Career As A Bronx Community Activist
As a Catholic priest at St. Athanasius Church in the South Bronx, Father Louis Gigante was one of the leading proponents of tenant rights reform in the late 1960s. In the fall of 1968, he founded the South East Bronx Community Organization (SEBCO) with funds from the federal Section 8 housing program, through which tenants pay 30 percent of their income in rent and the federal government pays the difference, which was generally considered to be one of the organizations most responsible for the economic and civic rehabilitation of the depressed South Bronx area. By 1981, Father Gigante had orchestrated the construction and rehabilitation of 1,100 federally subsidized apartments in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx. Father Gigante himself has claimed credit the rejuvenation of the Bronx, saying "I brought the neighborhood up from ashes to help the people in the South Bronx. There isn't one other organization that can take credit." Recent poor management of SEBCO's buildings in the South Bronx have brought accusations of being slumlord.
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