Most people spend a lifetime in New York praying for a real estate miracle to come their way. The Ehrhardts got theirs within two years of moving to Red Hook when a serendipitous recommendation from a store owner who Mr. Ehrhardt had done a favor for led to a below-market deal on a two-story house courtesty of the non-profit Crown Heights Jewish Community Council. The price? $500,000. But before you start drooling too much, this was hardly an architectural dream:

It’s not a fancy “brownstone Brooklyn original crown moldings” sort of place. It has a stubby concrete stoop, and polyurethaned Home Depot style doors and kitchen cabinets that might look at home in a suburban apartment complex. The windows are small. The backyard is paved and lifeless except for some raised planting beds that Mr. Ehrhardt recently built from lumber salvaged from a house down the block.

We don’t know anything about the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council: Does anyone know whether you have to be Jewish to qualify to get one of their deals? What kind of a pipeline of projects do they have?
An Unlikely Paradise [NY Times]