People dance at a Lunar New Year party at Carter Burden Network’s older adult center in East Harlem in January 2023. More lower-income Asian Americans are moving into the traditionally Latino neighborhood, and into its many public housing buildings.
Photographer: Amy Yee/Bloomberg
Why Asian Americans Are Moving to NYC’s East Harlem
More low-income residents are moving into the traditionally Latino neighborhood. Nonprofits have stepped up, but more services are needed.
In the lobby of a public housing building in East Harlem, Wanna Kingpayom eagerly accepted her weekly delivery of Asian groceries — a small bag of tofu, bok choy, rice and fruit.
Kingpayom, 63, used to work at a restaurant that closed during the pandemic, so she welcomes the free food from Heart of Dinner, a nonprofit whose volunteers serve about 100 vulnerable Asian American residents in East Harlem each week. The group, formed during the Covid-19 crisis to help Asians in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan’s Chinatown, has more recently shifted resources to the area, also known as Spanish Harlem, to support a growing number of Asians moving into the neighborhood’s public and affordable housing.