Sincerly, Tommy
Many low income households in NYC are located in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, where the cost of living is prohibitively high. Bedford-Stuyvesant, known for its hip-hop background, brownstones, and the iconic Biggie Smalls, has been undergoing the process of gentrification for several years now. Bed-Stuy is a historically black community with a combination of middle income and working class homeowners, but also includes a history of crime and violence that marks the meaning behind the phrase “Bed-Stuy do or die.” Black families have owned property in this area for decades, until recent years when wealthy developers and businesses have bought so much of it, making it impossible for working and middle class people to afford new real estate. As a result, landlords have been “raising rent prices for incoming young, urban professionals looking to move in with higher incomes.”
Several Bed-Stuy locals believe that gentrification has become one of the key reasons that the number of homeless persons in the neighborhood has increased in recent years. Kai Avent-deLeon, an activist for black women’s mental health and small business owners, has been using her business Sincerely, Tommy to fight gentrification and bring back the ‘natural energy’ of Bed-Stuy.
Sincerely, Tommy is a self-funded retail concept store and cafe, run by Avent-deLeon. Opened in 2014, when Avent-deLeon was twenty-four years old, Sincerely, Tommy has since grown into an “e-commerce shop with a soon-to-launch furniture line, and next, a boutique hostel and restaurant,” without any outside investment. At the same time, Avent-deLeon is a single black mother and is overcoming the setbacks of a global pandemic as well as the weight of systematic prejudice and its effects on small businesses. She explains, “The city is not supportive of small businesses the way it needs to be, considering we make up so much of the workforce. We contribute so much to the infrastructure and helping things run, but we don’t get enough assistance and enough aid; we’re experiencing that firsthand right now.” Avant-deLeon believes the city should be giving out grants to every small business that pays taxes, due to the fact that they contribute so greatly to the economy. “We need some kind of bill that will make up for the revenue lost [during Covid], not only for employees who won’t be able to pay their bills and live, but also for business owners; I don’t think people realize that when you’re running a small business,you’re the last person to get paid.”
Kai Avent-deLeon originally wanted to open her own retail business because, as she recalled, in an interview with The Helm, “[her] last job was [her] breaking point” as she was “working for someone else,” not herself. Her grandmother, who had worked in real estate, assisted her in finding the ideal location for her business, and they launched six months later.
When she bought the store space on Tompkins Ave (343 Tompkins Ave, Brooklyn, NY), it was shabby and run-down, so with some assistance from her mother and grandmother, Avent-deLeon put all of her personal money into fixing up the store. It was important to her to open her business in Bed-Stuy, as that was the neighborhood where both she and her mother had grown up. Her goal has always been to “do things that were reflective of the community,” as gentrification has been affecting the atmosphere of Bed-Stuy for the past few decades. Originally the idea was a clothing shop, but Avent-deLeon decided to add a coffee bar to the space: “I thought it would help people feel more comfortable coming in, especially since I was the only business on Tompkins Avenue, aside from one restaurant.”
Due to Covid, Sincerely, Tommy was forced to shut down for a while, so Avent-deLeon had to get creative to find ways to keep business flowing. She had already created an online platform where people could buy clothing, accessories, and more, but she no longer had a photographer since everyone was under quarantine. Avent-deLeon went “back to basics from the early, early days,” and took pictures of herself on her iPhone with her pieces to post on the Sincerely, Tommy website, and the store’s Instagram. Kai Avent-deLeon has continued to persevere through a time of incredible socio-economic distress, raising a child as a single parent, and having no outside financial support, in order to eventually become one of the most successful small businesses in Bed-Stuy, while also advocating for other small businesses who are not given enough support and attention from the government.