Until recently, small business owner Maisha Morales, 35, was living her version of the American dream. "I was doing so well," said Morales, the single mom of a 9-year-old son. "I had just saved up enough to put a deposit on my first home. My son was in parochial school and I thought, 'Things are working.'"
The Binghamton University graduate spent her teenage and college days working in Gallery Religious Supplies, then located in Downtown Brooklyn's Albee Square Mall. Not only was she attracted to the items the store sold, everything from love potions to Buddha candles to Bibles, she also saw the business as a good investment. In 2002, Morales bought Gallery Religious Supplies, and transformed the ailing store into a thriving business. "I took a business that was practically shut down, reopened it, and in less than two years it was making $2,500 daily," she recalled.
But in 2007 Morales' landlord sold the mall. The new owners decided to convert the property into an apartment tower, and evicted Morales and dozens of other small business owners who were tenants.
"There were folks who had their entire life savings in that place and lost everything. They pulled the rug out from under their feet," said Ilana Berger, the executive director of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE). The Downtown Brooklyn activist group encouraged Morales and other business owners to protest the mall's sale.
Small business owner Maisha Morales’ grandparents, Sergio and Carmelina Morales, came to New York in pursuit of a better life. After moving from Puerto Rico in the 1940s, the young couple settled in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
“My grandfather struggled and scraped up enough money to buy his first home in Brooklyn,” said Morales. It was on the ground floor of that two-family house on Myrtle Avenue that the couple opened up a restaurant called Gioca’s, a combination of their first names.
According to Morales, Gioca’s served the Bedford-Stuyvesant community for more than 20 years, with Puerto Rican cuisine and a side of the hottest Latino performers including Celia Cruz and Tito Puente. Morales’ grandfather closed Gioca’s after his wife died from breast cancer in 1973.
Morales scrambled to find a storefront nearby. "In desperation I took the first thing I could find," said Morales, who relocated to Willoughby Street. "My savings all went to this move and it's gone downhill since then." In the past 14 months, Morales has gone from having $100,000 in savings to falling into nearly $130,000 in debt.
A primary factor driving her debt is the increased rent Morales now pays. At the mall she paid $2,500 per month in rent. She now shells out $7,760, more than three times the amount. Customer traffic has also dropped off significantly since the store relocated. As a result, profits have taken a nosedive.
