It’s a long way from the drab cinderblock of Camptown Gardens in Irvington to the hallowed halls ofHarvard Law School. Chike Achebe has been there and back.
Achebe, 32, grew up on Webster Street in Irvington, in the shadow of Camptown Gardens, a foreboding high-rise public housing complex built in 1965 that has seen better days.
“We called Camptown Gardens ‘Crescent Lane,’ for one of the streets that ran along the project, Achebe said. “And Crescent Lane definitely had a lot of gangs.”
Achebe split his teenage years living with his mother in Irvington and his father in Newark, where he attended Science High School, a competitive magnet. He credits his parents, who valued education and kept a roof over his head, and his teachers along the way who helped him excel, from Science High to Rutgers and then on to Harvard Law School, where he got his degree in 2016.
“They invested in me,” he said. “And now I want to double down on the investment that people made in me.”
He ditched a high-paying job as a corporate lawyer to start his own company, Legacy Development Partners, which focuses on fixing up housing for low-income people. The Irvington Housing Authority recently awarded Legacy a $105,000 contract to renovate 10 apartments at Camptown, the housing project his parents told him to stay away from when he was a teenager.
“Housing is my passion,” Achebe said on a recent day as he lugged a bucket of paint up the stairs at Camptown Gardens, where his crew had gutted an apartment on the fourth floor. “It’s one of the bedrocks for people.”
Achebe recognizes he was fortunate to grow up in a good home, with a loving family and in a house that was clean, safe and secure.
“I truly believe that if you solve the housing issue, you solve a lot of other issues,” he said. “If you don’t have a good home, and there’s plenty of data to support this, then so many other issues come into play, like crime and addiction.”
On his way to Harvard, Achebe said he learned a lot from his father, who worked as a contractor and knew how to swing a hammer. His father lived in Newark during his teenage years and enrolled him in Science High.
“My dad was very big on education,” Achebe said. At first, he was “a bit immature” and struggled, Achebe said, but he credits his teachers at Science High for getting him on track.
One of those teachers was Jonathan Alston, who taught English and coached the debate team. Alston says he pushed to get Achebe into Advanced Placement English, even though some of his colleagues thought the curriculum was over his head.
“It was my experience that talented Black males are often overlooked and that teachers have to fight a little harder for them,” Alston said in an email. “In my class he did far better than most.”
Alston said he modified the curriculum based on his conversations with Achebe and added Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled,” an edgy satire that plays on cinematic stereotypes of Black people – and features as its main character a Harvard-educated Black man, Pierre Delacroix.
“When he told me that he focused on college – in a pact with his high school friend – and started Harvard Law School, I was not surprised,” Alston said. “Just as I am not surprised with the work he is doing now. I glad that he has come back to make things better.”
Alston said his only regret that he never had Achebe on the debate team. “I told him then that he would have been amazing,” he said.
Achebe arrived at Rutgers the same year that Barack Obama was elected president. Achebe, who is Nigerian, said Obama was a “huge influence” with his African roots, Harvard Law School pedigree, and his work as a community organizer before beginning his trek to the White House as America’s first Black president.
While at Rutgers, Achebe worked on Obama’s White House Initiative for Educational Excellence, a think tank that developed policy to reduce high school truancy and improve college access for low-income families.
He graduated Rutgers with Honors with a degree in Political Science and was admitted to Harvard Law, the storied school that has produced 21 Supreme Court justices, including three that currently sit on the bench of the nation’s top court, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan.
[Another former justice, William J. Brennan, Jr. was born in Newark and graduated from Barringer High School. Brennan served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1957 to 1990.]
“Harvard is an amazing place because you’re surrounded by a lot of really, really smart people, and a lot of ambitious people,” Achebe said. “So, every day, you are challenged to work harder. You are challenged to re-imagine who you think you are.”
After Harvard, Achebe moved to New York City to work in corporate law, taking positions with Skadden Arps and Lowenstein Sadler. He lived in a penthouse apartment in Harlem with a roommate he met at Harvard Law School, Jonathan Wall.
“That apartment was really amazing,” said Wall, who left corporate law is now a sports agent in Los Angeles. “And it was Chike who set the whole thing up. The elevator opened right up into the penthouse.”
While living in luxury and working corporate law, Achebe began buying and fixing up fixing up houses on the side, and his business grew from there. Wall said it’s not unusual for young attorneys to cycle through the big firms once they’ve found their true calling.
“They talk about the ‘golden handcuffs,’ Wall said, alluding to the allure of the high-paying corporate job that is lucrative, but can be less than satisfying. For a young attorney, Wall said the question becomes, ‘What is your vision? What impact do you want to have?’”
Wall said he’s not surprised that Achebe chose to work in public housing.
“He came from humble beginnings and has a very grounded and centered perspective,” Wall said. “He’s one of the most honest people I know. With Chike, what you see is what you get.”
Achebe says he sees himself as a practical problem solver, both as a lawyer and a contractor. He uses his legal training to run the company and work out contracts, and the handyman skills that his father taught to see the job through from start to finish. He describes his role as a project manager, buying the materials and supervising his crew to make sure the job is done right.
“I’ve always been pretty practical,” he said. When working a job, “my thinking is, ‘how do I put boots on the ground and get it done?’”
Now those boots are trudging up the stairs of Camptown Gardens, where there’s a lot of work to do.
Achebe’s contract is with theIrvington Housing Authority, the problem-plagued agency that was taken over by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2022.
For years,Camptown residents have been complaining of squalid conditions – broken fixtures, leaky pipes, pealing plaster. The IHA countered that it didn’t have a sufficiently trained staff or the budget to address all the problems.
Through a spokeswoman, HUD says the takeover was prompted by “several years of substandard performance” by the IHA dating to 2014. HUD cited IHA’s repeated failure to correct what it called “deficiencies in finances and management operations” as reasons for the takeover, which removed the executive director and most of the commissioners.
Achebe sees his work as keeping the Karmic wheel turning.
“Those teachers that invested in me, and there’s nothing that I could do to pay them back,” he said. “But I’m going to invest in someone else. And those people that I invest in, they’re not going to pay me back, but they’re going to invest in someone else.”
As for his parents, “I think they would prefer me to do the fancy law firm stuff, but I don’t think they’re totally against it. They’re really into education. But I do think they know that I am much more happy doing stuff I am passionate about.”
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Richard Cowen may be reached at rcowen@njadvancemedia.com.
