A LIFE BY THE WATER
FOR NEW YORKERS.
Our Story
Before we launched The Restorative Housing Organization, we were a family who lucked into a home on the Brooklyn waterfront.
The calming, empowering effect of living by the ocean was so profound that we set our sights on sharing the experience. We invested our own resources in a distressed waterfront property on City Island in the Bronx.
For the renovation, we chose to hire justice-impacted contractors and offer the rentals to government housing voucher holders through the Section 8 program.
That equation worked, so we did it again—this time in Jamaica, Queens. And it worked again. We employed four justice-impacted contractors and housed a family of five New Yorkers through Section 8.
At the limits of our personal resources, we started the non-profit Restorative Housing Organization (RHO) to raise the finances for future projects.
TRANSFORMING
LIVES SINCE
2022
Where it all began:
They Wanted a Waterfront House in New York City for $450,000 (but Not for Themselves)
By Joyce Cohen
A couple loved living in Sea Gate, Brooklyn, so much that they wanted to share the experience with others. So they looked for a distressed property they could restore and rent to a low-income tenant.
“I would have never thought that with Section 8 I’d be here. Never. I was given an opportunity, and I’m so blessed not to be stigmatized or judged just because I come from a program. When I came here, I wasn’t a Section 8 tenant, I was just me. I was just Stacey.“
~ STACEY RIOS, RESIDENT