Jimmy Carter’s affordable housing efforts began in NYC’s East Village

Former President Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at the age of 100, famously spent decades after leaving the White House helping to build affordable homes with the organization Habitat for Humanity — an effort that began with the rehab of a crumbling apartment building in the East Village.

Carter arrived at the six-story tenement building at 742 East 6th St. in September 1984 following a 27-hour bus ride from Georgia with fellow volunteers, the New York Times reported at the time. It was Habitat for Humanity’s first multifamily project in a major city and Carter, an avid furniture-maker, pitched in as a carpenter.

The building was missing chunks of its roof and large holes in the floors exposed rotting joists. Carter described his first visit to the building in April 1984, when he encountered a woman living in dire conditions next door.

“There was no water, no heat, no electricity. And she was cooking her meal on a trash fire that she built between two bricks,” he told the Times. “I realized then how much Habitat could mean to a neighborhood like this.”

Two years later, residents moved into the 19 renovated units after Habitat for Humanity officially bought the building from the city and turned it into a permanently affordable co-op known as a Housing Development Fund Corporation, or HDFC.

Outside the building Monday, Nancy Montanez, 61, said she was among the first group of “homesteaders” to move in. She said she raised three children in the one-bedroom unit she owns and still feels a special connection to Carter.

“ I feel like he partnered with me in my life to give me a place of stability to build a home and family,” Montanez said. “I mean, New York's no longer affordable, and it wasn't affordable then either.”

The building, constructed in 1902, is called Mascot Flats and features ornate moldings and iron fire escapes. Long before Carter’s visit, future residents worked to renovate the building and others in the area, and they continued to maintain it in the years that followed.

Carter returned to Mascot Flats for a ceremony in 2013. While in New York City, he also visited homes in Queens and Staten Island damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

In a statement Sunday, Sabrina Lippmann, the CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County, called Carter one of the nation’s “greatest advocates for affordable housing, self-help homeownership and shelter for all.”