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Meet Adenah Bayoh, New Jersey’s first Black female affordable housing developer
By
Mike Hayes
Published Sep 25, 2024
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Mike Hayes
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Mike Hayes
Published Sep 25, 2024
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Adenah Bayoh, who fled war-torn Liberia as a child and has since gone on to build a burgeoning real estate portfolio, is set to add to her already impressive resume by becoming the first Black woman to lead the development of a major affordable housing project in New Jersey.
Next year, 46-year-old Bayoh plans to begin moving families into a building she’s constructing on Newark's South Side, where she grew up. Once finished, the five-story building will contain 40-units, which will all be priced affordably for low- and moderate-income families. Five of the units will also be set aside for recently homeless families in need of transitional housing while they get back on their feet, Bayoh said.
But the building isn’t just providing housing. Each unit will have free Wi-Fi and families will be given a computer when they move in, Bayoh told Gothamist. And the children living in the building will also have access to free on-site after-school tutoring. Bayoh said she has made these additional services possible by forging partnerships with community organizations, like the Newark YMCA.
Bayoh said developing properties that simply "occupy space" isn't her goal.
“But really building buildings that solve generational issues. That solve problems for communities that we talk about all of the time. I'm not interested in building anything that is not impactful,” Bayoh said.
Like many states around the country, New Jersey is facing a housing crisis. Experts say the Garden State is short more than 200,000 low-priced apartments to meet growing housing demands. To tackle the burgeoning housing need, the state is poised to begin its next state-mandated round of affordable housing development this fall that will assign towns around New Jersey to develop a certain number of affordable units over the next decade.
In March, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a package of affordable housing bills and urged the development of more housing.
“We need to keep building. We need to do it equitably, and we need to do it fast,” he said.
Bayoh’s project checks several boxes laid out in the state's affordable housing strategy: It stands as an example of urban development in an underserved neighborhood and utilizes a tax credit program to finance and expand the development that local, state and federal politicians say is crucial to tackling the housing shortage.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop — a gubernatorial contender — has called for expanding the low-income housing tax credit program. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, also recently released a housing policy proposal that would increase the program's funding.
Bayoh’s journey into real estate began when she was in her mid-20s. In 2001, she purchased her first income-generating property: a three-family home in nearby Irvington, a middle-class suburb near her hometown of Newark.
“When you grew up in Newark, Irvington was like the next thing that your family did. We call it getting out the hood,” Bayoh said.
She lived in one of the apartments and rented the other two. The rental income allowed her to buy four more houses, she said. But when the 2008 financial crisis hit, she faced multiple foreclosures due to taking on subprime mortgages to finance the properties.
“I said to myself … this can either be the defining moment of my young life. This can either make me or break me. The choice is mine,” Bayoh said. “ And what I did was I rolled up my sleeves, and I started fighting the banks,” she said.
She said she was able to negotiate with some of the banks in court to hold on to two of her properties. And while her credit took a hit, she wasn’t in ruin like countless others affected by the subprime mortgage crisis. But the setback paved the way for another opportunity: pancakes. More specifically, the International House of Pancakes.
Bayoh said that when she was attending college in Teaneck, she and her friends would always hang out late night at their local IHOP. When she moved to Irvington, she was dismayed by the lack of any quality casual dining.
“All we had at the time was two run-down diners, Popeye's, McDonald's, just go down the list of the fast food greatest hits. And I just didn't think that was right,” she said.
The mayor at the time told her of a local diner for sale, she recounted. She purchased the diner in 2007 and turned it into an IHOP. Since then, Bayoh has gone on to open seven total restaurants, including four IHOPs.
Her ventures have helped make her Irvington's second-largest employer, according to the township.
“I can't even quantify what she has done for this community. And it seems like it's only the beginning,” said Irvington Mayor Tony Vauss.
Vauss, who has been the township’s mayor since 2014 and is currently in his third term, called Bayoh “an inspiration to every young girl that has come from humble beginnings.”
Around 2010, Bayoh decided to jump back into housing in a big way. She and a partner joined forces to redevelop Irvington General Hospital, which closed in 2006 and had deteriorated over the years. The pair developed close to 300 units of affordable housing at the site of the hospital.
In her latest affordable housing venture, Bayoh secured a highly competitive tax credit that cuts down investors’ bills.
Those types of tax credits have helped fund roughly 70,000 apartments over the last four decades, according to Melanie Walter, the head of the New Jersey Housing Mortgage and Finance Agency.
“This is actually the most successful public private partnership in U.S. history in terms of the amount of private investment generated using [tax credits],” Walter said.
In the past nine years alone, the state has completed 25,000 new units through the tax credit, Walter added.
Because these tax credits are so enticing for investors, developers whose projects are backed by them can usually get most, if not all, of their project financed. In turn, fully affordable housing projects — where margins can be razor-thin due the low rents — become financially feasible.
Although Bayoh’s 40-unit project is currently just a bunch of pipes, beams and a half-poured concrete slab, she’s already setting her sights on what’s next: another fully affordable building directly across the street.
When both buildings are complete, she said, the block will have 103 new affordable housing units.
“This project I want to do is different. I want to do all of the things I've always wanted to do for the community that they deserve,” she said.
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Mike Hayes
Mike Hayes covers equity and access to opportunity in New Jersey. He joined WNYC and Gothamist in 2023. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist writing about policing and criminal justice. He has written for ProPublica, CNN, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News and The Appeal. He is also the author of the book, “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.” In 2019, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
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