Nana Duncan was a college counselor in Harlem when she decided building houses was the best way she could help people.
Nana Duncan says she was first inspired to become a real estate developer over a decade ago, at a time when she had a very different job: college counselor.
This month, Duncan broke ground on a $100 million affordable housing project in one of the most underserved neighborhoods in the East Ward of Irvington, New Jersey. A native of Ghana who moved to the United States for college in 2004, Duncan is one of the first Black female developers to lead an affordable housing project of this magnitude in the state.
Duncan said some of the homes in the neighborhood became hotbeds for crime and were eventually knocked down — leaving dirt piles and untended open space that became overgrown with weeds. What’s next for these tax credit programs tied to low income housing development is sure to be the topic of much debate both in the state and in the nation in the coming months. While New Jersey officials haveexpanding tax credits to finance affordable housing development, similar federal programs are set to expire at the end of the year.
“The biggest challenge is that we're just invisible in this space,” she said, adding that when she started in the industry most women she encountered were in administrative roles. Vauss said his administration has spent the past three years going through “a lot of red tape” to get the state to turn the property back over to the township so that it could be developed as housing.
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