• Calendar
  • Contests
  • Villager Blog
  • Jobs
  • Our staff
  • Media kit
    • Contact advertising
    • Specifications and sizes
  • Current print edition
  • Home delivery
  • Previously published
    • 2011
    • 2010
    • 2009
    • 2008
    • 2007
    • 2006
    • 2005
    • 2004
    • 2003
  • Buy a copy of The Villager
  • Get email updates
  • Classifieds
The Villager Newspaper
  • Home
  • Editorial
  • SPACES
  • Global Village
  • The Angry Buddhist
  • Progress Report
  • COLUMNS
  • CARTOONS
  • Talking Point I
  • Talking Point II
  • Gallery Seen
  • News
    • Community
    • Police Blotter
    • Education
    • Obituaries
    • Politics & Government
      • District One
      • District Three
      • Borough Pres.
      • Mayoral Race
    • Villager Videos
  • Opinion
    • CARTOONS
    • Reporter's Notebook
    • Talking Point
    • Notebook
    • Guest Editorial
    • Columns
      • jack wells
      • Leaders
      • LENORE SKENAZY
      • Books
      • Eats
      • Technology
      • People
      • Pet Set
      • Spin City
      • Clayton
      • Jerry Tallmer
      • Ira Blutreich
      • Evan Forsch
      • Flashback
      • Horoscopes
      • History
      • Youth
      • Sports
      • Health
      • Poetry
    • Editorials
    • Your Letters
    • Scene
    • Publisher
  • Arts
  • Scoopy's
  • In Pictures
  • Real Estate
  • Villager Blog
  • Special Sections
    • Film Fest
    • Sponsored Content
    • Why Pink?
    • Art Corner
    • 80th Anniversay
    • Pride
    • Meat Market
    • Progress
    • Union Square
    • Volunteers
    • Literature
    • Downtown Directory
      • From the publisher
      • Community Listings
        • Handicapped & Disabled Services
        • Health Services
        • Hotels
        • Legal & Financial Services
        • Neighborhood Associations
        • Police
        • Political Organizations
        • Post Offices
        • Public Officials
        • Recreation
        • After School Programs, Daycare and Nursery Schools
        • AIDS Services
        • Business Associations
        • Cultural Organizations
        • Education Colleges & Universities
        • Educational Services
        • Libraries
        • Museums & Attractions
  • Jobs
  • RSS for Entries

For two original tenants, Habitat home was a lifesaver

October 17, 2013 | Filed under: News | Posted by: The Villager

 

Mascot Flats tenants accepted a plaque on Oct. 10 from Habitat for Humanity commemorating the renovation project 30 years ago. At right in front row is Ann Rupel and in the middle row center is Don Kao, both original homesteaders from when the building was renovated by Habitat for Humanity in 1984.

Mascot Flats tenants accepted a plaque on Oct. 10 from Habitat for Humanity commemorating the renovation project 30 years ago. At right in front row is Ann Rupel and in the middle row center is Don Kao, both original homesteaders from when the building was renovated by Habitat for Humanity in 1984.  Photo by Lincoln Anderson

BY HEATHER DUBIN | When Ann Rupel and her family were accepted as homesteaders at Mascot Flats — the first building in Manhattan renovated by Habitat for Humanity — they were living in an East Village apartment under less-than-ideal conditions.

Thirty years after the historic rehab project, Rupel still lives in Mascot Flats, on E. Sixth St. between Avenues C and D.

“We had a son born at end of 1983, and we lived in this ‘tub in the kitchen’ tenement apartment,” she said. It was rent-controlled, but the downside was two adults and a baby in one room, with no heat in the winter on weekends, and flooding from construction above.

“It felt like landlord tricks to get you out,” she said.

Rents in the neighborhood drastically increased, and Rupel felt there was nowhere in Manhattan to move.

“We had actually signed a lease on a place in Staten Island, but the commute was just so ridiculous,” she said. Luckily, they were homestead-bound instead.

After a three-month probation period, homesteaders, who paid $50 monthly dues while working to fix up the formerly derelict Mascot Flats, were in.

“It was really exciting to be part of the building,” Rupel said. “We learned a lot of stuff.”

Rupel, 60, is currently president of the co-op board, but she thinks a management company would actually be more pleasant for the building regarding tenant issues.

“It would be clear that the board isn’t the landlord,” she said. However, she acknowledged a volunteer board is better for the building with vested members.

Keeping the place afloat in the current economy has been a challenge. Some of the building’s residents are struggling with unemployment, layoffs and reduced work hours.

“Probably everybody in our building has taken a hit from that,” she said of the tough economy.

In an interview at his Mascot Flats apartment, Don Kao recalled his beginnings at the building. He had heard of a woman who bought three apartments for $1 each in a tenement building on Avenue D.

“I thought I could never live over here,” he said. “But she did it on her own.”

Kao, a counselor at the time, had met a biracial couple while leading a workshop. The woman worked at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB), and recruited Kao, who is Asian, to Mascot Flats for ethnic diversity.

After they were accepted, Kao, 62, and his daughter, his former partner’s niece, moved to the renovated Mascot Flats in 1986. According to Kao, the ethnic breakdown of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and whites in the building has remained the same throughout the years.

There are studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedroom duplexes in Mascot Flats. Kao, who has changed the layout of his apartment three times, pays $365 a month, with a $100 mortgage and $100 maintenance fee.

Kao has been living with AIDS for almost 30 years, and Mascot Flats has been integral to his survival.

“When I think about it, I would’ve been in a lot of trouble if I didn’t have a place that was affordable,” he said.

Both Kao and Rupel are University of Wisconsin-Madison graduates. He credits Madison for informing his politics, and believes housing is a right.

“Madison politics are keeping this building where it is,” he said.

Kao is also on the Mascot Flats co-op board, and feels having homesteaders at the helm is fundamental.

“It keeps the value of what it’s all about,” he said.

The Villager encourages readers to share articles:
Tweet

Advertisers from our print edition



Comments are often moderated.


We appreciate your comments and ask that you keep to the subject at hand, refrain from use of profanity and maintain a respectful tone to both the subject at hand and other readers who also post here. We reserve the right to delete your comment.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.


eight − 1 =

Search The Villager


Share This Post

Tweet


Sponsors

Sponsor


ClickHereForCalendarButton
ClickHereForCalendarButton

RSS Gay City News

  • Can Three Parents Make a Family in New York?
  • Federal Court Orders Trial on Trans Military Ban
  • David Buckel, Passionate LGBTQ Rights Litigator, Dead at 60

RSS Chelsea Now

  • Tribeca Film Festival Review: “Sidelined”
  • Tribeca Film Festival Review: “Slut in a Good Way”
  • “Nico, 1988” at the Tribeca Film Festival: 2 Reviews

RSS Downtown Express

  • Tribeca Film Festival Review: “Sidelined”
  • Tribeca Film Festival Review: “Slut in a Good Way”
  • “Nico, 1988” at the Tribeca Film Festival: 2 Reviews
  • High impact: Could ‘developmental impact fees’ ease Downtown’s growing pains?
  • Back on the beat: Community policing program comes to the First Precinct
  • Police Blotter: Week of April 19, 2018
  • Beware the Coarsening

RSS East Villager News

  • Best in Screen, 2015
  • A Coney Island of the East Village at City Lore
  • NYCHA will build on ‘hot’ East Side, chief assures
  • After 50 years, famed fashionista Patricia Field closing Downtown store
  • God’s Love We Deliver is back and cooking again in its gleaming new Spring St. building
  • Scoopy’s, Week of Sept. 3, 2015
  • ‘N.Y. Corporate U.’ is crushing us, critics cry
  • Foodies steamed after wonton rent hike, taxes force out Charlie Mom
  • Crusty punk whose pit bull terrorized East Village is dead
  • Spring forward to fall festivals

NYC Community Media LLC also publishes:
The Villager • Gay City News • Chelsea Now • East Villager News


ONE METROTECH, 10TH FLOOR NORTH
NYC, NY 11201
Main Telephone: 212-229-1890
Fax: 212-229-2790
Advertising: 212-229-1890

© TheVillager.com (Copyright 2017). Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to TheVillager.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Log in - The Villager - Published by NYC COMMUNITY MEDIA