February 1993 New York's Community Affairs News Magar:ine $2.

50
Officials say there's nowhere else to shelter them.
AR E A P OL I CY B OAR D FL I P - FL OP D H I G H W AYS OR S U B W AYS ?
T H E NE W W AV E OF ANT I - P OV E R T Y P R OG R AMS
- T hecity is sending hundreds of homeless people with AI D S
to sleep on the floors of crowded welfare offices.
eitv Limits
Volume XVIII Number 2
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2jFEBRUARY 1993jCITY UMITS
Webs of Community
I
magine a spider in the South Bronx, spinning a delicate web that links
neighborhood residents, tenant organizations, community groups,
schools, hospitals and small businesses. This image of connections is
one way to describe an important new trend in community develop-
ment.
Instead of focusing on an isolated project like a park or an apartment
renovation, a number of foundations, government agencies and other
organizations are now implementing a broader, more inclusive model for
change. At last!
The new model has two important aspects. It starts off with a goal-
neighborhood revitalization-and then proceeds to fund a variety of
projects that work together to meet that goal. It also mandates substantial
input from people living in the neighborhood itself.
In New York alone, there are more than a handful of projects experi-
menting with variations of this approach: the Comprehensive Commu-
nity Revitalization Program, Agenda for Children Tomorrow, Healthy
Start, the Neighborhood Networks, the Community Building Initiative
and the Bushwick Geographic Targeting Task Force. Across the country
there are scores of similar projects, most of them still in their infancy.
These projects merit attention, enthusiasm-and some questioning.
It's important to examine who backs them, how communities participate,
where money is targeted-and what finally results.
Some projects seem to be relying on the idea that neighborhood-based
groups should become a bridge connecting community residents with
private and public resources. This could create mini-versions of the
Enterprise Foundation and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation,
which funnel corporate cash to community groups. This approach has an
excellent track record of accomplishments, but it was created by corpo-
rations and foundations and emphasizes efficiency and professionalism
rather than the time-consuming task of building communities from the
bottom up.
For comprehensive programs to work, they must have a sincere
commitment to the challenging task of community organizing, and
neighborhood residents should have voting power to help determine
how and where resources are distributed. Without this, these programs
could easily become band-aids for social problems instead of a real force
for social change.
Cover photograph by Andrew lichtenstein.

FEATURES
No Vacancy
For the first time, hundreds of homeless people with
AIDS are being sent to dingy, unsafe overnight welfare
offices. 12
Making Connections
Six South Bronx community groups are taking part in an
experiment in comprehensive funding for neighbor-
hood change. 18
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial
Webs of Community ............... ................ ................. 2
Briefs
Youth Dollars ................................................... ........ 4
Empty Stomachs ...................................................... 4
A Taystee Future? .................................................... 4
Distrust ............. ...... ............. ........................ 5
Profile
Catalyst for Change .................................................. 6
Pipelines
The Politics of Poverty ............................................. 8
A Reconstruction Agenda .................................. .... 22
City View
Prescription for Success? ................................. ...... 24
Review
Teach Your Children Well ....... ......... ... ... .............. 25
Job Ads ....................................................................... 27
Catalyst/Page 6
No Vacancy/Page 12
Reconstruction/Page 22
CITY UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/3
YOUTH DOLLARS
A youth-oriented job-training
program that originated in East
Harlem more than 20 years ago
will now be expanded in 10
cities nationwide.
''YouthBuild'' was born in
1979 when a team of local
youths started rehabilitating an
abondoned building on EQst
119th Street. Now, the
YouthBuild Act, introduced by
Congressman Major Owens
from Brooklyn and folded into
an appropriations bill, allocates
a minimum of $17.5 million for
14 projects.
the YouthBuild program
provides hands-on experience
in rehabilitation and construc-
tion, training for acquiring a
high school equivalency
diploma, and skills for getting
and keeping a job. In East
Harlem, abOut 55 percent of the
youth who take part are placed
in jobs, according to Sonia Bu
of the Youth Action Program,
which runs the local YouthBuild
project.
But even as the program has
been accepted nationally, it has
come close to extinction in New
York City. last year, the Youth
Action Program lost 50 rrcent
of its funding because 0
restrictions impased by the
federal government, continuing
a downward spiral that began
in the mid-19S0s.
Because of the cuts, the city
could only provide funding for
seven months of training instead
of the usual nine to twelve
months. And the program had
to be limited to 17- to-21-year-
olds, instead of extending to 24-
year-olds as it had in the past.
Instead of training about 100
youths, only 70 were accepted.
"Much of the Aexibility of the
program was lost and, as a
result, it became harder to
implement," Bu adds.
The federal appropriation
should brine funds for New
York and other areas by the
summer. In the meantime, Bu
says "we're hoping that the
private donations will continue
and that the federal money
comes soon, or this program
will die."
In New York City, YouthBuild
programs are operating in
Manhattan and the Bronx. With
federal funding, Congressman
4/FEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMITS
Owens hopes that it will be
expanded to areas like
Brownsville in Brooklyn, where
youths can rehabilate many of
the abondoned buildings, says
Owens' spokesman Scott Henry.
''YouthBuild has shown real,
hard and the kids of
Brownsville need a positive
program like this," Henry says.
o Dwl_ OestrIcher
EMPTY STOMACHS
Soup kitchens are finding it
nearly impossible to cope with
the rising tide of. hungry New
Yorkers knocking on their doors,
according to a survey by an
advocacy group for emergency
food programs in the city.
"We find pearle are in a
perpetual state 0 emergency,"
says luz Rodriguez, executive
director of the Washington
Heights Ecumenical FoOd
Pantry. "Families must choose
between paying rent or buying
food."
According to the survey,
conducted last September by the
New York City Coolition
Against Hunger, 59 percent of
the 273 city soup kitchens that
sent people away
unfed. About two-thirds
reported that they served
smaller and smaller portions of
food during the previous six
months. And SO percent said
they were feeding more peaple
this than last.
Most people go to soup
kitchens and food pantries
because they have exhausted
their public benefits like food
stamps and public assistance,
according to the survey.
"Nothing is being done to
address the causes of hunger,"
says Judith Walker, executive
director of the Coolition, calling
the city's 750 emergency food
providers a "huge stop-gap
solution."
Even with the number of
peaple on public assistance
rising to over one million in
1992, and unemployment
crossing over into the double
digits, state aid to food pro-
gr<;lms has not increased and
federal assistance has been
slashed from $3.S million in
1991 to $3.5 million in 1992.
At Godian Fellowship Food
Center, a South Jamaica soup
kitchen that provides a meal of
rice and becins and watermelon,
Reverend Carl Baldwin is feeling
the sting of the cuts. Baldwin,
who heads the center, says that
he tries hard not to turn anyone
away. "Instead we divide what's
left and are forced to reduce the
amount that is given," he says.
To feed all the peaple that
came to their doors, soup
kitchen operators say they need
more food, more funding and
more staff. 0 Beth GreenfIeld
A TAYSTEE FUTURE?
When the owners of the
Taystee Baking Company shut
down their Flushing plant last
year, they said their business just
couldn't make it in New York
City--and off they went to
Pennsylvania.
But a group of former T aystee
employees didn't believe the
bosses-and they've completed
a preliminary business plan for a
worker-owned bokery that
would employ about 300
peaple. The search is on to find
a site and a chief executive for
the new company. Meanwhile,
financing for the next stage of
planning is being put into place.
"We're on the road to really
happen, a.s ?pposed
to lust being an organizing
campaign of a bunch of loud
workers," says lynn Bell, the
chairperson of the Community/
labor Campaign to Save Ta}'stee
Jobs. She says that dozens of the
former workers have been
picketing supermarkets that sell
bread baked by the Stroehmann
Corporation, Taystee's former
parent company, while others
Reduced RdonI: Eighty percent of the city's soup kitchens report they have more people to feed this year-
but funding has declined.
work with real estate agents to
find a suitable building for the
new plant.
The state's Urban Develop-
ment Corporation recently
awarded $75,000 to the group,
and foundations and banks
have pitched in another
$46,000. The money will be
used in to pay fOr the
services of consultants from the
ICA Group, which has helped
set up a number of worker-
owned and community-based
businesses, including Commu-
nity Home Care Associates in
the Bronx (see "Careful
T raining", August/September
1992).
ICA has already completed a
study examining the possible
marketing strategies for the new
bakery, as well as an analysis
of competing companies. 'What
we found was that the is
feasible," says Gail Sokoloff of
ICA. 'We're positive and
hopeful" that it can work.
The city, meanwhile, is intent
on retrieving $780,000 in tax
breaks given to T aystee over the
years. Wallace Ford, commis-
sioner of the Department of
Business Services, says
Stroehmann can' t finalize the
sale of its Flushing property
without paying the city back for
the tax breaks. Stroehmann is
reportedly selling the site of the
former plant to Home Depot, a
Southern retail chain.
Once the tax money is
recovered, Ford says, the city
plans to invest it with the
worker-owned bakery. 0
Andrew White
MUTUAL DISTRUST
A vocal group of a few
dozen tenants is challenging the
legality of the Cooper Square
Mutual Housing Association
(MHA) barely a year after it
renovating its first
buTIding.
The MHA's opponents have
joined together as the Lower
East Side United Tenants,
holding frequent meetings in the
community, rallying supporters
and raising money for a lawsuit
against Cooper Square and the
city. The tenants, who numbered
38 at their most recent meeting,
Community Cllre: Members of East Brooklyn Congregations in the new family health center they established
with St. Mary's Hospital in East New York.
charge that the city's housing
department approved the
project in 18 formerly city-
owned buildings without the
proper consent of the tenants.
The MHA is an offshoot of
the Cooper Square Committee,
which has fought for more than
three decades to preserve low
income housing in the neighbar-
hood. But that's not enough to
convince some tenants of the
organization's good intentions.
"They've turned their back
on the community," charges
Frank Consorte, a member of
Lower East Side United Tenants.
"Cooper Square sold us out.
They're trying to get rid of low
income people, but they're
doing it in a slick way," he says.
He lives in one of the 18
buildings, which are on Third
and Fourth streets between the
Bowery and Second Avenue.
The buildings have a total of
abaut 330 apartments.
A mutual housing associa-
tion is a method of owning and
managing several buildings in a
cooperative manner. Major
decisions about repairs and
management are made by a
central board of directors, with
a majority of members elected
by tenants and others appointed
by local community groups. The
basic idea is that shared
ownership improves the
cooperative's chances of
survival. The plan also promises
to preserve rents at levels as low
as possible--while still covering
management and operating
costs.
But many tenants paid less
than $100 a month in rent for
many years, while the buildings
were owned by the city. Now,
the monthly payments are much
higher. As soon as the MHA
took control, rents shot up to
$175 for a one bedroom
apartment. And after extensive
city-funded rehabilitation work
is finished, there will be further
increase:. For instance, a one
bedroom apartment will cost
about $315, says Deanne
0' Aloia, director of the MHA.
At a recent meeting of the
dissident tenants group, many
of the people present said they
opposed the MHA because they
feared their monthly payments
would soor out of their reach.
Others said neighbors had been
threatened with eviction for
refusing to pay back-rent owed
to the city.
But 0' Aloia says that the
increases are necessary to cover
the costs of operating and
maintaining the buildings.
While the city is paying for the
renovation work, it will not help
pay any of the management
costs once the work is done. She
adds that city and federal
government rental assistance is
available for anyone whose
income is low enough to qualify,
so that no low income tenants
will have to pay more than 30
percent of their income in rent.
says that about one-tenth of
the tenants in the first nine
buildings to join the MHA are
receiving rental assistance.
The tenants group also
charges that Cooper Square
didn't win the approval
of 60 percent of the tenants
before forming the MHA.
Consorte has a petition he says
was signed by three-quarters of
the tenants in his building
opposing the MHA. But the
city's housing department
recenrly sent City Council-
member Antonio Pagan copies
of ballots confirming that more
than 60 percent of the tenants in
each building originally
approved the plan. Pagan has
opposed the MHA in the past,
and the building where he lives
is the only.city-owned building
on his block that isn't part of the
program.
"AII we can do is accept [the
ballots) as valid," says a
spokeswoman for Pagan.
0' Alaio says she is confident
that the Lower East Side United
Tenants will not derail the MHA
project. Rehabilitation of two
buildings is now finished, she
says, and work in two others is
underway. 'We're moving
forward. To that extent I'm not
concerned, II she adds. "To the
extent that [the opponents) are
preying on people's fears, that's
unfOrtunate. It could slow down
the project." 0 Andrew White
CITY UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/&
By Fara Warner
Catalyst for Change
Ethel Velez is a woman with a mission: turning
Johnson Houses into first-rate public housing.
H
ats off!" Ethel Velez snaps at
two teenage boys entering the
community center of Johnson
Houses, a fortress-like project
in East Harlem.
"Yes, Ms. Velez," they both say,
quickly tucking away their baseball
caps.
It's a picky request, but an impor-
tant one, according to the 45-year-old
tenant association president. Sitting
at a table in the freshly painted room,
she points to a sign that says "Gentle-
men Please Remove Your Hats" and
says, "You either enforce the rule or
turn your head. After you turn your
head for five or six years, it's not a rule
anymore."
Velez, a strong-willed and detail-
oriented woman, has never turned
her head on the project where she
grew up. Once a graffiti-marred,
apathy-afflicted development where
the sidewalks were littered with crack
vials, Johnson Houses are now rela-
tively safe and litter-free, with the
tenants actively participating in plan-
ning and lobbying for repairs. And
Velez is not about to let the police, the
New York City Housing Authority, or
the tenants give up and ignore John-
son Houses again.
"Tenant involvement is the brick and
mortar of the projects."
Refuses To Take Credit
For someone who's helped turn
around a housing project, Velez is
surprisingly soft-spoken, almost self-
effacing when asked about her efforts.
She refuses to take sole credit for the
and she remembers a time when pub-
lic housing was seen as a step up
instead of a safety hazard. Her mother
brought her up to value community
involvement, and both she and her
brother, who directs the New York
Boys Choir, have an activist leaning.
Velez, who used to work as a resource
coordinator for East Harlem schools,
directed her considerable energy to
Johnson Houses in 1982, after she
attended a conference of the National
Congress of Neighborhood Women.
There she heard Bertha Gilkey, the
well-known tenant leader of Cochran
Gardens in St. Louis, speak of her
work. As Gilkey spoke, Velez became
Just last year, the project-home to
4,000 tenants in more than 1,300
apartments-was renovated with $21
million from the Department ofHous-
ing and Urban Development (HUD) ,
and Velez made sure tenants had a say
in how the money was spent, right
down to where the outside lights were
placed. Her acti vism-and guidance-
has helped instill a new degree of
pride within the development, resi-
dents say.
Setting an Example: Ethel Velez says, "We have to teach people to respect public housing again."
"Neighbors respect each other
here, " says Mary Taylor, a Johnson
Houses tenant for 42 years. She ex-
plains that the respect is part of a
bigger change; the crime situation has
improved, the buildings are in better
shape, and the grounds are kept up-
much of it thanks to Velez. "I think
she is magnificent," she says.
"Women like Ethel Velez should
be commended," adds Dave Caprara,
who led former HUD secretary Jack
Kemp's Office of Resident Initiatives.
8/FEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMns
improvements at the project-and
she's quick to note that strong tenant
leadership is no replacement for a
substantial financial commitment
from the government.
In fact, in the decade or so that
she's been in charge of the Johnson
Houses tenant association, her think-
ing has shifted. Once she supported
the Reagan-era ideology of selling
public housing to the tenants. But
over the years she's recognized some
of the limits to that approach. Now,
she says, in New Y orkCity, it's enough
to foster a productive relationship
between tenants and the New York
City Housing Authority (NYCHA). "I
prefer to call it cooperative manage-
ment, where we work together to im-
prove the conditions ofthe projects,"
she says.
Velez was raised in Johnson Houses
trul y inspired. "I'd have never thought
about doing anything in the project.
I'd have gone to school, then on to
college, buU'm listening to this woman
talk and I realized I identified with
[her]," she recalls.
St. Louis Inspiration
Velez, who had never boarded a
plane before, flew to St. Louis to see
Gilkey's achievements first-hand. At
Cochran Gardens, she saw a develop-
ment managed entirely by tenants,
with a tenant board overseeing
budgets, funding and the day-to-day
operations of the project. The trip,
Velez says, "sold me on the idea that
change could really happen."
On her return, she was determined
to test some of Gilkey's ideas at John-
son Houses. She soon found that it
was easier to take a plane to St. Louis
a
a
than move the intransigent housing
authority bureaucracy and overcome
the lethargy of tenants left bitter by
years of slow repairs and unsafe hall-
ways. Nonetheless, she pushed for-
ward, reviving tenant associations that
had been languishing and bringing
Bertha Gilkey to East Harlem to ex-
plain that tenant control can work.
In 1985, Velez participated in a
federal program to try taking Johnson
Houses out of the hands of the govern-
ment and into tenant control. But the
program folded within a year, and her
aspirations never bore fruit. "Ethel
just kept going despite that," recalls
Sonia Bu, who works for the Youth
Action Program in Harlem.
At the time, federal officials were
trying to use examples of feisty, deter-
mined tenant leaders like Velez to
promote a major policy shift away
from publicly-managed housing and
toward tenant control. It wasn't a
popular position among some hous-
ing advocates, who say that turning
public housing over to tenants lets the
federal government shirk its basic re-
sponsibilities. "Tenant ownership is
very tricky," says Victor Bach, a hous-
ing expert from the Community Ser-
vice Society. "One of the criticisms is
that tenant ownership takes problem
projects and gets them off the back of
the administration."
Others say that the only way tenant
involvement can work is through the
leadership of uncommonly commit-
ted people-like Velez, ~ i t h her get-
things-done personality. "Ideally what
happened at Johnson Houses should
happen in every project," says Ventor
Holly, a former management official
at the development. "But you can't
simply dictate that a leader should be
like Velez."
Commitments Fulfilled
There's no doubt that Velez has
gotten things done. After years of
prodding, the 17 brick high-rises of
Johnson Houses, which stretch be-
tween East 112th Streetto 115th Street
and from Lexington Avenue to Third
Avenue, are scrubbed clean and
mostly free from graffiti. Well-lit
sidewalks ensure a degree of safety at
night, and during the day, a brightly-
colored playground with seesaws and
swing-sets is filled with mothers and
young children.
Every month, the tenant associa-
tion holds meetings-now attended
by between 75 and 200 tenants-
where residents voice concerns that
are passed on directly to NYCHA's
managers. Many who are active say
the tenant association has only a small
amount of the internal strife that mars
many other tenant groups. "Ethel has
a warm, firm way of dealing with
people," Bu notes. "They know she
cares. She has lived in those buildings
forever." .
The lack of factionalism could be
the result of Velez's commitment to
ensuring that tenants' requests are
fulfilled. For instance, one major de-
mand was that all outside doors have
working locks. "We got a petition go-
Velez avoids
stressing tenant
ownership as a
panacea.
ing to lock the doors," says Velez.
"That was unusual because there are
no intercoms in the building. Now,
four years later, there's a mandate that
all city housing projects have locked
doors."
Velez says it was the collective
efforts of residents that changed the
project, and their participation was
essential for the latest round of federal
rehabilitation money. "We asked
[tenants] if you had a million dollars,
what would you want done with the
project?" Later, she sent the wish-list
to HUD, which helped convince
officials there that the project should
be renovated. Velez also sent out thou-
sands of questionnaires to get tenant
input into the rehabilitation.
And now, even Velez avoids stress-
ing tenant ownership or management
as a panacea. In the 10 years it took to
turn the project around, she learned
some hard lessons. She started out
believing otherwise, but now feels
that the day when tenant manage-
ment can work isn't here yet. "Not
now; not without years of education,"
she says. "We have to teach people to
respect public housing again."
She's also softened her attitude to-
wards the housing authority and
learned that working with them, in-
stead of against them, has advantages.
For example, in an effort to secure the
project from loiterers, tenants in John-
son Houses asked for a black iron
fence to encircle the walkways and
buildings. But fences are forbidden by
housing authority guidelines. Thanks
to the cooperation between the ten-
ants and the housing authority, an
exception was made and the fence
was allowed.
Respect is the Key
Still, the changes at Johnson Houses
go much deeper than physical im-
provements. "To make things change,
you have to get to the tenants and
make them aware of what they could
do to change what's happening," says
Betsy Pritchard, a 40-year resident.
"Now, [the tenants] want to find out
what's happening."
Instilling respect is the key, says
Velez. Without this, "no management,
tenant or otherwise, will get children
to behave or get their parents to keep
them under control."
These days, Velez is available eight
hours a day because she's the paid
project director of a program for
teenagers and senior citizens at the
local community center. The program
is currently using housing authority
funds to oversee an entrepreneurial
program, with teens selling "Project
Wear" -T-shirts and other items they
designed themselves. Slogans include
"People Unite" and "Let's stick
together."
Still, Velez is far from satisfied.
Across the street there are empty lots,
graffiti-covered walls, burned-out
buildings and liquor stores. It's a view
that has defeated many others, but to
Velez, it's just a matter of time before
this too must change. She envisions
new stores here, locally-owned, that
will hire neighborhood youths and
bring money back through the com-
munity. Her quiet but firm manner
instills optimism. "It will be better 10
years from now," she says.
Fara Warner is a reporter for
BrandWeek. Donna Leslie contributed
additional reporting.
Advertise in
City Limits!
Call Faith Wiggins!
(212) 925,9820
CITY UMITS!FEBRUARY 1993/7
By Steve Mitra
About-Face on Area Policy Boards
The Politics of Poverty
I
na major shift away from plans announced last year, the
city's Community Development Agency has decided
against slashing federal anti-poverty funds in 26 of the 33
neighborhoods that have long benefited from the money;
instead, the city will add additional money and 11 new neighbor-
hoods to the program-including two of the city's wealthier
communities: Greenwich Village and Stuyvesant Town.
The city has also backed off from an
earlier plan to eliminate the 33 Area
Policy Boards that decide which
neighborhood organizations should
receive the federal funds. But the
boards are still due to lose much of
their independence and influence,
and in the future, members will prob-
ably be appointed rather than elected.
The neighborhood
boards are respon-
sible for distributing
millions of dollars in
funding to commu-
nity-based nonprofit
groups that run a
variety of social
service programs.
Gladys Carrion, com-
missioner of the Com-
munity Development
Agency (CDA), says
the changes are nec-
essary because the
money is not being
used as effectively as
it could be.
"Poverty has
Supporters of Carrion's plan dis-
agree. They say it is long overdue, and
point to a long history of corruption in
the neighborhood boards, some of
which became havens for "poverty
pimps" in the 1970s and 1980s. They
also point to the general lack of public
awareness about the boards, and the
minuscule voter turnout in elections
organizations. Until recently, CDA
distributed millions of dollars in
federal Community Services Block
Grant funds and city money to local
groups based on the recommenda-
tions of the Area Policy Boards. The
boards, each with about 21 members,
include five representatives of local
elected officials, two leaders of com-
munity institutions like hospitals or
merchants' associations, and the rest
elected by voters every four years.
But under the new plan, a six-
member "Proposal Review Commit-
tee" in each district decides what
organizations will receive money.
Three of the committee members are
selected by the local policy board,
and three are CDA staff members. The
committees will distribute about $11.6
million this year-$9.3 million from
the federal government and the rest
from the city.
That's left some members of the
boards feeling like they' ve been
stripped of their power. "With these
changes, the boards
will become token
trustees," says Tho-
mas Helm, chairper-
son of Area Policy
Board Two in the
Bedford-Stuyvesant
section of Brooklyn.
The independence
of the boards may di-
minish even further.
After their current
term expires in June,
1993, Carrion says she
wants to stop holding
elections for the
~ policy boards alto-
~ gether. The city has
U'i not held Area Policy
~ Board elections since
u: 1987, when the voter
changed, poverty has
increased," she says.
"We can't just con-
tinue to do what we
are doing." She plans
Chan&Inc Apnda: Members of Area Policy Board Eight in Crown Heights debate their
diminished role in the anti-poverty progrom.
turnout was a dismal
one-half of one per-
to target money more directly at needy
populations-including pockets of
poor people in some otherwise
wealthy communities.
The assault on the powers of the
elected Area Policy Boards has brought
indignant protests from those who
stand to lose influence and their allies.
"My basic problem is that it reflects
contempt for grassroots empower-
ment," says Congressman Major
Owens of Brooklyn, who was Commis-
sioner of CD A from 1968 to 1973 when
the agency was in its infancy. "This is
a step towards wiping it out."
a/FEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMn&
for board members, as reasons for the
change (see "Failures of Democracy" ,
June/July 1992).
"I think the changes are a healthy,
positive step," says John Mollenkopf,
a political science professor at the
City University of New York. "The
boards tended to be self-perpetuating
groups that weren't doing a good job
of accountability."
Token Trustees
At the core of the new plan is a
revised system for deciding how the
money is doled out to neighborhood
cent. "If you call the
[current] boards 'representative,'
you're using the word loosely," she
says. "We're looking for meaningful
community participation."
She adds that she is considering
giving her agency the power to ap-
point board members as one way to
reform the process and to break the
hold of special interests that domi-
nate some of the boards. Last summer,
a report prepared for CDA by Nicho-
las Weiner of the New School for
Social Research found that the agency
"had complete discretion over recon-
stituting Area Policy Boards, because
they are unique bodies created by
New York City and not required by
federal or state legislation." Most other
cities do not have similar democrati-
cally-elected, local-oriented bodies,
the report found.
But board members scoff at the
notion of community participation
without elections. "How can you do
that? They're looking for a no-pain
way of participation," says Francis
Byrd, a member of Brooklyn's Area
Policy Board Eight in Crown Heights.
"Of the programs of the 1960s, this
was the last one remaining in which
grassroots people were elected to
office," adds a furious William Hill,
also of Board Eight. And Roberto
Cabellero, chairman of the Lower East
Side Area Policy Board and part of a
reform group that took control of that
board in 1987, questions whether
Carrion's changes can really solve the
problem of money going into the pock-
ets of poverty pimps. He points out
that, at times, corruption has been
rampant inside the city agency, which
was implicated in several influence-
peddling schemes in the 1980s. "Let's
just hope it's not politics as usual at
CDA, " he says. "They are political
too."
Funding Boost
Even as the boards' influence is in
decline, the CDA is expanding its anti-
poverty program. The number of
targeted community districts will
increase from 33 to 44 as. funding for
the program is boosted-largely be-
cause of a $4.8 million infusion of city
funds by the Dinkins administration
for the fiscal year starting July 1,1993.
This is a turnaround from Carrion's
proposal last summer to cut funding
from communities like East Harlem,
Jamaica, and the South Bronx and
transfer some of the money to areas
like Borough Park and Bensonhurst in
Brooklyn, and Stuyvesant Town and
the West Village in Manhattan. She
argued at the time that the old method
of distributing funds, based solely on
the number of people on welfare in
each neighborhood, ignored the needs
of many poor people. While the new
plan rejects the cuts, Carrion remains
adamant about targeting a wider popu-
lation.
"We want to try and enhance the
safety net," says Carrion. "This pro-
gram is designed to address the needs
of the working poor. We want it to
help more than just people on public
assistance. "
To do that, the agency has adopted
a new formula for determining which
neighborhoods should receive
money-and how much each of them
should get. The old formula was based
on the number of people on public
assistance in each community. With
some exceptions, a district took part
if 20,000 residents , or at least 15
percent of its population, received
public assistance.
Under the new rules, a district will
receive funds if 30 percent of its
population, or 30,000 residents, have
incomes at or below 125 percent of
the poverty level-or $17,438 for a
family of four. In addition, a district
can qualify if it has pockets of
poverty-500 or more people living
within a few blocks of each other with
incomes at or below 125 percent of
the poverty level. Still, in the latter
case, there must be a minimum of
8,000 people fitting the poverty criteria
for a district to take part in the program.
The new criteria not only increase
the number of districts getting money,
but also make it easier for areas nor-
mally considered relatively affluent
to qualify for aid. Angel Linares,
spokesperson for CDA, says the new
criteria were designed to capture both
ghettos-with vast areas of poverty-
and isolated poor areas in well-to-do
neighborhoods. "Some areas have
become more affluent over the years.
But within these communities there
are specific pockets of poverty that get
left out of the system," he says. "Some-
times it's just one street with a housing
project. We have to capture and service
this population as well. "
So, despite the fact that the
Stuyvesant Town area was found to
have a median income of more than
$30,000 per family in recent census
data, the area is now eligible for some
of the CDA money. Still, the district
will get a relatively small amount ,
only $32,848. Bensonhurst, with a
median income near $20,000, will
receive $75,615. By comparison, East
Harlem is slated to receive $500,516,
and Jamaica will get $436,517.
Carrion's about-face follows a series
of impassioned public hearings last
year, where communities across the
city mounted a campaign to hold on to
their funding.
With pressure from the communi-
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ties mounting, Linares says, Carrion
went to Mayor Dinkins and asked for
more funds . The mayor effectively
avoided a bitter election year brawl by
promising the new money.
History of Profiteers
CDA is no stranger to controversy:
the latest flurry of reforms is just one
in a line of many. Established in 1966
during the "War Against Poverty"
started by President Lyndon Johnson,
the agency's role was simply to moni-
tor the financial dealings of 26 local
community corporations thatrecei ved
federal anti-poverty grants. However,
over the years , these corporations
became centers of political influence-
peddling, and furthered the rise of so-
called "poverty pimps."
In an attempt to reform the system,
Mayor Ed Koch created the 33 demo-
cratically-elected Area Policy Boards
in 1979. But within five years, an
investigation by City Limits found that
while Koch's efforts had eliminated
some profiteers, several others had
simply slipped behind the scenes to
take control of the boards and the
funding (See "What's Poverty Got To
Do With It?", November 1984). Since
then, some boards, notably one on the
Lower East Side of Manhattan, have
been taken over by reform groups.
CDA programs are a ghost of what
they used to be. This year's federal
grant of $9.3 million is a fraction of
the $80 million annually that was the
Helping more
than people on
public assistance.
norm in the 1970s, says Linares. In
1981, Congress repealed the Economic
Opportunity Act of 1964-which led
to the creation of CDA-and in its
place set up the Community Services
Block Grant program. As federal fund-
ing dropped during the last decade,
the small amount of anti-poverty
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money became the focus of increas-
ingly bitter battles for funding.
Changes in Poverty
The dynamics of poverty in New
York City clearly have changed since
Mayor Koch set up the policy boards
early in his administration. The
number of people living below the
Census Bureau' s poverty line grew by
21 percent between 1977 and 1989,
according to a study for CDA by the
Community Service Society. And the
number of city residents on welfare or
federal Supplemental Security Income
(SSI) rose from just over one million
in 1977 to 1.2 million in 1991. By
1991, census data showed that one in
four New Yorkers lived below the
poverty line.
The increase in funding reflects
this rise in poverty. But the changes in
the way the system works are still
perceived as an affront by some who
have been active on the policy boards
for years. The distrust sparked a furor
last November when CDA awarded
$1.9 million in contracts to nonprofits
for technical assistance to the com-
munity groups that receive the federal
money. "There was no input from us
as to where the money went," argues
Francis Byrd of the northern Crown
Heights Area Policy Board.
He says the move just confirms his
fear about the future role of the boards.
"We're at the point where we don't
even know what we can negotiate.
The community is excluded in this
process."
He and others seethe city's changes
cynically. "It seems like it's [a case of]
politicians trying to get control of
something they don't have control
over, " says Francisco Marrero, Jr. , of
the Bronx's Area Policy Board Two.
But not all board members are
opposed to Carrion's changes. "It's
much better now," says Carole John-
son, chairperson of the Brooklyn board
that covers East New York. She says
cooperation with CDA will be an
effective way to distribute money. "It's
more hands-on. We will be working
together with CDA."
Some experts agree that the shift-
ing of power away from local boards
and towards the centralized agency
may be a good thing. Says Brenda
McGowan, professor of social work at
Columbia University: "Ideally you
would have local communities decide
where the money goes. The trouble is
that it's the local politics that are the
most vicious. " L-
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CITY UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/11
BY ANDREW WHITE
T
he besieged walls of the city's emergency housing program for people with
AIDS are crashing down, and for the first time, hundreds of chronically-ill
men and women are being left with no option but to sleep on the floors of
crowded welfare offices in unsanitary conditions that physicians describe as
a potential breeding ground for tuberculosis.
Virtually every night, single homeless men and women with AIDS are sent to the
city's notorious Emergency Assistance Units, where hundreds of homeless families
enter the shelter system and often spend several nights without beds, because there
is nowhere else for the city to send them.
During the week of Christmas, the city sent 81 homeless
people with AIDS to the crowded overnight offices, ac-
cording to city data. Two weeks later, the most recent
week for which figures are available, the Division of AIDS
Services referred 152 people with active AIDS to the
offices. Sixty-eight of them were given beds in temporary
hotels sometime during the week; the rest ventured back
to the streets, friends' homes-or any shelter they could
find.
. "Never before have I seen this," says Andrew Coamey,
the intake coordinator at Housing Works, which provides
housing for homeless people with
AIDS. "It's never been like this."
moment, the city does only a cursory screening for tuber-
culosis before sending people to the welfare offices.
Stephen Fisher, the director of the AIDS services agency,
acknowledges that people with AIDS are sometimes spend-
ing two or more nights in the welfare offices before
receiving beds for three or four days in motels near the
airports in Queens. "Having people wait at the emergency
assistance unit is not appropriate," Fisher concedes. "We
are trying to identify how we can avoid the whole situa-
tion."
Normally, a homeless person with AIDS goes to the
city's AIDS services office and is sent
"It's outrageous," adds Amy
Herman, director of the New York
AIDS Coalition. "The system cannot
address the needs of the people it was
designed to help."
The overnight welfare offices are
frequently jam-packed, the air thick
with the smell of sweat and dirty dia-
pers. Many nights, dozens of home-
less families sleep on chairs, in cribs
and on cardboard spread across the
Hotels are full-
and dingy welfare
offices are getting
the overflow.
to a residential hotel until permanent
housing can be found. This system
was set up to avoid having homeless
people with AIDS and other diseases
crowded together, which can quickly
worsen their illnesses. But now, the
city says the hotels are full and the
welfare offices are getting the over-
flow. "Wemayhavereachedthesatu-
ration point," Fisher explains.
The situation worsened on Janu-
ary 1, when New York adopted an
expanded definition of AIDS that in-
cludes illnesses common among
floors at the office on Catherine Street
on the edge of Chinatown. Now, an
increasing number of single men and women with AIDS,
sometimes in hospital gowns, also sleep huddled against
the wall.
Mixing homeless people with AIDS in crowded spaces
with homeless families is not the primary health concern,
doctors say. They explain that the gravest danger at the
overnight offices is that homeless people with AIDS who
may well have tuberculosis put other homeless people
with AIDS at serious risk of catching the disease. At the
12jFEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMITS
women and drug users infected with the HIV virus. The
new definition allows more people to qualify for city
services. As a result, says Ellen Alpert, director of AIDS
housing in the mayor's office, officials expect the city's
AIDS services caseload to expand as much as 62 percent
this year, from about 10,050 to as many as 16,300-
thousands more than anticipated just four months ago. So
far, more than one-quarter ofthe people with AIDS have
needed a home.

FIat-4ut: A homeless woman with AIDS sleeps on the floor of the Catherine Street Emergency Assistance Unit. In one week, the city sent 152
men and women with AIDS to this office because there was nowhere else to shelter them.
Tuberculosis Fears
Physicians and are fearful that the city's
inability to find rooms for homeless people with AIDS
could be a health hazard. They say the Division of AIDS
Services (DAS) is incapable of screening out all the people
with active tuberculosis before sending men and women
with AIDS to the crowded overnight welfare offices,
where they breathe stagnant air in close quarters along
with hundreds of other people.
"It's completely inappropriate to have people with mv
who are at risk for TB, and may already have TB, sleeping
in the Emergency Assistance Unit," says Lauren Shapiro
of the mv Law Project at South Brooklyn Legal Services.
"With a lot of sick people in a crowded place with poor
ventilation, you will see all kinds of diseases transmitted,
including tuberculosis," adds Dr. John McAdam of St.
Vincent's Hospital's Department of Medi-
cine.
Tuberculosis can destroy lung tissue and damage other
organs, including the brain. The disease is usually conta-
gious to healthy people only after prolonged exposure to
an infectious person over many days or weeks. But people
with weakened immune systems, like people with AIDS,
can catch tuberculosis much more easily, says Dr. Karen
Breudney, director of the infectious disease clinic at
Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. "If you're HIV positive
and you are exposed even briefly to tuberculosis, it's
entirely possible you'll pick it up and get sick," she says,
adding that the city should at least be checking lists of
known tuherculosis cases at the city health department
before sending people with AIDS to the overnight offices.
Fisher says a system for checking cases against health
department lists is being put together, but he's not sure if
people will be checked before they are sent to the welfare
offices. "The details haven't been worked out," he says.
In the meantime, it's a lottery whether or not the DAS
caseworkers can determine if a person with AIDS has
tuberculosis. The only way they can t,lJlll for sure is if the
person tells them, or if the disease is noted on the medical
forms people with AIDS present to the city to get assis-
tance. In some cases, a homeless person arrives directly
from the hospital, and the city caseworker can call a doctor
or social worker there for information. Still, Breudney
says many doctors don't mention tuberculosis on the
medical forms because it hasn't been one of the diseases
classified as an AIDS-related illness,
She Preferred the Street
If anyone fits the description of this decade's typical
person with AIDS in New York City, Elise Henry does.
More than two-thirds of recent AIDS cases in the city are
people of color. Nearly half became infected with the HIV
virus as a result of intravenous drug use, according to the
Health Systems Agency of New York City. And thousands
of them have been homeless at some point in their life.
Henry fits that description exactly. She is a thin, tired
CITY UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/13
but eloquent 45-year-old, born and raised in Harlem, who
has had full-blown AIDS for more than two years. A few
months ago, already very sick, she lost her apartment and
landed on the street, a situation she was familiar with after
years of drug use and periodic homelessness. She went to
DAS seeking a hotel room, but none was available; toward
the end of the day, DAS sent her to the emergency assis-
tance office on Catherine Street.
"I'm a street person and I was amazed at what I saw,"
Henry says. "I worried about TB, but there was nothing I
could do about it. I was so afraid. I saw people in there I
know have TB, herpes, AIDS. I couldn't understand,
thinking 'Why am I allowing them to do this to me? I have
to die to get a home?' "
The next day, she went back to DAS, hoping for a room.
None came through. She returned to Catherine Street,
spent another night, and still didn't get a hotel room the
next day. The third night, she says, she had had enough.
"I went back up and slept with the in the park at
Eighth Avenue and 26th Street, she says. "It was better
there. I was so sick, an old man got up off his bedding to
let me lay down for awhile."
Finally, Henry got a room in a midtown residential
hotel. But hundreds of people still spend their nights in
squalor at the welfare offices. "It's the dirty little secret of
what goes on in these
guest houses were converted into luxury cooperatives and
rentals in the 1980s. Many of those that remain are in bad
shape, with drugs freely sold in the hallways. Officials say
they are hesitant to house any more homeless people in
some ofthe worst. Others don't have private or even semi-
private bathrooms, which are necessary for AIDS patients
because of sanitation and health requirements.
The number of people with AIDS placed by the city in
the hotels has more than doubled since 1990, from about
800 to over 1,700 today, despite a 1990 promise by the
Dinkins administration to phase out their use. The for-
merly homeless people with AIDS often stay in the hotels
for years.
This has infuriated advocates, who say the city could
solve the crisis if more people were moved out of the
hotels and into permanent housing. "If people were moving
out, this wouldn't be happening," argues Shapiro of the
HIV Law Project. She and others add that it is extremely
difficult to wean an addict off drugs in a hotel, because of
the lawlessness and lack of social services. In a private
apartment, it's easier for people like Elise Henry to go
straight.
But the current crisis has forced Shapiro to focus her
advocacy on an immediate, short-term goal. She says
getting people with AIDS out of the hotels and into
permanent housing
all-night welfare of-
fices," says Steven
Banks of the Legal Aid
Society's Homeless
Family Rights Project.
"They're dumping
grounds for a number
of failures in city pro-
grams."
The Crisis Builds: Chart shows weekly placements in
residential hotels vs. referrals to overnight welfare offices. As
hotel rooms become harder to come by, more homeless people
with AIDS are sleeping in the offices.
must be the long-term
solution, but "given
the situation that
exists now, they have
to add more hotel
rooms."

Yet that's proven to
be a difficult task.
Some long-time resi-
dents of the hotels,
where many low in-
come and elderly
New Yorkers live, say
they are frightened by
the new infusion of
formerly homeless
AIDS patients. They
say they fear that
landlords have an in-
centive to empty their
rent-regulated rooms
and take in DAS cli-
ents for a hefty, city-
subsidized profit. The
city pays landlords
Hotel Shortage

C
The shelter situa-
tion for people with
AIDS began to worsen
last fall, Fisher says.
The residential hotels
where the city houses
most homeless
people with AIDS are
not exactly quality
housing-most are di-
lapidated, often
dangerous places. But
at least people have
private rooms and pri-
vate or shared bath-
rooms.
,
t
i
80
40
o
week endllll= 1124192
residential hotels
Source: NYC Division of AIDS Services
Those hotels are supposed to be only temporary shelter
until permanent housing can be found. Once that hap-
pens, the room can be assigned to another person with
AIDS. But many people haven't been able to move out of
the hotels and into permanent housing because of bureau -
cratic inertia and a shortage of social services and adequate
apartments. In September, gridlock set in, because the city
had run out of rooms. "As the number of AIDS cases
increases, the number of hotel rooms as a resource has
stayed constant," Fisher explains. "We've not been
successful in identifying new hotels."
Hundreds of single room occupancy hotels (SRO) and
14/FEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMITS
1212St92 1N93
between $28 and $35
a day to house people
with AIDS, while many long-time residents pay as little as
seven dollars a day.
"Imagine the pressures, the fright of people who are
uninformed," says Larry Wood of the West Side SRO
Housing Law Project, which works with hotel tenants in
an effort to preserve the remaining hotel rooms and main-
tain rent regulation. "It's a tactic that landlords can use to
empty a building."
"We have to be mindful not to push out permanent
tenants," agrees Alpert from the mayor's office. Anne
Teicher, deputy director for SRO housing in the mayor's
office, says it's a painful policy choice. "We don't want to
,
,
1
.
create a revolving door,
pushing one popula-
tion in and pushing
another out. We don't
want to create another
class of homeless."
There is at least a
glimmer of change in
the distance. This year,
for the first time, the
federal government has
allocated more than
$10 million to the city
for development of
supported housing for
people with AIDS. The
city will use half the
money to help double
~ the number of apart-
~ ments in the scattered-
""c.o:: ....... ~ ~ ~ site program, and half
Q for a congregate facil-
~ ity that will house
~ about 50 people with
~ AIDS. The city also
Besides, she says,
her office has re-
searched the entire list
of single room occu-
pancy hotels and guest
houses citywide and
has found few places
where the rising tide of
homeless people with
AIDS can be placed,
either because the land-
lords have histories of
tenant harassment or
warehousing, or be-
cause the buildings
don't conform with cer-
GIve Me Shelter: When Elise Henry was homeless with AIDS, she spent two nights
in a crowded welfare office. The third night she slept in a park.
plans to open up three
or four similar projects
each year for the next
tain basic standards. "The demand is very pressing," she
says. "But a lot of hotels are gone, a lot are being used, a lot
are not adequate."
Shapiro disagrees. "I don't buy the SRO problem," she
says. "The St. George Hotel has 200 vacant apartments. I
don't think there's [competition] for places." The
apartments are vacant in part because Brooklyn Heights
neighborhood groups say they are alarmed that so many
homeless people with AIDS are living in the hotel with
few social services.
"I think its AIDS phobia" that's keeping rooms empty,
adds Virginia Shubert of Housing Works. "They have to
open up more hotel rooms quickly."
Gridlock
The city originally intended that the hotels would be
reserved only for emergency, short-term stays while people
with AIDS waited for apartments with support services
like drug treatment, psychiatric care and, if necessary,
home living assistance.
But the shortage of supported housing is becoming
more and more desperate. "When [the Dinkins adminis-
tration] started in 1990 we were already far behind," says
Alpert. "It's increasingly hard to catch up."
As of January 1, there were 507 formerly homeless
people with AIDS living in scattered, privately-owned
apartments leased by nonprofit groups, who also arrange
for home care and other services. About 330 live in
apartments managed by the city's housing department, 60
in public housing projects, 77 in supported hotels managed
by nonprofits, and 53 in supported, congregate housing.
About two thousand more live in private apartments
they've located on their own or with the help of DAS.
New housing has been in the works for years, but,
Alpert concedes, "The development process has taken
much too long." She says one project for 70 people with
AIDS in the Bronx has been in the works since Mayor
Dinkins took office, and still has not opened because there
is "no clear funding stream. It's a patchwork of funding
sources."
"We're new at this," she adds. "It takes longer to get the
first few programs up. Once that happens, things will
move faster."
few years, Alpert says. Another $20 million in federal
funds is already appropriated and could be available as
early as next summer ..
In addition, Mayor Dinkins.recently announced plans
to reallocate $80 million dollars from a fund targeted for
the development of small shelters to nonprofit groups that
will convert hotels and rooming houses into permanent
housing with social services for single men and women-
some of them with AIDS.
Agency Roadblocks
Yet many critics of the city say that the biggest road-
block to moving people with AIDS out of the hotels and
into permanent housing is the Human Resources Admin-
istration itself, the social services department that includes
DAS. "There are any number of day treatment services,
mental health services, drug treatment services," says
Marie Edesess, a former DAS caseworker who now works
at the HIV Law Project in Brooklyn. Yet with all these
services at their fingertips, she says, the city's social
workers fail to coordinate resources so that people with
AIDS can move quickly into private apartments and remain
there as long as they are able.
Most critics of DAS agree that the agency's worst
difficulties are rooted in budgetary constraints and exces-
sive paperwork. But in many cases tllat slow paperwork
has lost apartments for a number of men and women with
AIDS who are trying to get out of hotels.
It took nearly three months for the city to issue a rent
check to Elise Henry, enabling her to move into her new
apartment beside a community garden in lower Manhat-
tan. She was lucky-the landlord didn't rent the apartment
to anyone else in the meantime.
Last August, a former drug addict named Randolph
Johnson found a small apartment in Park Slope with the
help of DAS. He couldn't move in until he came up with
$1,250 for one month's rent and the security deposit.
People with AIDS can receive $480 per month for rental
assistance from the city, or more if an exception is ap-
proved by Human Resources Administration officials-a
common request, since cheaper apartments are hard to
come by. But bureaucratic complications held up the
check for three months, despite constant efforts by a legal
ern UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/15
services staffer to ex-
pedite the process.
When Johnson went to
Park Slope to pay the
landlord in mid-No-
vember, someone else
had moved into the
apartment.
Support, adding a bu-
reaucratic knot to an
already burdensome
system. "I've told In-
come Support that it is
an issue," says Fisher
of DAS. "They've
agreed to look at it as a
problem that has to be
corrected. "
~ Alpert at the mayor's
~ office agrees. "The In-
~ come Support issue is
~ a mega-issue. I hear it
ill from all sides. We
"It took them so
long, I blew the apart-
ment," says Johnson. "I
could have torn that
office apart." Three
months later, another
apartment has fallen
through, and he is still
living in a residential
drug treatment center
in Greenpoint, taking
nmTJP"POO people with AIDS have been living in the St. know we have to deal
with it immediately."
George Hotel, some of them for years, because the city is having a tough time
finding permanent housing.
There's also a more
up a space that could be used by a drug addicted homeless
person with AIDS, despite the fact that he has been off
drugs more than a year.
"For the clients I work with there is a one and a half
month average wait for rent checks" to be issued for a
newly-found apartment, says Cynthia Reed of the HIV
Law Project at the AIDS Service Center of Lower Manhat-
tan. "And that's with an advocate active in their interest.
Many people wait three or four months before they even
come to me."
The delays have become common knowledge among
people with AIDS who deal with DAS, so that those with
extra savvy have learned how to bypass the system. When
Bill Thompson of Harlem found himself homeless, he
skipped going to DAS and went straight to the Minority
Task Force on AIDS. They had a vacant apartment avail-
able and gave him a place right away. "You have to be
tenacious," Thompson says.
Part of the problem is that DAS cannot issue checks on
its own. Rent and benefit checks are issued by a separate
unit of the social services department known as Income
insidious side to some
of the delays. Some caseworkers with access to checks for
homeless people with AIDS have been accused of theft.
One of them, Junior Ricketts, a former DAS caseworker,
recently pled guilty in federal court to stealing about
$110,000 in rent and support payments for clients, some
of them homeless. He managed to forge signatures and
deposit the checks in his own bapk account.
Breakdown
But what will happen now that the number of new AIDS
cases is mounting faster than ever before, and the system
has broken down?
"It's something that scares me," says Fisher.
"Demand is going to increase substantially," Teicher
adds. "The resources are taxed now ... "
"The city is scrambling ... " says Alpert.
"There are homeless people with AIDS on the streets
and there is nowhere for them to go," says Shapiro. "DAS
was set up to give them a place. It's not accomplishing its
mission. People will sleep in abandoned buildings, get-
ting sicker. They won't want to go to DAS." 0
r--------------------------------------,
GUTSY. Il\TCISIVE. PROVOCA'rtlVE.
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CITY UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/17
...... TIIIII: The committee to create more after-
school programs includes (from left): Cindy
Colter, Wanda Hardy, Beth Mara, Margie Arce,
Adrienne Merced and Joyce Thomas.

In

onnee Ions
A new foundation-backed experiment gives six well-established South
Bronx groups a chance to dream, plan, network, and do community
organizing. But some critics question their grassroots credentials.
BY LISA GLAZER
O
n a bitterly cold morning, Cindy Colter rushes
through the heavy front doors of Community
Elementary School 70 in the South Bronx, bounds
up the stairs, and plunks herself down on a
child-sized chair in a classroom where seven
women are hovering around coffee and doughnuts. It's
9:15 a.m. and they're ready and waiting for an early
morning planning session.
The women originally got together at a neighborhood
meeting organized by Promesa, a nearby drug rehabilita-
tion agency where Colter is employed. A number of
parents expressed concerns about the lack of activities for
their children after school stops at 3:15-so now this
group is doing something to solve the problem.
Colter is here because her employer, Promesa, is part of
18/FEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMITS
the Comprehensive Community Revitalization Program
(CCRP). "It's about making strong links between Promesa
and the community," Colter explains. "And it's about
bringing services here that other communities have-and
we need and deserve right here." With that, they get down
to work.
"We have 1,800 kids at this school. My concern is
there's not enough for the kids," says Maria Varona,
whose four sons attended the school. Next to Varona is
Raydell Robinson, a parent association president, wearing
a bright purple sweatshirt, her hair plaited in tight corn
rows. Beside her are two other mothers, plus two women
from Goodwill Industries who oversee a successful after-
school program nearby.
The meeting is small but productive, with extensive
back and forth discussion and lots of input from the
parents. After a brisk, energetic hour in which numerous
decisions are made, the committee forms a plan to present
to the principal the following week. They want to start an
after-school program that pays teenagers from Junior High
School 147 to become tutors at the elementary school,
using start-up funding from CCRP-which they hope will
help them win more substantial backing from the city's
Community Development Agency.
One month later, the after-school program is approved.
T
he planning session and its end results are just one
small example of what the Com rehensive Commu
nity Revitalization Program is achieving in the South
Bronx. Backed by several foundations, CCRP is a $5.6
million collaboration between six neighborhood-based
housing and social service groups, and each organization
now has one or two new employees who have been hired
to think, plan, dream and do community organizing.
The scope of activity is mind-stretching. CCRP is behind
a talent show, the purchase of a new Macintosh computer
and laser printer for Promesa's development office, plans
for a new Bronx supermarket, offices for primary care
doctors, the groundwork for a family day care resource
center, immunization programs, planning for start-up
businesses in catering, security, home health care and
building maintenance, new job-training programs and
more.
"I've been in this business a long time and there is
nothing that has excited me quite as much as this program,"
says Anita Miller, who oversees CCRP from the offices of
the Surdna Foundation in midtown Manhattan.
Indeed, there is much to be excited about. CCRP
represents an important new trend in
the way private foundations help poor
communities. While they've tradition-
substantial government investment, entire blocks of aban-
doned buildings have been renovated into new housing
for people from a range of backgrounds. But schools are
still overcrowded, streets unswept, emergency rooms over-
whelmed, jobs scarce and drugs all-too readily available.
Meanwhile, community groups that started off as a ragtag
assortment of activists now have scores of staff members
and large government contracts. There's an enormous
need to connect the new housing with other resources-
and to reconnect residents with the neighborhood groups.
Underlying the strategy sessions and organizing
campaigns are important questions that elude easy an-
swers. How can local groups nurture a sense of commu-
nity in a place where many people stay home because
they're afraid to venture outside? How can neighborhood
residents be asked to participate in civic life when the
police, the courts and the education system have all been
unresponsive-and rife with corruption? It all boils down
to this: How can the South Bronx become a stable home
instead of a place people try to escape?
R
Uth Poindexter, a 50-year-old tenant in a brick
tenement at 1687 Vyse Avenue, is trying to answer
those questions, along with her neighbors partici-
pating in CCRP. She'd like to see a clean, safe community
with jobs, first-rate schools and affordable doctors. "If you
get the community behind you, things can change," she
says.
This summer, she was one of more than 200 residents
that attended an open -air picnic organized by MBD. Before
enjoying barbecued ribs, green salad and corn on the cob,
ally funded specific projects, like parks
or housing developments, CCRP tries
instead to integrate funding for the vast
array of elements that worK together to
improve the quality of neighborhood
life.
Poindexter contributed ideas about
creating an ideal future community-
and a timetable for pushing the dreams
toward reality.
A new trend in the Since then, she's joined commit-
tees for economic development, com-
munity outreach, crime prevention
and youth training. Still, most of the
goals listed at the picnic seem ex-
tremely far off, and Poindexter wor-
ries that without tangible results, in-
terest in CCRP could easily diminish.
What's more, much of the decision-
making about how and where the $5.6
million will be spent is coming from
the neighborhood groups themselves,
which have been encouraging commu-
way foundations
help poor
communities.
nity participation by reviving tenant
associations, forming neighborhood
councils, setting up focus groups and holding community
picnics since last summer. "A big part of the strategy is to
rely solely on the wisdom of the residents," says Charles
Boyd, a CCRP program manager for the Mid-Bronx Des-
peradoes (MBD), a major developer and manager of low
income housing.
Still, the program is not without its critics. Some argue
that the effort's grassroots potential is compromised by
relying on large, well-established neighborhood groups,
some with million dollar budgets. Others question the
implications of a self-esteem training program for staff
members and community residents that is a central part of
CCRP, so important that Miller describes it as "the invis-
ible foundation" of the entire program.
Nonetheless, there's little argument that CCRP comes to
the South Bronx at an opportune time. After five years of
"Getting people involved-that's
like pulling a tooth," she says, the
slightest hint of aJlger in her voice.
Then she sighs. "A lot of people are
afraid. They don't want to come out and get involved.
They think people will see them and something will
happen to them and their kids .... The heavy drug dealers
are the problem. They figure you're messing with their
clientele, and they see you as a threat."
This tough deterrent to community organizing is some-
thing each of the organizations within CCRP has to reckon
with. The groups include three community-based hous-
ing groups-the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes, the Banana Kelly
Community Improvement Association and the Mount
Hope Housing Company-as well as the Phipps Commu-
nity Development Corporation, a city-wide group that has
a base in the Bronx; the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Coun-
cil, which provides housing, home care and meals-on-
wheels for seniors; and Promesa, a residential drug treat-
ment center.
CRY UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/19
Each organization is adapting CCRP to its own distinct
background. Promesa and MBD, both of them born in the
community, are encouraging greater community partici-
pation in decision-making through neighborhood councils
and committees. But Phipps is taking a different approach.
"Phipps did not originate from the grassroots, it does not
have a reputation as a community organizing body. It
almost seems more polite to start slowly," explains Lisa
Grist, who is overseeing CCRP for Phipps by starting off
reviving tenant associations in buildings the group
manages.
Some projects are being worked out cooperatively: the
groups share the services of a planner who is assessing the
South Bronx landscape, pinpointing the location of empty
lots and vacant buildings. And four of the groups recently
collaborated on a proposal for a grant to the federal
housing department, which they won. Now they have
$320,800 to help establish low income co-ops in 12 city-
owned buildings. There are also efforts to create a South
Bronx family day care resource center, coordinate
employment programs and bring doctors into the
community, with major financial backing coming from
CCRP, the United Hospital Fund and area hospitals.
The process behind CCRP is straightforward. Each
group has created a way to encourage neighborhood resi-
dents to help decide what projects to focus on. When they
have a committee and a plan, they can apply for CCRP
funding.
CCRP "gives us the opportunity to see what services are
[already] available in the community, and how we can
make a better plan for the future. It also allows us to
organize people, which we did not have the staff to do
before," says Zenon Arribalzaga from the Mid-Bronx Senior
Citizens Council.
"CCRP is unique," adds Madeline Marquez from Banana
Kelly. "It facilitates the planning process organizations
never can do because of the fragmentation of their funding
and lack of time. It mandates that we have to sit down and
do it. It's very exciting-and very, very challenging."
B
ut CCRP challenges more than its participants. The
program's backers tout it as an important national
demonstration project-but critics question if this is
an ideal model for lasting change.
The choice of groups involved is one target. "They say
they're doing an experiment, but they aren't taking any
risks," says Matthew Lee, a leader of the Community on
the Move homesteaders in the South Bronx. "They're
taking the existing, big, sell-out groups ... and giving them
money to put a friendly smile on what they're doing."
Lee's commentrefiects some of the antagonism that has
accompanied the rapid growth of groups known as com-
munity development corporations. A number of them
have become major landlords through their housing
development work-creating an inevitable tension
between them and some neighborhood residents. And
they've also won big government contracts, which can
reduce their desire and ability to challenge the city
government.
The questioning about CCRP also extends beyond the
neighborhood groups-to the foundations and corpora-
tions behind the project. "I don't trust the concept of
CCRP," says Jay Small, the executive director of the
20/FEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMITS
Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development,
a coalition of community groups that includes some of the
project's participants. "It's coming from the foundations .
You have to ask, whose agenda ultimately reigns?"
Miller responds emphatically that the foundations aren't
charting the course for CCRP. "I have never seen anything
as ground-up and as truly participatory as this," she says.
But Small exclaims, "There's a difference between
participation and control!"
Indeed, ultimate control for the program does rest with
Miller, who along with Edward Skloot, the head of the
Surdna Foundation, makes the final funding decisions for
CCRP. There's also an advisory committee that includes
representatives from all of the funding organizations.
Their names read like a Who's Who from the banking and
foundation worlds: Bankers Trust, Citibank, the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Engelberg
Foundation, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the
Clark Foundation, the Uris Brothers Foundation, the New
York Community Trust, and the Surdna Foundation.
Of course, foundations and corporations can spend
their money however they wish-but examining how
decisions are made can be a test of whether they practice
what they preach about community involvement. Some
foundations, like the North Star Fund, which is not a part
of CCRP and distributes grants ofless than $10,000, have
community-based funding boards.
Miller says this approach isn't practical for CCRP. "We
did not design the program for the groups to vote on each
other's grants. It would just create an unnecessary tension,"
she says firmly. "If someone wants to design something
where they raise $6 million and give it to community
groups to decide where it goes, well, I wish them luck."
T
he other controversial aspect of CCRP is the self-
esteem training program run by a Floridian, Roger
Mills, that all six community groups are participat-
ing in. The notion that poor p e o p ~ e need self-esteem
training can raise hackles. "People say 'Self-esteem work-
shop? I don't need self-esteem and I don't want to attend
another workshop!' " jokes Charles Boyd from MBD, adding
that many skeptics have eventually found the program
useful.
But critics say the proliferation of such programs is a
serious concern because they emphasize the notion that
poor people have a distinct pathology and are more
emotionally troubled than the rest of society-which
diverts attention from the power structures that reinforce
poverty.
Roger Mills, who's leading the training program, dis-
misses these points, explaining that he and others have
developed a theory called Psychology of Mind (PaM) that
is used by rich and poor alike, and can be seen as a starting
point for gaining the necessary confidence to stand up to
authority.
In literature describing the theory, Mills compares the
brain to a computer and people's method of thinking to
software. The key to greater success and happiness, he
writes, is changing the software by helping people realize
the inherent goodness and competence within them.
"Everyone has access to common sense and that's at the
core of everyone's psychological make-up," he says. "It
can't be destroyed by being an abused child or growing up
in a dysfunctional
community .. .it's such a
natural thing it always
comes back."
Mills received a gov-
ernment grant in 1 98 7
to try Psychology of
Mind training at the
Modello housing
project, a run-down,
120-family develop-
ment in Dade County,
Florida. In 1988, he ex-
panded to another
nearby housing project,
Homestead Gardens.
'Hey! Wait a minute! I
never sent out flyers in
Spanish! '"
The community was
cynical at first. "People
here have been choked
with promises," says Jim
SettInc up Shop: Charles Boyd of the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes in front of a lot
that may someday be a supermarket.
Beth Rosenthal, a
community organizing
consultant to CCRP, says
she was required to at-
tend one of the trainings.
"It's almost a spiritual
approach to help people
have confidence they
can make change." She
adds, "There's a lot of
fragile people in these
communities who have
lived through a lot, and
the neighborhoods can
be like a war zone.
There's also a lot of new
people coming in, many
Chandler, the principal of the Homestead Middle School.
But the Mills approach delivered, he says. "It touched all
ages and gave people a sense of belonging and comfort
about meeting in public forums and helping people feel
they have a voice."
Mills held confidence-building sessions with residents,
trained them to train their neighbors, and on their own
they decided to form a Parent-Teachers Association to
improve the local school and reduce truancy. Within six
months they also started meeting with the police and other
county officials to try and improve security at the projects.
Thanks to these meetings, Dade County introduced a
community policing program in the project. The PTA
members encouraged their neighbors to develop a work-
ing relationship with the police, which eventually led to
greater trust, cooperation-and an estimated 65 percent
reduction in drug trafficking, according to information
Mills compiled from the police and residents.
Mills also notes that dslinquency at the projects went
down 75 percent and the majority of parents involved
ended up going back to school, getting job training or
landing jobs.
Still, while many residents, newspapers and even
television shows have lauded Mills' achievements in
Florida, there have been rumblings of discontent about
Psychology of Mind. Last June, a reporter from The
Washington Post interviewed a number of former
Psychology of Mind therapists and clients who found the
approach overly simplistic and felt they were pressured to
always "think positive." One therapist, Enrique Suarez,
who helped Mills write the first book about Psychology of
Mind, even described it as a cult.
Requests to attend a Psychology of Mind training session
in the Bronx were refused, but many of those who have
attended say that it's nothing like a cult. They are also very
open about their initial wariness.
"It's reall y hard to get sold on this right away," says Jaye
Fox, the CCRP director from the Mt. Hope group. "You
look at it, and you think he's out of his mind. But it's more
useful than some give it credit for." Boyd from MBD cites
an example from his organization, which is primarily
African American. At meetings, a common complaint was
that Latino residents never attended meetings. With the
Mills training, Boyd says, "They can get unstuck and say
of them formerly homeless, and some of them need an
approach that's fairly personal. They've been left out of a
lot of stuff and you want to bring people in."
T
he original idea for CCRP came from Surdna Found-
ation director Ed Skloot-but the idea of compre-
hensive funding for poor communities has been
around for decades, and is finally being implemented in
scores of demonstration projects in New York and across
the country.
"It's perfectly clear that single-focus, single-factor
activities in lower income areas will ultimately fail," says
Skloot, explaining his interest in a more comprehensive
approach. "A few individuals or families will benefit, but
it will not cumulate."
Andrew Mott from the Center for Community Change
says CCRP fits into a larger shift in funding patterns.
"There's sort of a new wave of interest in comprehensive,
integrated funding for neighborhoods," he says.
Interestingly, the local trend toward comprehensive
funding resembles a move by international development
organizations. The General Assembly of the United Nations
voted in 1989 to stop funding isolated projects and to
adopt a broader model, where governments are consulted
about their needs and an interconnecteg. range of projects
receive funding, according to Paul Matthews, the policy
director for the United Nations Development Program.
Matthews cautions that the new model presents tough
challenges. "We're putting the recipients much more in
the center of the process and saying, 'Let's see if they can
do it better.' We think they can-but it remains to be seen."
The same could be said for CCRP in the South Bronx.
But for the people involved, it's a good start. "I'm a
fighter," says Ruth Poindexter, refusing to let her neigh-
borhood disintegrate around her. "As long as we get
people involved, this can definitely make a difference." 0
Editor's Note: Readers should be aware that City Limits
receives funding from a number of the foundations
mentioned in this article, and that the Association for
Neighborhood Housing and Development is a sponsor of
the magazine.
el1'Y UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/21
By Steven Wishnia
A Reconstruction Agenda
If President Clinton follows through on his promise to
reinvest in infrastructure, where should the money
go? Urban advocates have some ideas.
W
hat would you do with $20
billion? Most of us would
probably opt to buy Fifth
Avenue and move in with
all our friends. But if you're inclined
toward a grander vision
of the public good, why
not build recycling
plants, high-speed
trains or a freight-rail
tunnel to New Jersey?
What about refurbish-
ing the city's subway
stations?
These are some of
the things local urban
policy junkies and city
officials would like to
do if they could get
their hands on part of
the $20 billion annu-
ally that President Bill
Clinton is considering
investing in infrastruc-
ture.
billion trust fund for replacing lead
water pipes and reducing lead paint;
an additional $2 billion for low income
housing block-grants nationwide; and
whatever money it takes to help the
she adds, how the money is spent is as
important as what it buys: these
projects should hire and train people
from the neighborhoods in order to
"build the economy within the com-
munity and get more than just a build-
ing."
Although the city and state are
pushing for immediate funding of
programs, others counsel patience in
order to spend money on projects that
solve problems instead of contribut-
ing to them.
Marcy Benstock of the Clean Air
Campaign would rather see the
government spend
nothing on the infra-
structure than fund
"wasteful, environ-
mentally destructive
public works" just
because they're ready
to be built. With lim-
ited money available,
she says, it would be
better off "investing in
people to do jobs that
need to be done" by
~ fuil y funding pro-
* gramslikeHeadStart-
~ at a cost of $10 billion.
5:
()
::J Smooth Transit
Of course, whether
that plan will ever be
implemented is still
EJeyating Urban Priorities: The subway system is a top choice for new federal
money-if it's forthCOming.
~ . The number one
~ priority for many ur-
e<: ban environmentalists
is improving the city's
mass transit systems.
unclear, and urban advocates are
mindful of the budget deficit and the
panoply of interest groups pressing
Clinton to fund their pet projects. Still,
they agree that his administration can
only be better for New York than the
Reagan and Bush regimes of the 1980s,
which halved federal aid to mass tran-
sit and virtually eliminated funds for
public-housing construction.
So they're guarded ... but still look-
ing on the bright side. After all, says
Columbia University planning pro-
fessor Elliot Sclar, "We're not dealing
with Troglodytes anymore."
Wish List
The day after the election last
November, Mayor David Dinkins sent
the president-elect an 18-page, single-
spaced wish list with dozens of
proposals for projects to improve the
city. In fact, officials say they have
$1.7 billion worth of construction
projects ready to go as soon as money
can be found. The mayor favors a $10
22/FEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMns
city meet federal mandates on clean
water and improving disabled access
to public facilities.
The Dinkins administration also
wants to change the way money is
allocated almost as much as it wants
the money in the first place. Lisa
Parrish from the city's Office of
Management and Budget says any new
federal aid should be passed directly
to the city-bypassing the state Senate,
which is controlled by suburban and
upstate Republicans. She says money
should be allocated on the basis of
population and the level of distress in
a community. The way things work
now, the New York City region has
one-third of the nation's mass-transit
riders, but New York State gets only
19 percent of federal mass-transit
funds.
Penelope Pi-Sunyer, head of City
Project, best known for its alternative
city budget proposals, would like to
see the money go for "lots of construc-
tion"-housing, schools, health
clinics, and youth centers. However,
In that way, says Brooks Yeager of the
Audubon Society, "an infrastructure
package can be quite good environ-
mentally."
Maintaining the subways may not
be a sexy idea compared to high-tech
fantasies like magnetically levitated
trains or the subterranean chimera of
the Second Avenue subway, says Gene
Russianoff of the Straphangers
Campaign. But, he says, it is the most
important target for infrastructure
dollars. For instance, several sixty-
five-year-old tunnel exhaust fans like
the one that failed to prevent the Clark
Street Station smoke tragedy in 1991
have to be replaced for safety reasons
and for the sake of the economy,
which depends on a smoothly running
transit system.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority
has a $9.6 billion, five-year capital
investment plan for refurbishing
stations, connecting the 63rd Street
tunnel to the E and F lines and other
projects. Governor Cuomo is only
supporting an $8.6 billion plan-
leaving the MT A $1 billion short. That
gap could be filled in part with already
existing federal funds , but Cuomo says
he'd rather spend them on highways-
so new infrastructure money may be
the only alternative. In fact , the
governor and legislature delayed the
transit budget debate from the end of
1992 to this spring partly because
state officials wanted to see whether
Clinton would follow through on his
campaign promises and offer up addi-
tional infrastructure money.
Freight Trains
Congressman Jerrold Nadler is
hoping to get new attention for his
favorite infrastructure plan-making
New York City accessible to freight.
rail after more than 150 years of
isolation from the West. Nadler says
rejuvenating the city's transport
system is a key way to create blue-
collar jobs in shipping and manufac-
turing.
He proposes building a tunnel from
the waterfront in Brookl yn' s Bay Ridge
to either Staten Island or Bayonne,
New Jersey; raising clearances to 21
feet 6 inches on tunnels between the
Bronx and Bay Ridge to allow double-
stacked trains through; repairing the
Brookl yn Army Terminal port;
expanding the proposed Oak Point
terminal in the South Bronx, and
building a new terminal in the Penn
Central yards on the Upper West
Side-the site slated for Donald
Trump's recently-approved Riverside
South development. He contends this
could all be done for less than $2
billion, citing a 1980 Port Authority
study that estimated a Bay Ridge-
Bayonne tunnel would cost $430
million.
Nadler points out that New York is
the only major city in North America
with no link to the mainland's rail-
freight network; without one, he sees
the region's economy suffocating in
the truck exhaust and congestion at
the Holland Tunnel entrance.
He and others also suggest improv-
ing trains in the Boston-Washington
corridor, taking some of the shuttle-
flight load off airports.
Some of Nadler's ideas, like
improving passenger train service,
mesh with those put forward by the
Natural Resources Defense Council.
The NRDC calls for $7 billion for aid
to urban transit, inter-city rail, and
repairs to roads and bridges; $1.2
billion for making low-income
housing more energy-efficient and
abating lead contamination; $3.75
billion for recycling; $2 billion for
upgrading the water supply, includ-
ing lead abatement; $5 billion for
sewage treatment, and $2 billion to
restore damaged federal land.
"You can create jobs in many
different ways," says Ashok Gupta of
NRDC. The question is, he adds ,
"Which ones have additional benefits"
beyond short-term job creation?
Moses Started It
How likely is it that Clinton will
spend significant amounts of money
on the city's infrastructure? Those who
are pessimistic point out that he spent
"We're not
dealing with
Troglodytes
anymore."
much of his campaign distancing
himself from the Democrats' tradi-
tional urban, black, labor, and poor
constituencies.
"He dropped the word 'city' from
his campaign very early on," says Pi-
Sunyer. Others say Clinton' s empha-
sis on the infrastructure during the
campaign ensures he will spend at
least some money on it, and that he
may be open to arguments-such as
C1Drn
Mayor Dinkins '-that cities with
strong economies are the country's
best hope to compete with Europeans
and the Japanese.
But ultimately, funding mass transit
and concentrating investment on cities
may require a political decision to
reverse the course that development
has taken since World War II-the
move further and further into the
suburbs, a trend marked by the
metropolitan-fringe "edge cities" that
blossomed in the 1980s, such as the
corporate headquarters of Stamford,
Connecticut, and the office com plexes
of Morris County, New Jersey.
"That trend has been subsidized by
policies that made automobile infra-
structure very cheap and didn't pay
their real social costs," says Sclar.
For prosperity and ecological sustain-
ability, he says, planning has to focus
on the city as the heart of the region.
He cites the damage done by the
government policies and market forces
that created the modern city and
suburban landscape , orienting
regional development around high-
way networks while neglecting-often
purposefully-public transportation:
Robert Moses, for instance, success-
fully prevented designers from leaving
the Van Wyck Expressway's median
strip wide enough for a train to
Kennedy Airport-just one of many
short-sighted moves by the man who
held the purse for the region's
public works during much of the 20th
century.
"We have to undo that," Sclar says.
"It's not cheap."
Steve Wishnia is a former editor of the
Guardian newsweekly.
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CITY UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/23
II' I I '*11
By Susan Lob
Prescription for Success?
T
hese days, every discussion of
health care reform includes
presenting "managed care" as
the wave of the future. City
officials and the media are treating it
as the panacea that will solve a seem-
ingly intractable problem-bringing
decent medical
care to the city's
poor.
I, like many
other health
advocates, have
serious ques-
tions about how
managed care
will work in our
city. As New
York rushes
forward to em-
brace the sys-
tem, I suggest
that a caution-
ary brake be
applied. The
city needs to
......... -.
..............
". , Ie.. ....
... c. W9',_
.............
...., I ......
lEtt ft. 1111
stop and ask itself some basic ques-
tions to make sure managed care re-
ally makes a positive difference-and
doesn't backfire to make it harder for
the poor to get access to the care they
desperately need.
Their Very Own Doctor
Under managed care, when a per-
son becomes sick, he or she first sees
a family doctor. This doctor either
provides the treatment needed or de-
termines if a specialist is required,
and makes a referral. The benefits of
this approach are clear. People who
use a doctor they know and trust won't
rely on hospital emergency rooms for
medical care. Having one doctor
avoids replication of tests, saves
money, and helps people get better
health care. But making managed care
work will not be easy in a city with a
severe shortage of family doctors,
many people in poor heath, and an
emphasis on cost-cutting.
By turning to managed care, the
city is following a 1991 New York
state law that requires it to enroll half
City View is a forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
24/FEBRUARY 1993/CITY UMITS
of all Medicaid recipients in such a
plan within five years-that's about
750,000 people in the five boroughs.
In October last year, the city started a
'pilot program in Southwest Brooklyn
where families on Medicaid choose
from one of six companies offering
managed care plans. At the same time
the program is being expanded city-
wide.
Profiteering Physicians
The implementation of managed
care raises important questions. Under
the system, doctors are given a set fee
for each patient, no matter how many
times they see each of them, or what
services they provide. While this has
the worthy goal of reducing costs, it
may encourage some doctors to deliver
fewer-or poorer quality-services in
order to increase their profits. Studies
of managed care plans in Philadel-
phia showed this to be the case.
Even more importantly, there is a
severe shortage of doctors, especially
primary care physicians, who accept
Medicaid in New York City. Accord-
ing to a 1990 study by the Community
Service Society, there is a need for
500 additional physicians in low-
income communities city-wide.
Without primary care physicians,
hospitals and Medicaid mills may well
end up as the dominant institutions
providing medical care. Will these
institutions be able to provide
adequate care? I doubt it. Long waiting
periods for hospital appointments are
common now. An influx of managed
care patients will exacerbate the
problem and limit access to care for
other Medicaid recipients and
uninsured patients as well.
As an advocate for prenatal care, I
am particularly concerned about the
effect managed care could have on
pregnant women on Medicaid. The
United States ranks 22nd in the world
in infant mortality and in New York
City the rate is 25 percent higher than
the national rate. In 1984, the Prenatal
Care Steering Committee and other
advocates fought for a new program
that would offer quality prenatal care
to poor and uninsured women. This
program, the state-funded Prenatal
Care Assistance Program (PCAP),
offers a unique package of education,
counseling, outreach, and high quality
medical coverage for women from
conception through the child's first
year.
Yet, managed care will undermine
PCAP in several ways. Managed care
plans will not be held to similar
standards for high-quality medical
care, or give health care providers the
higher reimbursement rates thatPCAP
providers now get. So, they will have
no incentive to provide the same
quality services. When a woman in a
managed care plan gets pregnant she
will no longer have the option to
choose the PCAP program of her
choice (as Medicaid recipients do
now) but will be forced to use the
prenatal services offered by her
managed care plan.
An important aspect of PCAP is
that it also covers women who do not
normally qualify for Medicaid-
women who are employed in jobs that
don't offer health benefits, and
undocumented immigrants afraid to
apply for Medicaid. If PCAP folds
because of a loss of Medicaid patients,
none of these women will have access
to prenatal care.
Do it Right!
Despite these concerns, managed
care is a fact of life for many people
now. But it's not too late to make the
system work. My suggestions are:
ExemptPCAP: Since the program
is working, don't mess it up.
Slow down: Let's see how
managed care works in Southwest
Brooklyn for a few years. In the mean-
time, the city can move on a plan to
develop community-based primary
care
Provide real consumer education
on what managed care will mean to
recipients.
Fund a hotline run by an indepen-
dent community-based organization
to be available 24 hours a day to handle
emergencies and questions about
access to care.
Managed care will have a profound
effect on health care in the city and
has the potential to encourage and
provide preventive care as well as
quality health care. However, if not
implemented carefully, it could
become one more hurdle that poor
people must endure to get to the
services they need and deserve. Now
is the time to make sure that doesn't
happen. 0
For a list of questions to ask before
enrolling in a managed care plan, call
Susan Lob at (212) 227-8482.
By Eric Weinstock
Teach Your Children Well
in Tennessee with a long history of
involvement in the most crucial battles
we have faced. However, Wigginton
found himself with reams of material
that took 10 years to edit down and
publish. The results are certainly
worth the wait.
"Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral
History of Grass Roots Social Activ-
ism in America, 1921-1964," Edited
by Eliot Wigginton, Doubleday, 1992,
430 pages, $25 hardcover.
I
have a mind game that I sometimes
play. I'll picture myself living in
the past, when an important event
occurred and try to figure out what
I would have done had I lived during
that era. Would I have volunteered to
fight in the Spanish Civil War? Would
I have joined George Washington and
his ragtag army in 1776? Would I have
been a Freedom Rider? Would I have
had the intelligence to flee Nazi
Germany as my grandfather did?
Would I have been a garment industry
union organizer like my other grand-
father?
Reading "Refuse to Stand Silently
By" makes me sincerely hope my
answers would have been yes. Edited
by Eliot Wigginton, the book compiles
the stories of people who shaped some
of the recent history of our country.
Some of them are famous, their names
clearly etched in our history books;
others played less well-known-but
no less pivotal-roles. As they recall
the struggles they lived through and
fought , and speak of their disappoint-
ments and triumphs, it forces the
reader to give thanks.
Finding Ways to do Things
In the book, we not only hear from
Andrew Young, Studs Terkel, Rosa
Parks and Pete Seeger, but also from
E.D. Nixon, president of the Brother-
hood of Sleeping Car Porters and the
Montgomery chapter of the NAACP,
and Zila Hawes Daniel, who orga-
nized the first Amalgamated Clothing
Workers' local in the South. All of
their stories are sources of inspira-
tion.
Edgar Daniel Nixon was a Pullman
porter in segregated Montgomery, Ala.
in the 1920s. His job took him to St.
Louis where he saw integration for
the first time. It was an event that
changed his life. It made him realize
there was a better way, that change
could happen. In 1928, porters,mostly
black, weren't unionized, and were
earning half as much as unionized
train employees. "Lots of people were
against ourunion. Even blacks," Nixon
recalls. He adds that the union
prevailed because, "If you learn to be
a part of a movement that's doing
something and that's honest.. .and you
are sincere, you find ways to do
things. "
In 1925, Lucille Thornburgh got
her first job at a textile plant in Ten-
nessee. "You'd work ten hours [a day]
for eight dollars a week-that's if you
got to work a full week. Sometimes
you'd only take home four or five
dollars ... you had no sick leave, no
hospitalization, no vacation. You
worked strictly on piecework. They
always gave us the Fourth of July off,
and they thought they were doing us
a big favor , but we weren't paid for it.
No paid holidays at all. " Thornburgh
became a union activist in 1933, when
an AFL organizer came to organize
textile workers.
Industrial Crackpot
Ralph Helstein, a labor attorney,
remembers negotiating with the
Hormel Company in Austin, Texas, in
1939. That year, Hormel signed the
first guaranteed annual wage contract
in the packing industry. Jay Hormel
was regarded as a crackpot by industry
peers for giving in to labor. But to
Hormel, it was the right thing to do
and it generated millions of dollars in
good publicity. Given Hormel' s recent
history, it's a shame that his corporate
descendants aren't crackpots too.
"Refuse to Stand Silently By," was
intended to be a testament issued on
the fiftieth birthday of the Highlander
Center, a grassroots organizing school
We learn not only of the struggles
of these heroes, but also who their role
models were. As an educator ,
Wigginton was hoping that, for some
of them, public school teachers had
played a role in inspiring them to try
and create change. But it turned out
that family and individual role models
were the main reasons most of these
rebels with a cause took the actions
they did. Several of the subjects,
including Studs Terkel, stressed the
need to teach children about change
and community, and about the history
of organizing, especially the role
models who are still alive today.
Willing to Take the First Step
Historical memory tends to be short.
It's easy to forget that it has been less
than 50 years since Jackie Robinson
put on a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform,
since Jim Crow laws were common,
and since McCarthyism ruled the land.
This book is an important reminder
that people can be inspired to act for
change. However, mass movements
require a few pioneers and crusaders
willing to take the first steps. For
anyone seeking this role, it is crucial
to understand the people whose foot-
steps they are following. "Refuse to
Stand Silently By" is a testament to
those who have fought and won. D
Eric Weinstock is an economist and a
former city housing official.
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ASHOK MENON
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Transportation Alternatives, a grassroots citizens group wrkng to
reduce automobile dependence and promote environmental prac-
tices and p o l i c i ~ s in NYC, seeks the following full-time staff: DEPUTY
DIRECTOR. Responsible for org. management, incl. supervision of
staff, office, fundrsng, finance, represent org. in public. Super-
visory/managerial exp., fundrsng expertise, excwrtng/spkng skills,
dedication to envrnmntl issues rqrd. $30,000. POUCY ANALYST.
Study NYC trnsprtatn and clean air planning and budgt processes,
with organzng effort for car-reduction, promotn of transit, cycling,
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organzng expo rqrd. $28,000. COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. Orchestrate
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assist communities on pedestrian safety and traffic reduction
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Search Committee, Transportation Alternatives, 92 St. Marks Place
NYC 10009. All positions include benefits, hlth insurnce. Women
and people of color urged to apply. Spnish-spking a +.
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B'klyn and Queens, seeks the following: DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS.
Must have proven supervsry and admin. skills. Expd in low-income
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IlIlllE COORDINATOR/RECEPTlONIST. Expncd, mature indivdl to work
in busy CBO. Position reqs ability to wrk well under pressure and
independntly. Reqmnts include a plsnt spkng voice; knwldge of
hsng-related activities incldng Hsng Court, Section 8; computer lit.
and typng skills. Duties include hndlng office intake, answerng and
routng phone calls, mail, and client intake, light typing. Bilingual
pref'd. PROPERTY MANAGER. Expncd, mature mngr to work in com-
mitted CBO. Mngrs have complete responsblty for bldngs in
caseload, from prov of svces, rent collectn to recordkpng. Reqmnts
include ext knwldge of Hsng Court, DHCR, RSA, tenant relations,
mntnce, computer lit., and a keen interest + commitmnt to commu-
nity. Bilingual pref'd. TENANT ORGANIZER. Expncd organizer for busy
CBO. Duties include hding unit that orgnzes tenant assocs, block
assocs, mutual housing assocs, conduct mnthly tenant mtngs, and
act in tenant adv pos. Reqs exclnt spkng and wrtng skills. Bilingual
pref'd. SENIOR PROPERTY MANAGER. Manager wi min 7 yrs mngmnt
exp wi at least 3 yrs in supervsry pos for busy CBO. Will supervse
staff of propty mngrs, supers and porters wi complete responsblty
for rent collectn, mntnce, tenant relations, etc. Salaries com mens
wi expo Resumes only to: OHBTA, 319 Rockaway Ave. Brooklyn,
NY 11233. Attn: N. McWatt.
CITY UMITS/FEBRUARY 1993/27
Support Self Help Works
Federal Credit Union
Self Help Works Federal Credit Union (SHWFCU)
isthe on Iy low income cooperative housi ng based
credit union in the United States.Our goal isto be
the principal saving and lending institution for the
low income cooperative housing community.
FEDERAL
CREDIT UNION
If you are interested in supporting low income
cooperative housing in New York City, you can join
SHWFCU by becoming a member of Self Help Works
Consumer Cooperative.
Your deposits in SHWFCU assure there are loan funds
available to lend to our members and their communities.
SINCE 1987 WE HAVE MADE OVER $850,000 IN LOANS
TO OUR MEMBERSWITHOUT A DEFAULT.
Join the credit union and receive a Double Dividend: A "social dividend"
by supporting financial services for affordable housing, and
a financial dividend based on the credit union's earnings.
All deposits are fully insured up to $100,000 per account by the National Credit Union
Administration, an agency of the federal government.
Supported by over a quarter million dollars in deposits, grants, and low interest loans from
the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) Community Development Revolving
Loan Fund, Chemical/Manufacturers Bank, Bankers Trust, Republic National Bank, Chase
Manhattan Bank, and the Ford Foundation.
Self Help Works Federal Credit Union 40 Prince Street New York City 10012
CALL TODAY (212)226-4119