Daughter Bria Culpepper Launches Change.org
Petition to Support Embattled Mom
HARLEM, N.Y., April 25,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Sherri
Culpepper is a hard-working grandmother who has enjoyed an
illustrious and multi-faceted career. The veteran urban radio
producer has never said no to a challenge. She even changed careers
after the age of 50, becoming an operating engineer, mastering a
large variety of construction equipment, including cranes,
bulldozers, and front-end loaders before joining the International
Union of Operating Engineers - Local 15, not a small feat as a
Black woman. However, the predicament she now finds herself in
while trying to preserve her family legacy and save her home is a
situation she never saw coming.
The fourth generation Harlemite, who took over her family's
brownstones in 2012, has been in a twelve-year wrangle with varying
New York City agencies to legally
maintain ownership of her two properties. In the process, numerous
freeloading individuals are now "legally" housed in one of her
brownstones and have been residing there for twelve years without
paying rent and utilities or upkeeping any maintenance!
Culpepper, has filed a formal legal complaint (Supreme Court Index
#159115 /2022) against numerous New
York city agencies, including The City of New York, the New York City Department
of Finance, the New York City Department of Buildings, and the New
York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. She
is in an ongoing battle against the squatters and the city,
fighting to harness support for her plight as well as other
homeowners in a similar dilemma. Her daughter, Bria, has
started a Change.org petition to support her mom.
Culpepper's building has been systematically entangled in a web
of condemning bureaucracy. First, her single-family home was
erroneously designated as a Single Room Occupancy (SRO). SROs are a
form of housing that is typically designed for persons with low or
minimal incomes who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed,
chair and sometimes a small desk. Second, her biggest blow came in
2014 when the brownstone was unceremoniously "selected" by the
Housing Preservation and Development's (HPD) Alternate Enforcement
Program, better known as the "slumlord" program, and served with 52
violations and fines. Forty-nine of them had been corrected decades
before, but never administratively removed from the record books,
in turn creating additional ongoing issues and setbacks for her.
Both the SRO and HPD codes have allowed the freeloaders
"legal," no-rent housing.
As one of a diminishing number of original Harlem brownstone
homeowners, Culpepper alleges these efforts were
enacted to force her to sell her historical property in a massive
gentrification effort seen throughout many urban cities. In
addition to the SRO designation and HPD's tactics, Culpepper
has been continuously served an onslaught of ongoing violations and
fines over the years.
"Brownstones hold generational history and wealth here in
New York, yet, per gentrification,
so many of the original owners have been displaced by the city and
corporate contractors coming to takeover. I have refused to sell
and so here we are, over a decade later and I find myself with more
than seven tax liens, numerous retained and since fired attorneys,
and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, erroneous
violations, legal fees, and interest. And on top of that, I am
still taking care of numerous people living free in my home because
the city has sanctioned it. I believe my so-called "tenants" are
being supported and encouraged to create violations, damage, and
vandalize my property!" cites Culpepper. "It's
disappointing that in 2024, redlining and systemic racism continue
to hold and prevent certain communities from what's just and
fair."
When Culpepper took ownership of the home in 2012, she also
inherited a house full of cousins who had been living rent free
because of family ties. The cousins started renting out spaces in
the home to total strangers. Along with contending with the cousins
and new tenants, Culpepper, a grandmother, and mother of three,
found herself in ongoing legal entanglements with the city. Her
home was identified as one of the most distressed in the community
district, despite not fitting the criteria required of the program.
In fact, she attests that she has been overly attentive with the
upkeep of the property because of the skills garnered from her
professional construction background.
Culpepper's great grandparents moved into the brownstone in
1929, with a family of nine people at the time, including her great
grandfather's church occupying the parlor floor. The brownstone
holds deep, cultural, and familial ties as her great grandfather
was also the accountant for freedom fighter, Honorable Marcus
Mosiah Garvey in the early 1930's! In addition, her great uncle was
one of the Port Chicago 50, a
group wrongly accused of mutiny by the U.S. Navy in 1944 and
represented by NAACP's attorney, the Honorable Thurgood Marshall.
Until 1974, for 42 years, the family rented the property before the
owner finally sold the real estate to her great grandmother and
four of her children. For the last 88 years, the only people living
in the building were immediate family members and an occasional
close family friend passing through.
Culpepper's ultimate dream after securing and maintaining
ownership of her brownstones is to use her family's property to
continue their legacy of community activism. She hopes to revision
her brownstone as an inner city, sustainable, eco-friendly
workspace and teach children in the neighborhood about organic
gardening, water harvesting, creating green roofs, and utilizing
recycled building materials for new constructions.
To contact Sherri Culpepper and support her effort to save
her Harlem brownstones, sign the petition at Change.org. She
can also be reached at sherriculpepper@gmail.com.
Media Contact:
Makeda Smith
Jazzmyne Public Relations
makeda@jazzmynepr.com
323-380-8819
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SOURCE Sherri Culpepper