3). MVDC's service area extends north to south from West 100th Street to West 110th Street and further up to 126th Street between Lenox Avenue to Morningside Avenue in West Harlem

During the nineteen fifties and sixties, the Manhattan Valley neighborhood and its housing had suffered a serious decline. It had become obvious to a group of concerned and active community leaders that the community had been passed over by Federal, State and City urban renewal and other redevelopment programs. It was important to focus the attention of government agencies upon the needs of Manhattan Valley, a self-contained forty block community on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Out of that spirit, MVDC was formed.

From inception, however, it was realized that urban renewal programs too often resulted in the demolition of sound buildings with the concomitant up rooting and displacement of a large number of families who had their roots there. Accordingly, MVDC focused its energies and limited resources on resolving the housing problems of community residents through the preservation and rehabilitation of the existing housing stock without displacing a single family or individual.

While housing was then and still is MVDC's major concern, it recognized that it cannot be divorced from other problems afflicting the community. MVDC has, therefore, become involved in a wide range of activities and services to community residents, such as job training and employment of local workers in administration, management and on construction sites, crisis intervention, alleviation of substance abuse and crime, assistance to tenants with landlord problems, as well as assistance to responsible property owners.

In 1981, MVDC created the not-for-profit Manhattan Valley Management Company, Inc. to provide community-based, management and to prevent harassment by out-side management companies prevalent in low income "minority" neighborhoods. Simultaneously, it helped meet the need to produce operating revenues to be used for investment in the community to accelerate the development cycle and to move toward neighborhood self-determination.

MVDC's approach is increasingly being complemented and supported by environmental improvements, economic development planning, and other neighborhood job development and capital generating activities. Promoting private investment through the involvement of financial institutions in construction and building improvement loans adds momentum to MVDC's efforts.

In a move toward self-sufficiency, MVDC created in one of the buildings a warehouse, enabling the organization to purchase cleaning and other building maintenance supplies in bulk and produce substantial savings, as well as offer the service to other not-for-profits and private property owners in the community for a nominal fee.

From the years of redlining, of commercial and real estate abandonment to the threat of gentrification, MVDC succeeded in changing the community to the point that abandonment has come to a halt. Collectively, MVDC has completed over 1,400 units of safe affordable housing, creating commercial space for small residential entrepreneurs, increased the prosperity of existing shop owners by tenanting previously vacant buildings, and developed a child care facility and an adjacent playground for one hundred and twelve children from low income families.

Two important programs ensure the stability of the MVDC buildings, as well as savings in the replacement of fire escapes, boilers and other systems: 1) The preventive maintenance program supervised by MVDC's construction and maintenance supervisor, and 2) Energy audits, producing savings in electric and fuel costs.