Fania Gersham House
Fania Gersham House
Building
Fania Gersham House
Date Opened
August 16, 1988
Residential Units
28 independent apartments for elderly and/or physically handicapped person with very low incomes
Development Partners
Architect: Rosenblum-Harb Architects
General Contractor: Sparrow Construction Corp.
Major Funders: Original Funding: U.S. Departmentof Housing and Urban Development Refinancing: NYC Housing Development Corporation and National Equity Fund
Rental Subsidy
Project-Based Section 8 Contract
More Info
Building History
In the early ‘80s West Side Seniors for Action, a group of seniors working on a variety of social justice issues affecting older persons, “adopted” a new WSFSSH project in a vacant building on 105th Street designed to fill the need for additional apartments for seniors and/or physically handicapped persons with very low incomes. Fania Gersham, President of West Side Seniors for Action, and her intrepid group of seniors visited then-Senator Alfonso D’Amato to request that he do everything he could to ensure that the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would fund the building. Their visit worked, and even though the building was small by HUD standards (28 apartments), it was granted an award of $2 million plus Section 8 housing subsidy. Ms. Gersham had a long history of activism. She herself, along with other activists, actually met with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of the organizing effort that secured Social Security for older adults in 1935. Before her death at age 96, Fania knew that WSFSSH would be naming the building in her honor. Fania Gersham Apartments opened on August 16, 1988.