Kurt & Leah Schneider Apartments

Building History

On February 26, 1999, WSFSSH’s 12th building opened on 102nd Street. Kurt and Leah Schneider Apartments is a new construction building funded by HUD 202 Program to provide 50 units of housing for elderly (+62) low income persons. WSFSSH worked extensively with the community during development; the site was a city owned property that had been a community garden. In addition to addressing the concerns of the neighborhood gardeners, part of WSFSSH’s commitment to the neighborhood was to find safe homes for the myriad of feral cats who lived on the site.

It is appropriate that this building in the heart of Manhattan Valley be named to honor two long time Manhattan Valley leaders, founding WSFSSH Board member Leah Schneider and her husband, Kurt. Both Kurt and Leah were lifelong activists with rich accomplishments in social justice. After her retirement from Columbia University, Leah Schneider spearheaded the salvation of low income housing for Manhattan Valley. Today there are over a thousand units that protect low income tenants from being pushed out of the neighborhood. When Martin McCarthy introduced WSFSSH to Leah, she immediately saw the need for an organization that would specialize in housing senior citizens and persons with special needs. Always generous, she identified sites in Manhattan Valley which would be appropriate for senior housing. Even though Manhattan Valley was “her” neighborhood, she always made room for others whose mission was to provide housing for low income people.

While every WSFSSH building houses a wide diversity of people, K & L may be our most actively international building. Languages represented in the building, include English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Creole, Romanian, and Russian. As in all HUD 202 buildings, which applications were opened first was determined by random lottery.