Marcy Houses, the 28-acre public housing development in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, is best-known as a pillar of rapper-turned-mogul Jay-Z’s New York persona. Built in 1949 as part of a push by the New York City Housing Authority to house the city’s low-income residents, Marcy had fallen into a state of dangerous disrepair by the 1970s when Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, was growing up there.
“Where I’m from, Marcy son, ain’t nothing nice,” he raps in Where I’m From. “Marcy me, just the way I am always gonna be,” he declares in 2017’s Marcy Me.
But while hip-hop’s first confirmed billionaire remains intent on not abandoning his roots, residents of the Marcy Houses expressed annoyance and skepticism at Carter’s latest venture, the Bitcoin Academy – a series of free “financial literacy” courses being offered exclusively to Marcy tenants this summer.
On Wednesday afternoon, as bitcoin markets scraped two-year lows, few residents were aware of the cryptocurrency classes set to begin next week as a project sponsored by Carter and his friend and fellow crypto promoter Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. (At least some of the flyers advertising the course appear to have been simply dumped on the floor of buildings.)
“It’s kind of late to be doing that when people are trying to hold on to their dollars and everything is so expensive,” said 58-year-old retiree Myra Raspberry. “People don’t want to be investing money knowing that they might have a chance of losing it.
Raspberry said she had seen news reports about bitcoin’s crash, and had no interest in participating in the course.
“Every dime I get got to go to rent, phone, TV and internet. I don’t have money like that to be losing. If I did, I would try to invest in something that’s more reliable, like the basketball game last night. You know I’m going to win something from that.”
She hasn’t heard anybody talking about bitcoin in her community, she said. “People looking to make money, not lose it.” The average household income for public housing residents in New York City is $24,454, according to the New York City Housing Authority.
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