Treasured Harlem Church Facing Eviction Fears The End Is Near

HARLEM, NY — Inside the modest corner storefront of the Beaata Le Mariam Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, things looked roughly the same on a recent Sunday as they have for the past 16 years.

Following its weekly services, the church space at the corner of West 121st Street and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard was teeming with life, as members sipped coffee and tea, chatting in English and Amharic while children played tag on the sidewalk outside.

Clouding the festivities, however, was a stark reality: the church is likely weeks away from being displaced from its longtime home, as a three-year eviction battle nears its end.

"Every Sunday that we're coming here, we're thinking, is this the last Sunday?" said Tenbit Shiferaw, who has attended Beaata Le Mariam for over a decade along with her family.

The last remaining Ethiopian Orthodox institution in Manhattan, Beaata Le Mariam first received an eviction notice in 2019 from its then-landlord, the City of New York. The reason, church leaders soon discovered, was that the city planned to sell the building for $1 to the nonprofit East Harlem El Barrio Community Land Trust, which will take over the building after it is renovated and convert it into permanently affordable housing.

As Patch reported last year, eviction would likely spell doom for the church, whose leaders have been unable to find any space in Manhattan that can compare to their current venue's size (3,500 square feet) and affordability (roughly $1,267 per month, though rent payments have been waived during the eviction battle).

In the meantime, church leaders say their repeated pleas to the city to help them relocate have gone unheeded — even after then-Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to take action when Patch raised the issue to him during a news conference last year.

After the mayor's vow, the city, along with the nonprofit developers taking over the building, worked with Beaata Le Mariam to visit two vacant church spaces in East Harlem, but the venues were too small (625 square feet) and too costly (a staggering $18,000 per month), respectively.

Since then, relocation help has petered out, according to board member Atsede Elegba. Doing their own sleuthing, Elegba and fellow board member Almaz Kebede identified more than two dozen other rental spaces, but ran into the same obstacles.

For months, the church staved off displacement thanks to the state's pandemic moratorium on commercial evictions. But that moratorium expired in January — and on March 8, a civil court judge ruled that the eviction could move forward.

"Our mission is affordable housing"

Housing advocates hailed the November 2020 announcement that the city would sell the building at 2020 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd. — along with three others in East Harlem — to the nonprofit land trust. The historic deal was the culmination of a years-long grassroots push to bring the innovative land trust model to Harlem as a means of keeping housing affordable.

Indeed, even some church leaders have professed admiration for the plan, though some remain confused why Beaata Le Mariam could not return to their space after the building is renovated.

Kenneth Wray, an executive director of the nonprofit that is co-sponsoring the renovations, told Patch that the church space will need to be filled by a retail tenant willing to pay significant rent in order to help subsidize the affordable housing.

"We’ve never had any indication from the church that they’d be willing to pay anything," Wray said. "All we’ve gotten from them is, 'We can’t afford this, we’re a small congregation.'"

Rent for the storefront space will likely be raised well above its former $1,267 price tag once it is improved by renovations, Wray said. As for the lengthy eviction battle playing out in court, Ray noted that the church had initially agreed to relocate before deciding to fight the displacement.

"We certainly respect their religious mission, but we are secular organizations and our mission is affordable housing," Wray said. "How do we make sure the housing is affordable? That’s the most important thing to us."

The community land trust (CLT), meanwhile, told Patch in a statement that the church's eviction had been mandated by the city's housing agency as part of the 2020 deal — part of an official policy to evict commercial tenants when a city-owned property changes hands.

"We are sympathetic to the church, and the CLT finds itself in a difficult position regarding this situation," the CLT's board of directors said.

The entity that has petitioned in court to evict the church is the so-called Mutual Housing Association that is charged with carrying out the renovations — not the land trust itself, the group noted.

The mayor's office referred questions about the eviction to the city's Housing Preservation and Development Department. In a statement, HPD said that the project would deliver badly needed affordable housing and "contribute to the long-term stability and affordability of the neighborhood."

"We unequivocally support our faith-based communities," HPD spokesperson Jeremy House said, "and have kept our promise to support the tenant’s search for a new home including six months of rent forgiveness and identifying a new commercial space within budget."

"It would be devastating"

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has a rich history in Harlem, where it first arrived in the 1950s at the behest of Black Americans who were drawn to it as one of the few Christian churches in Africa that predated colonialism.

Today, Beaata Le Mariam's melting-pot congregation of about 100 people is, in Elegba's words, "a rare combination of Western-born and Ethiopian-born parishioners," with members hailing from the across U.S., Caribbean, and Eastern Africa.

Among those in attendance on the recent Sunday were Edelawit Yishak, 19, and Amerti Gudissa, 22 — students originally from Ethiopia who both came to New York for college, and discovered Beaata Le Mariam soon after.

"The connections that I’ve made have been very important," said Gudissa, who attends Columbia University. "There are people I look up to here, people I consider my fathers and my mothers — especially because my parents are back home."

"I was lucky because it didn’t get closed down," said Yishak, a student at Manhattanville College who found the church months ago. "It would be devastating to see it be displaced or closed."

Related coverage:

• Harlem Church To Be Evicted In City's Affordable Housing Deal
• Harlem's Endangered Ethiopian Church Hangs On, For Now
• Harlem Land Trust Secures Historic Deal For Affordable Housing

Have a Harlem news tip? Contact reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.