Metro

Victim of success: Brooklyn activist can’t afford nabe she improved

CECILIA CACACE (
)

She’s paying the price for making her Brooklyn neighborhood an incredibly desirable place to live.

Cecilia Maniero Cacace, 76, a lifelong resident of Carroll Gardens best known for hosting problem-solving “sit-downs” inside local eateries, has to be out of her First Place apartment by Jan. 14 because it’s being sold.

And she can’t find another affordable apartment in the gentrified ’hood.

“Oh, my God! I don’t want to leave. I’ve been here all my life,” Cacace told The Post yesterday from her favorite table at Happy Pants Cafe on the main drag of Court Street.

She pays $500 a month for her first-floor apartment, which features a neighborhood-staple front-yard garden. Similar apartments easily go for at least five times more — well out of her price range.

So Cacace, who still stubbornly calls her beloved neighborhood “South Brooklyn” — harking back to the days before the BQE divided it from Red Hook to the south and Realtors coined Carroll Gardens to spur sales — is packing up and preparing to move to Wisconsin to live with one of her two sons.

“She’s been a one-woman social-services agency in this neighborhood for decades,” said longtime neighborhood friend Carolina Salguero. “If anyone had a problem, you’d say, ‘Go see Celia.’ ”

Salguero, the Carroll Gardens Neighborhood Association and others are throwing a tribute party and fund-raiser for Cacace on Sunday at Mama Maria’s Restaurant on Court Street. The goal is finding a way to keep her in the neighborhood, either by raising enough to subsidize rent payments or finding another living arrangement for her like a “granny au pair or granny doorman.”

Cacace served on CB 6 from 1982 until 2008, and among her biggest accomplishments were convincing officials to build what is now called Valentino Park and Pier in Red Hook.

She was also instrumental for decades in helping land local teens summer jobs and advocating for seniors rights. During the 70s and 80s, she began organizing festivals in Carroll Park with clowns, DJs and concerts that catered to all age and ethnic groups.

Never a person to buckle to politicians, Cacace was outspoken at meetings, and it was her refusal to support the Barclays Center/Atlantic Yards project that led to Borough President Marty Markowitz not re-appointing her to another term at CB 6.