Deconstruction Work

a
s we report in our cover story, shoddy construction and poor design of New York City
Housing Partnership townhouses has prompted the city's most powelful nonprofit
builder to accept their first-ever set of construction and design standards.
The Partnership, by any standard, has been enormously successful in enlivening dead
zones in inner-city neighborhoods. But their current troubles have exposed the limitations of
solutions driven by the private sector. For years, conservatives have pointed to the
Partnership as proof that for-profit, private-market development is the key to massive neigh-
borhood revitalization.
Most didn't point out that none of the 15,000 new homes built in
New York since the early 1980s would exist without lots of public
money and land. And they never really bothered to ask the homeown-
ers what they thought of their new digs.
EDITORIAL
To the buyers, the price tag of their houses--$I50,OOO to
$250,OOO-seemed huge, even with subsidies of up to $60,000 per
unit. To the builders, these numbers were barely enough to break a
profit. They had to cut costs, and the Partnership gave them the latitude to use cheaply con-
structed modular houses, flawed multiple sewer connections and chintzy finishing materials.
It's a relief to hear the city is imposing stricter guidelines on the process. It's a shame
they are not using the occasion to make sure the benefits of the upgrade go to the working-
poor and lower-middle class homebuyers. Any adjustments to the average stripped-down
Partnership house are likely to raise the price of future homes by thousands of dollars per
unit. It's not likely that the city will suddenly discover millions in federal subsidies to help
offset new costs. No developer we've encountered would cut into profits to fulfill a govern-
ment mandate. So the improvements will be tacked onto the price offuture houses.
Which means better buildings will go to better-off buyers.
City officials are also saying they plan to look into the constructing more high-rises. It's
not a bad idea. Putting up a tiny two-family house in an urban landscape like Central
Harlem is a wastefulluxury--it both limits the number of units in communities that are in
desperate need of affordable housing and ignores the social and environmental advantages
of higher density. But without increased city money, those apartments will be even more
expensive to build than the best townhouses.
The South Bronx townhouse, an innovation that launched a score of adoring New York
Times stories, now presents the city with an ugly choice: Continue to build cracker-box hous-
ing for a wide range of incomes, or build caviar homes for those who can pay the freight.
If the administration is serious about building a better affOidable house, they will try
something really innovative-like prying open their wallets and paying for it.
* * *
Andrew White has left the building.
For seven years, Andrew's name has been on our masthead---for the last five his title sim-
ply has been Editor.
But anyone who has been around City Limjts knows the title falls short of describing the
sum of his varied parts. And those many talents have guided a wide range of improvements
and innovations in the magazine over the years.
Perhaps the best compliment we can give Andrew is simply to note our new masthead. To
fill his Reeboks, we're splitting his job into three parts-Kim Nauer is moving into the
Publisher's Suite and we are putting our complimentary abilities together as Editors.
~ - &Yrf
Glenn Thrush Carl Vogel
City Limits relies on the generous support of its readers and advertisers, as well as the following funders: The Robert Sterling Clark
Foundation, The Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, The Joyce Mertz-
Gilmore Foundation, The Scherman Foundation, The North Star Fund, J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated, The Booth Ferris Foundation,
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The New York Foundation, The Taconic Foundation, M& T Bank, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan Bank.
-
lity Limits
Volume XXIII Number 4
City Limits is published ten times per year, monthly except
bi-monthly issues in July/ August and September/October,
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Editors: Glenn Thrush, Carl Vogel
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CITY LIMITS
,
APRIL 1998
FEATURES
Woe Houses
Leaky roofs and shoddy construction have created huge headaches for
New York City Housing Partnership homeowners in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Now they' ve started a revolt, and the city may be shopping around for new
housing partners. By Laura Seigle and Glenn Thrush
Fort Jiggetts, The Bronx
What turns lawyers into paper pushers and landlords into tenant caseworkers?
It's liggett , the lO-year-old state rent subsidy that keeps 26,000 poor tenants off
city streets each year-and the Bronx Housing Court in business. By SashaAbramsky
One-Shot Down in Flames
The city's Human Resources Administration safety net for the working poor
is a one-time, low-cost loan for tenants in a pinch. But without enough HRA staff
to handle the demand, there's no guarantee it'll be there when tenants need it.
By Kathleen McGowan
CENTER FOR AN URBAN FUTURE
Jobs, Economy-Sized: A Call for Real Employment
For decades, the city has had no plan for long-term job growth other than
a vague hope that big business would carry the day. The Center for an Urban
Future presents a practical job creation strategy.
PROFILE
Writers Bloc
An innovative group helps women immigrants fmd a powerful voice through fiction
and poetry. By Idra Rosenberg
PIPELINE
Green Envy
Flush with $1.75 billion to spend on the environment, Albany politicians
promised to protect and expand New York's resources. So why has New
York City seen little of the money? By Kemba Johnson
COMMENTARY
131 Review
They Were Kings By Glenn Thrush
Cityview 132
Rent Controls on the Edge By Timothy L Collins
Spare Change 138
From Philanthropy's Files By Kim Nauer
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial 2 Ammo 33
Letters 4 Job Ads 35
Briefs 5
Professional
Vital Stats 30 Directory 3&

Day Tncdment DmnM
LETTERS ~
This is being written in response to your
recent cover story, 'The Most Dangerous
Experiment" (February 1998).
grams or residential placements, which can
cost between $50,000 and $100,000 a year
per patient." Day treatment should not be
combined with residential placement. Day
treatment is one of the most inexpensive
mental health service models. Day treat-
ment agencies receive Medicaid reim-
bursement of $47 for the entire six-hour
and twenty-minute day. During each day,
the child may receive one or more clinical
services such as psychotherapy, psycholog-
ical testing, art therapy, music therapy,
speech therapy, occupational therapy, psy-
chiatric observation, mediation supervi-
sion, social work services or special educa-
tion. The social worker serves as the liaison
between the agency and the family, and
makes home visits as required. On a ten-
month basis, Medicaid reimburses an
OMH-licensed day treatment agency
$8,460, not the $50,000 to $100,000 you
referred to in your article.
M
,
The issues of managed care as they
relate to seriously disturbed children pre-
sent numerous problems. The severely dis-
turbed child requires daily and consistent
comprehensive clinical and special educa-
tion services that address his serious psy-
chiatric disability. New York State Office of
Mental Health-licensed day treatment cen-
ters provide the comprehensive services
seriously disturbed children require.
Further, these agencies provide clinical ser-
vices to families, including home visitation
where required. Forty years of experience
has demonstrated that after two to six years
in a day treatment agency, approximately
95 percent of children are able to go to pub-
lic schools in their communities. There are
no shortcuts in addressing the needs of
mentally ill children.
A major point in your article requires
correction. You state, 'The most expensive
services are intensive day treatment pro-
In contrast to day treatment, Medicaid
reimburses a clinic $60 for a 30-minute
visit. The cost of residential and/or psychi-
atric inpatient care is high. Day treatment
~ F
For 20Years
We've Been There
ForYou.
of
NEW YORK
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Your
Neighborhood
Housing
Insurance
Specialist
R&F OF NEW YORK, INC. has a special
department obtaining and servicing insurance for
tenants, low-income co-ops and not-for-profit
community groups. We have developed competitive
insurance programs based on a careful evaluation
of the special needs of our customers. We have
been a leader from the start and are dedicated to
the people of New York City.
For Information call:
Ingrid Kaminski, Executive Vice President
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One Wall Street Court
New York, NY 10005-3302
212 269-8080 800 635-6002 212 269-8112 (fax)
was created in order to keep children out of
psychiatric hospitals and at home with their
families.
The managed care model is being devel-
oped to save money and provide cost effec-
tive treatment. Day treatment must not be
sacrificed at the altar of such an experiment.
Years of follow-up studies have shown that
children who received services in day treat-
ment agencies have stayed in the communi-
ty and become integrated and productive
citizens. Day treatment is a cost effective
bargain!
Ethel S. ~ m e r
Executive Director
Lifeline Center for Child Development
Trashing the Administration
I am writing to request a correction in
"Garbage Wars" (January 1998) concerning
the garbage transfer station issue.
My quote saying that I did not believe
Fresh Kills would close on time was in the
context that the city administration and the
mayor were not doing the hard work that is
required to actually accomplish the task.
That work, I emphasized, included proper-
ly dealing with the existing problems of
the waste transfer stations. At no time did
I state or imply that the activity of groups
fighting to protect their neighborhoods
from this serious problem was the stum-
bling block to Fresh Kills closure. Since I
am working both for the closure of Fresh
Kills and for an environmentally sound
solid waste plan for New York City's
garbage that properly deals with and cor-
rects the problems of the waster transfer
stations, I would appreciate your correc-
tion.
The article on the transfer station prob-
lem is generally well written and covers the
issue itself fairly well . Unfortunately, the
article really did not convey accurately who
the current players really are. NYPIRG, a
key player in the anti-incineration battle, is
not in this current battle.
My local community group, Staten
Island Citizens for Clean Air, has led the
effort to close Fresh Kills. NYPIRG has
been involved in some of our efforts, and
we often work with them, but I do not think
that even they would take the full credit for
closure from us.
In my workday life, I am project direc-
tor of the New York Toxic Project of the
Consumer Policy Institute of Consumers
Union. In that role, I was involved in found-
(Continued on page 34)
CITY LIMITS
J.
Traffic
Street Smart
D
ante Cancel survived the stereotypi-
cal dangers of Bronx streets-guns,
drugs, asthma. What did in six-year-
old Dante on a brisk October after-
noon last year was a speeding car. A
driver doing 65 mph in a school zone killed him,
leaving his mother Evelyn Cancel with a $12,000
funeral bill, a pair of Dante's last sneakers and a
lifetime of sorrow. "The guy who did this is not in
jail, and I'm never going to be paroled from my
pain," she says.
Cancel is not alone in her sadness: Traffic is the
leading cause of death and injury for children age
five to 14 in the Bronx. Now, a coalition of moth-
ers, along with the nonprofit Transportation
Alternatives and the Bronx Borough President's
APRILI99B
office, has started a program unique to New York
City designed to slow traffic along streets that ele-
mentary school students use to walk to school.
"Crossing guards are great, but they're only on
certain blocks," says Transportation Alternatives'
Susan Boyle, the program's coordinator.
So Boyle is thinking beyond public education
and stop signs. With a grant from the Governor's
Traffic Safety Committee to pay her salary and
that of an engineer, Boyle and parents have
already come up with traffic proposals for six of
the 12 pilot schools. The two most visually radi-
cal: raised crosswalks that both act as speed humps
and make children more visible, and "neck-
downs," widened sidewalk comers that constrict
streets to one lane.
Although rare in this city, these solutions have
been used successfully elsewhere. In Seattle, sim-
ilar features-raised circular islands in the middle
of intersections-installed at 14 dangerous inter-
sections helped decrease accidents from 101 to 33
per year.
These solutions don't come cheap, however.
Boyle estimates a price tag of $50,000 to $100,000
per school, money she and the Borough
President's office will have to raise. But despite
the cost, the Brooklyn Borough President's office
is negotiating with Transportation Alternatives to
start a similar program there.
In the meantime, parents in the Bronx are pro-
tecting their children as best they can. Accidents
are so prevalent near where Zaida Acre's 9-year-
old son goes to school in Bedford Park that she
says another parent tacked up the only stop sign
for at least 10 blocks on Marion Street. Says
Acre, "I have seen and heard of so many acci-
dents happening that I'm concerned not just for
my kids but for my neighbors' kids."
-Kemba Johnson

B r i e ~ .......... ------........ --------------.. r
Lending
Bed-Stuy's
Credit
Union Blues
C
entral Brooklyn Federal Credit
Union's explosive growth since its
creation in 1993 has made it one of the
largest community development cred-
it unions in the country. In retrospect,
its expansion may have been too ambitious.
Juvenile Justice
Today, the federal government is running the cred-
it union, and supporters are worried how the Bed-
Stuy institution will fare until-if ever-it returns
to the hands of its 5,000-plus members.
"We all feel [the credit union] really has a great
purpose in the membership it serves. In that com-
munity, it's one of the only lending institutions,"
says Lesia Bullock, spokeswoman for the federal
National Credit Union Administration. NCUA
took the credit union into conservatorship last
November, supplanting its elected board of direc-
tors and managing its business until problems are
fixed or the doors are closed. "We have every
belief that the credit union will be returned to the
membership and stay open," Bullock says. But she
adds that it will take some time to ensure that the
instituted changes are working.
Some of those changes worry the credit
union's leadership. "[NCUA administrators] are
not equipped, prepared or trained to run a credit
T
he NYPO's aggressive lock-'em-up policy for teen lawbreakers is
swamping overloaded jllYenile jails-and costing $1.6 million this
year in extra overtime pay.
DETENTION
DEFICIT
DISORDER
The city's two youth lock-ups had an average population of 315
offenders during the past six months, a 25 percent increase over last
year. And so the city had been considering cooverting a prison barge for teen use, even though it recently buitt
two new youth jails. Now officials are waming that the system may collapse without new non-unWDmlIld workers.
The Division of JlIYenile Justice (OJJ) has slated an additional sa.6 million for overtime costs next fiscal
year. At a March City Council hearing, newly appointed DJJ Commissioner nno Hernandez, conceding the
department needed more help, said he had recently hired 43 new counselors. Under pressure from coun-
cilmembers at the hearing, DJJ spokeswoman Sarina Roffe reported that the agency plans to hire 23 more
counselors in the future. -Brad Tuttle

union," says Mark Winston Griffith, chair of the
credit union's board of directors and executive
director of the Central Brooklyn Partnership,
which sponsored the credit union. (Full disclo-
sure: Errol Louis, who along with Griffith co-
founded Central Brooklyn, left the credit union
last May and is now with City Limits' sister insti-
tute, the Center for an Urban Future.)
Under conservatorship, the feds have sold the
credit union's building, curtailed its check-cashing
service and ended Saturday hours. Although
Central Brooklyn's board had also considered
making these moves, Griffith is concerned that the
federal administrators aren't giving the member-
ship enough notice.
"There's a sentiment that NCUA does not have
an understanding of community development
credit unions," says Sarah Ludwig, executive
director of the Neighborhood Economic
Development Advocacy Project and a member of
the Central Brooklyn Financial Freedom
Campaign, an organization that sprang up to sup-
port the credit union. The group has organized the
credit union members, started a media campaign
and enlisted the support of local reps like state
Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Con-
gressman Major Owens.
NCUA has set up an advisory committee that
includes Central Brooklyn board members and
employees, but, according to Griffith, NCUA staff
don't take the committee's advice. For its part,
NCUA says the advisory board is there solely to
ensure the community is kept up to speed.
"They're not necessarily consulted and asked per-
mission," Bullock explains. "They have no offi-
cial capacity."
Central Brooklyn's fmancial problems became
apparent early last year. "They tried to have the
best transaction services while being the most
sympathetic of lenders and having the widest
membership," says Cliff Rosenthal, the executive
director of the National Federation of Community
Development Credit Unions (NFCDCU). "That's
a heavy agenda for a credit union."
Citing high operating costs and problems with
loan delinquency, NCUA's board had voted last
spring to take over the credit union. Central
Brooklyn's founders dodged that bullet. But even
though they were able to raise $300,000, get tech-
nical support from the NFCDU and other credit
unions, and set up a new business plan with a vast-
ly improved bottom line, a second NCUA vote last
fall went two to one in favor of conservatorship
for Central Brooklyn.
So far, the credit union has kept the over-
whelming majority of its members, although there
are concerns that the changes--especially a new
location-will drive depositors away. "It's very
unsettling," says Lavern McDonald, a Central
Brooklyn member who used a $10,000 loan from
the credit union to buy her fust home. "I know I'm
insured, but I'm worried I'll go there one morning
and find a board over the door." -Carl Vogel
CITVLlMITS
7 ........ --------...... --------------..
" H IS PRIORITIES ARE
Workfare
City Training
Progl-am
Gets Mixed
Grades
T
wo teams of welfare recipients work
side by side in Central Harlem's
Marcus Garvey Park. Orange-vested
Work Experience Program workers
pick up trash, and sweatsuited Parks
Department trainees paint park benches.
Everyone gets the same welfare check for the
labor, but the difference is that the team in sweats
has volunteered to work an extra 15 hours a week
as part of the Parks Career Training Program.
PACT started in 1994 as one of the few train-
ing alternatives to WEP, and now accounts for
about 1,000 of the city's 35,000 workfare assign-
ments. Participants get training in security, horti-
culture or secretarial work, plus a chance to work
APRIL 1998
toward a GED or commercial driver's license.
The program must find jobs for at least 300
participants a year, and for each placement, the
Parks Department gets $8,000. "We don't promise
anyone that they will get a job, but we'll try," says
Andy Brogan, the program's Manhattan borough
coordinator. "In the last six to nine months, nine-
ty Manhattan workers got jobs. That's more than
thirty percent of the participants in our borough."
Job counselors point out proudly that they
know each participant by name. 'The job coordi-
nators pester you, bother you, call you, hound you
to get a job. That makes all the difference," says
Ray Robinson, a trainee who has been in the pro-
gram for almost a year. "In WEP, you sink, you
swim. They don't care."
William Hanks agrees that the PACT staff
seems more sincerely concerned about the partici-
pants. But, he adds, workfare is still workfare. "[It]
isn't a great learning experience, but I always
wanted a driver's license, and after three months in
PACT, I got my permit," Hanks says. "But some-
times I do feel taken advantage of-if a private
paint company did the job we did, they would have
done it in twice the time and charged a lot more."
That's why welfare activists accuse the pro-
gram of promising more than it can deliver.
"PACT is a glorified WEP assignment," says
ACORN's Milly Silva. "It's not been proven as a
hard-working way out of WEp or off welfare."
-ldra Rosenberg
Legislation

a
rn
c
I:'
Lead Lock
T
he City Council's long-languishing
lead inspection bill has 34 co-spon-
sors, the support of goo-goo groups
and one astonishing new feature: a
snowball's chance in hell.
Last year, the opposition of landlords, Council
Speaker Peter Vallone and the mayor killed the
bill without so much as a public hearing. This
year, many advocates had resigned themselves to
watching the council and the administration fail
once again to overhaul the city's ineffective lead
paint removal system.
But Richard Roberts, commissioner of the city
Department of Housing, Preservation and
Development, is reportedly looking to get out of
being fmed-Qr even jailed-by a state Supreme
Court judge. Last April, Judge Louis York ordered
Roberts to either create a systematic plan to inspect
buildings for lead paint or face imprisonment. This
March, the judge reaffirmed that position.
"Roberts is really eager to see this thing
resolved," says a Giuliani administration official
who has worked on lead abatement. "This is not a
guy who wants to be bailed out of jail for not
obeying a judge's decision." -Glenn Thrush
The staff of
(ityLimits
and the
(@nt@r for an Urban rutur@
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All the bank. you'll ever n e e d ~
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Educators for Social
Responsibility-Metro
1021-27 Avenue St. John Housing
Development Fund Corp.
Jill Hamberg
Gary Hattem
Ann Henderson
Fran Justa
Ingrid Kaminski
Betty Kapetanakis
Morris Kornbluth
James Krauskopf
Barbara Makris
Lawrence McGaugbey
Marina Metalios
Jordan Moss
Jasper Niblock
Ray Norrnandeau
Rita Norrnandeau
Tom Roderick
Glenn Rubenstein
Steven Saltzman
Jonathan Schlesinger
Jay Small
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CITY LIMITS
Writers Bloc
New York City's latest writing program brings together
women from around the world. By Idra Rosenberg
A
nnecy Baez is a busy
woman. When she isn't run-
ning therapy sessions as the
director of a Yonkers center
for traumatized children,
she's rushing off to teach social work
classes to graduate students at New York
University. But at night-while her hus-
band and daughter are asleep-she writes
in her kitchen. Her poetry and prose res-
onate with images from the stories of her
daytime cI ients, many of whom are new to
this country. Her writing also draws upon
her own immigrant past: Baez spent most
of her childhood in the United States, but
her family returned to their native
Dominican Republic when she was a
teenager.
"It's hard to fmd a space to write, but I
want to do it," Baez says. "I wish I knew
how a Dominican woman lived in the
APRIL 1998
1800s, but they weren't encouraged to
write. We need to document our history."
At a reading sponsored by the newly
formed Women in Literature and Letters
(WILL), Baez read "Tell Me More," a
poem that combines her own experiences
growing up in Washington Heights with
those of a homeless girl who names the
cockroaches that are her playmates. "She
preferred the big brown mother roaches/
They liked her/ they fell asleep on the
palmi of her hand/ while she caressed
them," reads a passage.
Afterward, members of the audience
told her how much they appreciated the
poem. "Nobody's written about them
before," Baez says. "For children who
grew up in roach-infested buildings, you
have to validate these experiences, because
they don't relate to playing with goldfish or
parrots."
Once Upon a Time
Women in Literature and Letters was
created to build a community of writers
and give women like Baez a chance to
share their work. The group's founders-
Angie Cruz, Marta Lucfa and Adelina
Anthony-met at a Latin American Writers
conference in Mexico last year and quickly
became friends. Although that program
included several feminist Latina writers,
the three were the only participants writing
about life outside the American main-
stream, and they decided to establish their
own community even before they had
returned to U.S. soil.
"I wanted to find other writers in my
generation, to see what issues they are
dealing with," explains Cruz, a graduate
student at New York University. No one
else she knew was writing in Spanish, or
writing about being a woman in
Washington Heights. But Lucfa, a
Colombian immigrant who now teaches
Latin American fiction at the New York
Institute of Technology, and Anthony, an
advocate of Latina culture and lesbian
rights, fit the bill. Together, they began
plotting to develop their group.
Originally envisioned as an organiza-

PROFILE
By founding Will ,
Angie Cruz (left)
and Marta Lucia
(right) have coaxed
immigrant women
to break with cul-
tural tradition and
start writing.

Many of the women writers discuss
the difficulty of finding an identity in
a hyphenated, two-culture world.
tion for Latina women, WilL expanded to
include all women of color. Eventually, the
founders decided to open the program to all
women interested in writing on topics
largely ignored by contemporary literature.
Now the program has participants from
allover the globe. Many of the women are
breaking their cultural traditions by writing
about their experiences and sharing them
publicly. "[After] reading the writing of
men in the Dominican Republic, [women]
only wrote about what they thought people
wanted to hear," Cruz says. "Now we are
giving voice to ourselves."
Valid Stories
One of the aims of WllL, Cruz says, is
to demystify the act of writing. The pro-
gram has a reading series that showcases
established woman writers, but its main
activity is the writing workshop, "Write on
Sistas."
Excerpts From WI LL's Works
The first foreign word I learned was my name. The summer before kindergarten, my mother sang (I
thought) to me how to spell it in English, a slow string of syllables without meaning but the most beautiful
music for it ... The first foreign language she taught me was my name, so that I would have a place in it: So
I would know how to claim myself from others, declaring myself aloud so there would be no mistake.
Rooms for rent. Contact Santos. The Saint with a monopoly.
GED ESL. Free Classes.
GED ESL. Free Classes.
Citizenship classes.
Massage. Pennanent make-up.
Niila shoes wholesale price.
clothes by the pound ...
Room for rent to childless couple. Rights to use the kitchen.
No bad habits. Honest family.
Smoke shop. 24 hours.
Let's be real. Let's do the impossible. Remembering Che.
If you don't come in, smile as you pass by.
- Kyoto Uchida
- Joselina Baez
Tu vez esa mqjerP Bueno, she got a story to tell. Her husband forced her to get her tubes tied. You know, so
she can't have no more babies. He said he couldn't afford them no more. She have six babies already. You
know I don't like to talk about people, but we're family so it's all right. She crazy woman, I tell you. Loea!
She went back to the hospital and told the doctor to reverse her tubes. She don't tell her husband she do
it. NOOD! She just got pregnant again and he think that baby bom a miracle child. I tell you, if I was him, I
would beat that woman having all those babies when she have no money. They live like they never left that
shack in el campo. Her children crammed in a two-bedroom apartment, looking for trouble. Bueno, he
think that baby bom a miracle. He's a fool. No one want to tell him the truth. I mind me own business. But
I tell you something, her baby bom with a blown heart. When he saw that flVll-pound baby tangled up in all
those tubes at the hospital, it scared the hell out of him. But I don't say nothing.
-Angie Cruz
I.M
A February workshop brought ten
women together, each from a different
country. One woman read a short story
about a Mexican family who had moved to
the U.S., written from the viewpoint of a
daydreaming child. One by one, each
woman critiqued the story, giving sugges-
tions and connecting the story to her own
experience. "Interesting, this immigrant
thing. There's always a better place, isn' t
there?" said Jacqueline Johnson, a poet
from Trinidad, to sympathetic laughter
from the group.
Since the first of the year, each twice-
monthly workshop has featured the work
of about a dozen participants. The meetings
strive to create a supportive atmosphere for
women who have never had the chance or
inclination to share writing with others.
"Here they start realizing, 'I have a story,
and my story is valid,'" Cruz explains.
"They have seen only TV and movie sto-
ries, where they never see themselves."
Sheila Maldonado knows what this iso-
lation feels like. "1' m a hermit and I never
talk about myself," says Maldonado, a
quiet young staffer at Latina magazine,
"but writing is intimate, and you tap into
how you see the world. I have had a deep-
er conversation in the two hours of this
workshop than I have ever had in my
office-and I work in an office full of
women."
Through Write on Sistas, WILL encour-
ages women to re-evaluate their lives. The
workshop is free, and its leaders supply
advice and information on grants and
scholarships for interested writers. But so
far, most participants are college-educated
and professional women. It's been a chal-
lenge to get less educated women to attend,
but some participants have already intro-
duced the workshop concept into other set-
tings. For example, WILL's. Veronica
Mitchell initiated a creative writing work-
shop, Luna Rosa, in a New York correc-
tional institution for women.
"Many inner-city youth can' t see
beyond the six-block radius of the pro-
jects," says Theresa Howard, the former
mentor director at the Jacob Riis
Settlement in Queensbridge. "Writing and
reading help them dream beyond a reality
that is too present. If you open a bigger
world to these teenage girls, they will begin
to see they have the potential to be more
than a baby's mother."
Taboo Topics
The logo on the front of WILL's
brochure clearly illustrates the feeling of
being split between two cultures. A short
poem divides the body of a woman who has
CITY LIMITS

two braids swinging wildly about her head:
"UJike two chicks passing in the girl...brown
face, white face, interface curl."
At the group's two-part reading series,
"Writing Down the Walls," a fund-raiser at
the Roger Smith Hotel to provide scholar-
ships for a writer's workshop this summer,
hundreds turned out to hear women writers
talk about the experience of split cultural
identity.
"Here, women feel comfortable reading
about their place in society, war, or their
grandmother," writer Kyoko Uchida said
after her reading, pressing a folder of poet-
ry to her chest with crossed arms. "It is a
very necessary and safe space."
Moving back and forth between Japan
and the United States, Uchida was con-
stantly aware of the blend of cultures that
shaped her life. ''My family asked me why
I write about them and embarrass everyone
with my writing. I was silent," she said. "I
don't act Japanese, but I'm seen as a for-
eigner in this country. Writing is the space
to blend these two contrasting views."
Uchida's experiences with her family
are common, Lucfa says. "We have taken
the risk of being divorced from our farnilies
for what we say, or rejected from our com-
munities. This is why we are trying to cre-
ate a community of women to trust, an
extended family to open up dialogue to
question how we live."
Many of the writers that night spoke
about the difficulty of navigating identity in
a hyphenated, two-culture world. "An
American friend asked me recently if! went
to a prom," recalls Emer Martin, who came
to New York from Dublin. "We don't have
proms in Ireland. We have emigration."
A Palestinian woman, Suheir Hammad,
described returning to her native country
and being seen as an American. "But in
America," Hammad says, "I was just
another immigrant, and a waste of food
stamps."
These young women's writing also
sheds light on taboo topics like sexual
abuse and domestic violence. Annecy Baez
says most of the women she works with
never talk about abuse in their homes.
"Immigrant women respect authority and
men, so it is hard [for themJ to believe a
man would do something like that. These
women, they can't afford to be alone," she
says. So Baez writes about the stories she
hears, giving words to their silence.
"Someone has to be the voice for them,"
she says.
The audiences at WILL readings are
engaged and enthusiastic. Hegal Martinez,
a City College student originally from the
Dominican Republic, said he thinks Latino
APRILI99B
men already contend with stereotypes of
being wife-beaters or macho guys, but
added, "If there is a problem there, we do
need to expose it and fix it."
who looked like themselves tell stories,"
he says. One girl was so inspired by the
reading that, between speakers, she wrote
a poem of her own-WILL's newest
member . Jim Dillard, a psychiatric consultant
for a group home for adolescents, was so
impressed by the first reading he attended
that he brought several of his clients to the
following one. "The girls were psyched
about it. It was empowering to see people
WIll hosts an ongoing reading series
held alternate Mondays through June at
Synchronicity Space in SoHo. Call 212-
740-3920.
The Encyclopedia
of Housing
edited by Willem van Vliet- -, University of Colorado
4 http://www_sagepub_com/sagepage!encyclopedia of housing.htm U
An extraordinary
compilation! ..
-Michael A. Stegman.
Duncan MacRae '09 and
Rebecca Kyle MacRae Professor
of Public Policy Analysis.
University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, andformer
Assistant Secretary for Policy
Development and Research, U.S.
Department of Housing and
Urban Development
Tlte Encyclopedia 0/ Housing
makes an enormous contribu-
tion . ... An eminent group of
scholars offer a wide-ranging
and enticing list of topics and
reference materials for use--
even to those longfamiliar with
the field of housing research . ..
-John M. Goering,
U.s. Department of Housing and
Urban Development
An invaluable resource. Should
be on the desk of every housing
professional. The Encyclopedia
is for people in both the public
and private sectors: It covers the
information they need {lllifputs
it into context. This is a great
book . ..
-Terence Cooper,
Director of Publications/
Communications.
National Association of Housing
& Development Officials
A remarkable and unique work,
a landmark contribution to
housing studies . ..
-Michael Harloe,
Vice Chancellor. University of
Salford, England
Tlte IIlIusing Rl'SIIUrCl'
Features more than 500 entries, ranging from "Aban-
donment" to "Zoning," written in accessible language
Contains peer-reviewed essays, selected by a Board of
Consulting Editors
Written by an author team of nationally and inter-
nationally recognized experts in the field
Covers content, theory, design, and key bibliographic
material about housing--listing classic works, recent
authoritative studies, or other key publications
Identifies clusters of interrelated topics using a straight-
forward system of cross-references at the end of entries
Includes a comprehensive name and subject index
A brie/sampling o/entries: abandonment - affordability-
code enforcement - CDCs - community-based housing -
coops - crime and housing - discrimination - displacement -
in-rem housing - linkage - local government - mixed
income housing - mortgage finance - rent control - resident
management - SROs - sweat equity - syndication - tax
incentives - urban redevelopment - women as housing
producers - zoning
From the Introduction: "In addition to the main entry on
affordability, cross-referenced entries review how afford-
ability can be measured, the pros and cons of the di fferent
methods, the features of different subsidy approaches, and
the work of organizations promoting affordability."
Contributors including: J. Atlas - R. Bratt - P. Clay - J.
Darden - C. Dolbeare - P. Dreier - C. Hartman - A. Heskin -
C. Hoch - D. Keating - N. Krumholz - D. Mandelker - P.
Marcuse - M. Nenno - W. Peterman - S. Saegen - A.
Scherer - R. Schwemm - A. Shlay - M. Stone - G. Squires -
J. Yinger
1998 (April) 1736 pages
5149.95, hardcover ISBN 0-7619-1332-7
Adopt 5 copies or more, 589.95 each.
Contact Sage for details.
HOWlO ORDER
Phone: (805) 499-9774 Fax: (805) 499'{)871
Mail: Sage Publications, Inc.
2455 Telier Road Thousand Oaks, CA 913202218
E-mail: order@sagepub.com
World Wide Web: http://www.sagepub.com
-,
PIPEliNE i
,
Samara Swanston
helped find funding
to tum a portioll of
Williamsburg s
waterfront into a
park---{)ne of the
few New York urban
communities to see
any bond act funds.
e-
Creen Envy
Albany hasn't shared much of the $1.75 billion
environmental bond act with New York City. But City
Hall bears some blame. By Kemba Johnson
S
aroara Swanston climbs througb
the hole in the chain-link fencing
that separates Williamsburg's
residents from the Brooklyn
waterfront and steps into a won-
derland of wild growth, rotting piers and
decaying factory buildings.
With the same persistence that drives res-
idents to cut a new entrance every time the
owners of the property mend the fence, invis-
ible gardeners bave planted tulip bulbs and
anonymous craftsmen have turned old bricks
and wood into benches. "We're a waterfront
community, but the community doesn't bave
access to the waterfront," Swanston says,
looking out across the East River. "So the
community has taken ownership of this site."
Swanston hopes ownership will
become official this year, thanks to a grant
that her group, the Watch person Project of
GreenpointlWilliamsburg, helped secure
from the state's $1.75 billion Clean
Water/Clean Air Bond Act. The money
will pay for the purchase of at least a third
of the site's 15 acres.
But as Williamsburg looks forward to
a new park, most other urban low-income
communities have been left out of bond
act funding. The city has been behind the
eight-ball from the beginning-some of
the language of tbe act itself gives prefer-
ence to everyone but New York City. It
doesn' t help that the process to determine
who gets funded ends witb the governor
and two legislative leaders, or that the
city's system of asking for its fair share is
barely functional.
And so, with nearly half of the state's
population, the city has seen only 12.6 per-
cent of the $328.3 million doled out since
the act was passed in November 1996. Of
the 25 open space projects approved
statewide tbis year, for example, the
Williamsburg riverfront site is one of only
four grants within city limits. And the
otber three city programs that passed
muster are in primarily middle class-and
Republican-Staten Island.
Time is running out. To get the most for
its money, the state wants to spend down
the bulk of the bond act funds over the next
five years. So if communities can't figure
out bow to tap into this funding soon, they
are likely to miss out on a rare opportunity
to make meaningful air and water quality
improvements in their neighborhoods.
A Dismal Showing
Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal could be
on a poster of where the city
could use money for environ-
mental clean-up. Typbus and
hepatitis fester in the water, and
during rainstorms runoff adds
sewage and street garbage to the
soup. About half of the sur-
rounding community of 16,000
lives in public housing. ''This is
Brooklyn's sink," says John C.
Muir, executive director at the
Brooklyn Center for the Urban
Environment, which is helping
educate the community about
possible solutions. "This is
where you throwaway stuff that
shouldn't be around decent
folks-and you throwaway the
people who live there."
Muir says one way to
address this inequity is to stem
the sewage overflow problems
with a portion of the $790 mil-
lion set aside in the bond act for
water quality projects. But to do
that, he says, the Gowanus com-
munity must repeatedly make
demands to the authorities: "It's
too easy to be forgotten and
swept under the carpet."
In addition to money to improve water
quality, the act provides hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars for safe drinking water,
brownfield clean-up, solid waste programs
and air quality improvements. "We have
more money than we know what to do
with, and it ain't coming [to the city]," said
Westchester Assemblyman Richard
Brodsky, at an environmental justice meet-
ing in February. "We have to change that."
Brodsky is in an influential position to
help make those cbanges. As the cbair of
the Assembly's environmental conserva-
tion committee, he bas some weight with
the two legislators-5enate Majority
Leader Joe Bruno and Assembly Speaker
Sheldon Silver-who, along with
Governor George Pataki, are required to
sign off on nearly every project. In the first
round of funding, these three doled out
$235 million. Of that, a mere $32.6 million ~
was designated for tbe city, including about ~
$18 million for scbool coal furnace conver- ~
sions and $2.7 million for clean-fuel buses. ~
CITY LIMITS
.. ---
................................
In that first round, the politicians made
their choices from a list of projects already
in the pipeline and personal pet programs.
Since then, the funding procedure has been
improved somewhat: Municipalities now
submit applications that are scored by a
handful of state agencies. But that doesn't
mean politics has been erased from the
process. The Watch person Project got its
Williamsburg park application on the state
Parks Department's short list via the
Brooklyn Borough President's representa-
tive to a statewide environmental commit-
tee. Then lobbying from the Sierra Club's
environmental justice group helped con-
vince Speaker Silver that the project was a
must-fund.
But if politics helped position a park in
Brooklyn, it has helped the suburbs a whole
lot more. Suffolk County, with 7 percent of
the state's population, has snagged nearly
one-third of the bond act funding handed
out this year, money for everything from
state parks to wastewater treatment plants.
For bond act scoring, Suffolk's suburban
landscape has the perfect mix of threatened
land and overburdened waste treatment
facilities. It also is home to a segment of the
voting population that may well be swayed
to re-elect Governor Pataki if he is seen as
their green savior.
Vote Fraud
It's a much different picture than New
York City voters must have envisioned
behind the ballot booth curtains in
November 1996, when they decided three
to one that going almost $2 billion in debt
to shore up the state's environmental infra-
structure was a good idea. In contrast,
upstate voters were ready to take a pass,
rejecting the referendum three to two.
"Some opponents of the environmental
bond act tried to scare upstaters by saying
all the money would go to the city," notes
Gary Sheffer, spokesman for the
Department of Environment Conservation,
one of the state agencies that scores fund-
ing applications. But neither the upstaters
nor the downstaters knew that some of the
state's largest mainstream environmental
groups had already decided where much of
the money would flow. And their take on
green issues has more to do with woodland
hikes than with inner city needs.
Earlier that year, when Pataki was con-
sidering the bond act as a way to increase
his appeal among environmentalists, pow-
erful green groups-including the
National Audobon Society, Adirondack
Council, Natural Resources Defense
Council and Trust for Public Open Space
Institute-met with Pataki's people to
APRIL 1998
shape the parameters. Insiders say they cut
a deal with the governor's staffers: As long
as it included plenty of money to buy land
for preservation, they would sell the act to
their supporters.
"These are powerful groups," explains
Jeff Jones, communications director at
Environmental Advocates, an Albany-
based nonprofit that bridges the
upstate/downstate divide. "They can
lobby with more success in Albany than
community-based organizations in New
York City can." They've been rewarded.
The Nature Conservancy snagged $4.5
million in clean water contracts paid for
by the bond act, for example, and the
Trust netted $6 million. So far, nearly 40
preservation and environmental restora-
tion projects upstate have been funded-
including money to purchase 800 acres of
forest land in Putnam and 130 acres in
Westchester.
"[New York City] doesn't have
Sterling Forests in pristine condition,"
says Leslie Lowe, executive director New
York Environmental Justice Alliance, a
coalition of community-based advocacy
groups. "While it's excellent that the state
is saving pristine forests, that's not all the
open space that should be saved."
Sheffer argues that the city still has
plenty of opportunity to harvest money
from the bond act. The state has already
promised $75 million to help close the
mega-dump Fresh Kills landfill on Staten
Island. The city could also get much of the
$200 million slated for brownfields and
potentially millions more to improve and
protect municipal parks and historic land-
marks. He points out that in February the
city snared $2.5 million in parks money-
46 percent of the total doled out in that cat-
egory. ''The city is pretty well represent-
ed," he concludes.
But many of the rules limiting what
New York City can ask for were etched
into the bond act itself. For example, the
project descriptions in its "open space"
rules call for forest preserves, ecological
areas and scenic wonders of singular qual-
ity, effectively barring the city from all but
one of the six categories-recreation.
Municipalities with more than I million
residents-another way of saying New
York City-are specifically denied some
bond funding, such as assistance to small
businesses with hazardous emissions. And
critics say urban issues like asthma and
lead abatement weren't even on the table
when the categories for bond act spending
were designed.
Potential Projects
New York City's dominance in the
municipal parks and historic sites category
actually points out another interesting plot
twist in the funding drama: City Hall made
almost no attempt to cash in. Meanwhile,
Suffolk's supremacy, like that of neighbor-
ing Nassau County, can be partially attrib-
The lIeed for park
space for some
Brooklyn wateifront
neighborhoods is so
great that Williams-
burg residents have
taken this aban-
doned site as their
own-rotting piers
and aU.
Me

Executive Indecision
W
ith community groups and local politicians starting to pressure the city to seek more
bond act money, the borough president offices may provide the best way for low-
income communities to apply directly for funds. There's a snag, though: No one
upstate or down is quite sure that they can.
Municipalities, including counties, are allowed to request funds, and since each borough
is also a county, the beeps say they should be able to solicit for their neighborhoods. But
city counties are incorporated into the larger New York City structure, which has its own
government.
Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden wrote a letter to Governor George Pataki in
January asking to be allowed to apply. Golden's office wants funding for the Gowanus Canal
clean-up and restoration of historic buildings at the Brooklyn Naval Base. But his counter-
part in Manhattan may not even wait for Pataki's decision. "Our understanding is that we
have the right [to request bond act funds] and if we identify appropriate programs, we fully
intend to do so," says Michael DeMarzo, Virginia Fields' director of public information.
But state officials are debating whether they would even consider such an application,
says Gary Sheffer, spokesman at the state Department of Environmental Conservation:
"Borough presidents [as county executives] is something we will look at."-KJ
e-
uted to aggressive applying.
Nonprofit groups turned in 32 of the
city's 36 parks applications last fall-and
most were from upscale organizations
like the National Arts Club and the South
Street Seaport. The majority of their grant
money will go toward work like fixing
roofs and restoring facades, hardly pro-
jects that will add more city green space.
Since this is the only category that non-
profits can apply for, the Giuliani adminis-
tration is on its own to handle the remain-
ing bond act applications. And its past
record has been dismal. More than 950
applications for local parks, water qUality
improvement projects, brownfields and
municipal recycling programs poured into
Albany from localities around the state last
fall. Only 47 were on stationery from the
City of New York. "Part of the problem in
the bond act is that a city has to apply. And
if that city doesn' t apply, we' re pretty
much hamstrung," Brodsky says.
Many of the projects that New York
City did deign to apply for are environ-
mental compliance mandates from Albany
and Washington, rather than responses to
community outreach. Neighborhood
groups were left scrambling to grab the
city's attention. "If you want to pull down
as many funds as possible-which the city
hasn't and probably won't-you need [to
pull together] a list of potential projects,"
explains Jenell Horton, an environmental
analyst at the Independent Budget Office.
"That hasn't happened."
CONFERENCE AND CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Hunter College Center for Occupational & Environmental Health,
the New York City Departments of Health, Environmental Protection, and City Planning and
the Pratt Institute Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment present:
MEETING THE URBAN HEALTH CHALLENGE:
A JOINT PUBLIC HEALTH AND URBAN PLANNING AGENDA
September 18 & 19, 1998, New York City
Though the disciplines of public health and urban planning emerged with the common goal of
preventing urban outbreaks of infectious disease, little overlap between the fields exists today.
The health, environmental and development problems facing urban residents cannot adequately
be addressed without approaches that integrate public health and urban planning assessment,
regulatory and intervention strategies. The conference will explore community-development,
government, professional and academic links between the disciplines.
Abstracts that relate to this subject are sought for presentation/publication.
For submission guidelines and registration information, contact Hunter COEH:
tel : 212-481-8790 fax: 212-481-8795 email: dkass@hunter.cuny.edu
Much of the criticism of the city's
application process comes from how
unwieldy it is. City agencies, including the
Economic Development Corporation,
Parks Department and Department of
Environmental Protection, all submit state
applications without any strong central
coordination. None of them have actively
gone into the communities to seek worthy
ideas. "We aren't set up as a municipality
to maximize our opportunities yet. 1 think
we can do better as a city if we communi-
cate better," says Mary Ellen Kris, DEC's
regional administrator for New York City
and surrounding suburbs.
Annette Barbaccia, director of the
city' s Office of Environmental
Coordination, counters that the city agen-
cies do know what the others are doing,
but they can better tackle their specialties
independently. And she blames some of
the problems on upstate bureaucrats, not-
ing that the city is still in dispute with the
state over bond act definitions and qualifi-
cations in some categories, such as brown-
field restoration on certain types of city-
owned property. "The city is trying to get
as much money as it can get," she says. "I
think you'll see more applications as time
goes on-as more favorable interpreta-
tions [of the Bond Act] take effect."
Pr ur. From a.low
While City Hall awaits bond act con-
cessions, environmental advocates are
mobilizing to pressure the city to apply
more earnestly for money and educate
communities on how to get in line for
funding. The New York Environmental
Justice Alliance held a meeting of city
neighborhood groups in February to talk
strategy. Since then, the alliance has start-
ed a "wish-list" of community environ-
mental projects that would need bond act
money to go forward.
Independent of the alliance's efforts,
the League of Conservation Voters has
succeeded to some extent in getting on the
city's radar by meeting with officials to
explain community needs. "There is defi-
nitely room for improvement in applica-
tions, and we're trying to work with the
city to change those numbers," says John
Johnson, who is spearheading the league's
efforts. "So far the city has been very
responsive, but the proof will be in the
results."
The opportunity to see those results is
still several months away. No one con-
nected with the bond act is really sur-
prised that the next funding announce-
ments will hit in November-just in time
for the election .
CITY LIMITS
Frank Lee of the Leegis Group
inspecting the Flushing Chase
branch his firm renovated.
CALL: CHASE MINORITY- &
WOMEN- OWNED BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
212-622-4138
Moving in the right direction
The bank that Frank built.
When we awarded Frank L e e ~ . o f the Leegis Group, the contract to
renovate our Flushing Branch, we felt we made the right choice in
expanding our relationship with his company. He was already a
participant in Chase's Minority- and Women-Owned Business
DeveloPment Program (MWBD) and ran a topnotch construction firm.
, ..
Chase takes this relationship-building process very seriously. We
know our future success will depend on how well we do business
with a rapidly growing audience of incredible diversity. Our rela-
tionships with companies like the Leegis Group will assure we
won't miss this important opportunity.
The Chase Manhattan Bank is committed to this course. Carol
Parry, Executive Vice President of our Community Development
Group, promises: "The new Chase will aggressively continue to
solicit business from minority- and women-owned businesses and
will provide a wide array of specialized financial services to this
important and rapidly growing market." Which must be music to
Frank's ears.
: ... ..................... ~ Community Development Group
CHASE. The right relationship is everything.
sM
C 1997 The Chase Manhattan Bank. Member FDIC.
hen Rose Johnson bought her new two-
family house in the South Bronx five years
ago, she went out back to inspect the patch
of lawn. She discovered it came with a few
free extras: A car bumper, Pampers and old
clothes were strewn among more than a couple of boulders.
With the help of her two teenage sons, she removed the
debris, but a few weeks later she came home from work to find
the pair sitting dejectedly on the front steps. When she asked
them what was wrong, they guided her inside her $199,000
townhouse. There she found the first floor awash ankle-deep in
water that had seeped through the ceiling from their tenant's
upstairs apartment.
The burst pipe was a harbinger of other problems: a broken boil-
er, a leaky roof and yet another flood. "We didn't know what to do,"
says Johnson, who had to shell out $700 for a new carpet. "There
are so many problems with this house. We just get by day to day."
Johnson's tale echoes complaints from many of the 109 South
Bronx families that live in West Farms Haven townhouses. Like
5,000 other affordable homes in the Bronx, the project was shep-
herded by the New York City Housing Partnership, a celebrated
Manhattan nonprofit that has turned some of the city's most for-
saken neighborhoods into neo-Levittowns, brimming with subur-
ban brick-and-siding row houses.
In interviews with 134 Partnership homeowners, most of them
in the Bronx, City Limits heard similar complaints time and again:
leaky roofs; crooked staircases; balky heating systems; improperly
soldered pipes that were installed rusty and tied to their beams with
telephone wires; and backyards that looked more like junkyards.
In 16 years, the Partnership has earned a national reputation as
neighborhood savior, providing relatively inexpensive homeown-
ership opportunities for families with an average income of about
$38,000. Over the last four years, the group has been a special
favorite of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani: Since he took office, the
Partnership has built or started work on $660 million in construc-
tion-about a third of which came from city subsidies.
But that Golden Age may be waning. Amid revelations of
shoddy construction and ineffectual oversight, critics are ques-
tioning the Partnership's practices-and the wisdom of construct-
ing cheap, cookie-cutter low-rises in housing-starved neighbor-
hoods like the South Bronx.
The problem is a system that has left construction quality and
repairs up to hand-picked private contractors, even though each
house has been subsidized by as much as $60,000 in city, state and
federal money.
"There are government subsidies involved, and the question
really is: ' Should we have oversight?' Well, we really haven' t in
the past." says the president of the Housing Partnership, Veronica
White.
Under pressure from homeowners, who have begun organiz-
ing to demand repairs, the Partnership is working out formal
design and construction guidelines for the first time. Officials are
CITY LIMITS
forcing developers to be more responsive to resident complaints
and are planning to hire a full-time staff member to monitor con-
struction on the 1,000 Partnership homes built each year.
But those changes might be just the beginning of a more pro-
found shift. "Sacred cows make the best hamburger meat,"
Giuliani remarked last month, while discussing his administra-
tion's decision to pull support for a 500-unit Nehemiah Houses
townhouse project in East New York. While he was clearly refer-
ring to the Nehemiah project, that philosophy might also apply to
the Partnership.
"After 10 or IS years, maybe you're talking about the need for
new blood," says a Giuliani administration source.
A
ny analysis of the Partnership'S successes and
failures must begin with Kathy Wylde, the uber-
operator who created an empire out of banker
David Rockefeller's early ' 80s, back-of-the-nap-
kin idea of a public-private project to help work-
ing-class minorities become homeowners. Pushing the white-
shoe directorate of the New York City Partnership and Chamber
of Commerce on the issue of affordable housing, Rockefeller
hired Wylde on her reputation as a competent nonprofit adminis-
trator. She turned out to be Roberta Moses.
Wylde created an independent system that captured hundreds
of millions of dollars in government subsidies and city land
while insulating its operations from intrusions by city bureau-
APRIL 1998
crats. "A key element to [Kathy's] style was to exploit every
possible political advantage," wrote urban planner Charles
Orlebeke in his laudatory 1997 history of the Partnership. "[She
knows] who is connected to whom in ways that could be orches-
trated to gain public agency approval of a particular program or
course of action."
Using Rockefeller's influence and her own considerable polit-
ical wiles, Wylde was able to convince politicians, including
Mayor Ed Koch, to exempt the Partnership from the city's oner-
ous bidding, oversight and procurement procedures. It was a set-
up that helped spark a massive moderate-income housing boom
in communities that had been abandoned by all but the poorest
tenants. But critics would later charge that it also shielded her
from accountability to her public benefactors.
"The city was always told to butt out," recalls a former city
housing official. "Anytime we had any questions, Kathy would
say 'This is our program. Just pay up.' We never had any say in
terms of the construction or the selection of contracts."
The structure of the deals reflected Wylde's desire to keep the
city from mucking up the works. The Partnership would select a
contractor from its own approved list. At the beginning, the builders
were outer-borough homebuilders and general contractors-later,
Wylde created a minority builder program. The contractors were
given a general budget and free-market latitude in how to build,
resulting in a wide range of styles and quality on Partnership jobs.
In a bid to include grassroots groups, Wylde and her staff
Night falls on the
Partnership'S trou-
bled West Farms
Haven project in the
South Bronx, and the
sun may be selling
on the construction
of suburban-style
homes in NYC's
inner-city neighbor-
hoods as well.
struction was always the obligation of the builders," says Wylde,
now head of the Partnership'S New York City Investment Fund,
which encourages private-sector development in city neighbor-
hoods. "It was never the responsibility of the Partnership."
"We had no representation on the sites," she adds. "We left that
up to the homebuilders-they were much better staffed. The goal
was to create a process in which the homebuilder would perform.
The premise of the program is that if the homebuilder wants to do
business with the program, he makes sure everyone's happy. The
process only breaks down if the builder isn't capable of delivering."
The Partnership's
idyllic promotional
material for its com-
plaint-ridden West
Farms Haven project
entices prospective
buyers with words
like "high quality,"
"affordable" and
"the peT/ect slarter
home."
selected neighborhood nonprofits to act as the Partnership's sales
agents and pre-construction contacts for potential homebuyers.
Once those components were in place, Wylde, a one-time com-
munity reinvestment officer at Anchor Savings Bank, would
assemble the fmancing from lenders. For the most part, the system
worked. She estimates that builders defaulted on their jobs only
"eight or nine times" during her tenure- mostly during the city's
building slump 10 years ago.
I
n the late '80s, Partnership project homeowners at a Bronx
site began grumbling about water leaching through their
walls. Koch administration housing officials-themselves
engaged in the massive rehabilitation of 22,000 rental
units-began pressing the Partnership for more oversight
and control. Wylde, working her platinum Rolodex, successfully
fought the administration off, and her self-styled laissez-faire con-
struction management style has defmed the process ever since.
"With the Partnership, you have a view that the market will take
care of everything, the construction defects, the size and price of
units, everything," says a former city development official. "It was
just amazing. There was never a construction manager on the site
anywhere. So how do you hold the builders accountable?
[partnership officials) left themselves wide open by not doing any
oversight."
Management of construction was left up to the builders them-
selves. Field inspections were conducted by the peripatetic Wylde,
who sped from site to site in a beat-up car. "The quality of the con-
Raise
the Roof
THE DAYS OF CARPETING large city-owned
lots with small single- and two-family
homes may be coming to an end. The
much-touted building style popularized by
the New York City Housing Partnership
and Nehemiah Houses is losing their lus-
ter to city officials.
While such projects will still be funded,
the city's housing department is looking
to use its remaining vacant land-and
dwindling development cash-to build
more four- to seven-story apartment
buildings.
The proposal is good news to urban
planners who have long championed high-
er-density affordable housing. Most
everyone agrees that Partnership and
Nehemiah homes have helped stabilize
low-income neighborhoods. But the reali-
ty is that the city's sidewalks, subways
and sewers are capable of supporting far
more people in these areas, says Mark
Ginsberg, vice president of the New York
chapter of the American Institute of
Architects and a leading member of its
national affordable housing task force.
1:-
"We're running out of land," he argues.
"We should be looking at building
denser."
That is easier said than done. For one
thing, the city's building code makes it
much simpler-and far cheaper-to build
one-to-four family homes. Shortly after
Rudy Giuliani took office, his buildings
commissioner Joel Miele offered a num-
ber of simple building code changes to
make constructing apartments and co-
ops more affordable. But the proposed
revisions, such as allowing builders to
place more apartments on each floor of a
walk-up building, have languished on the
mayor's desk for three years. The paral-
ysis may be at least partly due to the fire
department, which resists such changes
as a safety threat, Ginsberg says.
In response, Ginsberg and staff at the
New York City Housing Conference are
working on apartment building plans
designed to be fire safe, but with less
common area, no costly elevators and
only one stairwell. The goal is to cut per-
unit cost to a level comparable to a
three-family Partnership home.
Anyone trying to create affordable
housing in this era of shrinking govern-
ment subsidies has to think about the
trade-offs between a low budget and
maintaining acceptable design and con-
struction standards. To keep units inex-
pensive enough to attract lower-middle-
class buyers, both East Brooklyn
Congregations, which runs Nehemiah, and
the Partnership have sought to trim con-
struction costs as much as possible.
Their contractors often install low-cost,
factory-built "manufactured" homes,
which now account for nearly one-quar-
ter of all new homes built nationwide. But
pre-fabs have a mixed record in New
York, and some occupants have com-
plained about the homes' cheap con-
struction, trailer-park appearance and
unimaginative floor plans.
In response to the complaints, the
Partnership and the city Department of
Housing, Preservation and Development
have been drafting tightened standards
for low-rises. The new construction
guidelines have generally received a good
reception. But HPD's attempt to overhaul
the design criteria-mandating larger
rooms and adding costly amenities like
wrought iron gates-has piqued some
builders, who say it will drive up costs
and price out lower-income buyers.
"These designs could increase the cost
of a house by thousands of dollars," says
one contractor. "The social purpose
behind this housing has completely disap-
peared." -Kim Nauer
CITY LIMITS
,
Wylde's successor says that too much government interference
would have scared away potential contractors. "It's efficiency ver-
sus having government oversight," argues Veronica White, a rapid-
talking Bay Ridge native with a Harvard Law pedigree. "The prob-
lem with subsidized housing is, you're always fighting this tension
[over) what's the appropriate level of government intervention
that's not going to drag the private sector down. Sometimes you go
in one direction, sometimes you go in the other."
However, some of the Partnership's community sponsors say
the nonprofit has been solicitous of contractors at the expense of
communities. Michelle Neugebauer, executive director of the
nonprofit Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation in East
Brooklyn, is one such critic. In the early '90s, her organization
pressed the Partnership into doing 23 three-family houses on
abandoned lots just off Atlantic Avenue.
Soon after the homeowners moved in, the LDC began hearing
complaints: Heating systems worked on upper floors but left lower
floors freezing, plumbing leaked and ceilings cracked. Residents
spent thousands of dollars out of their own pockets to patch up their
houses, and it wasn't long before they started wondering if they had
been suckered. The houses, they told her, didn't seem built to last.
"The Partnership didn't stay on top of the developer,"
Neugebauer says, "and when things went wrong, we were the
ones stuck out there. They didn't have anyone on staff who really
checked what kind of materials the contractor used. This was real-
ly shitty construction."
Estimates of the magnitude of construction problems citywide
vary widely. White says: "It's infinitesimal: .01 percent, or some-
thing like that." But one Partnership contractor claims that it's
much larger: "Ten, fifteen percent." Problems have been reported
on at least a dozen sites. Last year, the Village Voice reported
widespread flaws at St. Mary's Homes, developed by a nonprofit
run by Father Louis Gigante in the South Bronx.
Because of his experiences with poor monitoring of construc-
tion sites in his district, Assemblyman Vito Lopez, a Brooklyn
Democrat with close connections to the Giuliani administration,
has made an unusual request with regard to an upcoming
Partnership project in Williamsburg. He wants the Partnership to
pay for an architect to oversee construction.
T
here was no such oversight during the construction
of the Hiram Rosado and Minford Place develop-
. ments, 45 townhouses built by Gerson Nieves' New
Rochelle-based Nidus Corporation. Bright and
charismatic, Nieves had been a darling of the
Partnership, but he made a fatal mistake when he was given the
contract in 1992: He contracted 30 houses out to New York
Modular, a Brooklyn-based prefab building supplier that went
bankrupt halfway through the Rosado job.
Nieves knew disaster had struck when he received the rust 10
units in the spring of 1994. They didn't match the blueprints-or
each other-and were so shoddily constructed that he had to make
repairs even before they were installed. Luckily for him, the com-
pany went out of business before he paid for the remaining 20.
Still, Nieves was in deep trouble. He had to spend $300,000 to
repair the modulars--especially their roofs, which he was forced
to completely replace in early 1996. "This thing has been a com-
plete nightmare," he says. "I don't feel good about it at all."
Because the project, like all Partnership sites, was a for-prof-
it enterprise, the group didn' t bail Nieves out or bankroll repairs
directly. When he ran out of money, the repairs simply stopped,
residents charge. "I am so tired," says Millicent Bowden, a sin-
gle mother who saved up for IS years to pay the downpayment
on a $162,000 house still beset by numerous problems. "I don't
know what to do anymore."
APRIL 1998
When the city's buildings department inspected the house next
door to Bowden's in 1996, they wrote to the Partnership that the
Rosado problems "should be corrected immediately." The report,
Rosado residents say, could aptly describe their own plight:
"Staircase wall between fust and second floors is not [vertical);
various problems in sewer lines and faucet connections; the eaves
are not constructed in an industry type manner; on rear staircase
concrete platform is sagging."
Some small repairs have been made, but the Rosado residents
have been locked in a long-standing feud with the Partnership
over responsibility for dealing with the larger problems. In
January, the Partnership finally agreed to layout the money to do
extensive repairs-if the homeowners signed a release agreeing to
limit the amount of damages for which they could sue to one dol-
lar. The residents refused. "Tbat kind of [release) has always been
standard," Wylde says. "If we didn't do that, they could just keep
on suing us." Partnership sources now say that residents will soon
THE CITY SHUT DOWN CONSTRUCTION on five New York City Housing
Partnership sites on the Lower East Side in March after a rogue backhoe
apparently damaged a tenement acljacent to one of the lots.
The cracks in the foundation of 182 Avenue B were severe enough to
cause city officials to evacuate 19 residents and two businesses. The
tenants all returned in late March after the Partnership's contractor
shored up their building.
As of press time, the city buildings department had not removed its
stop-work orders on the other sites in an attempt to make sure similar
mistakes hadn't been made. The developer, BFC Construction Corp.,
attributes the accident to prior structural distress.
The sites, part of the 100-unit Del Este Village condominium
development, are sponsored by the city and the Partnership. It is
the first time the Partnership has worked with BFC and its affiliate,
BFC&R Developers.
But the firm's partner Donald Capoccia is no stranger to controversy.
The Del Este Village prqject will obliterate several community gardens to
put in housing that will cost from 5103,000 to 5160,000 per unit.
A long-time lower Manhattan developer, Capoccia has received
more than 520 million in city construction management contracts
since 1992. He was also a rabidly enthusiastic Giuliani cash buddy.
Capoccia and his partners forked over 532,000 to the Friends of
Rudy-520,000 had to be given back because it exceeded city
contribution limits. -Carl Vogel
-
The view from the
Partnership homes
might be getting
rosier if organizing
efforts translate into
help with repair bills.
be offered a less stringent version and given money to hire a
lawyer to review their options.
The residents at West Farms, who have had to deal with simi-
lar problems, refused to sign a release offered to them in
November. Their builder, R. Randy Lee, was no novice: He is
head of the New York City Builders Association and one of the
Partnership's most experienced developers. But the results have
been almost equally frustrating for homeowners.
Frank Rodriguez has had to struggle with fetid sewer line
back-ups since moving into his West Farms house six years ago.
"The entire first floor was flooded," Rodriguez says, echoing the
complaints of at least six other homeowners. "Feces, urine, you
name it, it's in there .... Our sewers back up four or five times a
year. In the middle of the night we hear it coming."
The Partnership has served as an intermediary between West
Farms residents and Lee. But homeowner appeals for help have been
answered by occasional repairs from Lee along with homeownership
classes and advice to be careful not to stuff too much down the toilet.
Residents say the problem isn't their plunger management skills,
but a cost-cutting design flaw in the septic system. Unlike standard
houses, which have their own connections to city sewer lines, many
row houses are linked together in group sewer lines. The common
connections often get clogged-also a problem in many of the early
Nehemiah Houses-ejecting sewage into homes that share the line.
Contractors say this type of sewer line reduces the cost of each house
by $5,000. The problem is compounded by the city building code,
which allows builders to cut costs by installing four-inch pipe
instead of the six-inch conduit recommended by many contractors.
The situation has gotten so bad that Rodriguez bought his own
$200 sump pump from Home Depot, which he uses to shunt the
water out into his yard. A yard where, incidentally, he too had
found garbage, bike parts and bricks when he moved in.
"All the houses have the same problems," says Victor Conforme.
"The developer used cheap material." His two-family Cypress
Garden house on Van SicklenAvenue in Brooklyn has suffered from
roof leaks and damaged interior surfaces.
T
he Partnership seems to recognize the need to take
a more active oversight role. When White, a former
HPD deputy commissioner, took over as Wylde's
replacement 14 months ago, she began to look into
ways of improving the organization's accountabili-
ty system. "One of the things we decided was that we would hire
a roving construction manager to give unannounced inspections
and provide a level of oversight, so that we know if there's any
problems going on," she says. "That way some of the issues that
we might have had in the past will get caught. "
White will also mandate that all contractors track resident
comments by computer and dedicate one staff member to keeping
track of resident problems so "these complaints don't get written
on some scrap of paper and shoved into a desk drawer. "
Soon after White took the job, Giuliani tapped Richard Roberts,
a Partnership booster whose wife works for Wylde at the
Investment Fund, for HPD's top job. After hearing of the trouble
with some of the developments, Roberts convened a task force
with an eye towards imposing tougher standards on future projects.
A January draft of the task force's construction criteria (see
sidebar, "Raising the Roof. ") obtained by City Limits reads more
like a lecture to naughty contractors than a set of technical guide-
lines, with exhortations like "Rake out debris," "No stucco!! " and
"Provide two coats of paint." But the regs also contain the first
minimum standards for roof pitches and materials- including
drywall, insulation and flooring-as well as an outright ban on
forced-air heating systems, which have been the subject of many
homeowner complaints. Contractors say the city might also
require individual sewer link-ups for each new house in order to
stem the back-up complaints.
But bigger changes may be in the offing. In March, HPD offi-
cials told City Limits that Roberts is considering a shift away from
the massive construction of suburban-style townhouses, which
would likely divert a significant portion of HPD's diminishing
funding to putting up more conventional high-rise buildings in
inner-city neighborhoods. The shift won't mean halting construc-
tion of one- to three-family dwellings, but could signal an end to
the near-monopoly of subsidized housing construction funding
that the Partnership and the Nehemiah Houses have enjoyed.
"We have to consider other ways of doing things, other people,
other sites," said an administrator close to Roberts. "It's a good
time for us to think of other ways and other models .... We 're not
looking to displace anybody or replace anybody, but we need to
implement other kinds of models that make the best use of the
resources we have."
Details are sketchy, but officials say they will probably begin
funding the construction of four- to seven-story buildings in poor
neighborhoods, with ground-floor retail space where appropri-
ate-in line with the Partnership'S existing ANCHOR commercial
development initiative. But an HPD official made a point of say-
ing that the agency was undertaking the shift to seek "new blood"
in housing development.
"This is something I haven't heard about," responds the
Partnership'S White.
T
hese machinations don't matter much to the resi-
dents at Hiram Rosado and West Farms, who have
created an increasingly militant homeowners rights
movement. A meeting with representatives from
Public Advocate Mark Green's office last May
attracted 25 residents. Then word started getting around. More than
150 people showed up last month for a well-publicized gripe session
organized by Bronx state Senator David Rosado and attended by
representatives from Attorney General Dennis Vacco's office.
If the mood at the meeting gives any indication of the resi-
dents' future plans, the Partnership will have to do a lot to win
back the confidence of homeowners.
"It's like the Amityville Horror," says Marie Colvin, who has
suffered nearly continuous heating and sewer problems-despite
writing a check for $1,446 each month for the mortgage on her
West Farms house. "Do you know what kind of house I could
have bought in South Carolina or Florida for my $200,000?
"Give me a better house or compensate me. "
Laura Seigle is a Manhattan-based freelancer.
CITVLlMITS
t
Fort Jiggetts, The Bronx
IN THE CITY'S POOREST BOROUGH, A PAINfUllY INEffiCIENT RENT SUBSIDY REIGNS AS KING Of HOUSING COURT.
By Sasha Abramsky
A
mile or so up the Grand Concourse, past block after block of
sandstone apartments and shuls gone over to the Pentecostals,
gleams a four-story glass box. It looks like a shopping mall in
Passaic, but in reality it's the six-month-old Bronx Housing
Court, the Galleria of the Damned.
The building may be new, but the people all seem used. The courtrooms,
august, cherry-lined mausoleums, are often empty. That's because most of
this court's business-cutting deals to extract unpaid rent from poor ten-
ants-is transacted in lobbies and hallways. Here, defendants spend up to
eight hours waiting, negotiating, whispering, jamming bottles into the
mouths of cranky toddlers. Into their midst drift the functionaries who make
APRIL 1998
their money here: drowsy landlord lawyers who wear wrinkled suits Uke
bathrobes, Legal Services attorneys popping in and out of their barricaded
second-floor offices and white-shirted court officers who bellow the name of
the next defendant due at the dock.
From looking around, you would never guess that the court has just expe-
rienced its most significant change in decades. Last year, Albany rewrote its
housing laws. Soon after, the court administrati.on embarked on a new
restructuring plan and, in the Bronx, shifted its whole enterprise to the new
courthouse. Yet despite these variously intentioned efforts at reform, the
court continues to function as it always has. Most landlords get paid some-
thing; most tenants avoid eviction. And everyone with a law degree makes a
-
Halls crowded with lawyers,
tenants and landlords broke ring
deals have been a constant in the
old and the new housing court.
respectable living.
The grease that keeps this machin-
ery in motion is a little-known,
allegedly temporary rent subsidy that
is the product of a ten-year-old law-
suit, Jiggetts v. Dowling. Like the court itself, "Jiggetts relief' is inefficient-
ly administered, turns lawyers into clerks and gives tenants ulcers. Yet it also
manages to keep roughly 26,000 poor city tenants off the streets each year.
It is everyone's favorite insanely run housing assistance program.
"I'd say that 85 percent of the cases I deal with end in Jiggetts," says
Steven Goldstein, a young landlord attorney who spends weeks at a time
working out of his briefcase in Bronx Housing Court. "The point here is not
to evict tenants. It is to get our money and keep poor people in the apart-
ments. Jiggetts does that."
If Jiggetts is powerful throughout the city, it reigns supreme in the pover-
ty-stricken Bronx. For a borough with only 15 percent of the city's popula-
tion, the Bronx got nearly half of the Jiggetts money doled out in 1997,
according to court statistics. Because so many Bronx tenants fit the Jiggetts
profile, this relief has become the very lifeblood of the Bronx's dysfunc-
tionally functional low-income housing system. Landlords love it. Tenants
can't afford to lose it.
E
lkie Collazo, a thin 23-year-old woman in a Gap baseball cap,
arrives at the court building in the morning to answer her landlord's
complaint that she owes him $ J ,200. She doesn't have the money
to pay her debt, and like 93 percent of the tenants who appear in
the court, Collazo doesn't even have a lawyer to cut a deal.
Collazo is nervous, and rightfully so. Her daughter's in school, but her
-
four-year-old son is at home, being looked after by a babysitter Collazo can
ill-afford to pay. She looks at her watch as she ponders the day ahead.
"When you come to Housing Court, you got to be prepared to be here all
day," she says. "You don't know if you're going to be called in the morning
or at two o'clock in the afternoon."
Collazo's savior arrives in the form of Marie Edwards, a caseworker with
the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), a South Bronx nonprofit that offers pro
bono legal help to the poor. After reviewing the facts of her case, Edwards
gives Collazo the advice she has given to hundreds people: Apply for
Jiggetts as fast as you can.
Collazo is a textbook Jiggetts candidate. She is very poor, so poor she
can't afford a telephone. She has two small children and is on welfare.
(Jiggetts relief is only available to families receiving Family Assistance,
New York State's version of the federal welfare program, Temporary Aid to
Needy Families.) She is facing eviction-the subsidy is only available to
tenants on the verge of being kicked out of their apartments. Most impor-
tantly, Collazo's rent is hopelessly above what she can afford to pay. Apart
from her welfare check and food stamps, Collazo receives a monthly "shel-
ter allowance" from welfare that amounts to $286. Her rent is $453.26 for
a Westchester Avenue apartment swarming with roaches in a building that
is so poorly maintained the bathroom ceiling has collapsed three times in
the last year.
Collazo's application is also aided by another factor. She lives in a
rent-stabilized apartment, which both landlord and tenant lawyers say
makes it more likely the state will approve Jiggetts. Now all she has to
do is fill out the application, send it in to the state, fill in any additional
information officials request-and wait six to eight weeks for her answer
to arrive.
CITY LIMITS
Apocalypse No
I
t was billed as the most powerful anti-tenant pro-
vision in the state's new rent regulation laws.
Tenant advocates predicted that the new rent
deposit law, requiring tenants to pay their rent into an
escrow account as their cases meandered through
Housing Court, would result in hundreds of premature
and improper evictions.
So far, it hasn't happened.
Only 11 tenants have been required to pay rent
deposits since the law took effect in October-in a
Housing Court system that receives on average 25,000
new cases a month. So far, judges, lawyers and advo-
cates report that they have yet to see any tenants
evicted solely because they could not make rent
escrow payments.
The relative quiet may be due to delayed imple-
mentation. Legal Aid's challenge to the statute's
legality is still under consideration.
But observers say it seems to have more to do
with Housing Court judges. The new law limits judges'
discretion to grant delays in evictions. Seeing an
attack on their prerogatives, the judges have struck
back. In November, Staten Island Judge Philip
Straniere, not known as a tenant-friendly jurist, ruled
the law's fast-track eviction provisions unconstitu-
tional. And although no other judges have taken such
a bold step, they have helped to even the playing field
by stepping up the pressure on landlord attorneys.
Judges can't order delays, but they can give
owners an uncomfortable choice: Waive the rent
deposit provision, or go to trial immediately. Says one
landlord lawyer: "If you show up in court ready for
trial, your life is okay. Otherwise, if the tenant offers
something realistic in terms of payment schedule,
you'd better go for that."
Even without pressure from the bench, the rent
deposit mechanism is so awkward that it's not very
useful as a rent -collection tool, according to tenant
and landlord lawyers. Last fall's Housing Court
restructuring plan split the court into three parts.
The result is that getting a deposit requires separate
hearings before different judges.
"If you have twenty or thirty cases and one gets
sent out for hearing, you have to hold all the others,"
explains landlord attorney Alan Tenenbaum, adding
that many attorneys aren't willing tolerate the hassle.
The rent deposit law is "sort of a toothless provi-
sion," Tenenbaum says. "I haven't seen it used yet."
If these factors have made the law cumbersome
for wealthy, well-represented landlords, they have
rendered it virtually useless to small landlords, who,
ironically, pushed hardest for implementation. Unable
to pay the cost of navigating the legal maze and
unwilling to go immediately to trial, most small build-
ing owners have been backing
down and waiving their right
to demand deposits. Ifr llt AI" fl 't
Supervising Judge Richard I '
Rivera, who oversees I I r., t ' ! I t ~ ~ ~
Brooklyn's civil, housing and 1 ~
small claims courts, calls the ll,
rent deposit law a "selective 1 II r \f n 8J 8 1, U 0 a
weapon." Rivera says any +'1 u +
landlord who wants to see the
rent paid has an incentive to l""--______ ~ ~ ~ - '
opt out of the rent deposits.
It's the landlords who want evictions that push ahead.
The law provides one way to get rid of people you
don't want in the building, Rivera explains, "but
there's no motivation to get rid of the tenant if there
is money coming through."
Still, advocates warn that the lull may be decep-
tive. "People are still getting their feet wet and trying
to figure out how to proceed in a chaotic and danger-
ous situation," says Legal Aid's Mimi Rosenberg.
"If, within minutes of this law going into effect,
huge numbers of people were evicted, there would be
a traceable backlash," adds welfare maven Liz
Krueger, associate director of the Community Food
Resource Center. "We just haven't seen the true hit
yet because landlords aren't using the new laws."
-Kathleen McGowan
T
en years ago, Barbara Jiggetts, a young woman in a situation sim-
ilar to Elkie Collazo's, approached Legal Aid for help. Her shelter
allowance, $386 a month, also fell far short of her monthly rent,
and she was also facing eviction. With file cabinets full of similar
cases, Legal Aid decided it was time to challenge the legality of the
state Department of Social Services' shelter allowance rate, which hadn't
been increased in years.
Matthew Diller, a Legal Aid lawyer involved in the original case, recalls:
"In the late '70s, rent started going way up, and the shelter schedule just was
not adjusted accordingly .. .. By the late '80s, most public assistance families
could not fmd shelter within the allowance. We kept coming across families
who were being evicted because they could not pay their full rent. "
The case-which is still unresolved-was a Legal Aid broadside aimed
at jarring loose hundreds of millions in additional state welfare housing sub-
APRIL 1998
--
sidies. Over a decade of rulings, appeals, judgments and counter-judgments,
the one decisive change brought about by the lawsuit came in 1991, when a
Court of Appeals judge ordered state welfare officials to provide an emer-
gency rent supplement to poor tenants facing imminent eviction. That court-
ordered subsidy, which has grown from 3,000 clients in 1992 to 26,000
today, is now universally known simply as "Jiggetts." Last year, it cost the
state about $100 million.
There are two major reasons for the Bronx's Jiggetts dependency. First, it
is, per capita, the city's poorest borough. Second, a higher percentage of ten-
ants-three quarters, according to recent estimates-live in apartments run
by large management companies.
Because large landlords and management companies rent units in bulk,
they litigate en masse and are often represented by law fmns who file mul-
tiple cases at once. That means poor tenants are more likely to fmd them-
selves hauled into Housing Court. "For a small landlord, taking a tenant to
Housing Court is, at best, a last resort .... There simply aren't enough dollars
from other rentals to offset the loss of rent and cover attorney fees," writes
community development consultant David Rubel in a recent report on
tenants, the rent-aid isn't entirely free: For every $3 allotted in Jiggetts relief,
the family loses $1 in food stamps.
F
or all its faults, tenant advocates live in mortal fear of having Jiggetts
de-funded at a time when federal money for housing is increasingly
hard to come by. (Over the course of interviewing for the story, sev-
erallawyers and anti-poverty activists urged City Limits not to write
this piece lest it be used as a tool to attack Jiggetts.)
The fear isn't unfounded. Since he took office, Governor George Pataki
has unsuccessfully backed legislation to replace all housing subsidies with
district-wide "flat grants," a move that would effectively render the Jiggetts
case-and the entire rent supplement system-moot.
"If a single mom with one child has no access to public housing and no
access to Section 8 [federal rent subsidies] and no Jiggetts-how is she sup-
posed to live?" asks Scott Auwarter, CAB's director of eviction prevention.
It's important to note that CAB, Legal Aid and Legal Services have a
financial incentive to support Jiggetts in their own right, especially since
other key sources of their funding have been attacked by GOP lawmakers.
Housing Court for CAB. "[But] any landlord
with more than 50 units of housing will usual-
ly have a close working relationship with a
lawyer who specializes in Housing Court."
Big Bronx landlords and their attorneys act
like caseworkers-they routinely tell tenants
to apply for Jiggetts if they are having prob-
lems paying the rent. "My landlord referred
me over to Jiggetts," admitted one tenant who
didn't want her name used. "He said, 'You can
apply for Jiggetts because they can help you
pay the excess rent. '"
"If you can
get tenants
into the
Organizations bill the government approximately $1,050
per housing court case resolved. Without the money from
handling Jiggetts cases, tenant defenders in the Bronx
would go broke, lawyers say.
Even so, many of these same tenant advocates admit
that the system needs to change. According to lawyers for
these organizations, it isn't uncommon for an attorney to
carry a caseload of five hundred Jiggetts clients a year,
transforming much-needed client advocates into over-
worked paper pushers. CAB's Auwartar estimates that 95
percent of his organization's workload in the Bronx is now
Jiggetts-related. Legal Aid lawyers such as Lisa Sbrana
believe they spend up to 70 percent of their time on such
cases, with each case involving 20 to 30 hours of legal
work. ''There's no reason for it to require lawyers to do this
work," she says. "In terms of the actual mechanics of get-
ting the money, there's no reason it should require these
groups to fill in the applications."
Tenant advocates describe Mike Ortiz as
one of the fairer, friendlier landlords in the
Bronx. A partner at Realty Group, which owns
roughly 3,600 apartments, he says Jiggetts is
the only way he can afford to keep poor ten-
ants in an age of shrinking government hous-
ing subsidies. He estimates they go through
court to put up to 300 tenants a year on
Jiggetts. "If you can get [tenants] into the pro-
gram, you're guaranteed your rent. What 's bet-
ter than that?" he says.
program,
you're
guaranteed
your rent.
What's better
than that?"
Susan Bahn, a staff attorney at Legal Aid's Brooklyn
office, says that absent the legal time spent on Jiggetts, her
office could devote more resources to representing clients
for other equally important services like "divorces, civil
cases, their not getting medical benefits, making sure they
One problem with tbe tenant-landlord co-
dependency is that it doesn't protect enough tenants from eviction. To
receive it, a tenant must be on welfare and it favors those who have a rent-
stabilized apartment. Historically, the Bronx has the city's highest per capi-
ta eviction rate, and that situation hasn't much changed since the advent of
Jiggetts.
According to court statistics obtained by Rubel, between 1991 and 1995
the Bronx averaged 5,762 evictions annually. In comparison, in Brooklyn
there were 5,710 evictions during the same period-but that borough has
nearly twice as many tenants.
Additionally, those who succeed in getting Jiggetts and avoiding eviction
have no guarantee that their apartments will be maintained. To keep Jiggetts,
tenants must stay in the same unit, and so are more likely to tolerate poor
repairs and maintenance. Even if tenants withhold rent in protest, the land-
lord still gets the Jiggetts payments. "If you have a substandard apartment,
the landlord is only concerned with getting Jiggetts," says Julio Muniz,
Bronx Coordinator with the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court.
"Issues of repair are pushed to the side. Basically, it's free money." But for
--
have food stamps."
Although there has been some talk of streamlining the process to take
much of the paperwork processing out of lawyers' hands, the system is not
likely to change anytime soon. That's because the fate of Jiggetts funding is
dependent on the fate of the larger Jiggetts lawsuit, which still languishes in
state court.
Technically, the tenants have already won the case. Still, the state, con-
tinuing a policy initiated by Governor Mario Cuomo, has refused to begin
negotiations over a permanent increase in the shelter allowance.
And from the Governor Pataki 's perspective, that makes sense. State reg-
ulators maintain they simply carmot afford to s e t t l e ~ r even seriously dis-
cuss a settlement. If the shelter allowance were hiked as little as $200 a
month for the 405,000 families now eligible receive it, the state would have
to dish out an additional $81 million a year-and that's a huge bite out of
Governor Pataki's hard-won election-year surplus .
Sasha Abramsky is a Manhattan-based freelance writer. Additional report-
ing by Glenn Thrush.
CITY LIMITS
F
or years, the basic tactic employed by poor tenants in
Housing Court was to stall until they could come up
with the cash.
But the new rent laws passed last summer have
changed everything. Now tenants face eviction if they
don't pay up the lump sum they owe their landlords within five
days of a judgment in their case. And when cases get bogged
down in court for more than 30 days, landlords can insist that ten-
ants put deposits for ongoing rent into court-administered escrow
accounts. Again, tenants have five days to comply before facing
an immediate trial and likely eviction.
The changes, part of the Albany deal that saved rent regula-
APRIL 1998
tions, stripped judges of the power to grant long delays and dras-
tically accelerated a process that once was measured in months.
To stem what looked like a potential flood of new evictions,
the city's Human Resources Administration stepped in. After a
meeting last August with housing and welfare advocates, the
agency vowed to hire 122 new caseworkers to speed up the paper-
work on emergency "one-shot" loans-one-time cash injections
for tenants on the verge of eviction.
But the city didn't come through.
Technically, the loans are welfare money, but recipients are
usually working people down on their luck. One-shots are
designed for fundamentally solvent people who find themselves
Legal Aid's Susan
Bahn says the
city CQn " keep up
with the 2,000
one-shot applica-
tions they get
each month.
--
--
Many regional
centers are
hopelessly
overburdened
after years
of cutbacks.
temporarily strapped because of ill-
ness, accident or unemployment.
These discrete payments-as much
as $2,200 in the form of an interest-
free, one-year loan-are a cheap
safety net. They keep the working
poor from tumbling into the world
of permanent welfare, public hous-
ing, subsidized rent and a homeless
shelter system that can cost taxpay-
ers $36,000 per recipient each year.
It generally takes HRA at least four to six weeks to process a
one-shot application. The paper chase requires a dozen sign-offs
and the coordination of three separate offices in order to produce
a check. The process is bewildering: There are three different
kinds of grants with exacting and contradictory eligibility criteria.
The new caseworkers, stationed in courts and regional welfare
centers, were supposed to bring one-shots up to speed and make
it possible for tenants to get loan checks before Housing Court's
new five-day clock ran out. At least that's what everybody
thought, until the mayor's budget office scuttled lillA's plans in
February. The agency would get new caseworkers, budget boss
Joe Lhota decreed-precisely 13 new caseworkers.
Although the impact of the five-day rule has been blunted so
far by judges' willingness to sidestep rent deposits (see sidebar,
"Apocalypse No"), the city has still been caught short. Eight
workers were deployed in the housing courts this winter, and
some of the 33 regional centers have emergency rent personnel
that can expedite loans. But many centers are hopelessly overbur-
dened, and years of cutbacks mean that HRA's central office-
where almost all one-shots are evaluated-has only 12 supervi-
sors to sign off on 2,000 monthly applications.
"HRA just can't react to all those cases within one to three
business days," says Legal Aid's Susan Bahn. "They can do that
in extreme cases, with a screaming advocate, but otherwise they
just don't have the personnel."
S
ometimes even screaming isn't enough. Lucille Sing, a
social worker with a Master's degree, was laid off from
St. Vincent's Hospital last year at age 59. Her unem-
ployment benefits ran out in the fall , and two months
behind in her rent, she went to HRA in January to ask
for a $1,336.98 one-shot so she could stay in the rent-stabilized
apartment she'd lived in for 25 years.
They gave her $18.65 for a week's food and told her to get a
72-hour eviction notice to prove her desperation before applying
for a one-shot-even though she already had a formal letter from
her landlord explaining what she owed. The type of one-shot
she'd applied for required her to be solvent enough to pay the loan
back, but poor enough to need it. And the agency wanted to hold
a check from a guarantor to prove she'd pay the loan back.
Sing has been told she was lucky. Caseworkers at HRA have
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CITY LIMITS
been known to demand birth certificates, testimonials from former
employers, and months' worth of old grocery receipts, says Carl
Peterson, Queens coordinator for the City-Wide Task Force on
Housing Court.
them out in time.
Advocates fear that as landlords become familiar with the
new rules, the number of tenants who need quick one-shots will
climb and HRA won't be able to respond. "If that does come
about, then we know that there's going to be all kinds of prob-
lems, which is why HRA was going to bring [new] people in,"
says City-Wide's Peterson. "Right now, most people are just
holding their breath."
Since requesting her loan, Sing has had six appointments with
HRA (one took all day), a home visit from a caseworker and three
court dates. "This is infuriating, and very frightening, too," Sing
says. "This is living at the end of a gun, and at my age, where am
I going to go?"
Sing finally called her congressman, who wrote
the deputy commissioner of HRA. In early March,
more than six weeks after her initial visit, Sing's
check was cut-a $2,200 loan for what had become
four months' back rent.
Recognizing that such delays are commonplace,
judges used to postpone proceedings and hold off
evictions in about half of all Housing Court cases.
That gave tenants time to produce the money or, in
cases where the landlord was in the wrong, rent
receipts and building inspection records.
Under the new rent deposit law, however, Sing's
judge wasn't allowed to postpone her case. Luckily,
she had a sympathetic landlord and a nonprofit will-
ing to back her up her credit. With that, she was able
to strike a deal. She convinced her landlord to wait
while she went for the one-shot. Both finally got
what they wanted.
S
ince HRA has a standing policy of refus-
ing to answer any questions from City
Limits, hard figures are unavailable, but
advocates estimate that between 75 per-
cent and 95 percent of all one-shot appli-
cations are denied the first time, and court affidavits
show that little more than half of all tenants eventu-
ally get their loan.
Many landlords aren't as accommodating as
Sing's. And they know they could wait weeks or
even months only to find out that their tenants' one-
shots were denied. Landlord attorney Harvey Luftig
says he'd rather go to trial than wait for a tenant to
get a one-shot. "I don't have the sense that tenants
going for one-shots are successful," says Luftig,
who practices in Brooklyn. "My job is to assist my
clients in collecting rent. I don't have a great deal of
confidence that [one-shots] help tenants get it."
Luftig points out that one-shots used to be more
generous and easier to acquire. The city didn't both-
er to collect on the loans, so future ability to pay
wasn't a big issue. But over the last few years, one-
shot criteria has been tightened, the loans were kept
to a few months' rent, and the city started demand-
ing repayment. All of this has served to restrict ten-
ant eligibility.
Some tenants have landlords who will wait
rather than demand rent deposits. But landlords
anxious to rid their buildings of low-rent units
have no reason not to exercise the new provisions,
and their tenants can't depend on HRA to bail
APRIL 1998
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-
JOBS, ECONOMY-SIZED
This is an executive summary of a forthcoming report
by the Center for an Urban Future, the first in a series
on job creationfor low-income New Yorkers. For more
information, call 212-479-3353.
I
t's ironic that in the heyday of welfare reform,
New York City has no strategy for creating pri-
vate sector jobs for welfare recipients and the
working poor. The city not only shrugs its shoul-
ders over the survival of the city's destitute; it has
also neglected to secure a sound economic future for the
bulk of working New Yorkers.
Despite a lack of municipal leadership, local non-
profit and for-profit entrepreneurs are finding creative
new ways to generate jobs that pay enough to raise a
family. These enterprises are deepening their roots in
the five boroughs, identifying niche markets and cus-
tomizing their products and services. They are cooper-
ating with community institutions, forming industry
alliances and hiring locally.
Until now, the city has contributed only intermittent-
ly to private-sector efforts, and has failed to absorb the
lessons from these successes into any systematic jobs
agenda.
The Center for an Urban Future is crafting a blueprint
for a jobs agenda that distills the lessons learned from
these entrepreneurs. The Center urges city economic
development officials to look beyond their traditional
Midtown and Wall Street constituencies and instead
support the small- and medium-sized neighborhood-
based businesses that are the city's true engine of
LaGuardia Community College: Creating
An Educational On-Ramp to Employment
Though the headlines would have you believe
the city's two-year community colleges are only good for coddling infe-
rior students, LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City,
Queens is quietly moving welfare recipients into permanent, living-wage
jobs.
All students pursuing a two-year degree at LaGuardia must participate
in the Cooperative Education Program, a unique feature in the CUNY
system. The co-op program requires all students to enter the local work-
force through internships. It structures their academic work along voca-
tional lines, and it gives them intensive career counseling. Arguably,
LaGuardia's co-op program is more serious about work experience than
the mayor's work experience program.
Each year, LaGuardia places 2,000 full-time students (many of whom
are on public assistance) in internships, giving them on-the-job training
in computer programming, accounting, nursing and other fields. The col-
lege can pull off this feat because it matches students to the businesses
that can use them. Nearly 90 percent of the school's cooperative educa-
tion graduates are either working or continuing their education. And co-
op students-who start school with a median annual family income of
$14,00O-earn an average of $25,400 a year after graduation.
growth-and its most promising source of new work-
ing-class jobs. New York should identify market sectors
that could benefit from minimal public investments and
form partnerships with industry intermediaries.
Government has an important role to play. It can and
should be a catalyst for job creation and diversified eco-
nomic development. A little money, wisely spent, can
help employers build the capacity needed to hire more
workers-workers who pay taxes, shop locally and
keep the city alive.
The Center seeks to promote policies that create jobs
both for people coming off welfare and for other New
Yorkers just trying to make ends meet. Many jobs will
undoubtedly be beyond the capabilities of some public
assistance recipients. But the job market is a ladder.
Workers who step up into new positions create vacan-
cies for those with fewer years in the labor market.
The Center for an Urban Future is calling for nothing
less than a cultural shift: The city should make living-
wage job creation its top priority. The Center is propos-
ing that city officials help ignite the entrepreneurial spir-
it latent in New York's neighborhoods. It's not charity-
it's common sense.
NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET
A
s far as New York City officials are con-
cerned, welfare reform has nothing to do
with economic development. Jason Turner,
the new chief of the Human Resources
Administration, and the Economic
Development Corporation's Charles Millard don't do
lunch. And social service bureaucrats charged with help-
ing public assistance recipients get off welfare might as
well be on a different planet from the economic develop-
ment staff assigned to stoke the employment rate.
The lack of cooperation is perplexing and illogical.
City government ought to tear down the firewall
between welfare reform and economic development. If
both welfare reformers and economic developers keep
their eyes on job creation, they will inevitably find new
ways to work together.
WORKFARE: AIMING TOO LOW
ayor Rudolph Giuliani's workfare
strategy consists of encouraging peo-
ple to leave the welfare rolls by
demanding that they toil in dead-end,
menial public works assignments.
City government seems to have abandoned all hope of
helping public assistance recipients find real jobs.
The administration refuses to keep track of the
350,000 welfare recipients it has bounced into oblivion.
But recent data from the state reveals that about 20 per-
cent of workfare participants left the rolls because they
had found work, and the Human Resources
Administration itself estimated that only 4 percent of
participants claim permanent employment as a result of
the city's workfare program.
CITVLlMITS
A call for Real Employment in New york
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT:
AIMING TOO HIGH
or decades, the city's idea of economic
development has been grounded in a strate-
gy of charming multi-million dollar corpora-
tions to stay in Manhattan with offers of
prodigious real estate subsidies and tax
abatements. In 1995 and 1996, such deals cost the city
an average $600,000 each per year-and many deals
surpassed the million-dollar mark. And at least nine cor-
porations that benefited from the nearly $800 million in
city tax breaks since 1994 went ahead and laid off staff
anyway. As critics have long pointed out, if these sweet-
heart deals preserve any jobs at all, they keep as many
wealthy suburbanites as city residents employed.
These wasteful handouts look especially unfair when
compared to the pittance that real job-creating business-
es get from city government.
Hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized firms
have no chance of getting a city subsidy. Remarkably,
these businesses account for 99.7 percent of New York
City' s companies and provide many of its jobs. Between
1993 and 1996, firms with fewer than 500 employees
hired 99,000 new workers while those with more than
500 created only 22,300 new jobs. And between 1990
and 1997, 29 big companies went broke, while 6,000
companies with less than 50 employees opened up.
THE FORGOnEN SECTOR
A
good example of where government
could get a better bang for its buck is in
the light-manufacturing sector. Though it
may come as a surprise to some, the city
is currently home to 12,000 manufactur-
ing firms employing 286,000 workers, making products
from merchandise display cases to New York cheese-
cake. That's nowhere near the one million manufactur-
ing jobs the city had in the 1950s, and it is unlikely New
York will ever again be a center for large industry. But
the city' s structure and location do allow specialized
manufacturing to thrive.
Neglected but talented, manufacturing pioneers con-
tinue to break new ground. Twelve businesses started
squatting in an abandoned city-owned factory in 1988,
producing high-end wood products like furniture and
architectural details, and making a decent living. It took
eight years, but eventually they won city permission to
buy the dilapidated factory for $1 and the Greenpoint
Manufacturing and Design Center was born. Since then,
GMDC has spent $4.5 million on renovations, including
a $800,000 city grant for environmental clean-up. The
site is now ftlled to capacity with 68 businesses employ-
ing 400 people who share training costs and high-tech
machinery.
The city seems unwilling to expand this winning
strategy. Manufacturers need a lot of low-cost industri-
al space. But the city' s policies favor residential and
commercial tenants-people who generate few jobs
APRIL 1998
and, in their willingness to pay higher rents, put even
more financial pressure on manufacturing firms.
The city is taking a step backward on one program
that helped mitigate this situation: the Business
Relocation Assistance Corporation. The city's primary
program to keep manufacturers in town, BRAC gave
hundreds of displaced manufacturers grants of up to
$60,000 to help them relocate within the five boroughs.
The city made its disdain for manufacturing clear last
year when it began phasing BRAC out.
SOLUTIONS
C
reating living-wage private sector jobs for
people without a lot of education and
skills is feasible, as several enterprises
right here in New York City have shown.
These enterprises are all :
NeighbOrhOOd-based
Set up to capitalize on the strengths
of the local labor force
Tailored to New york City's economy
Organically attached to specific
industries
Benefiting from public/private
partnerships
The Center for an Urban Future encourages New
York City to expand on these core elements, keeping in
mind that the best job creation solutions come from the
private sector. This is not a big-government proposal.
On the contrary, the Center's research shows that a min-
imal amount of investment-applied strategically---can
yield a windfall of solid middle-income jobs.
The Garment Industry: A Sector-Based
Strategy for Growth
Some New york companies have found that
banding together both saves their own skin and keeps their industry
viable. By organizing umbrella groups, known as intermediaries, that
can channel public financial support to their sector, these industries help
preserve thousands of entry-level jobs and make it possible for hundreds
of small- and medium-sized businesses to expand.
The union-led Garment Industrial Development Corporation, which
has united labor, employer associations, design schools and govern-
ment, is one of the best examples. Garment manufacturers, which typ-
ically employ 25 to 60 workers, are too small to attract government
assistance on their own. But GIDC helps these small shops make over-
seas contacts and take advantage of government programs they might
not know about. The alliance turned two $50,000 Empire State
Development Corporation export grants into $20 million in additional
export business for 24 local companies. With a board of directors con-
sisting of workers, employers and government officials, GIDC has
helped many businesses increase their payrolls, sometimes by as much
as 50 percent.
-
.. -.-......... .. ' ... -
Numbing
Numbers
VITAL STATS
-
B
ronx Borough Hall has been touting the borough's recent
honorific of "All American City"-but rumors of rebirth may
be premature. A new citywide report reveals the sober truth:
Despite some improvements, the South Bronx remains the
city's poorest, most blighted and least educated area.
In a sweeping analysis released last month, two nonprofits,
Community Studies of New York, Inc.{INFOSHARE and City Project,
report that the South Bronx is home to four out of the five worst-per-
forming neighborhoods in New York City. The report breaks down results
into city council districts, inviting a more political take on poverty,
Councilmember Jose Rivera's Fordham district fared worst among the
51 city council districts in a ranking of economic, social, housing, health
and education indicators. But Wendell Foster's district, which includes
Highbridge, Melrose and Morrisania, is flat-out the poorest: 37 percent of
residents are on public assistance and more than half get Medicaid, com-
pared to citywide averages of 13 percent and 23 percent. The district's
median income of $13,513 was the city's lowest, marginally worse than
the bordering South Bronx districts including Mott Haven (Rivera) and
Hunts Point (Pedro Espada),
Almost 30,000 housing units have been built or rehabbed in the bor-
ough over the last decade. Despite the building boom, the report notes,
South Bronx residents still pay more of their incomes in rent than most
other New York City tenants. "The land and the buildings are good, but
the people are worse off than ever," says Jim Fairbanks, Councilmember
Foster's chief of staff.
The report also links these low economic numbers with bottom-draw-
er educational performance. Rivera's district sits at the bottom of the list
for reading scores, and Foster's and Espada's districts are tied with two
others for second worst. In math, Espada's constituents scored dead last.
The area's health stats are just as grim. In Foster's council district, 11.2
infants die per 1,000 births, compared to 8.8 citywide, Asthma and teen
pregnancy rates tower above average as well.
The eight districts in Central and East Brooklyn fare only slightly bet-
ter, Of the 141,441 residents in Una Clarke's Aatbush district, a mere
10,746 have private-sector jobs-one-fifth the citywide average. Overall,
Clarke's district supports a paltry 1,095 private businesses, one-third the
average.
Meanwhile, residents in Northern Manhattan are some of the sickest in
the city. Philip Reed's East Harlem district topped the asthma hospitaliza-
tion list in 1995, at more than two-and-a-half times the citywide norm. In
Bill Perkins' Central Harlem and Morningside Heights district, tuberculo-
sis rates are nearly three times higher than the city average and low birth-
weight babies are more common than in any other district.
As expected, districts in Staten Island, Queens and Manhattan below
96th Street fared well in almost every category. Still, there were a few
surprises. Although A. Gifford Miller's Upper East Side district is the
second-richest in the city, the neighborhood has roughly the same inci-
dence of low birth-weight babies-8 percent-as Washington Heights,
whose residents earn, on average, $30,000 less a year.
And data from Miller's district also disproves the bromide that all
overcrowded schools are bad. The Upper East Side's public schools oper-
ate at a far -above-average 120 percent of capacity, yet reading scores are
the city's best. -Kemba Johnson and Glenn Thrush
r---------------------------------------,
1995 Asthma Hospital Admissions
1,800
1,500
1,200
900 (;
600
300
NYC
LOW
.. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ WHEElINC _______ ,
I
I
I
5th 8th 15th 11th 34th 16th:
Council Council Council Council Council Council :
District District District District District District :
Upper East East SoutIJ SoutIJ North west I
Side, Harlem Bronx: Bronx: lIot! ............ : Bronx: I
Roosevelt West' Fordham, Haven,
Island Harlem Belmont Hunts Bed-Stuy, llelrose I
Puint, Wiliams- I
IIonisania burg I
L _______________________________________
r---------------------------------------,
Median Household Income
NYC
HICH
870,000
860,000
850,000
,.-------
STRAPPED
-------.,
NYC :I
840,000 Average 0
830,000 '"
820,000
I
I
;i
810,000 L-__ --" .... L-
4th
Council
District
EastSide
34th
Council
District
West SoutIJ Nortb SoutIJ
Bronx: Bronx: IIott Brooklyn: Bronx:
Haven, filrdham,
lIelrose . Hunts Bed-Stuy, Belmoot
P9int, Williams-
14th
Council
District
SoutIJ
Bronx:
Fordham,

IIonisaJia burg

r---------------------------------------,
: Percentage of Children Reading
I At Or Above Crade Level
:100%
80%
NYC
HICH
STRUCCUNC r-------
-------,
60%

I
NYC
I

'#-
'" '" '" '"
40%
i
= = =
=
=
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..,

20%


:J:
'"
50
z
<:;
E
-li


z
'0


?:
0%
5th 15th 9th 14th 16th 17th 37th
Council Council Council Council Council Council Council
District District District District District District District
Upper SoutIJ Central South west SoutIJ East 'l
East Bronx: Harlem, Bronx: Bronx: Bronx: Brooklyn:
Side, filrdham, Upper FIrdham, IIoIt East New ?:
RoosMIt Belmont west Side Kqs- bridge, HaVlifl, Yort, U
Island bridge lIelrose Hunts Pt., Cypress
j
CITY LIMITS
to history'S television set and examines the small, col-
orful dots one by one.
_1IIflII!! ..... -" ........ -
And that means slowing history into its component
days. It is hard to imagine that inspecting any year in the
1990s at such a microscopic level would yield anything
of comparable worth, but in the three years he
describes-1963 through 1965-the world overturned
itself in months, days, minutes. There are chapters on the assas-
sination of JFK and the ascension of LBJ; the rise of the Nation
of Islam; the excommunication and murder of
REVIEW
They Were Kings
Malcolm X; the FBI's covert campaign against
King; the murders of Goodman, Schwerner
and Chaney in Mississippi; the passage of the
Civil Rights Bill; and the destructive war
By Glenn Thrush
"Pillar of Fire: America in the King
Years, 1963-65," by Taylor Branch,
Simon & Schuster, 1998,
746 pages, $30.
G
Ossip writ large isn't quite history,
but it doesn't hurt the sale of a
history book.
Much of the talk about Taylor
Branch's ''Pillar of Fire," the middle passage in
his astounding three-part history of the civil rights movement,
focused on one salacious scrap of overheard conversation, if
you could call it conversation. In 1964, one of J. Edgar
Hoover's bugs picked up Martin Luther King Jr.'s voice, above
the purported sounds of extramarital sex, shouting: "I'm not a
Negro tonight!"
Considering the incessant hand-wringing over the Clinton
Affairs, it is remarkable that the revelations about an American
saint had such a relatively short shelf life. Thirty-five years ago,
the tapes would have derailed the Civil Rights Act and ensured
that MLK's name would never appear on the January page of
calendars nationwide. But news of his sex life has done very lit-
tle damage to his posthumous reputation.
There is a good reason for this. Bill Clinton had extramar-
ital sex. Martin Luther King had extramarital sex and enough
courage to challenge the moral and political temper of his
times.
Branch is the most consistently valuable historian working
today because of his refusal to peddle anecdotes or merely
chronicle the acquisition of power for power's sake. He rejects
the ersatz theory of the Great Flaw-so, mercifully, there are
none of the usual obligatory attempts to interview mistresses
and bathroom attendants to discern the subject's innermost
character through his utterances in bed or enthroned. In fact,
this book-like its predecessor nine years ago, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning "Parting the Waters"-doesn't seem much con-
cerned with King as a protagonist at all.
Branch is more interested in telling the tale of overlooked
people than in humanizing King. He takes a magnifying glass
APRIL I99B
between integrationists and black nationalists.
These sections could have read like the
Greatest Hits of the 1960s, except for
Branch's brilliance in showing small
people as they steel themselves for
great events.
In "Pillar of Fire" the most com-
pelling stories reveal a delightful spark
of human perversity in the face of bad
odds. Take the tale of two mismatched
friends from McComb, Mississippi,
Clyde Kennard and Vernon Dahmer.
Kennard, an erudite University of
Chicago student forced to come back home
to work his family farm, made the mistake
of trying to register at a nearby white college.
Enraged, the local authorities arrested him
and threw him into prison on trumped-up
charges of stealing chicken feed. When
Kennard became sick with colon cancer in jail-eventually it
killed him-Dahrner, a stubborn fellow farmer, began tending to
his friend's chickens and his civil rights causes.
The offhandedly fearless Dahmer became a legend among
the volunteers; he allowed them to sleep safely under his
eaves-as long as they did their share of fieldwork. Writes
Branch: "Dahmer pounded a meaty fist on two walls of his bed-
room to jolt awake sons and SNCC workers on the other side.
'Let's go bulls! ' he hollered. They all tumbled out into the
fields, and over breakfast several hours later Dahmer pressed
[voter registration workers 1 for the results on the previous day's
canvassing-what area are you working, anybody ready to go
down to the courthouse, how about the churches, any luck talk-
ing with the Negroes who come to the general store?"
In early 1965, Klansmen surrounded Dahmer's house,
poured gallons of gasoline through the windows and dropped
their matches. Dahmer picked up his shotgun, herded his fami-
ly to safety and began firing at the departing hooded figures. He
saved everyone but himself.
Lying charred on his deathbed, Dahmer dismissed his own
courage as if it were a bad business decision: "[Hle had always
said that it was unwise to be too far out front," Branch writes.
The difference between King's times and our own is this:
Our leaders survive by obeying the rule that Dahmer died
breaking .
City Limits editor Glenn Thrush is a former reporter for the
Birmingham Post-Herald.
-
--_.-----' . .. ".-
CITYVIEW
Rent Controls
on the Edge
Timothy L
Collins, an attor-
ney with the firm
of Collins,
Dobkin and
Miller Up, is the
former executive
director of the
New York City
Rent GuideLines
Board.
-
By Timothy L. Collins
S
hortly after the smoke cleared from the Rent Wars of
1997, Governor George Pataki wrote, "I believe
these changes will create the greatest housing con-
struction boom in 50 years. That will mean more
available apartments, more affordable apartments-
and more jobs for the people of New York."
However, it's more likely that the new rent laws will
depress new construction and raise the rent on tens of thou-
sands of units, exacerbating the city's already high
overcrowding rates. If enough people are forced to dou-
ble up-young married couples staying with their par-
ents, studios housing several tenants, two or more fam-
ilies sharing a few rooms-the city's higher vacancy
rate could trigger the end of all rent and eviction pro-
tections. Ironically, it could be a rise in the number of
overpriced apartments that dooms New York's rent
laws.
City and state rent laws are based on a "housing
emergency" defmed as a citywide vacancy rate of
less than 5 percent. If a higher percentage of rental
units across the five boroughs are empty, rent stabi-
lization must be declared at an end. As of the last
count in 1996, citywide vacancy stood at 4.01 per-
cent-up from 3.44 percent in 1993. The next count
will be taken in early 1999.
If the vacancy census comes in above 5 percent,
landlords will be free to charge market rents on all units and
evict tenants when their leases expire. (The city's older rent
control laws, which now govern less than 10 percent of regu-
lated units, would be discontinued "with due regard to prevent
uncertainty, hardship and dislocation.") If the current rent pro-
tections end, Assembly Republicans would likely argue that
the emergency is over-so why should new rent laws be
introduced?
The truth is, however, that a surplus of affordable housing
doesn't exist. In 1996, the average tenant devoted more than 32
percent of his or her income to rent-up from 20 percent in
1970. Declining real income among the bottom four-fifths of
the city's population over the past two decades has increased
overcrowding rates. In 1984, about 7.7 percent of the city's
apartments were considered overcrowded. By 1993, over-
crowding rates reached 1003 percent, where they remain today.
Of the 81,000 apartments estimated by Census Bureau
surveyors to be vacant and available in 1996, more than a
quarter had rents below $500 per month. Anyone who has
shopped around for an apartment in New York City will rec-
ognize that this figure is misleading. Thousands of these units
are in low-rent single-room occupancy hotels where owners
keep rooms empty for high-paying transient guests and often
refuse to rent to long-term tenants who might then assert sta-
bilized tenancy rights.
A closer look at the number also shows that the vacancy
figures include about 17,000 vacant units that had been on the
market for more than six months. It is hard to accept these units
as vacant and avaiLabLe when they sat empty for so long.
Another 6,000 "vacant" apartments were in projects run by the
Housing Authority, an agency which currently has a waiting
list of nearly 340,000 families.
Several factors could add a modest increase to this roll of
empty units-enough to tip the vacancy rate over 5 percent.
The fme print in the Rent Reform Act of 1997 vastly expand-
ed lUXUry de-control laws that remove rent protection for rela-
tively well-to-do tenants. In addition, through a Byzantine for-
mula, substantial rent increases were allowed for all rent stabi-
lized apartments that experience a tenant turnover (on average
about 9 percent of the units annually). Landlords used to be
allowed to take rent increases in the range of 5 to 12 percent
when an apartment emptied. The new rent laws may produce
hikes ranging from 18 percent to 40 percent. Combined, these
changes will sharply raise the rent on tens of thousands of sta-
bilized units.
As long as the economy remains strong, there may be
enough young, bonus-laden professionals to pay these higher
rents, but if the market hits a downturn, the newly expensive
units will prove to be beyond the means of many. And even if
the economy stays robust, many landlords may well push the
envelope past what the housing market will bear. After all, the
only way suppliers realize they have outstripped demand is by
running a surplus for a while.
The governor does have one thing right: Fifty years ago the
city did experience a tremendous housing boom, as it had in
the 1920s. But the feverish construction rates after the two
world wars occurred when strict controls limited rents in exist-
ing buildings. (Rent regulation has never been mandated for
new buildings.) Developers who wanted to capture the surging
demand for new housing driven by an upwardly mobile mid-
dle class wasted no time laying foundations.
Then-as now-if there had been no rent regulation, lower-
income tenants who lacked the means to pay market rents would
have been forced to double up. Overcrowding in market rate
apartments would have resulted in more empty units in existing
buildings and these vacancies would have discouraged new con-
struction. Strict rent control kept vacancies to a minimum and
gave developers irresistible incentives to build new units during
periods of economic growth. That situation provided new hous-
ing-not just an illusion of abundant housing while middle- and
low-income households double up .
CITY LIMITS
Bronx and Bucks
Policy and Politics :
Clinton s Legacy
B
ack in the early months of Clinton's ftrst term, before an
Arkansas land deal became front page news and White
House intern gossip consumed the nation, a group of
political scientists pledged to track how politics on Capitol Hill
affects social policy.
Their conclusion-way too much-is the backbone of a
new, unflinchingly academic book on the Clinton presiden-
cy. In fact, the professors say that the last six years of
intensely partisan politics have seriously restricted Beltway
pols' ability to deal with changing social and economic con-
ditions.
Take welfare reform, for example. CUNY's John
Mollenkopf writes that between 1993 and 1994, the public
flip-flopped on who-Clinton vs. the Republican-led
Congress-it trusted to tackle welfare reform. More than 50
percent wanted Clinton to ftx welfare in 1993, but by 1994,
when legislation was being hammered out, his mandate had
fallen to less than 30 percent. That left the Republicans, with
the backing of 60 percent of the public, to take the lead on pol-
icy changes.
Urban reform suffered too. During the twenty years before
1994, federal aid to urban social programs dropped 30 percent,
and infrastructure money fell by half. That money drain, com-
bined with national distaste for cities, prevented any coherent
reform.
The book also dissects the partisan fights over national
health care reform, the minimum wage, and crime, giving an
early peek at how future academics and historians will
describe national politics during the last years of the 20th
century.
"The Social Divide: Political Parties and the Future of
Activist Government, " $22.95, Brookings Institution Press,
202-797-6106.
Long Road Ahead
T
he South Bronx has seen 10,000 new and rehabbed hous-
ing units built in the last 10 years, but this groundwork
has yet to support full-scale community renewal, says a
new report from the Citizens Housing and Planning Council.
Between 1988 and 1997, housing construction in the South
Bronx created on average 1,000 jobs per year. However, many
of these jobs went to outsiders. In the neighborhoods surveyed,
only half of working-age men and one-third of working-age
women held jobs, significantly lower than the citywide aver-
ages of 75 and 60 percent respectively. And while the South
Bronx has seen a significant drop in crime despite a 20 percent
population increase since 1988, crime rates still remain among
the city's highest.
The area may also have a harder time leveraging political
support, since it has the lowest voter participation rate in the
city. In the assembly districts that include Melrose and
APRIL I99B
Morrisania, the registered voter population climbed by
8 percent between 1992 and 1996, but voting rates fell
from 53.5 percent to 48.5 percent.
"A Preliminary Assessment of Community Redevelopment
in the South Bronx, " $7, Citizens Housing and Planning
Council, 212-286-92lI.
Tax Toals:
Master Street Theater
A
ngry that the tax reform debate has been dominated by
the big boys? Incensed that the tax burden rises more
sharply for families moving from poverty into the mid-
dle class than for those moving into higher tax brackets?
Then you might try organizing a "Precision Cell Phone Drill
Team," or opening a "Corporate Soup Kitchen." For scripts on
how to stage these fun pieces of street theater, order the Tax
Fairness Organizing Kit, out this month from the wacky guys at
United for a Fair Economy.
Just so you know what you're talking about, the kit also
includes lot of educational info. For example, since the
1950s, the effective tax rate on working families has risen
from 5 percent to almost 30 percent. During this time the per-
sonal exemption slid from half to a quarter of a family's
income, while the Social Security tax climbed from 1.5 to
7.65 percent.
The kit is high on energy and advocacy and short on solu-
tions. Still, it's a good tool for groups new to the tax reform
debate.
"Tax Fairness Organizing Kit," $7, United for a Fair
Economy, 617-423-2148.
Government Guide,
Dinero Directory
A lot has happened in the two years since the City Project
last published its directory of "Who's Who in NYC
Government." To keep up with the new council members and
changes in city commissioners, the city budget watchdog
group has issued an updated edition. The gold star feature
remains the smiling mugs of City Hall bigwigs, agency heads
and council members, so you know just who it is you' re
harassing when you call. "Who's Who in NYC Government,"
$10, City Project, 212-866-0700.
From banks to community groups, corporate sponsors to
technical assistance, the world of neighborhood renewal is
alphabetized, itemized and described in the second edition of
the National Directory for Community Economic
Development. Okay, so not every single relevant organization
in the country can be found among its 2,000 listings, but the
directory is a good place to start networking. "National
Directory for Community Economic Development," $55,
National Congress for Community Economic Development,
202-234-4510.
AMMO
-

(Continuedfrom page 4)
LETTERS ~
l
ing the Organization of Waterfront
Neighborhoods (OWN) approximately one
year ago, the first citywide coalition tack-
ling the problem of waste transfer stations.
Numerous grassroots neighborhood organi-
zations have been very important to our
efforts, as well as New York Lawyers for
the Public Interest, the organization that has
successfully represented some of these
groups in suing the city over the lack of
rules for the siting of transfer stations.
OWN wants the city to proceed with a
sound solid waste management system that
protects everyone. Most accurately, OWN
is trashing the administration's inadequate
efforts thus far to properly deal with the
garbage problem.
organization. It is our love for the children
of East New York, our hard work, dedica-
tion, money, sweat and tears that is the
foundation of Kids' Power and the reason
for its overwhelming success as an organi-
zation. Only one resident of Elva McZeal
Apartments works with us, and maybe a
handful of children from the complex par-
ticipate in the program. The staff of AReO
Management and the support of the entire
tenant board are responsible for the dona-
tion of the space in which we are currently
housed.
Reach 20,000
readers in the
nonprofit sector,
government
and property
management.
-
Barbara Warren
Roots of Pow.r
I am writing in response to "Elva's
Endgame" (January 1998). There is a por-
tion of the article which, in essence, gives
the impression that the tenants and Ms.
Dorothy Jones are responsible for the exis-
tence of Kids' Power. I want to correct this
and to set the record straight.
I, along with the staff of Kids' Power,
am responsible for the existence of the
The use of the word "homegrown" in
this article has given many the impression
that Elva McZeal is the creative force
behind Kids' Power. We are a homegrown
organization (grown in my home in 1994).
We feel that the statement takes away from
the staff, parents and members who are
Kids' Power and places credit solely in the
hands of people who have nothing to do
with the founding or day-ta-day operation
of the program. While we appreciate the
donation of the space from Elva McZeal,
we do not wish to give credit where it isn't
entirely due.
Sammy Jackson
President
East New York Kids' Power
ADVERTISE
IN
CITY
LIMITS
Call John Ullmann at
(212) 479-3321 or
(91 7) 598-1068
for pager.
SUSTAINABLE AMERICA
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1998
CHOICES FOR A SUSTAINABLE AMERICA:
THE POLICIES AND POLITICS
May 28th-31st
World Trade Center - Portland, OR
The GA will feature symposiums on unique regional initiatives for sustainable economic
development, "schmoozing salons" for participants to meet and exchange ideas with
others about their work, strategy forums to provide an opportunity to map out SA's
and the movement's future, plenaries on Movement Building, Community Economics and
Money and Capital. The GA will bring you and your organization practical strategies
for making sustainable communities a reality and introduce you to the contacts around
the country promoting sustainable economic development.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION MATERIALS PLEASE CONTACT: Sustainable America. 350 5th Ave. Rm. 3112.
NY. NY 10118-3199. T: (212) 239-4221. F: (212) 239-3670. sustamer@sanetwork.org. ht tp://www.sanetwork.org
CITY LIMITS
Youth Force, a center to support youth organizing and community development
in the South Bronx, seeks applicants for LEAD ORGANIZER of the Community
Justice Center to divert youth from the juvenile/ criminal justice systems. Rve
years youth work, or BA plus 3 years youth work, or law degree/ MSW and 1 year
youth work. Fax to 718-665-4279.
Global Kids seeks F1NAHCIAUOFACE MANAGER to provide fiscal management
administrative support to organization which operates in five NYC schools and
runs several youth leadership programs. BA, strong office management and
accounting experience, Peachtree, Excel , and MSWord required. Salary low-mid
$30s. Send letter and resume to Celena Green, Global Kids, 561 Broadway,
NYC, 10012.
The Abyssinian Development Corporation seeks a PROJECT DIRECTOR for the
Neighborhood Partners Initiative (NPJ). Funded by the Edna McConnell Clark
Foundation, NPJ is a program designed to support community building and neigh-
borhood preservation in Central Harlem and the South Bronx. The Project Director
supervises a three-person staff focused on resident empowerment through tenant
organizing, leadership development, employment and improvement in quality of
life. Minimum of five years community development/organizing/social service
agency experience. BA in social science, education or social work. Strong written,
verbal and interpersonal communication skills a must. Salary commensurate with
experience. Send resume to: Fabienne Kirk, Vice President for Programs,
Abyssinian Development Corporation, 131 W. 138th Street, NYC 10030-2303.
Apply your organizational and computer skills to the advancement of reproduc-
tive rights. The Department of Public Policy litigation and Law at the Planned
Parenthood Federation of America seeks a skilled individual to fill the position of
LEGAL ASSOCIATE/JUNIOR PARAlEGAL. We seek someone with excellent word-pro-
cessing (preferably Word for Windows) , secretarial, and administrative skills, and
the ability to learn to do legal research, manage a small law library and perform
other litigation-related tasks. Salary approx. $30,000 plus comprehensive ben-
efits. Please send resume and cover letter to: M. Zeitlin, HR Dept., 810 Seventh
Avenue, NYC 10019. Committed to diversity.
The Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged (HELP) is seeking a REGIONAl.
DIRECTOR to be responsible for three of their facilities: HELP Bronx-Morris, Bronx-
Crotona and HELP Haven in Manhattan. The Regional Director will be
ble for a budget of $13 million and for the management. administration, and coor-
dination of all the operations, services, and programs of these facilities.
Reporting to the VP Operations, candidates must have substantial and extensive
experience in a senior management position and excellent leadership skills.
Successful candidate will work closely with staff and senior leadership and will
serve as a public spokesperson for the organization and have the primary respon-
sibility for negotiating with local and state government regulatory agencies. Fax
resumes to Harriet Shohet, The Development Resource Group, 212-983-1687.
EXECUT1VE DIRECTOR, full-time sought for small not-for-profit corporation operat-
ing family support centers. Responsibilities include program development and
supervision, grant writing, administrative tasks. Qualifications include Master's
degree and at least 5 years experience in Administration. Salary: $30,000.
Please send resume ASAP to: Margaret Galiardi , OP, Ministry Office, 555 Albany
Avenue, Amityville, NY 11701.
Large nonprofit multi-service agency serving Brooklyn and Queens has opening for
a PROGRAM MANAGER for multi-site SRO. Oversee provision of housing and case
management services to 225 formerly homeless tenants in three Brooklyn sites.
Direct supervision of social service, property management and maintenance staff.
Responsible for facility related issues. Ensure compliance with New York City DHS
and HPD service and reporting requirements. MSW preferred with minimum 1 year
supervisory experience with homeless and/ or mentally ill population as well as
strong administrative skills and demonstrated ability to assess and address
ty issues. Able to travel between sites, deal with challenging population. Spanish
helpful. Salary: low $30s, excellent benefits. Send resumes to: POP Management,
191 Joralemon St. , 8th R. , Brooklyn, New York 11201. Or fax: 718-722-6134.
SOCIAL WORKER. NMIC seeks an experienced social worker. Requirements: MSW,
bilingual English/ Spanish, 5 to 10 years experience in grassroots, community-
based settings with immigrant populations. Provide case management, super-
vise staff and MSW students, perform administrative tasks. Salary: commen-
surate with experience. Send resumes to: NMIC, 76 Wadsworth Ave., NYC
10033. Fax: 212-928-4180.
Brooklyn nonprofit seeks EMPLOYMENT SPECIAUSTIBUSINESS COORDINATOR and
JOB COACH to join establ ished supported employment program for the develop-
mentally disabled. Employment Specialist will develop new initiatives, jobs and
work opportunities. Position requires excellent oral , written, computer and net-
working skills. Prior business experience preferred. Job Coach must have prior
coaching experience with developmentally disabled. Both positions require flexi -
APRIL 1998
bility and entrepreneurial spirit. Fax resume and short cover letter to MDC, attn.
Personnel: 718-382-6453. No phone calls.
COMMUNITY DEVROPMENT ASSOCIATE. Women' s Housing and Economic
Development Corporation is seeking an energetic and creative individual to
design and implement community development activities for a housing and eco-
nomic development program in Morrisania (South Bronx). Responsibilities: plan-
ning community activities for youth and adults, representing organization at com-
munity events and meetings, developing marketing material for programs.
Minimum qualifications: BA in human services, sociology, or related plus 2-3
years experience in community work, outreach, youth programs and/ or organiz-
ing; or AA and equivalent experience. Must have desktop publishing/ computer
skills, excellent verbal and writing skills (English and Spanish), and familiarity
with neighborhood. Evening and some weekend work necessary. Salary: mid
$20s, negotiable (plus benefits) depending upon experience and education.
FAMILY SUPPORT WORKER. BSW or related degree or MSW plus 2-3 years
ence in case management, advocacy, child care and/ or community work in a job
training environment. Knowledge of current welfare system (WEP). Bilingual
(English/ Spanish) candidates are encouraged to apply. Salary: low $30s plus
benefits. Send cover letter & resume to: Dale Joseph, WHEDCO at Urban
Horizons, 50 East 168th St. , Bronx, NY 10452. Fax: 718-839-1172.
New job opportunities at Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center: DEVELOPMENT
OFFICER fOR GRANTS. Seeking experienced development officer to maintain and
expand the Center's foundation, corporate and govemment grants program.
Responsibilities include: conducting research, corresponding and networking with
funding sources, and writing proposals and follow-up reports. Must have superior writ-
ing skills, strong interpersonal and communication skills, ability to prioritize work in a
busy environment, and prior development experience. This position reports
to the Director of Development. Please, no consultants. CONTROUER. Seeking
finance/ accounting professional to oversee all financial functions and manage six-
person Rnance Department. Requires excellent financial , budgeting, communication
and organizational skills. Must have working knowledge of various accounting and
spreadsheet programs, MIP a plus. Minimum 4 years management experience with
a minimum of 2 years in nonprofit required. AbilitY to priOritize work in very busy
ronment and to handle diverse personalities is essential. DIRECTOR Of HUMAN
RESOURCES. Seeking human resources professional for all aspects of human
resources, including payroll processing, benefits management, recruitment, develop-
ment of personnel policy and procedures, and vast array of additional HR duties.
Minimum 4 years management experience with minimum 2 years in Human
Resources or employment services required. Must have working knowledge of ben-
efit administration, policies and procedures, and have word processing and database
skills, and superior communication and organizational skills. AIDS RIDE PlEDGE OFFICE
MANAGER. Seeking qualified candidate to manage data entry pledge office and super-
vise data entry staff of high-profile, nonprofit fundraising event. Responsible for over-
seeing processing of 2,400+ individual registrations and 50,(}()()+ pledges. Requires
minimum 2 years supervisory experience in data entry and database management
(FundMaster experience a plus). Must be able to prioritize work in very busy environ-
ment, exhibit excellent organizational and communication skills with abilitY to handle
diverse personalities. Mail resume and cover letter (stating desired position) to:
Center Personnel , 208 West 13th St., NYC 10011. Women and people of color
encouraged to apply. No faxes, phone calls or visits please.
Corporation For Supportive Housing (CSH), a national nonprofit financial and
technical assistance organization, seeks highly motivated professionals to work
with community-based organizations and state and local government agencies to
further the development of service supported housing for homeless people with
special needs. All pOSitions require: Excellent verbal and written communication,
analytic and computer skills and Bachelor'S degree (advanced degree preferred;
additional education may substitute for some experience) SENIOR PROGRAM OFFI
CER (New York City) Requires at least 7 years experience in affordable/ support-
ive housing development and finance, community development, and/ or related
areas. Experience with low-income housing tax credit syndication and/or other
private market financing strongly preferred. Proven management skills and
ity to represent CSH in public forums. PROGRAM OFFICER (Trenton, N.J.) Requires
at least 5 years experience in affordable/ supportive housing development and
finance, community development, social service delivery and/ or related areas.
CSH offers competitive salaries and excellent benefits. (EOE M/ F/ D/V) Send
resume and cover letter with salary requirements to: Dir. of Ops. CSH, 342
Madison Ave., Suite 505, NY, NY 10173.
CHURCH DESK DIRECTOR. Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies seeks profes-
sional with an advanced divinity degree and extensive knowledge of Protestant
churches and social services. Responsibilities include: providing technical assiS-
tance/ training to churches to develop social service programs, engaging church-
es in social service delivery, helping churches secure and manage resources, and
coordinating advocacy and pol icy strategies. Excellent communication, writing,
flexibility and organization skills necessary. Salary commensurate with experience
and excellent benefit package. Send resumes to: D. Taylor, FPWA, 281 Park Ave.
South, NYC 10010. Fax: 212-982-0697. (continued on page 36)
(continued from page 35)
PUBUC AFFAIRS ASSOCIATE. Citizens' Committee for Children, a nonprofit organi-
zation, is seeking a full-time Public Affairs Associate to work on public education,
media and outreach activities. Qualifications include Bachelor's or Master's
degree and two to three years of related experience. References required.
Competitive salary plus benefits. Please send resume to: Rose Anello, Associate
Executive Director, Citizens' Committee for Children, 105 East 22nd St., New
York, NY100l0.
PROGRAM ASSOCIATE. The Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) seeks a
highly organized, friendly and articulate person to serve Program Associate.
Founded in 1987, the EGA is a voluntary association of 200 private, community
and corporate foundations and giving programs concerned with protecting the
environment. The purposes of the Association include: facilitating communica-
tion within the environmental grantmaking community, promoting an under-
standing of the range of environmental issues within the larger philanthropic
community, and improving the overall effectiveness of environmental grantmak-
ers. EGA has two full-time staffmembers: a Coordinator and Program Associate.
Candidates must have an interest in the environment and be hard working, high
energy and detail oriented. Assist in producing materials and coordinating the
annual conference and other EGA-sponsored meetings and events. Undertake a
variety of office responsibilities including everyday clerical tasks while juggling
competing priorities. Computer skills: Proficiency in Windows 95, Word,
WordPerfect, Quickbooks and facility with the World Wide Web, Listservs and e-
mail essential. Qualifications: Ability to research thoroughly and write clearly.
Experience with event planning. Excellent computer skills and a sense of humor
are a must. Salary range: $28,00(}.$32,000 To apply, please send resume,
cover letter and writing sample ASAP to: Sarah Hansen, Coordinator,
CoNSULTANT SERVICES
Proposals/Grant Writing
Real Estate Sales/Rentals
Technical Assistance
Employment Programs
Capacity Building
Community Relations
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3450, New York, NY 10104. E-mail: shansen@rffund.org. Web: www.ega.org. No
phone inquiries.
WRfTER/EDITOR. Nonprofit serving neighborhood-based organizations looking for
writer/editor in communications office. Prepare copy for self-help handouts,
brochures, small publications, press releases and newsletter. Primary platform:
MS Office on PC. Some desktop experience and familiarity w/ Mac
PageMaker/Quark Adobe PhotoShop a plus. 25+ hours/week, will adjust hours to
right candidate. Opportunity for position in fall. Start immediately. Send:
D. Perez, CCNYC, 305 7th Ave., NYC 10001. Or e-mail: dperez@Citizensnyc.org.
COORDINATOR, Neighborhood Week. Nonprofit serving neighborhood-based orga-
nizations looking for coordinator for Neighborhood Week Project. May 1 through
June 30 in each of five NYC boroughs. Familiarity w/ 1+ NYC boroughs a must.
Driver's license and some community organizing experience and references
required. Send: D. Perez, CCNYC, 305 7th Ave. , NYC 10001. Or e-mail:
dperez@Citizensnyc.org.
The Workplace Project seeks EXECUTlVE DIRECTOR to run dynamic New York work-
ers center organizing Latino immigrants for better wages/working conditions.
Guide organizing strategy; develop membership; fight exploitation in underground
economy. Auent Spanish/English. Interviewing in March-April; position starts June
1. Fax letter/ resume to Workplace Project, 516-565-5470. Call 516-565-5377.
CONTROlLER, small nonprofit. Responsible for budgets, payroll, vouchers, taxes.
Knowledge of A-133, government contracts. Work with diverse population, report
to Executive Director. Salary: $40,000s-50,000s. Fax Anna at Nontraditional
Employment for Women, 212-255-8051.
IRWIN NESOFF ASSOCIATES
management consulting for non-profits
Providing a lull-range 01 management support services lor
non-pro lit organizations
o Strategic and management develapment plans
o Board and staff development and training
o Program design and implementation 0 Proposal and report writing
o Fund development plans 0 Program evaluation
20 St. Johns Place, Brooklyn, New York 11217 (718) 636-6087
Does your nonprofit need corporate, real estate,
tax or other business legal services?
Lawyers Alliance for New York has a staff of skilled lawyers
and a roster of 400 volunteer attorneys from leading NY firms.
We specialize in providing free or low-cost legal services to non-
profit corporations. We also offer helpful and work-
shops on many nonprofit legal issues.
To find out if we can help your nonprofit, call 212 219-1800
Lawyers Alliance
99 Hudson Street New York, NY 10013 for New York
Committed to the development of affordable housing
GEORGE C. DELLAPA, ATIORNEY AT LAW
15 Maiden Lane, Suite 1800
New York, NY 10038
212-732-2700 FAX:212-732-2773
Low income housing tax credit syndication. Public and private
financing. HDFCs and notlor-profit corporations. Condos and co-ops.
J-51 Tax abatement/exemptions. Lending for Historic Properties.
CITY LIMITS
PROGRAM OFFICER. The Veatch Program of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation
at Shelter Rock (UUCSR) in Manhasset, Long Island is seeking a full time program
officer for its grantmaking operation. Responsibilities: Identify grassroots and advo-
cacy organizations that work for progressive social change; evaluate proposals and
make grant recommendations; monitor the progress of ongoing grants; conduct
periodic evaluations of programmatic areas; work with Veatch board members and
grantmakers. Qualifications: Prior experience working with grassroots and advoca-
cy organizations; analytical skills and ability to work with individuals and organiza-
tions of different ethnic, religious and socio-economic backgrounds; excellent writ-
ing skills; preferably prior grantmaking experience; familiarity with community orga-
nizing strategies; should agree with UU principles. Availability for travel a must.
UUCSR is committed to affirmative action and invites applications from candidates
regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability. People of color are
encouraged to apply. Resume, cover letter, at least three references must be
received by May 22, 1998. Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock,
48 Shelter Rock Road, Manhasset, New York 11030. Phone: 516-627-6576.
Growing community development organization in Fort Greene, Brooklyn has the
following job opportunities: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR.. Self starter to
implement community economic development initiative designed to -create jobs,
develop businesses, and revitalize a blighted commercial corridor. Previous busi-
ness or community economic development experience. Strong interpersonal,
organizational and computer skills. ASSISTANT DIRECTOR. Highly organized indi-
vidual to oversee and supervise housing programs and personnel. Must have
excellent writing, communication, computer and problem solving skills. Previous
community development and supervisory experience required. Salaries com-
mensurate with experience. Cover letter and resume to: PACC, 201 Dekalb
Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205. Fax: 718/522-2604
NY STAR
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SPECIALIZING IN REAL ESTATE
J-51 Tax Abatement/Exemption. 421A and 421B
Applications 501 (c) (3) Federal Tax Exemptions All forms
of government-assisted housing including LISC/Enterprise,
Section 202, State Turnkey, and NYC Partnership Homes
KOURAKOS & KOURAKOS
Bronx, N.Y.
(718) 585-3187
Attorneys at Law
New York, N.Y.
(212) 551-7809
Providing Professoinal Real Estate Services
to New York's Not-For-Profit Community
10 East 34th Street
6th Floor
ARC ADVISORS
incorporated
Lee M.Allen
Managing Director
New York, NY 10016
Phone: (212) 447-1576
Fax: (212) 213-2650
APRIL 1998
DIRECTOR, MIS. The Women' s Housing and Economic Development Corporation
(WHEDCO), a growing, multi-site nonprofit community and workforce develop-
ment organization, seeks a Director of MIS to develop and support the agency's
technical and research infrastructure. Responsibilities include upgrading net-
work (hardware, operating system, server, office applications), providing training
and technical support to 30+ users, developing and implementing a compre-
hensive, research-friendly client tracking database, and purchasing all hardware
and software for the agency. Project management experience a must. Familiarity
with project evaluation and research, and some experience with social policy a
plus. Compensation: competitive salary and generous package of benefits and
opportunities. Send resume and cover letter to: Donna Rubens, Ph.D., Director
of Research, Communications and Development, WHEDCO at Urban Horizons,
50 East 168th Street, Bronx, NY 10452.
Family Dynamics, Inc. , a nonprofit, seeks DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENTIPR. Four to
five years proven experience fundraising in nonprofit sector; excellent grant writ-
ing, public relations, organizational skills; detail-oriented; knowledge of comput-
erized donor-base management and Paradox a must. BA required. Salary: $45-
55,000. Mail : Family Dynamics, Administrative Office, 154 Christopher Street,
NY, New York 10014 Fax: 212-255-8785.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE ATTORNEY. Public interest law firm seeks staff attor-
ney to work in environmental justice/community development project.
Minimum 5 years experience in litigation, community work and policy advoca-
cy. Strong writing analytical and interpersonal skills required. Excellent salary
and benefits. EOE. Apply by April 24. Send resume: NYLPI, 30 W. 21st St .,
NYC 10010.
(continued on page 39)
LAWRENCE H. McGAUGHEY
Attorney at Law
Meeting the challenges of affordable housing for 20 years.
Providing legal services in the areas of General Real Estate,
Business, Trust & Estates, and Elder Law.
217 Broadway, Suite 610
New York, NY 10007
(212) 513-0981
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Cooperative conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards of directors
313 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201,
(718) 780-7994 (718) 624-6850
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From Philanthropy's Files
BRINGING THE
WAR HOME:
A NATIONAL MEDIA ADVOCACY CAMPAIGN
EMPLOYING THE TARGETED USE
OF INCENDIARY WEAPONS
A PROPOSAL TO THE FORD FOUNDATION
SUBMITTED BY
THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND
A CAPACITY-BUILDING PROJECT OF
STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC
SOCIETY, INC.
AUGUST 1968
Taking on the United States military-industrial complex is not simple.
empo"" moj;a ,"II", 00",;'" to re.s;" tho m"'",g' of slUd,", load,,",
Y;pp;, P'"'''''''''' aod ""rtod hang",." whO-I,t', face ;t-a" mostly;O
it for the drugs and free love. Focus groups reveal confusion as to the intent of
the organization's protest work. The public remains corrupted by consumerist
values. Attempts to levitate the Pentagon proved woefully inadequate, vis-a-vis
actual levitation.
The Weather Underground is part of a long tradition in American history that
dates back to the Boston Tea Party, except we wear ski masks instead of Native
American garb. After long discussion among the Weathermen, we have decided to
pursue funding through the foundation WOrld, i.e. "The Man." Our only hope is
that the N,w Loft do,,, 001 oed op 'l"od;,g "I ;" lim, filiog "dl", pal""'",
haVing downtown lunches and chasing tiny grants for "comprehensive communi-
ty development." However, we are prepared to go the distance with this-we have bought a suit.
The important work of Students for a Democratic Society, Inc., began five
years ago. After convening to consider the state of the world we were inheriting,
a white paper, entitled the Port Huron Statement, was produced and created irrev-
ocable movement away from the tired values embodied by Governor Ronald
Reagan and IBM's machine culture.
This watershed document served to lay the groundWork for an innovative and
ltighly ,If""" "'lUdoot d'moos""oo """gy." Now h ;, 'me '" boild " th,,,
areas of strength, create a more proactive strategizing tactic and advocate the end
of the American political system through armed revolution.
To th;, oed, w, a" proposmg a groondb''''''og m","a ad,,,,,,y ''"'paigo
employing incendiary and fragmentary weapons, in common parlance:
"bombs." The mOdel, designed to be easily replicated by other anti-wor "_-'
civil rights groups, will !!eneratp .
CITY LIMITS
(continued from page 37)
Family Dynamics, Inc., nonprofit, Bushwick, Brooklyn. Four positions available:
PREVENTlVE SERVICES SW. Provide direct and concrete services to 15 families,
run groups. Salary: $25-28,000. INTAKE WORKER. Conduct intake and assess-
ment, advocacy and referral. Salary: $20-25,000. CASE MANAGER. For job readi-
ness program: provide support services and parent education to mothers on PA
and serve as link to career training and child care. Salary: $25-28,000. CAREER
TRAINER. Provide career counseling, job readiness, life skills and basic comput-
er training. Salary: $23-26,000. All positions require BA, bi-lingual (Spanish),
computer literacy. Prior experience with population and knowledge of Bushwick
desired. Mail to Family Dynamics, Administrative Office, 154 Christopher Street,
New York, NY, 10014. Fax: 212-255-8785.
FAMILY SUPPORT WORKER. BSW or related degree or MSW + 2-3 years experience
in case management, advocacy, child care and/ or community work in a job traill-
ing environment. Knowledge of current welfare system (WEP) . Bilingual
(English/ Spanish) candidates are encouraged to apply. Salary: low $30s plus
benefits. Send cover letter & resume to: Dale Joseph, WHEDCO at Urban
Horizons, 50 East 168th St. , Bronx NY 10452. Fax: 718-839-1172.
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT, college child care, family day care, training, poli-
cy/ advocacy. Excellent writing skills; work with diverse populations; excellent
MS Word, Excel skills; initiative; skilled at forms, reports; draft letters, reports.
Associate' s degree (Bachelor' s preferred). $26,000 to $35,000. Health, pen-
sion, good vacation/ sick. Resume, cover, writing sample to: Todd Boressoff,
BMCC Early Childhood Center, 199 Chambers St ., NYC 10007. Fax: 212-346-
8258.
PROGRAM MANAGER. The New York Industrial Retention Network (NYIRN) has an
immediate opening for a new full -time project manager. NYIRN is a new nonprofit
organization dedicated to strengthening New York's manufacturing sector, retaill-
ing manufacturing jobs and building the capacity of community-based organiza-
tions, labor unions and others to engage in economic development. The position
is part of a collaborative effort with the Queens County Overall Economic
Development Corporation to improve the coordination and delivery of economic
development services in Queens. The Project Manager will work with local d e v e ~
opment corporations, unions, churches and community-based organizations to
build a network to identify companies that are at-risk, to assess their needs and
to work with the companies and network participants to develop and implement
remediation strategies. Applicants should have a background in economic or
community development, community organizing and strong communication
skills. Applicants who are multi-lingual are preferred. Applicants should send a
resume and cover letter to: NYIRN, 30 Flatbush Avenue, Suite 420, Brooklyn, NY
11217. Fax: 718-{)24-8618.
ADMINISTRATOR FOR ORGANIZING ACTIVmES. Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI ) is a
student activist organization whose primary purpose is to promote increased
access to higher education. WRI is seeking a seasoned activist/organizer
whose responsibilities will include: coordinating and supervising students and
volunteers; overseeing collective actions and special events; supporting the
director in instruction of its leadership program; developing creative systems
for linking "clients" to WRI training, organizing and advocacy; promoting the
extension of WRI programs to other venues; serving as a liaison to collabora-
tive organizations and networks. Candidates must have: a keen interest in
empowering individual and coll ective social change; familiarity with local , state
and federal social welfare and public education policies/ policy-makers; exten-
sive experience in organizing demonstrations, rallies, speak-outs and other
actions; effective verbal and written communication skills, bilingual preferred;
MSW in Community Organizing or equivalent of five years experience in the
field. Resumes and references to Melinda Lackey, WRI Director, Hunter College,
695 Park Ave., Room El030, New York, NY 10021.
AFFORDABLE OFFICE SPACE. Community Environmental Center has 2,000-3,000
sq. ft . for rent in Long Island City, Queens. Sunny, second floor walk-up, unfill-
ished open space. Will finish to speCifications, $8.50/ square foot as is. Garage
parking, security, conference room, copying, reception, cleaning available. Close
to E-F-G-7 subway. One stop from Midtown Manhattan. Call Justin Green, 718-
784-1444.
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