New York’s Catholic Church Is Turning Old Parishes Into Condos. Parishioners Say It Is Feeding a Housing Crisis

• The Archdiocese of New York deconsecrated about a dozen church properties so they could be sold
• Earlier sales included a US$50 million deal with a hotelier and a US$41 million condo conversion
• Condos in one former parish were priced from US$2.395 million to US$5.25 million
• Parishioners accused the church of worsening the city’s affordable-housing shortage

The Archdiocese of New York cleared the way in 2017 to sell off roughly a dozen of its church properties, formally deconsecrating the buildings so they could be put on the market, DNAinfo New York reported on 26 July 2017. The list stretched across Manhattan and into the Bronx, taking in the Church of the Nativity on Second Avenue, Most Holy Redeemer in the East Village, the Church of All Saints in Harlem, St Elizabeth of Hungary on the Upper East Side and St Gregory the Great on the Upper West Side.

The move followed a string of lucrative earlier sales. The Chapel of San Lorenzo Ruiz at 378 Broome Street in Little Italy went to a developer for more than US$7 million. The Church of St Vincent de Paul in Chelsea sold to a hotelier for US$50 million. The Parish of Mary Help of Christians in the East Village fetched US$41 million from Douglas Steiner, owner of Steiner Studios, and became the Steiner East Village condominium development, where units were priced between US$2.395 million and US$5.25 million. A townhouse at 143 West 87th Street linked to St Gregory’s sold for US$4.31 million.

The archdiocese framed the decision as practical housekeeping. “Rather than continue to support an unused worship space, the parishes have asked that they be ‘deconsecrated,'” spokesman Joseph Zwilling said.

Not everyone in the pews agreed. Parishioner Mercedes Sanchez said: “The Archdiocese is playing a role in the lack of affordable housing.” Fellow parishioner and activist Felix Cepeda put it in terms of heritage: “The city is losing a part of its history, especially buildings built for poor people.”

For Jamaican Catholics in New York, many of whom worship in the Bronx and Harlem, the story is close to home: the buildings their communities helped fill are among the most valuable real estate in one of the world’s priciest cities. It also raises a question that applies in Kingston as much as Manhattan. When a congregation shrinks and a church sits on prime land, does it sell to the highest bidder, or use that land to meet the housing needs of the people it serves? Churches in Jamaica, which hold considerable land of their own, will face the same choice.

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