City Limits Magazine, December 1986 Issue

. . .
December 1986
$2
F H A E V I C T I O N F E V E R O S P I R I T O F R E A N O R B U M P U R S O R V E M I N U T E J U S T I C E
I N H O U S I N G C O U R T O S H R T E R W A R S O
2 CITY LIMITS December 1986
Clq " ' m ' ~ s
Volume XI Number 10
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City Limits (ISSN 0199-0330)
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Editor: Annette Fuentes
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FROM THE EDITOR
From Eviction to Homelessness
Back in the Depression days, the papers were filled with stories of
evictions and often violent confrontations between the marshals and
supporters of the evicted parties. Rent strikes and tenant actions against
landlords were commonplace as the desperate economic conditions
pushed renters to a level of militancy and organization that had govern-
ment officials fearful of chaos, anarchy or worse, Communist inroads.
"5 Held in Rent Clash: Police Battle with Agitators After Brooklyn
Eviction," is the headline of a January 17, 1933 article in the New York
Times. The trouble began, we are told, after Mrs. Dora Davis and her
three children were evicted for failure to pay three month's rent. Sym-
pathizers gathered in front of her building and protest speeches and
picketing ensued. A melee broke out between the police and the eviction
protestors ending in the arrest of five people who were charged with
disorderly conduct.
Struggles for survival in New York City in 1933 look amazingly like
struggles for survival in 1986. The more history changes, as they say,
the more it stays the same old story of the have-nots clinging by their
finger tips to the brink of oblivion and in 1986 that means homelessness.
The only thing that hasn't traveled forward in time with the travails of
tenants facing eviction seems to be that militancy, that sense of anger
and outrage of the common citizen at the plight of her or his neighbor
who may be booted out from an adjacent dwelling.
There are approximately 25,000 evictions carried every year in New
York City and there is every reason to translate those numbers, those
flesh and blood statistics, into homeless people. This issue of City Limits
is dedicated to the disease of evictions and the better understanding of
why so many tenants are emptied out of their homes into repositories
for the homeless and how some activists hope to thwart the unholy
process. For the eviction-homelessness equation cuts to the heart of the
city's housing crisis and goes beyond it. It is an economic crisis for a
growing population of city residents who are being forced to live in
squalor and then further punished for not being able to afford even the
high price of dilapidation. When more and more low income folks are
forced into a corner of choosing between paying the rent or putting food
in the mouths of babes, there must be an alarm sounded somewhere.
Eviction is a dirty word and a dirtier business. Common sense and
good government policy demands that protections be extended to the
thousands of families who are at risk of losing their homes no matter
what it takes. Even those with their eyes on the bottom line of budgetary
affairs must see that an ounce of homeless prevention is worth a pound
of its cure.O
Cover Photo Courtesy Fourth World Movement
,
INSIDE
FEATURES
The Eviction Epidemic 12
With some 100,000 warrants of eviction issued every
year, the connection between homelessness and
evictions is becoming increasingly clear to city offi-
cials, tenant and homeless advocates, who are taking
steps to keep people in their homes.
The Federal Housing Administration Pays Off-
With Evictions 20
The cornerstone of federal housing policy, the FHA
has moved into the business of evicting low income
tenants in a dangerous pattern that is just beginning
to emerge.
DEPARTMENTS
From the Editor
From Eviction to Homelessness .. . . . .... . 2
Short Term Notes
Malignant Neglect ... . . .. . . .......... . .. 4
Challenging Merger . .. . .... ..... . ... . . . 4
Homeless Committee ... .. . ....... . ... . . 4
Good Project Gone Bad . . .. ... .... ...... 5
Neighborhood Notes
Bronx . . .. .... .... . ..... .... .. ....... . 6
Brooklyn .. ..... . .. . ................. . 6
Manhattan ...... . .. . .... . .... . .... ... . 7
Queens . .. . ....... . .. . ...... ... ....... 7
Pipeline
Shelter Wars .. .. ..... .. .......... . . . .. 8
A Report on City Housing Court . . . . . . . . . 11
City Views
Eleanor Bumpurs and the Spirit of the Rose. 17
Workshop ............................... 23
December 1986 CITY LIMITS 3
Shel ter Wars/Page 8
Epidemic/Page 12
HUD EvictionslPa
4 cln LIMITS December 1986
SHORT TERM NOTES
MALIGNANT
NEGLECT
Landlord Joseph Cohen has
been ordered to restore the
adjoining apartment buildings
at 41-43 Avenue B in
Manhattan's Lower East Side,
from which tenants were
vacated last May after the rear
wall collapsed.
In a strongly worded
statement against gentrification,
Housing Court Judge Lewis
Friedman agreed with the
tenants' contention that Cohen
intentionally allowed the
buildings to deteriorate in order
to drive them out.
Vacant buildings are worth
substantially more than those
burdened with rent controlled
and rent stabilized tenants," he
wrote. "Gentrification, if it
occurs at all, should not be the
product of the fortuitous
collapse of a wall."
His ruling could strengthen
recent case law in which
landlords have been ordered to
make major repairs to fire-
damaged buildings and to
return tenants to rent-regulated
apartments.
This case, however, goes a
step further because it concerns
a building that was damaged
through neglect, rother than
through fire, according to MFY
Legal Services attorney Ted
Zeichner. Housing activists say
that refusal to do structural
repairs is becoming an
increasingly common
harassment technique in the
Lower East Side.
Friedman noted that the
landlord never got an engineer's
report on the building and that
he bought it knowing he could
not make a profit with the
tenants in place. "The owner
offered no explanation of how
he would make a profit without
the collapse," the judge stated.
Zeichner said that repairs are
expected to total about
$320,000, although Cohen's
consultant gave a considerably
higher estimate.
At presstime, Cohen had not
appealed the ruling.
Cohen and his managing
renant activist Mary S"ink:
She helped tenants fight landlord Joseph Cohen's
harassment.
agent, Vickers Management/
Stanley Vickers, have been
buying a great deal of property
in the Lower East Side. In
Chelsea, housing activists say
that Cohen and Vickers
Management were active in
buying and emptying buildings
in their neighborhood, often
forcing tenants to move by
allowing buildings to fall into
disrepair.D Beverley
Cheuvront
CHALLENGING
MERGER
New Jersey and Pennsylvania
based community groups
signed a precedent setting
agreement October 21 with two
banks after a three-month
challenge to a merger between
the financial institutions.
In August, 33 independent
community groups together
with New Jersey Citizens Action,
organized an ad hoc coalition
to challenge the proposed
inter-state merger of Midatlantic
Bank of New Jersey and
Continental Bank of
Pennsylvania. Using the federal
Community Reinvestment Act,
the coalition charged the banks
with discriminatory lending
practices - known as
redlining - in various
neighborhoods those banks
deemed high investment risks.
The coalitions's attorney, John
Thurber, of the New Jersey
Public Advocate's office, .
explains that as "the CRA is
vaguely worded," not defining
actions to be taken by
authorities against banks
engaging in discriminatory
lending, community groups
"can'ttrustthe Federal Reserve"
to deny banks a charter. But
groups can use the CRA, he
notes, by focusing unwanted
attention and negative publicity
on banks-which is just what
the coalition did.
On September 19, the
coalition picketed during
lunchtime in front of Midatlantic
Bank branches in Newark and
South Jersey. They aimed for
press coverage and got it. Still,
theirfirst meeting with the bank
did not produce an agreement,
so the following Friday, the
group distributed flyers at the
banks, explaining the
implications of the case. "On
Monday, the bank had a better
proposal," says Christopher
Graeber of New Jersey Citizens
Action.
The agreement provides for
financing low cost home
improvement loans as low as
$500, and home mortgages at
one percent below the normal
interest rate and targeted by
income levels. ':,\11 closing costs,
such as application fees, were
cut in half," says Thurber, and
there is no minimum loan. In
addition, a credit union for
community groups and
nonprofit organizations, to be
funded by the banks, was set up
for the purpose of creating low
income housing.
While the Federal Reserve still
has to approve the merger
because the banks withdrew
their application during the
negotiations, it appears likely
that the merger will happen at
the end of the year, according
to Thurber. The Federal Reserve
is not required under the CRA to
deny banks a charter and
Thurber thinks the coalition has
done "remarkably well. This is
the first time New Jersey groups
have had this level of
involvement with banks and
with the CRA."
The coalition will monitor the
banks to insure that the
agreement is honored but its
success has sparked a
commitment that goes even
further. Graeber sees it as a
beginning for low income
housing strategies: "New York is
ahead in this area, but New
Jersey has a long way to go."
Now that the ground has been
broken, he says, community
groups and nonprofits can
encourage banks and builders
to finance their projects.D
Benlna Cohen
HOMELESS
COMMlnEE
Mayor Koch recently named
an Advisory Task Force on the
Homeless with a mandate to
search for better ways to serve
the city's homeless population
and to prevent homelessnes in
the first place. Conspicuously
missing from the mayors
16-member panel are members
of housing advocacy groups.
Among those the mayor did
name to the Task Force are
developers Donald Zucker,
Jerry Speyer and Leonard
Stem, along with Michael
Sovem, president of Columbia
University, one of the city's
largest real estate holders, and
John Zucotti, a lawyer who
helps developers like Zucker get
their luxury projects approved.
''The mayor selected a panel
of business leaders and
academics," explains Donald
Kummerfeld, Task Force chair.
..
"They are private citizens who,
it is hoped, can take an objective
view" on solving the cityl
housing crisis. Given just two
months to issue a report, the Task
Force sent out letters to housing
advocates on November 7
saying, "we do invite you to
submit a written statement" by
November 25 . .
Beth Gorrie of the Coalition
for the Homeless points to the
"mountains of testimony" that
already exists on what should
be done, adding, "What can
you say in one hearing that's
going to be meaningful?" As for
the panel itself, Gorrie says,
"They're all emminent New
Yorkers, but they don't work with
the homeless in soup kitchens, or
try to keep them from getting
evicted: But she does have kind
words for Stem, who "has
literally put his money where his
mouth is."
Bonnie Brower, executive
director of the Association for
Neighborhood and Housing
Development, sorcastically calls
the Task Force the mayorl
"Green Ribbon Panel." Brawer
observes that within a week of
commencing his research
committee, Mayor Koch
announced a plan for opening
20 new emergency shelters, so
he "obviously isn't waiting" to
hear what the panel
finds.OBeHIna Cohen
GOOD PROJECT
GONE BAD
When two Jersey City, New
Jersey churches joined together
in 1974 to rehabilitate nine
deteriorated buildings in the
Bergen Lafayette community,
the future was filled with
pramise. Armed with a $1.2
million Section 312
rehabilitation loan from the
Department of Housing and
Urban Development, the
churches formed a nonprofit
corporation - Salem-Lafayette
Housing-to run the project.
But with incredible swiftness
things went sour at Salem-
Lafayette houses. By 1984 the
nonprofit group had defaulted
Sltanna Smitlt, direc"'r 01 tlte Toledo, Oltio Fair Hou.ing Center, addre ed
tlte opening .... ion 01 tlte November 8 conlerence on sexual Itarallment 01
women tenants .pon.ored ~ City Limits at Hunter Scltool 01 Social Worlr. 200
Itou.ing, women'. and legal advocate. participated in J5 wor"'ltop. on variou.
a.pects 01 Itarallment a. tit., allect women 01 dillerent race and income
baclrraund. in today's Itou.ing cri.i . Fvnded by tlte Fard Foundation and Hunt
Alternati.,.. Fvnd, tlte conlerence wo. tlte lirst .uclt gatltering in tlte nation
on tlte subject and paved tlte way lor City Council It"ri .... December 2 on
.exual Itoraument .n Itou.ing.
on their HUD mortgage and
was millions of dollars in debt.
On November 18, HUD offered
the project for sole.
"It's a classic urban renewal
project gone bad/ says Lauren
Anderson, a project manager
for the Jersey City Department
of Housing and Economic
Development. Repairs that were
supposed to be part of the
original rehabilitation were
repartedly never completed
and maintenance was often
lacking. Landlord-tenant
disputes occured constantly,
with charges of illegal rent hikes
and evictions. The board of
directors faced a probe by the
Internal Revenue Service and
the project fell behind some
$500,000 in taxes to Jersey
City. By 1984, Salem Lafayette
Houses filed for protection
under bankruptcy laws.
But in March of 1986, the
Department of Housing and
Urban Development gained
permission from bankruptcy
court to begin foreclosure
proceedings on the property.
HUD wanted to sell the Salem
Lafayette Houses and recoup
the loan money.
Jersey City officials became
alarmed. There was nothing in
H!JD's auction process to ensure
Salem Lafayette Houses would
remain a low to moderate
income development. Despite
the years of problems and bad
debts, the project provided 74
much-needed affordable
apartments. Jersey City went to
court to block the sale.
The city, along with one of the
tenants, filed a suit in U.S. District
Court in Newark asking that the
sale of the project include one
condition: preserve Salem
Lafayette Houses low and
moderate income tenants. But
HUD argued it couldn't legally
impose such restrictions. Richard
Burlc, director of HUD's division
of Rehabilitation Loans and
Homesteading, says, "We can't
put additional restrictions on
mortgages that are not part of
the original mortgage." The
only way HUD could maintain
the project as affordable
housing was by t a k i n ~ title and
then "selling Salem Latayette
Houses through its property
dispasition division, not a
particularly appealing course of
action to Burk. "All we've gotten
in two and a half years is a very
hard time collecting on our
money. We've really taken a
bath."
Following the November 12
hearing, Judge John W. Bissell
dismissed the case. Says Beverly
Murphy, an attorney for Jersey
City, "The Judge found the
financial aspects more
compelling than the social
aspects."
Jersey City officials braced
themselves for the November 18
sale. Many were sure that
market rate developers were
eyeing the project for a condo
conversion plan. But Lauren
Anderson was Ha bit suprised"
when she arrived atthe auction
and didn't see any developers.
Nobody met HUD's minimum
bid, so the government owns the
project outright. While HUD
officials might feel they got
stuck, Jersey City officials were
elated. Hit changes the legal
status of the project," explains
Anderson. HUD can now
legally ensure that Salem
Lafayette Houses remain part of
the city's affordable housing
stock.oD. T.
~ h e Bronx
Bank on the Run
Crotona looks different than it did
ten or twelve years ago. Where there
once stood hulking abandoned build-
ings ravaged by arson and vandals
there are now dozens and dozens of
single-family houses, each taking on
its own personality with trim and
fencing and landscaping. Buildings
like 785 E. 181 Street and 2120 Mapes
Avenue, on the road to abandonment
ten years ago, are now low income
tenant co-ops. The Fairmont Theatre
on Tremont Avenue, its screen blank
for many years, is now a "quad" show-
ing the latest favorites.
"We've worked day and night for
ten years to bring this neighborhood
back," says Dalma De La Rosa of the
Crotona Community Coalition. ''And
now they want to take away our bank.
It's incredible to us that they would
do this now," she adds, gathering sig-
natures on a petition outside the local
Manufacturers Hanover Trust branch
on Tremont Avenue.
The petition calls for Manufactur-
ers to reconsider their departure from
Crotona when their lease expires on
December 12. The Crotona Commu-
nity Coalition has held two demonst-
rations outside the branch and has
met with bank officials. The group is
also calling on State Banking
Superintendent Jill Considine to in-
vestigate the effects this branch clos-
ing would have on their neighbor-
hood. [For an in depth look at branch
closings see City Limits Oct. 1986
issue.]
"If they close we'll have to go to
Fordham Road," comments Cecilia
Bruno, citing the 15 to 20 block walk
senior citizens like herself will have
to the nearest Manufacturers branch.
"It makes no sense. They stayed
through the lean years and now they
decide to go. I don't understand it
and I told John Leonard just that,"
says local Council Member Fernando
Ferrer at one of the demonstrations,
referring to a letter he wrote to Man-
ufacturers' vice president John
Leonard. Assembly Member Gloria
Davis echoes this support, calling for
"long, long lines" of demonstrators '
in front of the bank.
Crotoila residents are still hope-
ful-no new tenant has signed a
lease for the building. Organizers be-
lieve they can convince the bank to
stay and be part of the solution, not
part of the problem.
City Stalls
The Fordham Bedford Housing Cor-
poration has acquired a former nurs-
ing home to be renovated as transi-
tional housing for homeless women
with young children. "Concourse
House" will provide space for 45
families and has already received a
$900,000 commitment from the
state's Homeless Housing Assistance
Program. The city, however, has yet
to provide even a commitment for
support and has twice delayed an-
nouncing its Capital Budget Home-
less Housing Program application
finalists.
"We've taken on a big risk and are
incurring major expenses to insure,
secure and provide utilities for the
building," reports Rev. John Jenik,
president of FBHC's board and pastor
of nearby Our Lady of Refuge RC
Church. "We had hoped the city
would be treating the homeless crisis
with a greater sense of urgency and
showing more support for such com-
muntiy sponsored efforts." The Ford-
ham Bedford group hopes to open the
facility by aut!Imn 1987.oLois Harr
Brooklyn
In Bedford-Stuyvesant ...
In June, 1985, a huge auction of tax
foreclosed buildings-mostly one-
and two-family brownstones-
brought an outcry from many resi-
dents who saw the sale as a giant step
toward gentrification. To the south,
in another predominantly black com-
munity, Bedford-Stuyvesant, foreclo-
sures on and sales of one to four fam-
ily homes is moving along apace,
with a large number of vacant homes
and parcels of land going through the
community review process every
month.
Those old brownstones comprise
the largest concentration of that type
of housing in the city, says Henry
Snead, chair of Community Board 3.
And while his CB is fulfilling their
responsibility to subject those
forclosed properties to the Uniform
Land Use Review Process (ULURP)
so they can be sold at auction, he and
others have real questions about the
loss of those homes to community re-
sidents. "It's a concern, " says Snead,
"because of the type of population-
mostly seniors - who are still home-
owners and who fall prey to tax fore-
closure. We have to be concerned."
He .notes that property values have
grown considerably in Bed-Stuy in
recent years and thinks that gentrifi-
cation in his neighborhood is "very
real " despite a public perception that
it is a deteriorated and high crime
area. "Because of the amenities and
where the community is located and
the shortage of housing (gentrifica-
tion) becomes a concern," say!!
Snead.
While Snead and his colleagues on
the Community Board don't see an
immediate threat from the auctions,
which have been ongoing for years,
or an influx of wealthier outsiders on-
going for years, they have been push-
ing for the sealed bid procedure in-
stead of an open auction where
people often get carried away in the
heat of bidding and commit more
money than they can truly afford.
Birth of NIA
The Brooklyn Neighborhood Im-
provement Association of Crown
Heights just launched a new venture
called NIA to rebuild and manage re-
sidential buildings in Central Brook-
lyn. After two years of planning,
BNIA sees this new project as a com-
bination of "physical improvement
with technical assistance and com-
munity organizing to ensure the avail-
ability of decent low and moderate
income housing," says Carlyle
McKetty, director of the group.
NIA will come about in three stages
and is scheduled for completion in
1988. With funding from a variety of
corporate and philanthropic sources,
NIA will stay affordable by offering
technical assistance on a sliding
scale.D A.F.
Manhattan
Condo Mania
Several hundred residents of the
Lower East Side marched through
their neighborhood on November 1
to demonstrate widespread concern
over continued luxury condominium
development in the community. The
march, sponsored by the Lower East
Side Joint Planning Council, was
held to "dramatize a three-point plan
to preserve affordable housing"
threatened by unchecked real estate
market activities. Rally participants
stopped at three locations symboliz-
ing the "invisible homeless" -low
and moderate income residents
threatened to be displaced by de-
velopment trends.
The first stop on the march route,
the New York City Housing Author-
ity's Lillian Wald Houses on East 3rd
Street, is home to hundreds of
families already forced to double up
in overcrowded apartments, accord-
ing to the rally organizers. Commu-
nity leaders urged the use of at least
half of the more than 400 buildings
and lots owned by the city in the area
for low and moderate income hous-
ing. The next stop was 43 Avenue B,
where the owner deliberately failed
to maintain the property, eventually
causing its partial collapse [see Short
Term Notes]. March leaders used this
site to emphasize the extent of land-
lord harassment in the neighbor-
hood. As part of their
three-point plan, organizers called
for a local enforcement unit to handle
the increased volume of such com-
plaints. This unit would respond im-
mediately to "people in trouble," pre-
venting the displacment that results
from such abuses.
The rally converged at the Christa-
dora Hotel, a prime example of the
city's favored practice of providing
low cost housing acquisition prices
on city-owned properties to private
developers. Initially purchased from
the city for $63,000, the property sold
just a few years later for over $3 mil-
lion. Frances Goldin, a spokesperson
for the Planning Council, believes
this kind of transaction may point to
"some kind of collusion." The build-
ing is being redeveloped to include
condominiums selling for up to $1
million. The Planning Council as-
serts this private return on invest-
ment has yielded nothing for the
neighborhoods' residents. The three-
point plan calls for at least 20 percent
of all new construction in the neigh-
borhood be set aside for low and mod-
erate income housing.
The march was part of what Goldin
characterizes as the "new spirited
leadership" on the local communtiy
board - which originally adopted
the three-point plan in June of 1985-
and a renewed determination to fight
to keep affordable housing on the
Lower East Side. Calling for unified
action, Goldin says, "Everybody
working together can makes this
work."OMary Breen
Queens
Thnacious Tenants
"We won!" is music to the ears of
any weary tenant organizer and when
the winning happens in housing
court, so much the better. This time
the happy words came from Evelyn
Kramer, tenant leader at 88-24 Mer-
rick Ave. in Jamaica.
Tenants in that building have been
on rent strike since last April when
problems with building security and
a whole host of violations became un-
bearable. 88-24 Merrick Ave. is
owned by Michael Partridge and is
one of the five Jamaica buildings he
received $1.1 million in loans to im-
prove. When those improvements did
not happen as expected and when
rents within the building were re-
structed by the city's department of
Housing Preservation and Develop-
ment, tenants in the building got
angry. In the case of Partridge tenants
in Kramer's building, they didn't just
get angry, they got even. Over the
months, their rent strike grew and fi-
I.J.ally on October 22, in Judge Sparks
part in Queens Housing Court, the
tenants were granted rent abatements
ranging from $400-800 and Partridge
was ordered to make all necessary re-
pairs.
A joyful Evelyn Kramer says that
best of all, Partridge was ordered to
hire a full time superintendent for the
building. "Now we hope this building
will get the attention it needs," she
states.
Alpine Update
Tenants of the Alpine Tenants As-
sociation also have reason to cele-
brate, though cautiously. They have
just settled a second rent strike
against the landlord. Their four-
building complex in Jackson Heights
has changed management hands so
often an outsider needs a scorecard.
Originally noted in this column as
being owned by Hameed and Safder,
the buildings are now owned by Man-
chester Jackson Heights Associates,
John Keown, president. This owner
has agreed to make all necessary re-
pairs on a complaint list supplied by
tenants within 90 days of receipt. 68
complaint forms were delivered on
Spetember 2 and are part of the agree-
ment worked out in Housing Court.
The owner has also agreed to install
very long-awaited thermal windows
no later than December 15,
1986.0 Irma Rodriguez
PIPELINE
Shelter Wars
BY MARY PAPENFUSS
A 19th CENTURY ARMORY IN THE
middle of Brooklyn's Bedford-
Stuyvesant is ' where they've taken
their stand - the parents of the kids
in the Uhuru Cultural Center's mars-
hal arts class, the tenants down the
block on Sumner Avenue, State As-
semblyman Al Vann.
They're battling in the courts to
stop the city from moving 250 home-
less men into the Sumner Avenue Ar-
mory off Jefferson Street. In the
shadow of a spotlight of publicity
about a similar fight against shelter-
ing homeless people in midtown
Manhattan, Bedford-Stuyvesant com-
munity groups are quietly locked in
what they regard as a life-and-death
struggle for their neighborhood.
The Bed-Stuy fight is part of a cres-
cendo of opposition to the city's
homeless shelter policy. After years
of ignoring the homeless, the city is
being forced to house its burgeoning
shelterless population by a series of
lawsuits brought by the Coalition for
the Homeless. The Koch administra-
tion's slapdash answer to its legal ob-
ligation to shelter more than 9,000
homeless has been to open "huge,
congregate facilities and shoehorn as
many people as possible into them,"
according to Beth Gorrie, assistant di-
rector of the Coalition for the Home-
less.
A case in point is upper Manhat-
tan's massive Fort Washington shelter,
which triggered a storm of local op-
position when it opened in De-
cember, 1981. Originally intended to
house 200 men, it now shelters over
900 men, and on cold winter nights
its population soars to 1,200, said
Gorrie. H the city's past performance
is an indication of the future, Bed-
Stuy residents "have every reason to
feel the Sumner Avenue Armory is
Fort Washington revisited," Gorrie
adds.
The city's policy has tremendous
implications for the neighborhoods
where the shelters are located-and
for the homeless.
"It's a complicated issue," says Gor-
rie. "On the one hand, we're certainly
not opposeu in more shelters opening
The Sumner Avenue Armory in Bedford-Stuyvesant: The community i. fighting
the city's plan to warehou.e 250 men in the building.
in late fall. On the other hand, we
take issue with the way the city is
doing it.
"The increasing number of home-
less is a predictable event. It's not a
flood, it's not an earthquake - the
city can plan for it. And yet, it was
doing nothing back in June or July.
"In a sense the city is creating a
false issue, pitting the homeless
against communities, when the fact
is, the blame doesn't rest with either
group."
Not In Our Backyard
That confrontation between com-
munities and facilities for the home-
less can reveal an ugly hatred of the
homeless as human pollution that
drives up crime, forces down prop-
erty values and is bad for business.
Kathleen Conkey, spokeswoman
for Manhattan Borough President
David Dinkins, who has been in-
volved in the Midtown South Preser-
vation and Development Committee's
battle to stem the soaring number of
homeless families in midtown wel-
fare hotels, admits: ''A real problem
is that a lot of [the Midtown South]
merchants - not all of them - aren't
looking at the whole problem. Their
attitude is: 'Just get them [the home-
less] out of here. We don't care what
happens to them.'"
But Mayor Koch, insists Conkey,
harps on that "not in my backyard"
mentality to condemn all community
opposition to facilities for the home-
less-conveniently painting legiti-
mate concerns as "hypocrisy."
Those legitimate concerns center
on a city policy to warehouse huge
numbers of homeless people in a few
communities, like Midtown South.
That neighborhood accounts for 40
percent of the city's homeless
families - more homeless in one
block than in the entire borough of
Queens. It's a skewed policy that
pours a huge population of children
into an area with no recreational
facilities.
It's also a policy that concentrates
blocks of homeless in less
powerful- often minority-
neighborhoods .with inadequate so-
cial services. North Brooklyn houses
20 percent of the city's total homeless
population in huge shelters like the
600-bed Greenpoint facility and 750-
bed Atlantic Avenue Armory.
"We resent the fact that the city is
steering large populations of home-
less into primarily residential, black
neighborhoods," says Dr. Esmeralda
Simmons, director of the Medgar
Evers Center for Law and Social Jus-
tice. The Center is representing the
Uhuru Cultural Center, the Coalition
of Bed-Stuy Block Associations and
Assemblyman Vann in a lawsuit
against the city to block the Sumner
Armory plan.
Segun Young, director of the Uhuru
Cultural Center, calls the city's plans
for the Sumner Avenue Armory "a
Rambo-style tactic," consistent with
its plan to put a "majority of the
homeless in minority neighbor-
hoods."
"It was the iast straw," says Young.
"The city comes in here and imposes
whatever they want without any
dialogue with the community."
The cultural center, which pro-
vides a variety of arts and cultural
scheduled to open sometime this
month.
A major complaint in shelter fights
has been the city's stunning arro-
gance in dealing with communities.
Community Board 3's first lesson in
the protocol of shelter siting occurred
a few years ago when the city prop-
osed a daycare center at 85 Lexington
Avenue-which the board approved.
The "daycare center's" first tenants
turned out to be over 100 homeless
women.
Park Slope's Community Board 6
has been treated no better, even
communicated our willingness to
deal with the homeless. But the city
was completely autocratic and insen-
sitive to our needs or to the needs of
the homeless. They did no advance
work here, never checked into the
schools, police, social services, never
considered the impact."
Shelter decisions are often beyond
the pervue of community boards be-
cause government-owned facilities
for city use -like armories are not
covered by the Uniform Land Use Re-
view Procedure (ULURP) , which
mandates community board as well
as Board of Estimate review. Shelter
decisions are almost solely HRA ter-
ritory. The agency reviews possible
sites submitted by the city's Division
of Real Property, private landlords
and community boards, according
the HRA Executive Deputy Adminis-
trator Stella Schindler. The agency
makes a choice based on size, rehab
cost, location and conformance with
shelter legal requirements like space,
toilet facilities and structural safety,
Schindler states.
Location considerations, Schin-
dler insists, takes into account an
"equitable distribution" of facilities
throughout the city. "We're sensitive '
to the concerns of communities about
the homeless," she says.
Segun Young, director of the Uhuru Culturol Center:
rhe city plans to put a "majority olthe homeless in minority neighborhoods."
Schindler admits that certain com-
munities currently shelter a dispro-
portionate share of the homeless,
with Midtown South being the "most
heavily impacted," and north Brook-
lyn housing one-fifth of the city's
homeless. Over half of the homeless
men in Brooklyn are sheltered in the
56th Assembly District, which covers
Bed-Stuy and part of Crown Heights,
according to statistics from Vann's of-
fice.
programs and social services to the
community and has been a tenant of
the armory for ten years, got an evic-
tion notice in August shortly after a
boy was shot and killed during a rap
concert at the armory. "Within a week
we heard rumors about a homeless
shelter," recalls Young.
Community Relations
The local community board was
never informed of the city's plans for
the armory. In fact, the city's Human
Resources Administration (HRA) in-
sisted in September that there was no
intention to use the site for a home-
less shelter, according to Community
Board 3 Chairman Hemy Snead. Less
than three weeks later, the Sumner
Avenue shelter had become a fact,
though it has been one of the most
cooperative boards concerning the
homeless. Board 6 was the only one
in Brooklyn that last year submitted
a list of possible shelter sites to the
city. All of them were dismissed by
HRA. Instead, in March the city
turned the Park Slope Armory on
Eighth Avenue and 14th Street into a
controversial shelter for 70 men after
telling the community it would
house homeless families. (It has been
converted to a shelter for women, and
the city is negotiating with the board
to find alternate sites for the resi-
dents.)
"There was no need to steamroll
us," says Robert Acito, district man-
ager of Community Board 6. "But the
city did anyway. We thought we had
A major push of the Medgar Evers
Center lawsuit and one filed by Com-
munity Board 3 against the Sumner
Avenue Armory is to force shelter de-
cisions into the ULURP process. Both
suits, along with another filed by the
Midtown South community, also
charge that shelter site decisions fail
to consider the environmental im-
pact of facilities in a community, as
required by city and state environ-
mental laws. If the legal action
against the city is successful, environ-
mental impact statements would also
open up HMs site selection process
to the public.
Robert Acito
l
district manager of Brooklyn's Com-
munity Board 6:
The community oHered a list of possible shelter
sites, but the HRA rejected everyone.
Though Koch has characterized the
community battles as anathema to
the interests of the homeless, what's
emerging seems to be quite different.
Confronted with a huge population
of homeless, the communities are
bending to the demands of necessity.
They must hammer out a rational,
long-term solution for the homeless
on their streets if they are to survive.
As Rita Sklar, head of the Midtown
South Preservation and Development
Committee, puts it: "Society can't a f ~
ford to keep these people in the hole." with cots. The Partnership for the
The result is that communities are Homeless has helped set up over 130
finding their interests merging with shelters with 20 or fewer people each,
the interests of the homeless. Beth and has met with neighborhood op-
Gorrie believes neighborhoods are re- position "only four or five times,"
vealing "a marked shift toward the claims Peter Smith, president of the
homeless - genuine concern." non-profit organization.
Both Brooklyn lawsuits clearly Beth Gorrie at the Coalition for the
spell out a concern for the homeless. Homeless is "encouraged" by Koch's
"We fully support sheltering the plan, but still comes back to the final
homeless, but in a way that treats solution for homelessness-homes,
them like human beings," says Dr. not just emergency shelters.
Simmons. "The point here is that / The Coalition, like Community
people see the city has no policy for Board <3, the Coalition of Bed-Stuy
the homeless. It's simply dumping Block Associations and the Midtown
them in whatever warehouse it can. South Preservation and Development
The city's not looking out for the Committee, wants the city to develop
neighborhoods, and it's certainly not its vast in rem housing supply into
looking out for the homeless." affordable housing. Gorrie's organiza-
Besides calling for a halt to the tion also wants the current
Sumner Armory plan and demanding moratorium on development of resi-
the proposal go through ULURP and dential hotels continued and re-
environmental review procedures, straints on co-op conversions so that
the Center's lawsuit also demands still more people aren't forced into
that the city develop a plan to provide homelessness.
low-income housing to address the "What we have to attack is why
root cause of homelessness: the dis- people don't have housing," em-
appearance of affordable homes. phasizes Dinkins spokeswoman
Koch has apparently bowed to Kathleen Conkey. "Our goal is to keep
some of the recent community uproar homeless families out of midtown be-
over homeless facilities with his new cause that's not where they belong.
plan, announced in October, to build Those kids need a home where their
20 new shelters of 100 units each. moms can buy them food at a grocery
Communities have generally pressed store, not at a deli; where there's parks
for far lower density shelters dis- and playgrounds and basketball
persed throughout a community, in courts."O
lieu of giant drill floors crammed
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Five Minute Justice:
A Profile of Housing Court
THE CITY WIDE TASK FORCE ON
Housing Court, a four-year-old or-
ganization of legal and housing pro-
fessionals, held a press conference
November 25 to announce the release
of their new study on the city's Hous-
ing Court, called "Five Minute Jus-
tice: Ain't Nothing Going on but the
Rent." The results of three years of
research and court observations of
some 3,000 Housing Court cases, the
Task Force's report is a scathing in-
dictment of the lO-year-old institu-
tion. Having strayed from its original
mandate to enforce housing mainte-
nance, Housing Court, finds the
study, today operates primarily as a
rent collection agency for landlords.
Set up in 1972 under federal pres-
sure to create a program for improv-
ing the housing stock, Housing Court
was charged with "effective enforce-
ment of state and local laws for build-
ing maintenance." But "Five Minute
Justice" reveals that 64 percent of
cases brought to court were initiated
by landlords for nonpayment of rent
and another 19 percent simply to
evict tenants. And in a vast majority
of cases - 62 percent - tenants
raised the issue of needed repairs to
their apartments as a serious prob-
lem. In fact, tenants brought to Hous-
ing Court most likely came from some
of the city's worst buildings, with
higher than normal code violations
than buildings citywide.
The report, named for the fact that
almost half of the pretrial hearings
before a Housing Court judge lasted
for less than five minutes, also pro-
files the typical tenants at Housing
Court: 82 percent are black or His-
panic; 66 percent are women; 50 per-
cent are on public assistance; and
most shocking, 75 percent enter the
complicated court maze with no legal
representation. Landlords, con-
versely, have legal aid 78 percent of
the time.
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This imbalance between tenants
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report, since 70 percent of the time,
cases were resolved by agreements,
called stipulations usually written by
the landlord's attorney. And with no
legal assistance, tenants are often
hard put to understand the terms of
such "stips," which judges explained
to them only 57 percent of the time.
In conclusion, the report offers a
specific and clear program for re-
medying the problems of Housing
Court. First and foremost, tenants
must be provided counsel if they can-
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tenants and landlord lawyers during
which agreements are drawn up
should only occur before court per-
sonnel, not in hallways as is usually
the case; only landlords without mul-
tiple code violations should be per-
mitted to bring nonpayment actions
against tenants-a so-called "clean
hands" requirement; and all agree-
ments to pay rent must be con-
ditioned on completion of necessary
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This first history of the tenant movement in New York
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of housing, urban government, and urban social move-
ments. The contributors examine the social bases of the
movement, and describe the context of the movement at
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Includes over 30 photographs spanning the entire era.
Rutgers University Press
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FEATURE
The Eviction
Epidemic
E
victions may be the largest single
contributor to the homeless in the past
10 years, an alarming fact facing city
officials and tenant advocates who now
must work to keep people in their homes
and off the streets.
BY BRENT SHARMAN
O
ne night in October, as the
temperature dropped to the
low 40's, about 20 tenants at
1915 Andrews Ave. in the Bronx were
crowded into a living room listening
intently as a local tenant organizer
explained their rights. Copies of a
leaflet, "How to Handle a Dispossess"
were passed around the room.
All of a sudden, whispered conver-
sation got loud. "What's wrong?"
asked the organizer, interruped be-
fore getting to the heart of his presen-
tation. A young Puerto Rican man
stepped forward, waving the leaflet.
"It says right here at the beginning,
'your landlord must sue you in Hous-'
ing Court before he can legally evict
you ... he must deliver to you papers
called Notice of Petition and Petition,
also called a dispossess.' But there's
been people thrown out of this build-
ing who never got any papers. In fact,
this lady right here was evicted last
month bY 'a marshal. Lost her stuff
and she's been staying in our apart-
ment since with her kids. She never
got a dispossess!"
Evictions are dramatic. Evictions
are often illegal. Evictions are run-
ning rampant throughout certain
New York City neighborhoods in a
pattern that has advocates for low in-
come tenants and certain city offi-
cials sending up emergency flares.
Evictions equal homelessness - a
simple and frightening equation.
The city's Human Resources Ad-
ministration (HRA) , the agency that
places homeless families in hotels
and city shelters, reported in March
1986 that 27 percent of families sur-
vyed in the shelters and hotels had
been evicted by their landlords - the
highest single reason given. (The
other main reason is being forced to
leave "doubled-up" arrangements
from the houses of relatives or
friends.)
Last year, a broad based group of
community activists and tenant advo-
cate lawyers formed the Coalition for
a Moratorium on Evictions, issuing a
60-page document that called for
legislative action to stop residential
evictions until massive reforms of the
eviction process could be made and
greater social service support for
threatened households im-
plemented. That doucment was one
of the first clear recognitions that
evictions are the primary cause of
homelessness in this city. And in of-
ficial quarters, City Councilman Abe
Gerges, chin of the Select Committee
on the Homeless, has stated a "major
Inside Brooklyn Housing Court:
A maze 01 reCi 'ape anCl long /ines awai,s tenants lighting evi
initiative to halt evictions is vital to
curb homelessness."
By the Numbers
It's surprising that official recogni-
tion of the eviction epidemic has only
recently emerged. Evictions have
been soaring for many years. The Co-
alition's report notes, "between 1969
and 1985, 368,864 households were
evicted(by a city marshal) ... about 1.5
million people!" Those numbers
don't include people illegally evicted
or locked out, or those who were in-
timidated into moving by the land-
lord because they were not aware of
their rights.
The rate of evictions parallels the
availability of housing: In 1975, when
abandonment was ravaging low in-
come neighborhoods, a displaced
poor family could find another apart-
ment-albeit a dilapidated one. In
that year, there were 15,597 evictions.
Seven years later, evictions had dou-
bled to 30,740 as gentrification and
speculation became the main trends
in the housing market. Notes Judge
Israel Rubin, Administrative Judge of
Civil Court, "When I first got into
Housing Court the owners were in-
terested in one thing, their rent.
That's no longer true. You now have
iction orders.
people actually interested in evic-
tions, not the dollars and cents. That's
created an entirely different atmos-
phere in court."
A geographical survey of evictions
reveals two areas of New York City
with high concentrations of evic-
tions: the West Bronx, accounting for
69 percent of all Bronx evictions and
22 percent city-wide; and North Cen-
tral Brooklyn, with 60 percent of that
borough's evictions and 19 percent of
all city evictions.
This finding almost coincides with
HRXs report on the "Charateristics of
Homeless Families" that shows over
50 percent of the homeless coming
from the South Bronx (which in-
cludes most of the West Bronx) and
North Brooklyn.
There were over 300,000 dispos-
sess proceedings filed by landlords
last year in Housing Court to get ten-
ants out of their apartments. Of those,
one third actually became warrants
of eviction and 24,000 evictions were
carried out, according to the Mars-
hal's Bureau, which means the ten-
ants either didn't show up at the court
hearing and by default the landlord
got approval for an eviction or the ten-
ants did show up but the judge ruled
in favor of the lanlord - often be-
cause the beleaguered tenants could
not pay back rent.
The vast majority of dispossess'
notices tenants receive are for non
payment of rent. Because of the as-
tronomical rise in rents(often illeg-
ally, says the New York State Tenant
and Neighborhood Coalition, which
projects 65 percent of city tenants are
overcharged), many low income ten-
ants can't defend themselves against
a dispossess by paying off the rent.
The Human Resources Administra-
tion estimates, for example, that
many public assistance recipients
pay rents that are much higher than
the welfare budget allocates for shel-
ter.
Many tenants, though, are not yet
She wants to keep her hame:
An eviction is often socially and emotionally
damaging to families.
completely priced out of their apart-
m ~ n t s but have witheld rent for lack
of repairs and services - some 62 per-
cent of tenants who witheld rents, ac-
cording to a new Task Force on Hous-
ing Court study (see p. 11). A majority
of tenants who end up in Housing
Court live in buildings with housing
code violations way above the norm,
also noted in the study. Witholding
rent is the one leverage they have to
try to force repairs by the landlord.
One Brooklyn tenant leader puts it
this way: "I couldn't take the situation
of no heat or hot water, broken locks,
etc. any more so I helped to start a
rent strike. We were eager to go to
court-'Please, Mr. Landlord,' we
said, 'send us a dispossess!' Once in
court, though, I was worried sick
about getting evicted. Those landlord
lawyers play all kinds of tricks. "
This tenant's landlord is Leonard
Spodek, the infamous "Dracula land-
lord" who owns many properties in
Flatbush, Brooklyn. Before a young
boy fell down a faulty elevator shaft
and died in one of his buildings, caus-
ing a public outcry, Spodek had been
investigated by the state Attorney
General, who found that Spodek had
overcharged his tenants to the tune
of $3 million.
Frantz DuPuy of the Flatbush De-
velopment Corp. organized tenants in
several Spodek buildings. He remem-
bers that "all of his buildings had HP
actions (to get repairs) going on. That
winter (1985-86) there were at least
five evictions. It's hard to believe, the
court, all the judges knew about
Spodek. Everyday Spodek had sev-
eral tenants in court on dispossesses.
But the court protected him for years.
They should have stopped all the
eviction procedures until he cleared
up all the violations."
While non-payment eviction cases
are not on the rise, holdover cases, in
which the landlord just wants tenants
our, are mushrooming. The landlord
may claim the tenant is a nuisance or
that an apartment is needed for the
owner's personal use. In buildings of
less than six units, which have no
rent regulation, tenants whose leases
run out are especially vulnerable to
eviction attempts.
Personal use and small building
holdover cases are difficult for a ten-
ant to defend. Brooklyn and Queens
housing activists note a growing pat-
tern of such evictions. In their study
of displacement, Community Board
2 in Queens called for protections to
tenants in small buildings, including
the right to a lease and essential ser-
vices, and an end to the widespread
use of personal use evictions.
(Un)Due Process
In October, Elsie Ortiz, a commu-
nity organizer for the Bronx Heights
Community Corp. held an emergency
meeting for residents of 1479
Macombs Road, a huge dilapidated
building. Several evictions had re-
cently taken place although the ten-
ants never received the court papers.
Eulelia Acevedo, a mother of three,
was one of them. The apartment from
which she was jettisoned and that she
still calls home, was a "wreck" and
Acevedo had joined other tenants in
a Housing Court action against the
landlord in August to get repairs or-
dered. "The court even told us we
shouldn't pay rent until the landlord
fixed the building. The landlord was
mad," she recounts, "and threatened
us as we left the courtroom. He said,
'I'm going to get you out. ' So we were
a little worried."
The landlord kept his word and on
October 20, Acevedo was thrown out
of her home by a city marshal even
though she had not been properly
served with a dispossess notice or a
72-hour notice of eviction. Staying
with friends for now, Acevedo filed
an Order to Show Cause with Elsie
Ortiz' help in the hopes of getting her
facing Down
the Marshal
One day last April , the marshal
arrived at 90 Clinton St. in Brook-
lyn armed with a warrant of evic-
tion for Geraldine Riddick. Rid-
dick and her five children, who
had lived there for almost 10 years,
were standing on the front steps.
So were 25 other tenants, blocking
the entrance and holding signs that
proclaimed, "Geraldine Must
Stay!"
The marshal warned the tenants
they were breaking the law and
could be arrested. "We're not mov-
ing," they responded. Four police
cars, the landlord and a moving
truck arrived on the scene but the
tenants stood firm. The landlord
insisted the eviction take place im-
mediately but the police were re-
luctant to arrest 30 people.
Adeyemi Bandele from State As-
semblyman Roger Green's office
appeared and helped negotiate a
five day reprieve for Riddick.
The next day, a Legal Services
lawyer re-opened the court case
and Riddick won the right to stay
plus thousands of dollars in rent
abatements for the shockingly bad
conditions in her apartment. Says
tenant leader Edith Reese, "We
were prepared to get arrested be-
cause we were determined not to
let this happen to a member of our
tenant association. We have been
going through rent strikes and HP
actions for years."
Riddick had gotten a dispossess
and in the confusion of court, un-
wittingly signed an agreement to
move. She took the papers to social
services, which sat on it. When
Riddick got a 72-hour notice of
eviction, she went to court for an
Order to Show Cause but the judge
was nasty and said she "could do
nothing," recalls Reese.
"The night before the eviction,
we knocked on everyones door and
people agreed to stay home from
work, even keep their kids home
from school," says Reese. While
their eviction resistance was suc-
cessful, Reese says there are still
serious problems in the buildings
and a rent strke is in the works.
"Even though it's clear the land-
lord wants us out, we've gotten
pretty tight through all our strug-
gles. This is our house and we're
staying. All of us!"OB.S.
Safe at home:
Neighbors joined fage,he, '0 block 'he eviction
01 Geraldine Riddick.
apartment back.
Eulelia Acevedo's is just one exam-
ple of an improper eviction. Her due
process rights were violated when
she did not receive the two eviction
documents but such knowledge does
her little good now as she waits to
get back home. "Sewer service" is
what housing advocates call it when
a tenant is improperly served with a
dispossess or eviction notice and it
is pervasive in New York City eviction
proceedings.
The 1983 Advisory Council on
Housing Court's annual report stated,
''All practitioners in the Part(Housing
Court) are aware of the widespread
practice of sewer service. This prac-
tice is, in no small part, the result of
the difficulty of serving process on
tenants in dilapidated buildings in
poor neighborhoods .. . " This observa-
tion certainly rings true for tenants
at 1479 Macombs Road, who had no
mailboxes at the time of the evictions.
Illegal evictions are another hazard
menacing tenants from borough to
borough. While sewer service evic-
tions are improper, they are legal,
oddly enough, since they emanate
from an eviction request approved by
a Housing Court judge and are ef-
fected-even if incorrectly-by a
city marshal. But when the landlord
locks a tenant out without bothering
to get a dispossess or a marshal to
serve it, that's a violation of Local Law
56 and a matter for the police.
Increasing incidents of illegal lock-
outs and mounting pressure from
community housing groups
prompted the City Council to enact
Local Law 56 - the Illegal Eviction
Law-in 1982. It also covers deliber-
ate cuts in essential services aimed
at driving a tenant out and makes it
a crime for which a landlord can be
arrested. The police have been edu-
cated on illegal evictions in the past
several years by legal and housing ad-
vocates and directives now instruct
officers to respond to tenant calls by
forcing the landlord to allow entry to
the apartment immediately or face ar-
rest.
Nonetheless, landlord lock-outs are
on the rise, says Roger Maldonado of
South Brooklyn Legal Services.
"Judging from our intake, I'd say that
illegal evictions have increased
dramatically over the last couple of
years, especially in the gentrifying
neighborhoods surrounding Down-
town Brooklyn," he notes. "The
police have been largely cooperative
about getting the tenant back in after
our office calls them."
But the police are not always eager
to enforce the law. Tenant organizer
Gail Schechter of St. Nicholas Neigh-
"When I first got into Housing Court, the owners were interested
in one thing, their rent ... you now have people actually interested
in evictions, not the dollars and cents."-Judge Israel Rubin
borhood Housing Preservation Corp.
in Brooklyn says , "Illegal evictions
are a serious problem in Greenpoint
both in small buildings and rent
stabilized apartment buildings. A lot
of the victims are alone, especially
the elderly. Tenants who are easily
Administrative Judge Israel Rubin:
He says landlords filed 300,000 dispossess pro-
ceedings in 1985.
intimidated. The police for the most
part are not responsive. They usually
don't let the tenants back in but refer
them to Housing Court and quite
often side with the landlord."
By the Book
In order for a city marshal to carry
out an eviction, he must first obtain
a "warrant of eviction" signed by a
Housing Court judge. A warrant can
be isued if a tenant doesn't show up
in court to respond to a dispossess
notice or if a tenant does not comply
with the court's final judgement, usu-
ally to pay back rent or move out by
a certain day. The marshals are then
required to serve tenants with a 72-
hour Notice of Eviction. If a tenant
moves fast, he/she may be able to file
an Order to Show Cause that can
delay the eviction until a hearing is
held. At the hearing, usually sched-
uled one week later, the tenant must .
present an "excusable default" exp-
laining why he/she didn't come to
court originally or didn't pay rent on
time.
The Order to Show Cause stage of
the game is riddled with legal
technicalities that would make any-
one's head spin-especially after a
warrant of eviction has already been
issued. Once a person has received
the 72-hour notice, the chances of
self-defense against eviction are
pretty slim. Says Marshall Green of
Bronx Legal Aid, "They are at a severe
disadvantage. All the cards are
stacked against them. It takes a very
persevering person to get through the
process."
Elsie Ortiz only recently became a
tenant in the Bronx and her
work with Eulelia Acevedo and other
residents at Macombs Road has been

r Since 1980, the Housing Energy Alliance for Tenants Cooperative Corp. (H.E.A.T. COOP) has low
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The H.E.A.T. Coop has targeted lor services the largely minority low and middle income neighborhoods 01 the
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r Jrr - ./ { , to neighborhood stability.
As a proponent 01 economic empowerment for revitalization of the City's communities. H.E.A. T. remains committed
to aSSisting newly emerging managers and owners of buildings with the reduction of energy costs (long recognized as
the single most expensive area of building management). H.E.A. T. has presented tangible opportunities for tenant
associations. housing coops. churches. community organizations, homeowners and small businesses to garner
substantial savings and lower the costs of building operation.
Through the primary service of providing low cost home '-ling 011, various '-ling plant services and
energy management services, H.E.A. T. membenl have collectively saved over 1.5 million dollars.
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viability as a business entity, H.E.A.T. has commiHed its revenue geoerating capacity and potential to providing
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Twenty-seven percent of people in city shelters came there after
being evicted by their landlords.

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An eyiction notice posted by the city's sheriff department:
OYer 100,000 warrants of eviction were issued 'ast year by Housing Court.
more than a challenge. She is tackling
the Mount Everest of Housing Court
petitions, the Order to Show Cause
in an attempt to help Acevedo and
the other evicted tenants get their
homes back. Ortiz spent a day and a
half filling out forms, getting them
notarized, serving them in the "man-
ner prescribed by law." "How on earth
do they expect tenants to get through
all this," she exclaims exasperatedly,
"You practically got to be a lawyer."
Roger Maldonado agrees with
Ortiz' assessment. "Close to half of
the people walking in here have al-
ready been evicted. Most of them
claim sewer service. Trying to get an
apartment back is difficult. Without
an attorney, forget it."
Marty Needleman of Williamsburg
Legal Services is equally grim:
"Maybe one to five percent of tenants
not represented may win reposses-
sion of their apartments." And with
only one in ten tenants going to Hous-
ing Court with legal representation,
the odds are they will stay evicted.
An Ounce of Prevention
Short of divine intervention to
create thousands of units of afforda-
ble housing to swallow up the flood
of evicted people, there is simply not
enough housing for the people being
evicted. Housing and tenant advo-
cates look to needed changes in both
the eviction process starting with
Housing Court, and efforts to keep
low income tenants from the pre-
cipice of eviction and homelessness.
The Anti-Eviction Project headed by
Roger Maldonado in Brooklyn is a
vital tool, but it was recently de-
funded by the city.
At a symposium on eviction pre-
vention in the Bronx this summer,
Judge Rubin announced a new post-
card notification plan to alert tenants
in a default situation. The aim is to
cut down on the number of default
judgements and warn tenants before
they face a 72-hour eviction notice.
It is scheduled to begin January 1987.
Housing Court judges also need to
protect the due process rights of ten-
ants who are churned through the
eviction mill often without having
their stories fully heard and consi-
dered. Tying rent payments to repair
orders is one giant step that can halt
offenders like Leonard Spodek before
tragedy makes action unavoidable.
The HRA's Court Liaison Project,
which places caseworkers in court to
help needy tenants get emergency
welfare funds and stave off court-or-
dered warrants of eviction, is a valu-
able measure recently implemented.
Before that, caseworkers would only
assist when a tenant received a 72-
hour notice of eviction.
And with a concerted effort, HRA
could allocate the available resources
to needy tenants and prevent their
evictions. Protective Services for
Adults is a program designed to save
elderly or handicapped tenants on
the brink of eviction. It was im-
plemented by HRA after the killing
of Eleanor Bumpurs in 1984 during
the course of a Bronx eviction. Al-
ready the program has prevented the
vast majority of pending eviction
cases referred by marshals, Housing
Authority and HPD officials using
funds available to pay rent arrears.
Ultimately, Housing Court judges
themselves are responsible for the
fate of a tenant facing eviction since
they are giye.n, in the words of Judge
Rubin, considerable "discretion" in
dealing with cases. One judge who
made a ground-breaking decision re-
cently is Judge Peter Tom. On August
26, he reversed an eviction order
against a welfare tenant, citing the
"grave injustice" and hardship evic-
tion would cause. He noted the ten-
ant could't be blamed for long
bureaucratic delays at social services
and ordered the landlord to accept
late rent payment in lieu of eviction.
The Coalition for a Moratorium on
Evictions is calling for LQajor reforms
of Housing Court and the HRA as well
as legislative action for rent subsidies
to low income households, raising
welfare allowances and strengthen-
ing of rent regulations. In the mean-
while, the Coalition is encouraging
tenant resistance to evictions by es-
tablishing neighborhood "eviction
watches." A tactic borrowed from the
militant tenant movement of the De-
pression era, anti-eviction actions
may be making the headlines more
and more as desperate New Yorkers,
pushed to the brink of homeless ness
make one last stand.D
Brent Sharman is a member of the
City Wide Task Force on Housing
Court.
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CITY VIEWS
Eleanor 8urnpurs
and the Spirit olthe Rose
BY PEGGY DYE MOBERG
BEFORE WINTER CHILLED THE
city, I walked along the Bronx avenue
that rolls past Eleanor Bumpurs'
home on the night of October 29. I
was on a memorial vigil with the
Eleanor Bumpurs Committee for Jus-
tice. You remember Bumpurs: On the
29th, two years ago, six policemen
went with a shotgun to evict the 66-
year-old grandmother for four
months back rent and they killed her.
No one went to jail, although at press
time in mid-November, an appeal was
pending in State Appellate Court in
Albany.
Bumpurs' home is the publicly-
owned Sedgwick Housing. The to-
wers stand like missile silos above
the barrens of the Cross Bronx and
Major Deegan Expressways. One man
on the vigil stared at the trucks speed-
ing below us. He said, "My relatives
used to live in this neighborhood."
To build the highways Robert Moses
evicted a thousand families on one
mile alone in nearby Tremont. Some
of the residents had earlier been run
out of lower Manhattan by the con-
struction of the Manhattan and Wil-
liamsburg Bridges. "Eleanor Bum-
purs came in a long line of evictions,"
said the man.
Suddenly, a sign by Bumpurs'
building caught my eye. In a vegetable
patch, above the cabbages, the sign
said: "Garden of Eden. Keep Off the
Grass." The trees nearby flashed gold
leaves and underfoot the winter grass
spread soft and brown. Yes, it was
Paradise in the Bronx, and I had to
smile in spite of the vigil. Then the
old question about paradise lost
whistled in the wind: How did killing
find its way here? And where, the
hope?
I found the answer and a story in
Manhattan's lower reaches, in the
mayor's records. Filed were a report
by Police Commissioner Benjamin
Ward, on November 16, 1984, to
Mayor Koch; a memo from the city
corporation counsel, November 20,
1984, with a letter attached from Dr.
Robert John-the psychiatrist who
interviewed Bumpurs before her
death; and the main report on Eleanor
Bumpurs' called "The Eleanor Bum-
purs Case," November 19, 1984, by
Victor Botnick, then-Deputy Health
Services Administrator and Special
Assistant to the Mayor.
Two things struck me. First, Bum-
purs lived her last four months in the
hands of the government. The city
played landlord, money supplier, so-
cial worker, mental doctor, police and
executioner. Second, the government
began to close its paw over Bumpurs
three days after she stopped paying
rent to her landlord, the New York
City Housing Authority (NYCHA).
Here are items in the Botnick report:
"7/84-Eleanor Bumpurs' rent
paying record is generally good with
the exception of April, 1984, when
she paid her rent on the 23rd of the
month. In July of 1984, she stopped
paying rent.
7/3 - Eleanor Bumpurs is served
a 14-day notice.
7/18/84 - Eleanor Bumpurs is
served with a Personal Demand for
rent.
7/24/84 - NYCHA mails Petition
and Notice of Petition to City Mars-
haL"
Now, sending the City Marshal after
Bumpurs in less than a month puz-
zles me because Bumpurs had paid
her rent on time for the three previous
years. She got no grace. Her rent
didn't amount to a C-note either. She
paid $53 plus utilities and intercom
which raised the total to $96.85. Bum-
purs' rent wasn't even new income
for the government. It was welfare
money-recyled cash-from the
Human Resources Administration
(HRA) that the woman was supposed
to pass over to the Housing Authority.
Paradoxically, though, while Bum-
purs got no time, the government took
plenty in seeking help for her. When
the woman stopped feeding the
ninety-six bucks from one bureauc-
racy to another, the Housing Author-
ity waited three months - until Oc-
tober 10 - to telephone HRA and say
that Bumpurs was being evicted.
HRA, in response, didn't pay the rent,
although funds are specifically set
aside for such situations. Botnick's re-
port cites the laws.
HRA also dallied in calling in a
psychiatrist until four days before the
eviction. The rationale for a shrink
was Bumpurs' reportedly denying to
HRA caseworkers that she owed rent,
plus her allegedly fly-infested and
dung-filled bathroom and her mutter-
ings that President Reagan was to
blame.
Dr. Robert John spent a fast two
hours on the case including travel,
interview, and diagnosis. He wrote,
in fact, in his letter of November 15,
1984 to Mayor Ed Koch: 'Mer we left
her apartment, I sat on a bench out-
side the building and wrote my report
immediately, although it was not a
very safe neighborhood. It was now
getting on for 5 PM." The doc was in
such a hurry to write how "staying
the eviction, even if that were possi-
ble, would not be recommended by
me," that he scribbled in what he
thought was a hazardous place in
winter's 5 o'clock darkness. At the
same time, "missing from the case re-
cord was a service plan for helping
Eleanor Bumpurs after the eviction,"
said the Botnick report. "Retrospec-
, tively, [HRA] staff reported they in-
": tended to have Eleanor Bumpurs hos-
pitalized at the point of eviction,"
Botnick wrote, since Dr. John re-
ported Bumpurs was "psychotic,
know reality from non-real-
ityJShe has delusions and hallucina-
tiotls, :md her judgement is impaired.
is ..unable to manage her affairs
Pl'QPerfy." But HRA had no hospital
chosen,., no :plan for treatment, no
plan to have a doctor present at the
eViction or other kind of support. The
attention was on getting her out of
the apartment. Eviction was the goal.
Now, on another tack, implicitly
justifying the eviction and killing
were stories from the police to the
press about how Bumpurs weighed
300 pounds and had a knife. So let's
look at what the government finally
wrote about Bumpurs' violence after
she was safely under. The Botnick re-
port' mentions she often "answered
the door holding a large knife." Man-
agers saw it. The psychiatrist wrote
in his report that he saw "the kitchen
knife on the windowsill between us."
But no one said they fled, got
scared, or even worried. They noted
that Bumpurs had the knife and they
stayed with her talking. The way I see
it, this big old lady had a thorn, like
a big old rose bush in that Garden of
Eden-she had protection in a rough fifth man directing as sergeant while
society. the sixth covered the door. And they
. ' Bumpurs kept the kitchen knife ' killed her. Oh, their report said they'd
near at hand when she opened her been afraid she might be boiling lye
door. You never know, my grand- to throw on them and so they needed
mother used to say, whether these a shotgun. But a shotgun doesn't de-
people mean to be Christians or to fend against lye. And no lye was re-
kill you or both, so 'you be ready. My ported found. The shotgun didn't
grandmother kept a tomahawk next leave the triggerman Sullivan any
to her chewing tobacco on her bureau choice about killing her. A shotgun
by the kitchen door in Chicago. And works like a little bomb. It explodes
yet"against a shotgun at close range, pellets over a wide target area. It liter-
wl,ial is this thorn, this kitchen knife? ally "blasts" - not a clean shot - but
And the way the shotgun came, Oc- blasts. At close range, the first blast
tober 29, 1984, was described in took the woman's hand off and the
Pplice Commissioner Ward's report: second killed her. The police brought
Six trained police of the her out naked.
Emergency Service Unit (EMS) put In light of all this, the mayor's man,
on bulletproof vests and gas masks, Botnick, made eleven recommenda-
opened the lower lock on Bumpurs' tions, mostly for review committees
door with a passkey and entered com- and more eviction reporting steps.
mando style: the first cop carrying a But he also threw in how future ten-
six-foot restraining T bar; the next two ants on the verge of eviction deserved
each carrying a 2' x 3' plexiglass added HRA services such as "finan-
shield; the fourth man, a shotgun; the cial or psychosocial counseling. "
Plus a caseworker or a psychiatrist
should be at the eviction if the city's
tenant had seen a shrink before. Also,
the city's fees to psychiatrists needed
to be raised, and private consultants
should be brought in to provide "sys-
tem wide protocols".
Police Commissioner Ward added
in his report that the role of the police
is to "preserve the peace in the course
of the eviction, not to carry out the
eviction itself." Then, over Bumpurs'
black body, this black official de-
scribed how his peacekeepers, in "re-
sponse to the death of Mrs. Bumpers,
have commenced a re-examination of
various types of non-lethal alterna-
tives such as mace, tear gas, nets, re-
straining bars, shields, and fire extin-
guishers" to subdue people. Ward
said that the police were even looking
at "other types of chemical agents
and restraining devices including
'Remote Mobile Investigators' " - i.e. ,
robots. Ward said that the police were
going to use "hostage negotiation pro-
cedures" in the future in situations
like Bumpurs. '
These people are getting prepared,
I'm reading, on how to handle us.
And I do mean you and me. Because
at the rate of rents rising and the rate
of jobs falling, we are going to find
the golden gap, some of us, that Bum-
purs found - the gap between us and
the gold. More landlords will be cal-
ling in the marshals and the "peace
officers" - those not suspended for
extorting, drug deals or robbery. In
the last five years, every day, evictions
have proceeded at a rate of two or
three families an hour around the
clock. That's 25-30,000 a year, accord-
ing to the Coalition for a Moratorium
on Residential Evictions, a commun-
ity coalition.
No one is talking about minimizing
evictions, about making sure a tenant
gets a lawyer or about m,aking homes
for people. This government, in its
"reforms" after Bumpurs, is talking
about throwing people out in a less
noisy way, sort of like changing the
electric chair to a needle injection.
I remember the MOVE case in
Philadelphia. There, the government
used the equivalent of a neighbor-
hood shotgun to remove a household.
Bombing is just a shotgun on a bigger
scale. And in Philadelphia, as in New
York with Bumpurs, the reasons
given were that the group was "dis-
turbed" and "dirty." Bumpers and
MOVE alike had bad toilet hygiene,
flies, and muttered ugly words. And
the police, in both cases, were turned
loose on the humans. Unleashed were
police EDP teams - the special task
forces which are more akin to search
and destroy missions than to patrol
cops. The "problem" residents of the
market economy were removed.
Guided by the black mayor of
Philadelphia, the armed police of the
state, blew up a neighborhood. That's
the solution to problems of people
who don't fit into the "free-market"
system. It's just war on a smaller scale
than Vietnam, Libya and Central
America. The market's solution to
"dirty" old ladies and "lazy" blacks
is to blow the opposition up.
And what chance has a thorn like
Bumpurs' got against the shotgun sys-
tem?
As I think back to that night by the
highways and the garden, I hear the
wind whistle the answer: Spirit. Yes,
I'm straight. This old dead grand-
mother Bumpurs warmed me up to
see the workaday violence in our sys-
tem of rule. In the battle against evic-
tions, as the homeless rest in our
doorways next to the holiday wreaths
and tinsel, Bumpurs has given us a
chance to see beyond housing, wel-
fare, landlords and legalities. Bum-
purs has exposed that it is life or the ,
system that is our choice. It is life
and the right to be - to be an old 1:0se
bush of a human, maybe like her, with
arthritis and diabetes and too much
fat and a mind that wanders and ~ o d
knows what else can happen to a
human who's been kicking around
the planet for enough years. But it is
life - the higher spirit that keeps ,
planting the gardens of Eden in the
Bronx. We can make the world over
with the Spirit. It is life or barbarism.
Cheers to the SpiritlD
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FEATURE
The Federal Housing
A . Pays 00-
WIth EVIctions

The FHNs mortgage insurance prog-
ram spurred banks to pump money
T
he line between social goals and private
profit blurs at the Federal Housing
Administration. Now the government
agency is evicting low income tenants to
sweeten the sales price of houses it owns.
BY DOUG TURETSKY
C
armen Quinones is worried.
She believes it's just a matter of
time before she faces eviction
from her home at 326 Crescent Street
in Brooklyn's East New York.
Quinones' landlord defaulted on a
Federal Housing Administration-in-
sured mortgage and in order for the
mortgage holder to collect, the gov-
ernment wants the tenants out.
Quinones lives in a five-room apart-
ment in the two-family house with
her three children and a granddaugh-
ter. Quinones' neighbor, Martha
Ortiz, has already received an evic-
tion notice. Both women's families
live on public assistance. "We look
around for other apartments, but the
rents are just sky-high," explains '
Quinones. "We're always on edge just
waiting."
Despite their meager incomes, the
women have been keeping up the
building themselves. Besides aban-
doning the mortgage, the landlord
left a $4,000 bill to Brooklyn Union
Gas, w.hich the women have been pay-
ing off. Quinones even bought her
own refrigerator when she moved in
two and a half years ago. But if the
foreclosure goes through and the
FHA takes title to the house, the
women won't be repaid for the money
they've put into it. All they're guaran-
teed is an eviction.
This story is not unusual. In the
last few years Brooklyn Legal Ser-
vices lawyers Martha Copleman and
Deborah Dowling have handled some
20 similar cases. In each case the
FHA, which is an agency of the fed-
eral Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HOD), refused
to accept title to the house unless it
was unoccupied. This "conveyance"
of the title is a prerequisite for the
FHA to payoff an insured mortgage.
No federal regulations say these small
buildings have to be empty, but in
recent years legal services lawyers say
a clear pattern has emerged. Charles
Pinero, chief of Property Disposition
in HOD's New York Regional Office,
admits that just 8-10 percent of these
small homes are conveyed with ten-
ants. This policy hits the poor har-
dest. Declares Linda Cohen of the
Community Service Society, "Instead
of being a source of low income hous-
ing, HOD is becoming a source of
eviction."
Money Bags
The Federal , Housing Administra-
tion was created in 1934, in the midst
of the Depression, ' as part of the Na-
tional Housing Act. The Congres-
sional Act .established the "goal of a
back into the housing industry since
the government's mortgage insurance
took the risk out of home loans.
The FHA single-family home insur-
ance program (which covers one-to-
four family homes) is one of the most
popular federal housing programs.
Ostensibly, it helps families who
wouldn't otherwise qualify for
mortgages get loans and become
homeowners. But critics charge the
real impetus behind the program is
not to house families but to support
the mortgage and home construction
industries.
The FHA enables the government
to subsidize private ownership of
housing without draining public cof-
fers. Much like points paid on a bank
mortgage, the FHA earns a "pre-
mium" - paid by the mortgagor - on
each loan it insures. If a homeowner
defualts the government takes title to
the house, pays the remainder on the
mortgage and rents or sells the prop-
erty to replenish the loan pool.
Tales of government inability to run
a business profitably are undermined
by the history of the FHA. "I believe
it's the only component in the govern-
ment that makes money," says Pinero.
In 1985 the FHA netted $9.4 million;
in 1984, a whopping $792.3 million.
Profits are invested, primarily in
Treasury notes, according to Bill Gla-
vin, a HOD spokesperson.
For tenants like Carmen Quinones
in FHA-insured houses whose own-
ers have defaulted on the mortgage,
such tales of profits have a hollow
ring. Her family faces eviction be-
cause the FHA believes unoccupied
properties are more valuable.
Changing Times
Martha Copleman says the Federal
Housing Aqministration's attitude to-
wards occupied conveyance began to
change in 1981, when the Reagan Ad-
ministration came into office. Leah
Margulies, a lawyer with Queens
Legal Services, who is defending two
clients threatened with an FHA evic-
tion in Jamaica, Queens, puts it
bluntly: "This is an economic thing.
The FHA is not mandated to care for
people, they deal with property."
For several years, legal services
lawyers have argued in court that the
FHA has not been following its own
regulations regarding occupied con-
veyance. "When we met with some
of these people [HODIFHA officials]
it was clear they never read the regu-
Carmen Quinones, Marta Ortiz and families:
A tenant's right to remain often
hinges on HUD's assessment of a
property's condition made by a realty
specialist, according to Pinero. But
many critics believe the inspection
process is rigged. "They're using the
inspection process to declare every-
thing uninhabitable," says Margulies.
Loretta Wilson, one of Margulies'
clients at 100-28 167th Street in
Jamaica says that immediately after
filing a request to remain in her apart-
ment an inspector was sent over and
the property d e c l a r e ~ uninhabitable.
Faced with eviction by the FHA, the next step for them may be home'essness.
lations," charges Copleman. In 1984,
Copleman and Dowling along with
lawyers from Community Action for
Legal Se .. vices and the Bedford-
Stuyvesant Community Legal Ser-
vices Corporation filed a class action
suit against HUD. The suit charged
HOD with undertaking an illegal and
arbitrary policy requiring evictions of
tenants in small buildings where the
owners had defaulted on their FHA-
insured mortgage. A key complaint
cited by the lawyers was the refusal
of HUD to reconsider their eviction
orders, despite regulations authoriz-
ing such reviews.
Once in appeals court, HOD agreed
to "informal conferences" with ten-
ants requesting the right to stay before
rendering a final decision. But these
conferences became mere formality.
"On reconsideration they've denied
everybody," declares Copleman.
"As far is HUD is concerned, they
didn't want anyone here," complains
Wilson.
Copleman charges that the inspec-
tion report on 542 Logan Street in
East New York, where several of her
clients lived, listed only the fact that
the tenants were on welfare as a
reason for requiring the building to
be conveyed to HOD vacant. Pinero
vigorously denies this claim. Cople-
man also argues that the costs of fix-
ing-up properties are purposely over-
estimated by HOD. According to HUD
regulations, an apartment can be con-
veyed occupied if needed repairs
don't exceed 5 percent of a building'S
rehabilitated value. Copleman and
Dowling have called in outside ar-
chitects who have disputed HOD's
cost assessment, but to no avail.
Lawyers like Copleman, Dowling
and Margulies use the courts and ad-
ministrative review to stave off evic-
tion of their clients for as long as pos-
sible. But if a dwelling is in foreclo-
sure, a process that can take a year or
more, there's no landlord, no one re-
sponsible for repairs. During this
legal limbo a small building will
often suffer deterioration, paving the
way for HOD to declare a property
uninhabitable. "Litigation is not the
best way to solve these problems,"
admits Copleman.
The Bottom Line
The Department of Housing and
Urban Development's primary con-
cern with the conveyance of FHA-in-
sured homes is the bottom line. "Oc-
cupied properties are less valuable
and more difficult to market," says
Jacqueline Campbell, director of
HUD's Single Family Property Dis-
position Division based in
Washington, D.C. Such considera-
tions have led Campbell's department
to propose new regulations that will
make occupied conveyance to HOD
nearly impossible. Says Gloria Jor-
dan, director of the technical unit of
the Bronx Neighborhood Stabiliza-
tion Program, "I've got wind from
HUD that they're no longer in the wel-
fare business."
One of the only ways HOD will ac-
cept tenanted buildings under the
proposed regulations would be if a
tenant had a "temporary" illness or
injury. Under these conditions a ten-
ant could remain for up to three
months.
Easing the sale of foreclosed build-
ings is essential to the FHA insurance
program, say HUD officials. "We have
to recapture as much as possible of
the funds paid out on foreclosures,"
explains Pinero. Campbell adds that
"HUD is not equipped to be a land-
lord," and that too many tenants who
have been allowed to remain in the
buildings have failed to keep up their
rent payments.
But attorney Leah Margulies likens
the auctioning of these small build-
ings to the sale of public land. Many
critics charge that HOD's policies vio-
late Congressional housing legisla-
tion by contributing to the displace-
ment of low income families. In New
York City, where affordable housing
is at a premium, the small buildings
being sold-off by HOD could well be
used to ease the burden on low and
"Instead of being a source oflow income housing, Hun is becom-
ing a source of evictions."
moderate income families.
The average value of FHA-insured
small buildings in Brooklyn and
Queens is $51,000, Staten Island
$56,000 and in the Bronx $65,000
(1985 figures). Copleman, Dowling
and others would like to see HUD re-
tain these buildings as a source of
low-rent housing or turn them over
to tenant ownership. Linda Cohen of
the Community Service Society's
Ownership Transfer Program has
tried to work with HUD and the
mortgagors of foreclosed buildings to
negotiate tenant purchases. "The
banks who hold FHA mortgages
could get full value from HUD upon
conveyance," says Cohen. "But they
should be giving tenants first option
to buy at the mortgage price remain-
der or at a discount."
According to Jacqueline Campbell,
HUD has experimented with trying
to sell foreclosed buildings to ten-
ants. "Some years ago we gave tenants
the right of first refusal, but it wasn't
a good experience for us. In most situ-
ations they didn't have the werewit-
hal to purchase the property." The net
result, says Campbell, was a loss of
income for FHA. Likewise, Pinero
discounts turning the buildings over
to public housing authorities. "Why
should we give it to the housing au-
thority? They're marketable, so we
sell them."
Pinero admits that sometimes the
FHA takes a loss on the properties it
sells. This especially angers Cop le-
man. "Their whole rationale is that
they say they are not in the business
of being a landlord. They want to re-
plenish their FHA loan pool. In fact ,
if they're taking losses on the prop-
erty and making people homeless,
they're not accomplishing what
they're supposed to." Renee Steinha-
gen, a policy analyst for the Commu-
nity Service Society, says such ac-
tions underscore the fact that the
FHA does not operate in order to
house people. No records are kept by
HUD of how many tenants request oc-
cupied conveyance of their homes.
Nor are any records kept of how many
tenants are evicted as the result of
conveyance of these buildings. And
the FHA, an arm of the federal agency
charged with ensuring adequate
housing for all families , makes no pro-
visions for those it evicts. "It's a bus-
iness," says Pinero. "It's just like any
private business."
With no records kept, it's virtually
impossible to know how many ten-
ants are evicted by the FHA each year.
In 1984, 308 FHA-insured mortgages
went into default in the city. Since
Pinero estimates that just 10 percent
of these properties are conveyed to
HUD occupie9, it can be concluded
that tenants in about 270 one-to-four
family buildings were evicted in 1984
alone. (Default statistics for 1985 are
not available yet, but Dan Panarella,
special assistant to HUD's regional
adminstrator, estimates that 12 per-
cent of FHA-insured mortgages go
into default yearly.)
To Martha Copleman, the Federal
Housing Administration's policies
are part of HUD's disregard for low-in-
Brooklyn Legal Service. lawyer Martha Copleman:
She be'ieves Federal Housing Administration
policies show a blatant disregard lor the poor.
come tenants. "It's so clear that their
attitude is that these people are the
undeserving poor."
But HUD officials see no reason to
give low-income tenants any particu-
lar breaks. "They are certainly eligi-
ble to bid for the property," says
Campbell, dismissing the idea of
ownership transfer programs.
Brooklyn Legal Services lawyer De-
borah Dowling sums up the thrust of
the Federal Housing Administration's
eviction policies succinctly: "They're
dumping these people on the city and
state."O
TENANT LIAISON. City-wide non-profit agency seeking indi-
vidual to package low interest loan and tax abatements for limited
equity cooperatives. Person to serve as tenant liaison from appli-
cation submission to loan closing and abatement award.
Negotiate with city officials to ensure maximum benefits for
cooperatives. Work with city and in-house technical staff to deter-
mine job specifications, construction monitoring and violation
removal. Salary: High Teens. Negotiable, depending on experi-
ence. Send Resume to: Rey Reyes, UHAB, 1047 Amsterdam
Avenue, New York, New York 10025.
PLANNERS. Jersey City Planning Dept. seeks to fill several
planning positions immediately: Ass't Dir., Sr. Plnr. Planning de-
gree required or relevant experience. Send resume to: Urban
Research & Design, 26 Journal Square, 16th Floor, Jersey City,
N.J. 07306.
COMMUNITY WORKER-TENANT ORGANIZER. Experienced,
references. 5 hours daily, 25 hours a week. Call on residents
with information about Housing Rights, Unemployment, Medi-
care, Welfare, Social Security, Food Stamps, Court Experience,
arrange tenant meetings, form tenant and block associations.
Midtown Manhattan Eastside. Call Dwight Roesch 751-8149
mornings before 11. Salary: $250.00.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. Lower Easr Side housing group
seeks a community organizer. Requirements: BA plus 1 yr. ex-
perience in tenant/community organizing necessary. High School
degree plus 2 yrs. experience. Some typing, some night meet-
ings. Must be bilingual, Spanish/English. Lower East Side resi-
dent preferred. Responsibilities: Organize building and block
associations to deal with neighborhood preservation, repairs,
displacement, and neighborhood development. Salary $13,000-
14,500 plus excellent fringe benefits. Send your resume to:
Cooper Square Committee, 61 East 4th Street, New York, NY
10003.
\
WORKSHOP
DIRECTOR. Neighborhood Housing Services of Kensington-
Windsor Terrace. To manage Neighborhood Non Profit 1-4 family
housing rehab program in Brooklyn. Work with voluntary Board
of Directors, staff supervision. Experience in community organiz-
ing, program planning and budgeting. $24-$29,000 commensu-
rate with experience. Resume by December 1,1986 to Search
Committee, Neighborhood Housing Services of KWT, 127 Be-
verly Road, Brooklyn, New York 11218.
STAFF ATTORNEY. The Community Law Offices (Volunteer Di-
vision) of the Legal Aid Society is seeking to hire a committed
and energetiC staff attorney for its Housing Development Unit.
The HDU represents tenant groups in upper Manhattan north of
96th Street from River to River. Its staff currently consists of four
attorneys, five housing specialists and one tenant organizer. Re-
sponsibilities include civil court litigation (primarily 7 A proceed-
ings, HP actions and defense of non-payment proceedings),
Rent Strike negotiations, and assistance to tenant managed and
7 A managed buildings. Duties also include supervision of staff
paralegals and pro bono attorneys engaged in all of the foregoing
activities. Night meetings required. Spanish helpful. 2 + years
legal experience preferred. Starting salary is negotiable, based
on experience, benefits are per Association of Legal Aid Attor-
neys union contract. Send resume to: Housing Development
Unit, Community Law Offices, 230 East 106th Street, New York,
New York 10029.NO PHONE CALLS.
STAFF ATTORNEY. The Community Law Offices (Volunteer Di-
vision) of the Legal Aid Society is seeking to hire a committed
and energetic staff attorney for its General Litigation Unit. The
office represents low-income persons in the upper Manhattan
neighborhoods of Harlem, East Harlem, Washington Heights and
Inwood. Responsibilities include client representation in Housing
Court, administrative proceedings, matrimonial matters, and
major responsibility for representation of elderly clients. Duties
also include supervision of staff paralegals and pro bono attor-
neys engaged in all of the foregoing activities. Spanish helpful.
Experience in government benefits, landlord & tenant, or working
with the elderly preferred. Starting salary is negotiable, based
on experience, benefits are per Association of Legal Aid Attor-
neys union contract. Send Resume to : Pierre-Gerard Nau, Office
Manager, Community Law Offices, 230 East 106th Street, New
York, New York 10029. NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE.
Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation
Required by 39 U.S. C. 3685
Title of Publi cation: City Limits . Publication No. : 498890. Date of Filing:9/
23/86. Frequency of Issue: Monthly. except bimonthly in June/July, August/
Sept. No. of issues published monthly: 10. Annual subscription price: $15
indi vidual , $35 institution. Complete mailing address of known office of
publi cation: 424 West 33 St., NY, NY 10001. Managing editor:N/A. Owner:
Cit y Limits Community Information Service, Inc. Editor: Annette Fuentes,
424 W. 33 St., NY, NY 10001. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other
security holders owning 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds.
mortgages or other securities: none. The purpose, function and nonprofit
status of thi s orga;nization and the exempt status for federal income tax
purposes (1) has not changed during preceeding 12 months. Extent and
nat ure of circul ation. Total no. of copies: 5,000 (5 ,000 actual no. closest
to fi ling date); Paid and/or requested circulation: 2,200 (2 ,200) ; Mail sub-
scri ption: 1, 800 (1, 800) ; Total paid and/or requested circulation: 4 ,000
(4, 000); Free di stribution by mail , carrier or other means, samples, com-
plimentar y, and qther free copies: 600 (800); Total distribution: 4,600
(4, 800) . Copies not distributed: 400 (200); Return from news agents : 0 (0) ;
Total : 5. 000 (5,OOP). I certify that the statements made by me above are
correct and compl ete, Annette Fuentes, editor.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER/HOUSING SPECIALIST. Non-profit
neighborhood development corporation in the northeast Bronx
seeks an energetic individual to: organize and coordinate tenant
associations, provide information and technical assistance to
both individual tenants and tenant associations, provide assist-
ance to landlords on availability of loan programs. organize and
work with neighborhood civic associations, develop and imple-
ment creative neighborhood preservation and promotion pro-
jects. REQUIREMENTS: Self-motivated. independent worker
who is detail oriented and good with people. possesses strong
writing and organizing skills. Knowledge of New York City housing
code, rent regulations and loan programs helpful. Degree in
planning or related field preferred. Some evening work is re-
quired. EOE. SALARY: Commensurate with experience. For
more information and to apply for this pOSition, write to NIDC,
2511 Barker Avenue, New York, N.V. 100467.
CONSTRUCTION SPECIALIST MANAGEMENT. Neighbor-
hood Housing Services of Williamsbridge Olinville Wakefield. a
non-profit community improvement program seeks qualified indi-
vidual with strong background in construction/rehab contracting
and mangement. Must be able to prepare accurate work specifi-
cations and cost estimates, explain construction process to
homeowners and assist director in administering and marketing
the program. Knowledge of New York City Building and Housing
Codes is desirable. Starting Salary: $21,500, depending upon
qualifications. Send resume to: Neighborhood Housing Services
of WOW, 3550 White Plains Road, Bronx, New York 10467. Atten-
tion Leonard Robbins, Director.
COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. The West Side Single Room Occu-
pancy (SRO) Law Project educates SRO tenants regarding their
rights, offers organizing assistance to SRO tenants groups, and
provides legal services, including representation in court. RE-
SPONSIBILITIES: Under the supervision of the Project Director/
Senior Attorney, and the Community Organizing Supervisor,
Community Organizer(s) will: Assist in establishing an overall
strategy for the general organizing effort. Participate directly in
the organizing of SRO tenant groups and work with groups
throughout the city concerned with SRO issues. Act as a
paralegal, as required. including serving legal papers, assisting
the staff attorneys in representing tenants in court, etc. Fulfill
administrative responsibilities, as required, including surveying
conditions in various SRO's, making reports on organizing efforts
and their results, etc. Qualifications: At least three years experi-
ence in the housing field. tenant organizing or othe community
work. Skills in advocating on behalf of clients. negotiating
strategies, and working with diverse cooperating groups and
agencies. Knowledge of Spanish is helpful. Salary: $20,000.
Starting Date: Immediately. Send resume to: Saralee Evans,
Goodard-Riverside Community Center, 647 Columbus Avenue,
New York,New York 10025. An EOE.
DIRECTOR FIELD OPERATIONS. Neighborhood Housing Ser-
vices of New York City, Inc. : To provide staff training, program
monitoring, planning assistance to 5 neighborhood based 1-4
family housing rehab programs; experienced in housing rehab,
working with community organizations. BA, writing skills. $24-
30,000 commensurate with experience. Resume by December
15, 1986 to: Executive Director Neighborhood Housing Services
of NYC, Inc., 121 West 27th Street, 4th Floor New York, NY 10001.

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