As New York battles its gray cannabis market, nonprofit Housing Works will be the first to sell pot legally in the Empire State.
Answered Prayers: The CEO of nonprofit Housing Works Charles King, an ordained Baptist minister, says legalization is about liberty and fighting for the oppressed.
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After 85 years of cannabis prohibition, the first bag of weed will be sold legally in New York City next week.
Housing Works Cannabis Co, an entity operated by nonprofit Housing Works, will open the city’s first legal retail pot shop on December 29. The 4,000-square foot space will open on Broadway and 8th Street in Manhattan’s Astor Place neighborhood.
Housing Works, cofounded by CEO Charles King, has been focused on providing housing, healthcare and other types of treatment to homeless people living with HIV and AIDS, substance abuse and other issues since 1990. The nonprofit generates some of its funds through its 12 thrift shops and one bookstore across the city. Revenues from cannabis sales will go towards fighting to end America’s war on pot and help people who have been arrested and incarcerated for drug crimes.
“We think that this can be a quite lucrative business and to that end, we intend to invest all of the profits in fighting the war on drugs as well as the impact of the war on drugs,” says King, a 68-year-old ordained Baptist minister. “If you look at our incarceration rates at the local level, at the state level, and the federal level, overwhelmingly, the people who are incarcerated are people of color. We want to use these resources to challenge every level of government to look at drugs in a very different way, a more holistic way that is not using the criminal justice system as the panacea.”
Housing Works is investing up to $1 million to open New York’s first dispensary. After the first year of operation, it expects to generate less than $1 million in profits. For context, its thrift stores generated $10 million during the fiscal year ending in June 2021, according to the organization’s public filings. Housing Works generated $150 million in revenue, grants and donations during the same period. King says if all goes well, the organization will open two more dispensaries, all staffed by people convicted of marijuana crimes.
“It’s a new market for us with various regulatory obstacles that we have to overcome,” says King. “We’re prepared to lose money if we have to up front in order to turn it into a thriving business.”
Housing Works, which serves 15,000 people with primary care, mental health and substance use services and operates 800 units of supportive housing around the city, also plans to launch two vocational training programs. One will teach leadership and management skills, and the other will help justice-involved entrepreneurs get the experience required in running a business to apply for their own cannabis licenses.
New York legalized marijuana for adults in March 2021, but the state did not start issuing licenses until November 2022. Housing Works Cannabis Co was one of the first 36 dispensaries to be awarded a license to sell recreational marijuana. The 35 other entrepreneurs were awarded licenses and will soon open their stores. New York State’s Office of Cannabis Management, the agency tasked with launching and regulating the industry, will gradually award more licenses.
Chris Alexander, the executive director of New York Office of Cannabis Management, said that Housing Works is a great organization to lead the state’s legal cannabis market.
“With its history of supporting New Yorkers, particularly formerly incarcerated individuals, we’re proud that Housing Works is seizing this opportunity to grow its resources and deliver more for New Yorkers,” Alexander said in a statement.
New York will become one of the country’s largest legal cannabis markets. The state’s legal cannabis industry is expected to capture $4.2 billion in sales by 2027. But the legal market has a lot of competition from New York’s vibrant and thriving illicit and gray market. Unlicensed dispensaries flowered around the five boroughs and across the state while regulators took their time to issue licenses. City Hall recently assembled a task force composed of New York City Sheriff’s Office, the New York City Police Department and the Office of Cannabis Management to tame New York’s wild west of weed.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that the joint interagency enforcement pilot program seized nearly 100,000 packages and cartons of cannabis and issued more than 300 civil and criminal violations since carrying out raids across the city starting in November.
While most of the 21 states that legalized recreational marijuana opened the market to anyone who could afford the multi-million-dollar license application fees, New York focused on a social equity model. The first licensed adult-use dispensaries in New York are either owned by successful business operators, or a close family member, who have a cannabis conviction, or non-profit organizations that provide services to individuals who have been harmed by the unequal enforcement of cannabis prohibition.
Sasha Nutgent, who is the store manager of Housing Works Cannabis Co said that taking the lead in New York’s social equity model is a “once in a lifetime moment.”
What is perhaps most interesting about Housing Works and its foray into legal weed is the fact that King is a Bible-carrying ordained minister. King grew up on a cotton farm in Texas sharing a two-seater outhouse with seven brothers. (They used pages from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog for toilet paper, he says.) His father was an Evangelical fundamentalist preacher and his mother and two sisters never showed their elbows or knees. Smoking, drinking alcohol and playing pool was strictly verboten. King, who is an influential figure in the LGBT community, preaches at the Riverside Church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan regularly. When asked if marijuana clashes with his religion, he says he doesn’t see anything in the Bible that suggests God wants people to be drug-free teetotalers.
“God put things on earth for our use, whether it’s alcohol or the cannabis plant,” King says, explaining that even Jesus turned water into wine while attending a wedding with his mother.
King says he sees marijuana legalization as a platform to stand up for the oppressed, which is in line with the teachings of Jesus. When asked if a Bible verse guides Housing Works as it opens New York’s first legal cannabis dispensary, he doesn’t hesitate. He opens a Bible, which was sitting on his lap, and reads from Luke 4:14, a story of when Jesus read from Isiah in a synagogue in Nazareth:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
King says the words are fitting because cannabis legalization is all about righting the wrongs of the war on drugs and supporting people who have been oppressed by the government. He says playing a small part in the legalization of marijuana in New York is an honor.
“This is about proclaiming liberty,” says King. “This is about the people who have experienced the most damage from our cannabis laws, [most of whom] have been very low-income people, people living on the margins, and that’s who Jesus actually came for.”
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