Brownsville - A Brooklyn Neighborhood Rebuilt

Originally a village of small cottages and shops, Brownsville became a neighborhood of immigrants after 1887 when a real estate developer began building tenement houses and marketing them to garment workers from the Lower East Side. The opening of the Fulton Street elevated railway in 1889 and the Williamsburg Bridge in 1903 also attracted new residents to the area. After World War II the area declined, particularly following the 1977 blackout, but between 1977 and 1985 the Council of East Brooklyn Churches and neighborhood organizations built or renovated thousands of new homes, including owner-occupied low-rise, row houses.

The City took possession of the abandoned buildings and vacant lots in neighborhoods like Brownsville as well as other areas of Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and Harlem, and by the 1980s the City's portfolio had grown to over 100,000 units of housing and over 5,000 vacant lots. In the mid-1980s, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) began collaborating with community groups and selling vacant lots and City-owned residential buildings to nonprofits and private developers that have primarily created affordable housing.

In 1983, property owners, businesses, and other interest groups formed the East Brooklyn Business Improvement District. The nonprofit operations include an industrial park featuring businesses engaged in light manufacturing or distribution and a commercial strip on the southern border. The Local Development Corporation of East New York administers the State-designated Empire Zone in East New York, which offers financial incentives and tax credits, including wage tax credits for companies hiring full-time employees in newly created jobs, and utility discounts to businesses located within the zone. The organization also offers entrepreneur programs, including those targeted at women entrepreneurs, to encourage the development of small businesses.

In recent years, the Brownsville area has experienced an increase in commercial development. Clean Rite Centers opened a 10,000 square foot, 24-hour self-service laundry with a parking lot in 2000 on what had been a blighted, vacant lot on the corner. Soon after, a medical clinic opened next door and new residential housing was built across Bergen Street. Most recently in Brownsville in 2005, homeowners moved into 37 new affordable townhouses that they purchased from the Settlement Housing Fund, the nonprofit developer of the homes.