A wall commemorates recent deaths in one section of Crown Heights. (Jill Colvin)

Shenesa Brewster knows not to walk the streets at night in Crown Heights.

“A lot goes on now. Stabbing, fighting, shooting,” said the 22-year-old childcare worker who lives and works in the neighborhood. “Last year it was calm. This year is different.”

After more than a decade of declining violent crime, killings are increasingly common in Brooklyn’s 71st and 77th precincts. According to the most recent police statistics, murder is up 30 percent from this time last year in both sections of the neighborhood. In the 77th, rape is up nearly six percent, and in the 71st, robbery is up nearly seven.

While these numbers are nowhere near as high as they were 15 years ago – there were almost four times more murders in 1990 than there have been so far this year in the 77th –many residents are worried that, as the economy slides, so too will the progress their neighborhood has made.

“We’re all concerned,” said Doris Alexander, district manager of Brooklyn Community Board 8. “They are pleading for help, for more police presence.”

Some female residents say that they have had to change their routines because they fear becoming victims.

“It has gotten scary,” said social worker Debora Robinson, 43. “You have to be more alert when you’re in the streets, who’s around you.”

She said that her 15-year-old grand-daughter chose not to go trick-or-treating for Halloween this year because of the threat of violence.

Jada Williams, 22, a home help aid with a one-year-old son, said that now, if she goes out, she makes sure she leaves early, drives more frequently and always remains with a group.

Even with all those precautions, she said, “I hardly go out due to the fact that I’m scared.”

Local business owners have also been affected.

Arthur Baize, 56, who owns a restaurant/bar in Crown Heights, said that several of his customers have been robbed.

“When it gets dark, I’m not going out. I’m staying in,” he said.

This week, two men were killed and another critically injured during a botched robbery at a discount store at Nostrand Ave. and Lefferts Blvd. Last month, Edward Hunt, 32, a sanitation worker and father was killed outside of his Crown Heights apartment building while on his way to work.

But police say that though murder is on the rise, crime, overall, is down: 17 percent in the 77th and nearly five percent in the 71st since last year. This amounts to 230 fewer victims than last year in the 77th and 70 fewer in the 71st. Gun violence is also down even though homicide is up, and the arrest rate for homicide is up over 130 percent, according to Deputy Inspector John Cosgrove of the 77th Precinct.

“People were always concerned about it. That’s a constant,” said Cosgrove of crime. But, he said, “When you think of where we came from, we’re doing an excellent job.”

Back in 1990, the 77th recorded nearly 8,000 crimes and 70 murders. In 2006, they recorded just 1,585 and 15.

Cosgrove also said that, because the incident numbers are now so low, even a small bump can look disconcerting. The 77th precinct’s 28.5 percent figure is the result of an increase from 14 to 18—not much of a difference, he argued.

But New York State Assembly Member Karim Camara said that even if there is a disjoint between the likelihood of being victimized and people’s perceptions, seeing the statistics and hearing gun shots fired frequently nearby affects the way that people live.

“It’s domestic terrorism. It causes people to have fear in their own neighborhoods. People should feel safe in the communities that they live in,” Camara said.

“They’re scared to death. They’re not as sociable as they once were,” said Emily Givens, 44, an HIV peer educator who is unemployed, describing the current climate in the neighborhood. “It’s like a barrel of crabs. Anyone and everybody is pulling each other down.”

Residents, police and politicians are all quick to blame the economic downturn for the violence. The environment is negative and people on short fuses, beat cops report.

The nation’s unemployment rate is now up to 6.5 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. For blacks, that number nearly doubles to 11.1 percent. In Crown Heights, the number is even higher, with some groups at 50 or 85 percent, according to community activists.

Robinson said that people are being driven to kill to pay the rent.

In desperate times, she said, “I ain’t got nothing. You ain’t got nothing. But you’ll kill me for what little I have.”

Richard Green, a community activist and Chief Executive Officer of the Crown Heights Youth Collective, said the community is in desperate need of recreational and educational facilities.

He recalled that when he was growing up in the neighborhood, schools would stay open until 8pm, giving young people a place to go. Today, he said, they are forced to stand on street corners or in apartment hallways, with nothing to do but cause trouble.

“It’s sort of like violence waiting to erupt then when kids have nothing to do,”

Anthony Niger, 44, a Parks and Recreation Department employee said as he bagged fallen leaves outside of St. John’s Recreation Center.

As a parent of seven kids, ages four through 14, he said he worries about what will happen to them as they grow up.

“It’s every parent’s problem to make sure everything is alright with your family. I worry very much,” he said, complaining that he has developed memory problems because of the stress.

In order to appease residents’ concerns, both CB8’s Alexander and Assembly Member Camara said that they have appealed for more protection from police. Camara has called for more officers and more security cameras on the street, and has been pushing for the creation of neighborhood watch groups. Both are also trying to address long-terms problems, such as helping disconnected youth get involved with the community and completing their education.

77th Precinct Community Council Recording Secretary Evangeline Porter said the youth committee is trying to encourage young people to participate in the Law Enforcement Explorers program, which teaches young people about the profession.

Alexander said that she has also called on the police to reinstate the 77th Precinct as an Operation Impact zone, which was halted earlier this year. Operation Impact, which was first implemented in 2003, deploys hundreds of new graduates from the police Academy to high-crime “hot spots.”

According to an NYPD spokesman, the precinct is scheduled to receive new rookies when the next academy class graduates.

However, Mayor Bloomberg just announced that the city will be canceling its January 2009 academy class as part of an aggressive budget cut. As a result, new cops will not be available until after they graduate from the next class, scheduled to commence in July, 2009.

A programmer at chabad.org, the Lubavitch World Headquarters' flagship website, answers a curious user's question. Unlike other sects of Hasidic Jews, Lubavitchers embrace technology as a tool to spread their faith. (Jill Colvin)

When Rabbi Moshe Hecht receives questions from his congregation, he doesn’t refer them to renowned scholars or the quarter-million volumes at the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters library. Instead, he sends them to a website, chabad.org.

“Almost any time someone asks a question, scholastic faith questions or geographic Jewish questions, on law, ideas or philosophy, chabad.org is the way to go,” said Hecht, 23, who works at the Chabad Center of Forest Hills, Queens.

With nearly one million users a year, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s central Internet portal is one of the most popular Jewish sites on the Web. Chabad.org was founded in 1988, before the Internet as we know it even began to take shape. It now has 55 full-time programmers on its team. And it is just one of more than 700 websites in 50 countries operated by the movement.

Many Hasidic Jewish sects shun modern technology, choosing to live in traditional, insular communities. They have banned their members from using the Internet, watching television or listening to popular music because it distracts from religious study. This is especially true inside the home, which must be kept kosher—free from impurities.

But the Chabad-Lubavitchers, one of Hasidic Judaism’s largest movements, has embraced the Web. It uses the Internet to educate the public, connect with religious leaders abroad, and reach out to non-orthodox Jews who could join the movement. And many believe that technology has helped Chabad become the fastest-growing Jewish
outreach movement, with more than three centers a week opening somewhere in the world, according to Rabbi Beryl Epstein of the Chassidic Discovery Center.

Lubavitchers practice a unique interpretation of Jewish theology inspired by Kabalic mysticism. They follow the teachings of seven generations of highly respected charismatic spiritual leaders called “Rebbes.” The last Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, taught his followers that technology is a tool provided by God that can—and should—be used to spread their faith.

“The Rebbe taught us that, instead of shunning it, instead of making it taboo, to really take advantage of it. The Internet especially,” explained Hecht. “The Rebbe revolutionized this.”

The impact of the revolution is striking to anyone who visits the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Bearded men wearing black suits and fedoras make cell phone calls in the synagogue as others sway back and forth, chanting in prayer. Outside, rabbis use BlackBerrys to send emails and new
acquaintances spell their names aloud so they can find each other on Facebook.

Their online presence is just as extensive. Chabad.org now has more than 9,000 pages of content in English, Hebrew, Dutch, French and Spanish. Russian and Portuguese are on the way. Much of the content is educational, with descriptions of Jewish customs, theology and history. An “Ask the Rabbi” feature answers questions about living a
Jewish life, while sections for women, parents and children offer advice and entertainment. There are recipes and even online cartoons, including the popular Itche Kadoozy Show, an animated comedy that tries to bring biblical lessons to life.

For many, chabad.org has become an online Jewish college, with thousands of digitized texts and 2,400 audio classes that can be streamed or downloaded on iPods.

“The gem of what we’re doing here is taking material that’s thousands of years old and presenting it in a way that’s accessible,” said Meir Simcha Kogan, project administrator at chabad.org.

“It’s allowing Jews access to information that once was held only in the realm of the scholarly,” said David Birk, an Australian rabbi studying at the Chabad Resource Center at Columbia University. “It’s a very beautiful thing.”
The lessons are especially popular among women.

While Chabad women attend religious schools, they are taught separately and devote less time to study. Using technology, they can listen to more advanced classes without having to sit face-to-face with men, and they can access teachings at home while tending to their families.

Simcha Pruss, 45, who grew up in Perth, Australia, said she uses chabad.org frequently to access Jewish texts online.

“There are some texts in the lady’s shul (another word for a synagogue) but not really the variety that’s in the men’s section,” said the speech pathology graduate student, wearing an ankle-length navy blue skirt and thick black sweater, buttoned to her neck. Under Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law, women must dress modestly in public, with their knees, elbows and collar bones covered.

Pruss said that having access to the website is especially convenient because, unlike men who can be found in their synagogue 24-hours a day, women scholars are not always available to consult.

The format also makes material accessible to Jews living miles away from a Chabad Center. Staff at chabad.org say they receive emails from all over the world. In mid-October, a Somali wrote to staffers seeking Jewish contacts. One man wrote from a ship stationed in Antarctica. The interest from Laos and Serbia was so great that centers were recently opened there.

Many rabbis have also embraced other websites, including the online social networking site Facebook, to reach out to potential members.

“I remember thinking this is like the greatest gift from heaven,” recalled Rabbi Yonah Blum, director of Chabad at Columbia, who currently has 2,870 friends on the network. “This is one of the greatest tools that ever came into a Chabad Rabbi’s resources.”

But members of the community also recognize the potential danger of engaging with the wider world. Maintaining purity is much easier in an isolated community, Birk explained. This is especially true for children, who may be exposed to harmful material, such as pornography or blasphemous religious ideas at an impressionable age, or feel pressure to conform to a less stringent lifestyle because of what they see around them.

“There are compromises,” he said. “If you’re going to bring a person up in a modern world and you’re going to be a minority, it can be harmful.”

Still he, like others, credits Chabad’s willingness to interact with the outside world and embrace technology for much of the movement’s success.

“This is what technology is for,” Blum said.

Obama supporters in Brooklyn celebrate his historic win. (Jill Colvin)

Tears streaming down her face, Marilyn Legal, 63, hugged the first person she could find. “Congratulations,” she whispered in the stranger’s ear, then threw her head back and jumped up and down screaming, “We did it!”

The converted warehouse next to the Obama Headquarters in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood exploded into fits of cheering at 11 p.m. last night as CNN announced that Democrat Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States. People shouted. Strangers embraced. Others stood awe-struck and silent, their faces wet with tears.

“The faith has been restored,” said Legal, a retiree from Crown Heights. “We’re alive to see history in the making.”

For almost everyone in the predominantly black audience of volunteers and supporters at the Brooklyn for Obama-organized watch party, the significance was clear.

“It means I was part of history and my little vote made a difference,” said Ricardi Sorrias, 40, a clerk from Bed-Stuy.

With 99 percent of districts reporting, the Democratic candidate captured 52 percent of the popular voter, with 62.5 million ballots cast compared with 55.5 million for Republican challenger John McCain. While recent polls had shown Obama pulling ahead in recent weeks, many in the room were surprised by the results.

“This is wonderful. Unbelievable. It’s an overwhelming, emotional experience,” said Karlene Gordon, 48, a community activist from Crown Heights, grabbing her heart and smiling wide. “It transcends race, class, status, titles. It’s just everybody’s election.”

For Henry, a 62-year-old Panamanian immigrant who arrived in the United States 25 years ago, the moment felt like a gift from God.

“It was a blessing to see this happen,” said Henry, a retiree from Bed-Stuy, who received a heart transplant three years ago. “I think that my Lord gave me an opportunity to have this come true.”

Again and again, people said that what they were feeling was too much to put into words.

“It’s like asking the people of South Africa how they felt when Apartheid was lifted, when they went to cast their first vote,” said 60-year-old Bed-Stuy resident Pamela Green, the executive director of the Weeksville Heritage Center, an historic freed slave settlement in Brooklyn.

“I never thought that I would see a black man” elected president, Green said. “But as much as he’s a black president,” she continued, “it’s more important that he’s a smart man. I believe that he can make people think differently about the type of country we can be. It doesn’t matter that he’s black. That’s just icing on the cake.”

Many shared the sentiment that Obama’s election transcends race, as both blacks and whites united to elect the nation’s first African American president.

“To see all of us come together and win it is a blessing. We did it together. It wasn’t about race. It’s about together,” said Teesha Thomas, 33, a recreation coordinator from Bed-stuy.

“We did not have faith in him. Then the whole white community got behind him. Then we realized something was happening,” Henry explained.

He said that he has interracial grandchildren and seeing how far Obama has come makes him more hopeful for their futures.

Some Obama volunteers in the room next door continued making phone calls to voters on the West Coast well into the evening, even as results came in. For them the victory was especially meaningful.

“Twenty months and it comes down to two hours,” said James Polite, 16, a student at Williamsburg Charter High School who said he had volunteered for the campaign for nearly two years, canvassing in Pennsylvania and making phone calls to voters in North Carolina. He spent the evening sitting nervously, staring at the projected screen like a father watching his son’s championship soccer game.

After Obama’s victory was announced he said he couldn’t wait to see his classmates in the morning. “Now I can say, ‘I told you so.’”

At 1 a.m., cars were still honking their horns down Fulton Avenue. Revellers stood on opposite sidewalks, calling and answering back and forth across the street a raw throated chant: “O-ba-ma.”

“Just to see the jubilation of everyone makes me speechless,” said Peter Rawlings, 45, a carpenter from Crown Heights, as he exited the building.

But as the shock began to fade, some began to wonder what comes next. With such high expectations and so many promises, will the man with the audacity of hope deliver?

“The first African American President. History is made,” said Karriema Artis, 22, a criminal justice major at Borough College who waited over an hour with her 9-month-old son to cast her vote. But as she sat on the subway returning home to the Bronx, she said she is worried.

“At the end of the day, are we going to get what he’s telling us he’s going to give us? Because I would be very disappointed and upset if he doesn’t come about everything he promised.”

4-year-old Imahni stands with her mother, grandfather and great-grandmother as they register to vote. All (except for Imahni, of course) will be voting for Democratic candidate Barack Obama. (Jill Colvin)

On the final afternoon of voter registration for the 2008 election, four generations of the Knight family entered the auditorium of Crown Heights’ P.S. 138 in hopes of making history.

Arlene, 26, a receptionist, had brought her 4-year-old daughter, Imahni, to watch her great-grandmother, Ilene Knight, an 82-year old retiree, and her grandfather, Frederick Blake, a 50-year-old taxi driver, register to vote for the very first time in their lives. Their goal: to help Democratic Senator Barack Obama make it to the White House.

With the economy in freefall and no relief in sight, citizens are rearing for change. Here in Obamacountry, the excitement is palpable. Obama signs dot the windows of every commercial and residential block, and residents donning buttons emblazoned with the candidate’s face stop strangers to talk politics on the street.

And while commentators in the mainstream media insist that race is not the defining issue in the contest between Obama and Republican Senator John McCain, for many in Crown Heights, a predominantly black, lower-income neighbourhood, it is.

“This is special,” Blake said after successfully registering as a Democrat, a wide grin still spread across his face. “To be honest with you, it’s a part of black pride. I would like to see a black president.”

A black president, Arlene said, would run the country differently, and set an example for her 4-year-old that “we can be what people say we can’t be.”

“Unless you’ve been in the predicament, you can’t really relate to somebody,” she said.

Experts are predicting record turnouts this year, especially in historically black neighborhoods. Of the estimated 1.3 million new voters the Democratic Party has registered since 2004, 60 percent are minority voters. In some states, black voters have been registering at nearly twice the rate of whites, reversing a decades-long registration gap.

Elections inspectors working the registration table at P.S. 138, where over 90 percent of students qualify for free lunches and 90 percent are black, said that they have seen much higher turnouts this year, especially among young people and new immigrants.

“Interest is off the charts,” said Dan Lavoie, 30, Media Director for Brooklyn for Barack, a volunteer organization that campaigns on behalf of Obama.

“You can hear it in their voices and see it in their faces how different this is. The fact that he is African American has jazzed up Brooklyn and neighborhoods and states all across the country,” he said.

And it’s not just registration. CNN President Jonathan Klein said Monday during a panel on the election that the network has seen its minority viewership soar during the election, with black viewers representing 30 percent of growth.

Bartenders, café owners and hairdressers in the neighborhood said they hear political discussions in their establishments every day, which never happened during previous elections.

Q. Adonicam, 58, who owns Q’s Tavern on Nostrand Ave. said that people are more engaged now than he’s ever seen.

“People are more involved,” he said. “They feel more represented now that they have someone black who’s running.”

While elections inspectors registering voters must remain neutral, those working at P.S. 138 agreed that the majority of those they’ve assisted have registered with the Democratic party and will vote for Obama. They said that, from what they gather from conversations overheard during the registration process, the economy is the foremost issue on local residents’ minds.

Lavoir, who works at a poverty think-tank when he’s not stumping for Obama, said that most voters are paying close attention to the candidate’s policy proposals, in addition to the color of his skin. Obama’s affordable housing plan and an urban policy agenda would, Lavoir said, have a “huge impact” on neighborhoods like Crown Heights.

“Part of what is really sustaining the excitement is people can see how electing him would be affecting their lives in real ways,” he said.

In previous years, “people of color didn’t really fee they has anything to vote for,” said Kenya Sollas, 31, a student at Medgar Evers College and part-time inspector for the Board of Elections who has lived in Crown Heights all her life. Now, she says, that has changed.

But as Obama’s poll numbers rise, some have begun to worry that supporters may be expecting too much if Obama does win, and that they would be devastated if he does not.

Eric King, 45, co-owner of Nature’s Organic Natural Foods, for instance, said two months ago that, if Obama is elected, “American will see it’s not about color” and be rid of its racist tendencies. “It will make everything different,” he repeated Saturday.

Yet even the most optimistic caution against such drastic expectations.

“It’s not fair to put the large and heavy burden of eliminating racism on a single man,” said Richard McIntire, National Spokesman for the NAACP. “I think they’re setting themselves up for failure.”

Some are also beginning to ask what the consequences will be if Obama fails to win the White House.

“If he loses, I think we’d be in a situation where American cities would be close to riots,” warned Dorian Warren, a Columbia Professor of Political Science who studies race and politics.

Less dramatically, others fear that a loss would result in African Americans losing faith in the political system that has let them down so often before.

“They just don’t trust American politics yet because of the history,” Warren said “There’s both an incredible optimism simultaneously with cynicism.”

Michael Grinnell picks his 5-year-old daughter up from the Haitian American Day Care Center. Administrators at the center fear that they may have to close classrooms due to record-low enrollment. (Jill Colvin)

On a sunny morning the first week of autumn, children at the Haitian-American Day Care Center in Crown Heights run around the yard in navy blue uniforms as cartons of milk are wheeled through sky-colored halls to their preschool classrooms. Laughter fills the air.

But in the administrators’ wing, the tone is worlds away. The center is one of several in the neighborhood whose staff say their survival in being threatened by new city policies.

Under Mayor Bloomberg’s Project Full Enrollment, city-funded centers that do not maintain full capacity are at risk of consolidation and closure. In June, the city will begin to pay centers according to the number of children enrolled instead of capacity, meaning that centers with low enrollments could face large funding cuts that threaten them further.

This month, Haitian-American is down to only 74 children—well below the 110 that it used to house and 21 short of its licensed capacity.

“This year and last year was the first time we had to go through this,” said Executive Director Frances Hannah, who has worked in the industry for over 35 years and now fears that the city will try to close her classrooms. “We’re struggling.”

Haitian-American is not alone.

As of June, 12 of the 18 government-funded day cares in the districts encompassing Crown Heights were classified as under-enrolled. While a handful were short only two or three children, others, including Haitian-American’s two sites, had 20 or 30 fewer children than their licensed capacities, according to a citywide vacancy tracking report.

The Administration for Children’s Services, which oversees day care funding and eligibility, said that providing services to the most children with available funding is its top priority. The city, it says, wasted $40 million on vacant seats in fiscal year 2007, which began in July 2006.

“The overriding goal is to make quality child care and early education available to as many of the City’s eligible children as possible,” the agency said in a prepared statement. “We can’t pay any longer for empty seats in child care centers while there are NYC children who need and are eligible for child care.”

The ACS said in a February report that it did not anticipate any program closings under Project Full Enrollment. However, since 2004, the agency has closed or consolidated 17 centers, amounting to a loss of 1,058 pre-school slots. About half the losses were attributed directly to under-enrollment.

“We are worried that we could lose half of our centers,” lamented G.L. Tyler, director of political action at DC1707, the union that represents local day care workers.

Centers are particularly nervous about the new funding rules, which will allocate money based on a center`s enrollment tally instead of its capacity. While the agency believes that this is the most equitable way to allocate resources, directors and advocates point out that most day care costs—teachers, maintenance, heating—are fixed costs that do not fluctuate with attendance.

The agency and directors also have differing explanations for under-enrollment. ACS Press Secretary Shiela Stainback said she blames over-saturation and changing demographics. In gentrifying neighborhoods like Crown Heights, there is less need for subsidized care, she said.

Others attribute the declining numbers on recently instituted city and state policies they say make applying and qualifying for subsidized care more difficult for parents.

Some centers used to have an ACS staff member on-site who could help parents with application procedures. Now, directors who say they have little time are not as familiar with requirements must walk new families through the process themselves and mail documents, which can be returned due to error, delaying the process.

Another point of contention is the State’s Agreement to Actively Pursue Child Support, which requires single parents to provide documentation of a court order for child support, an open case with the Office of Child Support Enforcement, or a “good cause” as to why they should not actively pursue obtaining child support. Day care workers say the requirement, which came into effect in January, 2006, is enough to scare many reluctant parents into seeking alternatives, such as family care with relatives or other home-based services.

“The problem is that the city’s policy is what is driving the un-enrollment problem. It’s certainly not because there aren’t any eligible children out there,” said Vaughan Toney, President and CEO of Friends of Crown Heights, which has a waiting list for admission.

Parents interviewed outside of Haitian-American and Friends of Crown Heights said that they were unaware enrollment troubles.

“They’re not feeling it yet,” said Donna Cuthbert, a Crown Heights teacher at John Edward Bruce Developmental and Educational Center, which now has 45 enrolled children and a license for 75.

This summer, Bruce was consolidated with 19 Albany Avenue Day Care Center and relocated to its site. Cuthbert’s classroom has shrunk from 22 to 25 registered children to just six, she said.

To address these concerns, the agency has committed $2 million to assist with recruitment and management. It is streamlining operations to expedite processing and formed a joint task force in February to determine how best to distribute funds and achieve higher enrollment. Already the task force has delayed implementation of the enrollment-based funding rule from this month to June.

At Haitian-American, the staff is also doing anything it can to appeal to neighborhood residents in hopes of boosting enrollment. In March, the center lowered its minimum age by six months. It is also distributing flyers, fundraising, and even purchasing radio ads on a local station.

Advocacy groups and government officials are also working on proposals to help match children with vacancies and keep centers afloat.

“We have to find a way to help these agency services in a climate where you’re applying a very strict business model to a social service program,” said Andrea Anthony, executive director of the Day Care Council of New York. “It’s a 60-year-old system that’s being changed right before our eyes.”

Crow Hill. (Jill Colvin)

Ben Harney sweeps a summer’s worth of fallen leaves off the steps of his century-old Brooklyn brownstone, sweating through his shirt in the stifling heat. The 56-year-old has worked more than two decades restoring to its original glory the home he purchased as a single room occupancy in a neighborhood plagued by drugs and high crime.

And Harney is not alone. Crown Heights is now home to one of the largest and best-maintained brownstone housing stocks in the city. In order to protect that stock, a small group of community organizers, most new to the neighborhood, has begun the process of petitioning the city to historically landmark Harney’s home and dozens of other properties in the Crow Hill section of the neighborhood—an increasingly popular trend in the borough. Yet Harney and most area residents haven’t heard about the plan, which would prohibit new development and strictly regulate changes to existing building facades.

“We need to do something so that our neighborhood still looks the same for our children,” urged Frampton Tolbert, deputy director of the city’s Historic Districts Council, which advises community groups on landmark applications. Once a neighborhood is landmarked, he said, “You don’t have to worry as much about predatory developers coming and demolishing it.”

The proposed area borders two other recent landmarking projects: Phase 1 of the Crown Heights North Historic District, officiated by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission in April, 2007, which includes 472 buildings, and the Prospect Heights Historic District, which is now under consideration. If Phase 2 of Crown Heights North is implemented according to plan, it will become the largest landmarked area in the city according to Justin Moore, from the Brooklyn Office of the Department of City Planning.

The landmarking process can take two to three years from proposal to study to designation. There are already 20 historic districts in Brooklyn, according to the Commission—more than twice as many as any borough in the city excluding Manhattan.

Much of the sudden interest in landmarking seems to stem from good old fashioned competition. Nina Meledandri, from the Crow Hill Community Associaion, said that association members don’t want to be left out and are worried that their neighborhood will become a target for developers who are prohibited from constructing elsewhere.

“It’s a big red flag. ‘Developers! Come here when you can!’ The community’s gotta watch its back,” she said. “The community should decide where the community should go. Not outside developers.” Meledandri also said that members are determined to maintain affordable housing in the neighborhood, which they believe developers would eliminate.

Yet, experts point out that property values almost always rise at higher rates in landmarked neighborhoods.. A long-range study by the New York Independent Budget Office that focused on Brooklyn found that houses in historic districts sell for more on average than similar houses outside historic districts, with a price premium ranging from 22.6 percent in 1997 to 71.8 percent in 1978. During the boom of 1997-2000, it found, landmarked properties increased in value 13.4 percent per year versus 4.7 percent rate for non-landmarked ones.

As a result, residents living in the Phase 1 area of Crown Heights North say that landmarking has fed gentrification, not slowed it.

Proposed Crow Hill Historic District.

“The rents are going up like a skyrocket. Everybody’s crying for the rent. Everybody. All the buildings here. Everyone’s complaining,” described Duran Rodriguez while sorting recycling at a Crown Heights apartment buildings where he has worked as a superintendent for three years.

He said that residents are now borrowing money from family and friends to make ends meet.

“Yes it’s going to make it more desirable for a certain person to come out here. But given what’s happening, they’re coming anyway,” Meledandri maintained. Gentrification, she said, “is going to happen here regardless of whether you landmark it or not.”

Yet Annette Kavanagh, a board member from the Crown Heights North Association responsible for the April proposal, said that most residents are pleased with the changes they are seeing.

“Most of the people in the community have been rallying behind us,” she said. “I can see people taking a lot more pride. It brings a warmth and a sense of community to the neighborhood.”

In Crow Hill, many renters were also excited to hear about the plan. But homeowners were more cautious, expressing fear of restrictions and higher maintenance costs.

“The idea of landmarking is nice, but as an owner trying to renovate and keep up, you really have to follow the landmark’s guidelines and that could be costly,” said Felicia Falebita, 41, who grew up in Crown Heights and has lived in Crow Hill for almost nine years. “It’s just one of those double-sided coins.”

“It sounds like a catch-22,” said Harney, a theatre producer and director who has lived in his Crow Hill brownstone for 25 years. “My concern is relevance: what is the concern for the people? It’s not leaders; it’s people who live in houses. If it starts to get into things that value a façade over people, I don’t think that’s correct.”

The Crow Hill Community Association in now working to raise awareness about the landmarking process. The group will then begin the lengthy process of preparing documentation of each property in the proposed district for evaluation. If the neighborhood is eventually deemed worthy of landmark status by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a public hearing will be held to debate the effects of designation before officiation.

While other neighborhood businesses owners struggle with layoffs and diminishing profit margins, Crown Heights realtors say that times for them have never been better.

Local brokers estimate that rental rates in the neighborhood are up nearly 20 percent from last year. One-bedroom apartments that would have rented for $850-900 in 2007 are now going for $1,000, Hortense Lynch of Superb Realty Co. said. And while home values nationwide are down, prices here are up 5 to ten percent, with houses now pushing a million dollars.

“It’s the best time,” said Belinda Gillis, owner of B. Belinda Realty, who grew up in the neighborhood and has been working as a broker here for 15years. “The housing market has been undervalued for so long. Crown Heights was always a well-kept secret, a hidden secret. But you knew it would come out.”

Real estate experts say that rising rents are a common, wide-spread consequence of a slowing economy. As nervous buyers forgo purchasing homes, they increase rental unit demand, pushing up prices, explained Yuval Greenblatt, an executive vice president of rentals at Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

But in “emerging neighborhoods,” like Crown Heights, this is compounded by gentrification. Once synonymous with poverty, high crime and racial conflict between its Afro-Caribbean majority and large Hasidic Jewish minority along, the area is now witnessing an influx of young professionals from Manhattan, Williamsburg and Park Slope lured by spacious, well-maintained homes and easy access to three subways lines.

“A lot of yuppie types, both black and white, are coming in,” observed Frank Edwards, who was born in the neighborhood and describes himself as one of the area’s longest-working realtors. “The value here is much better than Manhattan.”

Long-time residents describe witnessing a complete neighborhood transformation, from increasing diversity, to plummeting crime rates, better restaurants and new health food stores.

“When I came here, nobody even wanted to be on this corner,” Gillis recalled, referring to her office’s up-and-coming block. “It changed overnight.”

While rising prices may be good news for those in the business, long-time residents are growing increasingly concerned.

Jamilah Coles, 28, reports that she is now paying $56 more per month for her apartment than she did this time last year, thanks to growing interest in her neighborhood. “People were afraid to live in these parts before,” remembered the long-time resident. “Nobody’s afraid anymore.”

“People can’t afford the rent. They can’t afford the houses,” Lynch described. The situation is made worse, she said, by a rental unit shortage and the fact that many landlords are now refusing to rent to individuals enrolled in government assistance programs like Section 8, which provides vouchers to supplement costs.

The spike in prices is even forcing some long-time residents to consider leaving the neighborhood.

“It’s too much,” said 64-year-old Carlotta Holder, who said she has tried to retire but that Social Security checks simply can’t cover rising rental and energy bills. “The only thing that don’t carry up is the salary,” she said, half-joking that if only she lived in the projects, she could afford to retire.

After 42 years in Crown Heights, Holder said she has decided to leave the state and move to Florida—an increasingly popular trend among older black residents, noted Edwards and Gillis. “I can’t live here,” Holder said, shaking her head from side to side. “I’m getting out of New York.”