After years of fighting deed fraud over their Bed-Stuy home, the family turned to their community for help when the grant funding they were counting on fell through.
For her entire life, Sylvia Fye, affectionately known as “Ms. Sylvia,” has called the same Bedford-Stuyvesant building in Brooklyn her home. It’s where she grew up, where she later welcomed Tangina Stone and her partner, Emani, and where the three have built what Stone described as a close-knit relationship that’s more like family.
Now, after years of trying to protect the Brooklyn property, they are facing the possibility of losing it.
Stone, 34, told TheGrio that she and Emani have lived in the home for nearly 15 years, essentially their entire adult lives. Ms. Sylvia, 70, who has no children, calls the couple her children.
“We eat meals together. We care for each other when we’re sick. We look out for each other in all ways. We spend holidays together,” Stone said. “We’re family. I don’t know what other way to put it. We are a chosen family.”
Stone said Sylvia previously faced attempts to take the home and that the family has spent roughly the past three years dealing with the latest housing crisis, with the threat becoming particularly serious over the past two years. They had been fighting privately before it reached a point where they felt they needed to turn to their community for help.
While Stone declined to discuss specifics of the current situation out of concern for the family’s safety, she said their experience has changed how she thinks about deed fraud and the ways homeowners, particularly Black elders, can be targeted.
“There are really nefarious, sneaky ways that developers and folks who are really interested in these homes are figuring out how to defraud folks out of their homes.”
As the family fought to keep the property, Stone said they believed help was finally on the way when Ms. Sylvia was approved for a grant through a Sustainable Neighborhoods program that would provide the money needed to save the home.
According to Stone, the approval came after a lengthy application process that included multiple audits and inspections. After completing the process, the family believed the financial assistance was finally moving forward.
“We were just waiting for a check to be sent to our mortgage servicer, and while we waited, it just never happened,” Stone said. “They just completely ghosted us.”
Stone said the family eventually turned to local elected officials for help getting answers. At one point, they were told a missing piece of paperwork was holding up the process. After it was completed, Stone said they again went months without receiving the funds.
Shortly before launching their fundraiser, the family finally heard back and was told the grant money was no longer available, according to Stone. She said the family was not offered another funding option after being told the money had run out.
Stone said the family had held off on crowdfunding because they believed the approved grant would eventually come through and did not want to raise money they might not need. Once they learned the funding was unavailable, however, they were left with little time to act.
In July, Stone launched a Chuffed campaign, with a goal of $70,000 to help cover the expenses needed to save the home. Since then, over 1,000 supporters have donated, bringing the total to nearly $53,000 of the initial goal. The campaign has already given the family something they desperately needed: more time.
Stone said several people offered legal assistance after the fundraiser began circulating. An attorney has since joined their fight and helped secure an additional two weeks while they negotiate more time.
“We made it through this really tight window of time, and we’ve got something to actually barter with now because of community showing up for us,” Stone said in late July.
The attorney secured two weeks while negotiating for more time.
The fight to keep the home has also unfolded as Stone navigated a health battle of her own. She revealed having Lynch Syndrome, a genetic condition that increases the risk of several cancers, and underwent a preventative upper mastectomy to reduce her risk of breast cancer.
“It’s been devastating to have to fight on this front, while also recovering from a surgery that I also had to fight really hard and advocate for myself in a really racist healthcare system to get the care that I’ve needed,” Stone said. “It just sometimes feels like the advocacy never ends.”
Her fight is also tied to her work as vice president of her block association, where she said she has helped other elders facing housing threats. Ms. Sylvia’s home is part of the Willoughby-Hart Historic District, which received landmark status in 2024 after decades of neighborhood preservation efforts.
For Stone, saving the property means preserving another Black family’s place in Brooklyn.
“It would mean that a family gets to stay,” she said. “There are so many Black families being displaced right now, and it would mean that a family in Brooklyn gets to stay.”
Stone also wants people to know Ms. Sylvia beyond the fight over her home. She once operated beauty salons in Bed-Stuy and Flatbush and was part of New York City’s influential Paradise Garage scene of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Now, Stone said, Ms. Sylvia wants to enjoy retirement in the home where she has spent her life, “to sit on her back porch and look out at a thriving garden and know that she’s not going to be displaced.”