About

My name is Harold (“Harry”) DeRienzo. For the past 40+ years I have worked in the field of community development. My experience is extensive, though geographically restricted to New York City neighborhoods, particularly the South Bronx where I have resided most of my adult life. Currently, I reside with my family in the Atlanta area, continuing to work remotely with several organizations that promote resident/tenant empowerment through cooperative housing, mutual housing, and community land trusts.

My background is mostly in the not-for-profit field, but I also have experience in social work, tenant and community organizing, planning, teaching, and legal work, among other things.

I began my career in community development working with residents on Kelly Street in the South Bronx in the early seventies.  We organized around the motto of “Don’t Move, Improve,” at a time when the South Bronx was losing thousands of units of housing each month to fires and abandonment. Along with others, I founded Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc., a group that would assist in the preservation and redevelopment of thousands of affordable housing units and become a national and international model for self-help community development.   I served first as the founding Executive Director and later, as a board member and Treasurer for the organization, resigning as Executive Director in 1982.   I  resigned  but  remained a full-time resident of Kelly Street for the next 20 years.

For more on this stage of my work, a good source reference is the first episode of the series, EYES ON THE PRIZE III streaming on HBO Max (See Below). For more information on the current work of the group featured in that documentary, Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc., please refer to the group’s website, http://www.bananakelly.org.

In 1982, I was recruited to head up the Parodneck Foundation for Self-Help Housing and Community Development, Inc. (then known as the Consumer-Farmer Foundation).  As Vice President/CEO of the organization and later as President,  I undertook to further build the organization on the philosophy, mission, and experience of its former leader and founder, Meyer Parodneck, and to further its work consistent with the organization’s 60+ year history of consumer rights, self-help, mutual aid and cooperation.  During  my tenure at the Parodneck Foundation,  I was responsible for a number of innovative programs and initiatives, such as the creation of a city-funded home improvement program exclusively targeted to at-risk seniors; development with Fannie Mae and participating local banks of a pilot program, which would later become  a national program, designed and implemented to assist victims of predatory lending; the  preparation and passage of the city’s first 197-a plan, and the rescue and further development of CATCH – a citywide mutual housing program – with over 800 units of resident controlled rental housing in the South Bronx, Harlem, Washington Heights and Central Brooklyn. 

In November of 2002, at the request of the New York State Attorney General’s office,  I returned to Banana Kelly to help rescue it from bankruptcy.  Working with former Borough President Fernando Ferrer and others on the reconstituted board of directors,  I was able to arrange for the financial packaging and rehabilitation of Banana Kelly’s 560 then-distressed units, a $46 million package that put all of these buildings back on the road to financial viability.  The group has since built on this turnaround to develop a number of new projects, some on its own and others with not-for-profit and for-profit development partners: its first new construction project with city bond financing; the purchase and refinancing of two major overleveraged projects that were rescued from speculation and tenant harassment; the conversion of over 150 units of homeless shelter units into rent regulated housing;  working with a local group in East Harlem, developing the city’s first (recent) community land trust project, and more, while continuing its work in providing services to the homeless and disabled.  From a staff of 6 and housing portfolio of 566 units in 2002, Banana Kelly currently (2024) has a housing portfolio of over 1700 units, a staff of about 40 employees, not counting building service employees, and operating out of three offices.

For-Profit Experience:

In 1997, co-founded Inner City Oceans, Inc., New York City’s first urban, environmentally sensitive fish farm located in the basement of an industrial building in the Port Morris section of the South Bronx.  The fish farm was closed in 2002, unable to compete with Tilapia sold at $.70 to $.80 a pound at the Fulton Street Fish Market given that our break-even price per pound, a function of the care, feeding, and water treatment system employed, was $1.10.

2009 to 2011: Served as Special Counsel to Goldstein Hall PLLC and handled all downstate (New York City and Long Island) finance and title closings for the Homeless Housing Assistance Corporation, a division of the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.  I did this at a time when Banana Kelly was unable to pay any compensation for my CEO services.

Teaching Experience:

In 1994 served as Adjunct Professor for the Graduate Planning Department of Planning and Architecture at Columbia University.  On a regular basis, I have taught classes as guest lecturer at New York University, Queens College, Hunter College and Rutgers University. 

Planning Experience:

In addition to the teaching experience, I co-authored, along with my dear friend, Eugenia Flatow, a plan for Bronx Community Board #3 (representing about 100,000 residents in the Morrisania section of the Bronx), which became the city’s first officially adopted 197-a plan, pursuant to the New York City Charter.

Publications:

Published in local, national and international community development, real estate and civic publications including City Limits Magazine, Units Magazine, National Civic Review, New York Affairs (NYU) Magazine, Chapin Hall Center for Children, and by the Institut fur Landes-und Stadtentwicklungforschung del landes Nordheim Westfalen (published proceedings from a UNESCO conference in Unna, Germany). 

In 2008, published The Concept of Community, Lessons from the Bronx, published by IPOC Press, Milan, Italy. A second book, (Building Homes/Building Community) was published and available in June, 2021 and third book (Preventing the Next American Civil War, How Culture, Community and Democracy Frame Human Progress), was published and available through Barnes & Noble in June 2021. If you are interested, there is information about how to order the most recent books on my Home page, with excerpts from the Introductions of each book on my blog page. I have also written a fourth book, Coming of Age in an Era of Political Apostacy. Information on how to purchase this book can be found on my Home page. A sample chapter and book review is also available on my blog site.