Rev. Kim Council, Brooklyn Deputy Borough President, on Politics, Property, and Prayer

By Fern Gillespie
The contentious national and local political landscape in New York City during 2024 has left many people mentally and emotionally exhausted. As we move through this holiday season into 2025, more people seek mindfulness and meditation. This year, the United Nations even declared December 21 as World Meditation Day.

Brooklyn Deputy Borough President Kim Council balances a life of politics and prayer. She’s also the assistant pastor and a lifelong member of Brooklyn’s Berean Baptist Church, where she served as the executive director of the Berean Community and Family Life Center. “The challenge is for us not to get weary,” she told Our Time Press. “As a people, we’ve been here before. We’ve dealt with challenges. We are resilient.”

This year, as part of Borough President Antonio Reynoso’s mission to develop more affordable housing in Brooklyn, she created a clergy roundtable to advise faith-based organizations on building housing. “A lot of our pastors want to develop their properties. Pastors are in a unique position because they have the property, but most of the congregations are mission-focused as opposed to profit-focused,” she said. “We wanted to make sure to create an environment to educate the pastors that were interested in developing their property so they would not be taken advantage of.”

As former vice chair of the Local Development Corporation of East New York and president of the East Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation, she spearheaded the construction of over one thousand units of affordable housing. At Berean, she helped develop 170 affordable housing and 67 units of senior housing in Crown Heights. “I came of age under Rev. Dr. Gus Roman at Berean. The church-built Horizon Village in Brownsville in the 1980s, and people were able to purchase that house for $30,000,” she said. “I watched how he navigated and how he brought so many pastors and churches together.”

In addition to affordable housing, she is a well-known advocate for women’s healthcare, preventative healthcare, youth development programs, food insecurity, violence prevention programs, ending gun violence, minority business development, Business Improvement Districts, and merchant associations to help support local businesses. An AKA Soror, she holds a degree in political science from HBCU North Carolina Central University and a master’s degree in library science from Pratt Institute. Her mentors have included Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, and Congressman Ed Towns.

Rev. Council grew up in HUD-subsidized housing as the oldest of five children. “My dad had maybe a fifth-grade education. He was typically the last one hired, and the first one fired. So, he was unemployed a lot,” she recalled. “We’ve faced eviction. I know what it’s like to be hungry.” Her mother worked at a daycare center and later at the post office.

“My mother was a proponent of education. She sacrificed to put us in Catholic school. It was a huge sacrifice.”
“As a young person growing up in Brooklyn, depending on what you’re exposed to, you can have a very narrow worldview. I think as you grow and as you are exposed to different things, your perspectives begin to change. Your understanding of people who are different than you expands if you allow it.”

Working as a law librarian for 24 years at a law firm became beneficial in her work as a community advocate. “It was considered a white shoe law firm. My worldview was challenged a lot. The firm was very supportive of everything that I was doing externally,” she said. “The law library gave me the ability to understand the law. How do we research the law, understand legislative history, understand legislators’ intent, and put legislation together? The relationships that were built as a result of working with that firm were a lot of connections to Brooklyn and a huge amount of support for me professionally and personally.”

Borough President Antonio Reynoso has been impactful and inspirational in her life. “I feel so privileged to be in this position right now,” she said. “I’m incredibly thankful to Antonio for reaching out and seeing in me that I could be a partner. I’m really excited to be working with somebody who shares the same values that I do and who puts people first over politics.”

For Rev. Council, mindfulness extends to remaining engaged with our neighbors. “Taking care of each other and checking in on each other. Even in the midst of everything that we’re going through, we remember that we are our neighbors’ keeper,” she stressed. “I look at my relationship with God as one where he considers me a friend. In my conversations and communications with God, I try to take time and pull back to think about where I am, how blessed I’ve been, and how many doors he’s opened. And how many more people we have to help come through those doors.”