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StoreWorks Homeownership Program

The purpose of the StoreWorks Program is to rehabilitate small, vacant, mixed-use buildings currently owned by the City and restore them to private ownership and active use. The buildings generally consist of a storefront at street level and one to eight apartments above. Rehabilitation of these buildings creates affordable rental housing as well as additional retail services and economic opportunities in various neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

This program is carried out in cooperation with the development arm of Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City (NHS), an experienced not-for-profit organization that acts as developer, oversees the design and construction, and markets the completed buildings to individual buyers. The rehabilitation is financed with loans from private lenders as well as partial financing from HPD. The City also provides partial tax abatement for a period of twenty years. There are limited restrictions on resale profits.

The buildings are priced at market levels, and there are no income limits for buyers, nor any price or income limits for renters of apartments or stores. Buyers may be residential or commercial occupants or investors and are selected through a lottery carried out by NHS and supervised by HPD. Priority for 50% of the buildings is given to buyers who currently either reside in or conduct businesses in the neighborhoods where the StoreWorks buildings are located; and priority for the remaining buildings is given to New York City residents and those who plan to occupy the buildings.

PHONE NUMBERS:

  • For information about the next round of StoreWorks, call the Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) Community Development Corporation: (212) 519-2528.
  • Call 311 to request a homeownership kit.
  • If you need to speak with a representative of the Homeowner Mortgage Servicing unit, please call (212) 863-6914 between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm.

All references to servicing mortgages should be directed to the HPD office indicated below;

NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development
The Homeowner Mortgage Servicing Unit
100 Gold Street, Room 7-U1
New York, New York 10038
Attn: Intake Coordinator

StoreWorks Personal Success Story

Juanita Simmons, who works on Wall Street by day and teaches aerobics by night, taught fitness classes out of a 320 square foot building behind her Queens Village home for 10 years before she purchased a two-story building on Linden Boulevard through the StoreWorks program in 2000. Created through a partnership between the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services, the StoreWorks program sells city-owned buildings with storefronts and residential units.

Ms. Simmons bought the Linden Boulevard building for $240,000 and opened an aerobics studio called Body Connection Health Club. With twice as much space in her new aerobics studio, Ms. Simmons offers six different aerobics classes each week, massage therapy and body wrapping, free blood pressure and health screenings by a registered nurse, and free monthly health seminars. She beams with pride when she talks about her health club. "Every day feels like the first day I opened Body Connection. The StoreWorks program is just great!"