It is choosing to adopt what some residents half-jokingly call the “Kumbaya” Montclair mentality.įareed and Norrinda, who are now both 43, settled into a six-bedroom house in Upper Montclair. To set a Zillow alert to Montclair (versus, say, Glen Ridge, a nearby suburb with comparable median property values but a significantly more homogeneous, white population) is to actively choose diversity and progressiveness in addition to that manicured lawn and the driveway with space for two cars. In 2019, the New York Post wrote, “Montclair is the only suburb true New Yorkers will even consider.” Brooklynites move there with such regularity it has been called “Park Slope with backyards,” along with other epithets that are equally insufferable.
New Yorkers could move there and find they wouldn’t have to sacrifice the reasons they had chosen to live in a city in the first place. For Montclair, diversity is a matter of local pride. Well, technically, the latest Census estimate has it at 22.3 percent Black, but ask a real-estate agent, a town resident, and a politician what’s unique about Montclair and eventually they’ll all trot out that 24 percent figure.
And the kicker: Montclair is 24 percent Black. It leans heavily Democratic and has great restaurants, great public schools, a young Black mayor, and a really cute pie shop. Oh, and did you hear the rumor about the swinger parties? Parts of it are very affluent - Upper Montclair has been ranked as the wealthiest community in New Jersey. Stephen Colbert is on the board of the annual film festival and still lives in town. Not suburban, but “urban suburban.” An art museum there recently hosted a Kara Walker exhibit. Here’s the brochure copy: Only 40 minutes from New York by train. They considered whether the city could be a suitable substitute for their suburban existence in Maryland, but while looking at homes with their two young sons, the eldest, Kingston, kept asking questions like “Where is the other floor to the house?” and “Are all of the houses just on top of each other?” “He was so extra,” Fareed said.Ī few of Norrinda’s new colleagues lived in Montclair, New Jersey, and suggested she look there. He and his wife, Norrinda Brown Hayat, had both gotten new jobs - he would be teaching criminal law at CUNY, and she had taken a position as the director of the Civil Justice Clinic at Rutgers - and Fareed had dreams of brownstones fueled by a viewing of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It reboot on Netflix. to the New York tristate area, Fareed Hayat thought, I’m certainly going to Brooklyn. When it came time to relocate from near D.C. Photo: Photograph by Kendall Bessent for New York Magazine
Norrinda Brown Hayat and Fareed Hayat on their patio.