.

Geoffrey Canada:
Street Stories
City Limits
Volume XX Number 6
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2/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
Do the Math
R
eal estate brokers like to say that America was built on homeowner-
ship. So do politicians, when it comes time to defend the tax deduc-
tion homeowners are allowed on their mortgage interest each year.
Not that this has needed much defending. calls for the deduction's
repeal have been pretty much consigned to the fringe.
U's a funny system. Up until a year ago, I was a renter. Now I'm an own-
er. I got a great deal: a second bedroom, a communal roof deck, an honest-
to-god hallway between the front and back of my apartment (wonders nev-
er cease). And on top of that, after my tax deduction, I shell out almost
$100 less each month than I did when I was a renter. Who's complaining?
The mortgage interest deduction is a rite of passage into the middle class.
There's no denying the tax break makes it possible for some people to be-
come owners, adding to their stake in the long-term stability of their com-
munities. There are, however, no limits. If you buy two or three homes,
you can deduct all of the interest payments on all of the homes. Lost rev-
enues to the federal government equal more than four times the total
amount of money Washington spends on housing programs for people liv-
ing in poverty, analysts say. And these deductions are invariably carried
over to state taxes as well.
This is only one of many issues that need to be reconsidered in this era
of seemingly universal austerity in government. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
and Governor George Pataki understand their political base; they have tar-
geted their budget cuts almost entirely on government workers and on pro-
grams that help the poor. But there is a limit to how far these cuts can go.
Giuliani's claim that he can strip $700 million in welfare spending out of
the budget is based largely on the premise that he can prevent about 40 per-
cent of parents applying for Aid to Families with Dependent Children from
getting on the welfare rolls. Such figures are jarring. Such an achievement
would be ruthless.
The Albany-based Fiscal Policy Institute and Manhattan State Senator
Franz Leichter estimate that placing a $25,000-per-year cap on the state
mortgage interest deduction would save the state $50 million. They've
come up with an additional list of proposals, such as equalizing various tax
rules for different types of corporations-arcane stuff, but revealing because
so many businesses receive special treatment in the tax laws, draining the
state's coffers. Their proposals could increase revenues by more than $500
million. Several other organizations and officials have come up with simi-
lar recommendations, all of which Giuliani and Pataki have seen fit to ig-
nore or denounce. They'd rather do it their way.
Which would be fine. Except that the net consequence will be more peo-
ple on the streets with no place to go and little food to eat, more people liv-
ing in deteriorating slums, and ultimately either more crime or a vast in-
crease in police spending. The politicians will have preserved our important
tax breaks, even added to them. But what will have happened to our city?
-A.W.
We lost a friend and valuable ally last month. Elizabeth Darguste was only
27 years old when she died after a short illness. During the last three years
she has been a powerful presence at the Citizens Committee for Children,
where she worked as an advocate for the rights of homeless families. City
Limits depended on her for information and perspective, but the bulk of her
work was devoted to something much more important: making sure women,
men and children had a safe, decent place to call home. We miss her.
Cover illustration by Gregory Buske
..,
PROFITS FROM POVERTY
SPE{;IAL R E P O R T ~ PARTS 4 AND 5
Storm Warning 8
The city wants to identify buildings on the brink of abandonment, and
there's loads of government data to help them do it. Problem is, none
of the computer systems speak the same language. by Kim Nauer
No Questions Asked 10
They've got an astonishing foreclosure rate and a reputation as one of
the biggest slumlords in Brooklyn. So why are GreenPoint Bank execs
bragging? Go ask Wall Street. by Linda Ocasio and Jill Kirschenbaum
FEATURES
Losing Ground 14
Candidate Giuliani talked up recycling as an economic development
strategy two years ago. Heck, that's what other cities are doing to
make money and create jobs. So how is it our recycling efforts have
become the laughing stock of the industry? by James Bradley
Visible Heroes 20
On the streets of urban America, where guns are as prevalent as
cracks in the sidewalk, kids don't know from fair fights any more. In
an excerpt from his upcoming book, Fist Stick Knife Gun, Geoffrey
Canada muses on the war at home.
PROFILE
False Assumptions 6
In an adult literacy classroom, welfare recipients are learning a lot of
big words. Like stereotyping. Advocacy. Legislative initiatives.
by Lise Funderburg
PIPELINE
Vacancy Decontrol 28
The Rent Guidelines Board is putting forth a plan that will effectively
do away with rent regulation as we know it. by Steven Wishnia
NOTORIOUS
Dame Runyon 31
New York's original riot grrrl, activist Marie Runyon is turning 80.
{;OMMENTARY
Planwatch
Spare the Rhetoric
Cityview
The Means of Survival
Review
Spin Another Tale
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial
Briefs
No Jobs, No Breaks
Heave-Ho
Atlas Shrugs
WEST Emergence
2 Letters
by JiU Kirschenbaum
32
by Eddie Baca
33
by Prema Vora
34
by Matthew Lee
35
Profe88ional Directory 37
4
4
5
5
Job Ads 37,38,39
8
6
20
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/3
BRIEFS
No Jobs,
No Breaks
The girls of exclusive Nightin-
gale Bamford School got a les-
son on social justice from a loud
group of Bronx protesters last
month, when some 15 people
busted into the school's lobby
demanding jobs and veca-a
Spanish term for scholarships.
The noon protest, done in
tandem with a similar action at
the tony Richmond Country Club
in Staten Island, was staged by
the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now
(ACORN) to highlight what it
considers particularly egregious
cases of corporate welfare.
Both institutions received mil-
lions of dollars in low-(X)st con-
struction loans from govern-
ment economic development
agencies. Yet neither has provid-
ed their communities with new,
permanent jobs, protesters
charged.
The actions are part of an on-
going campaign to link govern-
ment development funding to
jobs and training for low income
people. In addition to the
protests, ACORN members have
been meeting with officials at
Heave-Ho
Longtime residents
ordered out
Tenants in two Northern
Manhattan apartment buildings
are fighting to keep their homes
after the Department of Hous-
ing Preservation and Develop-
ment (HPD) ordered them to
leave last month.
Declaring on April 11 that the
buildings at 548 and 552 West
163rd Street were too dangerous
to live in, HPD notified residents
that they would be relocated in
five days, says James Kelly, staff
attorney for the Northern Man-
hattan Improvement Corpora-
tion. Tenants, however, stalled
the action after convincing a
state Supreme Court judge that
HPD was acting prematurely.
"We are not going to move,"
says tenant association presi-
4/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
the city's Economic Develop-
ment Corporation aboutthe is-
sue. At the same time, ACORN is
also targeting corporations and
nonprofit institutions that have
received more than $10 million
in subsidies or low interest
loans.
The city's Economic Develop-
ment Corporation and the state's
Industrial Development Authori-
ty routinely offer incentives to
lure business into town and help
those that are already here
grow. In return, companies are
supposed to create new, perma-
nent jobs, says ACORN's John
Beam. However, he adds, track-
ing is poor and many fail to keep
their promises.
"We're not saying 'Don't do
these deals:" Beam says. "But
if you do them, they should
have some impact on New
Yorkers. They should be going
to community halls and the
poor neighborhoods. Hire us
first and give us training. or
ACORN maintains that
Nightingale Bamford School
has received substantial tax
benefits over the years. In addi-
tion to receiving $5.8 million in
property tax breaks, the school
also collected a $22.3 million
low-interest Industrial Develop-
ment Authority bond for a re-
construction project. The
dent Adela Ventura. " This is
[happening) because we are
Spanish speaking. This is dis-
crimination."
HPD officials, however, main-
tain there is ample reason to
move the families. The buildings,
which share a boiler, have a total
of 40 units, 19 of which are va-
cant. There are more than 1,100
code violations, 357 considered
hazardous. Most serious, the
boiler does not work, so there is
no heat or hot water. "We have a
long history with these build-
ings," says HPD spokesperson
Mara Neville. "Our code enforce-
ment inspectors feel they are un-
fit for human habitation."
Kelly, who seeking to have
landlord Isaac White replaced by
a court-appointed administrator,
argues that conditions in this
building are no worse than many
others. Moreover, the boiler is not
a major problem right now since
warm weather is here. He argues
that this and the other violations
school, saving some $2 million
in interest payments, has not
been required to create jobs or
offer scholarships, activists say.
Dorothy Hutchinson, Nightin-
gale Bamford's Head of School,
counters that 14 percent of the
faculty members are people of
color and that 18 percent of the
student body benefits from the
school's financial aid program.
"I was not around when ACORN
was here, or she adds. "But if I
was, I would have loved it if they
had brought resumes. I would
have loved to have talked with
them about jobs."
As welfare, public services
and school budgets are being
slashed. state and federal politi-
cians are taking a new look at
listed-such as broken pipes,
missing lobby level windows, ac-
cumulated garbage and exposed
wire-could be fixed by HPD's
Emergency Repair Program dur-
ing the summer while the tenants
remain in their homes.
Joan Byron, an architect from
the Pratt Planning and Architec-
tural Collaborative. inspected the
buildings for structural problems
and reviewed HPD's code viola-
tions assessment. "While the
conditions I observed were seri-
ous, all could be corrected with-
out requiring the tenants to va-
cate the building," she testified.
The real problem, Kelly
charges, is that HPD doesn't
corporate welfare deals. On May
17, one ofthe costliest corporate
retention deals in the city's his-
tory was closed, giving the New
York Mercantiles Exchange $129
million in combined state and
city cash as well as $58 million
in incentives to keep its 8,100
jobs here and build a new head-
quarters in Battery Park City.
ACORN activists are careful
to acknowledge the role that
these deals can play in bolster-
ing job numbers. But more often
than not, companies must be
forced to live up to their end of
the deal, says organizer Helene
O'Brien. "We're demanding that
they honor their obligation to
the people of New York, or she
says. Uncoin Anderson
want to shoulder the expense for
repairs and, therefore, simply
wants to relocate the residents.
Residents have been told by HPD
that any relocation would only
be temporary while their build-
ing was being repaired, but they
don't believe it, he says.
"The tenants feel that once
these buildings are vacant, they
will never see their homes again.
It would be just one more vacant
building to HPD," he says. "I
would hope at this point that
HPD would be willing to take
more affirmative action and try
to see what they can do to get
these conditions fixed."
Kim Nauer
Atlas Shrugs
A Brooklyn waste-hauling
and concrete-manufacturing
firm has set out to build a wood-
burning incinerator cum power
plant in the East New York sec-
tion of the borough. Its neigh-
bors, however, are doing all they
can to get city and state environ-
mental regulators to dump wa-
ter on the idea before the blue-
prints are even drawn.
The Atlas Corporation, a.k.a.
Atlas Concrete, Atlas Bioenergy
and Atlas Roll-Off, hopes to burn
242 tons of waste wood collected
from throughout the region at a
plant on Essex Street near Lin-
den Boulevard. The site is about
four blocks from a cluster of pub-
lic housing projects, including
Boulevard and Linden houses.
"I think its messed up," says
Kerlyne Innocent, who lives
nearby. "I believe it could result
in health problems for the entire
community. Being that we have
a bunch of kids here, we don't
know what the results would
be .... It's not right."
Atlas originally sought to build
their incinerator in Suffolk County
four years ago, says organizer
Martin Brennan of the New York
Public Interest Research Group.
But community opposition was
stiff and the plan was quashed. In
1992, Brennan adds, the state De-
partment of Environmental Con-
servation blocked the firm from
establishing its burn plant in East
New York, but earlier this year,
soon after Governor George
Pataki took office, the agency of-
fered its preliminary approval for
the project.
either issue the proper permits
or prevent the plant from going
forward. Opponents are asking
the city's Department of Environ-
mental Protection to demand a
full Environmental Impact State-
ment from Atlas before any per-
mits are issued. When advocates and local of-
ficials hollered, however, that ap-
proval was promptly rescinded.
Now, Brennan says, the city and
state are debating whose agency
should be the lead regulator to
The East New York Urban
Youth Corps began circulating a
petition opposing the project the
same day City Limits went to
press; by that afternoon, the
WEST Emergence
Less than three months after its founding as-
sembly, West Siders Together (WEST), the latest
New York affiliate of the Industrial Areas Founda-
tion, is already beginning a hardcore campaign
to reduce crime in the neighborhood and im-
prove dangerous conditions at the aging 72nd
Street subway station.
In mid-May, WEST leaders met with federal
Transportation Secretary Federico Pena to de-
mand that he act to ensure that the perilously
overcrowded 72nd Street IRT station, scheduled
for reconstruction during the next saveral years,
be made safer by adding an emergency exit on
the station's south end. Pena responded that he
didn't know what could be done given the budget
battles taking place in Congress, but promised to
take a look at the problem. In the meantime,
WEST leaders are pressing for government fund-
ing for a temporary shuttle bus service for locals
who want to avoid using the station.
A scheduled meeting with Police Commission-
er William Bratton didn't work out as well. Brat-
ton begged off and sent a contingent of subordi-
nates instead. Reflecting IAF's belief that it's
pointless to negotiate with anyone other than
thosa with the power to make policy, WEST lead-
ers instead passed out a list of concerns, repaat-
ed their desire to meet with Bratton and filed out.
Manhattan Borough President Ruth
Messinger, who had sat up the meeting, fired off
an angry letter to Bratton urging him to resched-
ule. -I do not often make this kind of requestfor
the Police Commissioner to meet with commu-
nity groups about local issues," she wrote,
adding that she felt in this case the group had
every right to expect his attendance because
they offer a unique opportunity for collaboration
with the department.
We're developing a sanse of oursalves as a
real organization," says WEST leader Paul Dun-
lop from the Upper Manhattan Valley Community
Association. We hold politicians accountable to
do their jobs, and we have to do our jobs." Ac-
tions on several of these issues are planned for
the coming months. Robin Epstein
BRIEFS
group had already gathered 300
signatures from local residents.
Several other groups are also
protesting the incinerator;
ACORN, Urban Strategies and
members of Community Board 5
have all organized local meet-
ir:tgs around the issue, and Bor-
ough President Howard Golden
says he wants the whole plan
washed away.
Con Edison is also opposed
to the project, says spokesper-
son Bruce Wittmer. By state law,
Con Edison would have to pur-
chase any power generated by
the wood burning plant. "We do
not need the extra power," says
Wittmer.
Atlas executive Tom Polsinelli
doesn't have much to say about
the tempest his firm has stirred
up, however. "No comment," he
says. "It's going through the per-
mitting process and we're not
commenting on anything. n
Andrew White
,
',
,./
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/5
False Assumptions
A literacy program with an activist slant is breaking down
popular images of poverty.
A
ll Puerto Ricans are lazy,"
says Charlotte Marchant to
her students in an adult edu-
cation class on East 93rd
Street in Manhattan. "All African-
Americans are thieves."
Marchant, director of adult and
family learning at the Stanley M.
Isaacs Neighborhood Center, is not
spreading racist dogma; she's simply
trying to make a point. "These are
stereotypes," she explains to the 14
students seated before her. "You can
always find one or two people who do
these things, but you can't say it about
an entire group."
Every student in today's class is es-
pecially sensitive to widespread
stereotypes about people on welfare:
each of them depends on at least one
form of public assistance, from Aid to
Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC) to Home Relief. But Marchant,
along with fellow teacher Ira Yankwitt,
is explaining to them how it is that the
very people subjected to unfair label-
ing often come to use those labels on
themselves. They see demeaning im-
ages on television, hear them on radio
and in casual conversation, and often,
these men and women living in pover-
ty end up believing such stereotypes
about themselves and their neighbors.
The text for today's lesson is an un-
usual publication that the instructors
and six students put together last year:
a 40-page, consciousness-raising man-
ual titled, Unmasking Face to Face: A
Workbook on Welfare. It's a fairly sim-
ple, slightly insurgent text with a very
powerful message.
Making Ends Meet
Students practice their math skills
by filling out a budget worksheet in
the chapter called, "Can You Make
Ends Meet on Welfare?" In the "Fight-
ing Words" chapter they practice writ-
ing-and activism-by drafting a letter
of complaint about how they have
been mistreated by someone in the
welfare bureaucracy. And in Chapter
8, "A (Very) Short Economics Lesson,"
a one-page essay touches briefly on
such topics as the American Dream,
6/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
unequal distribution of wealth, infla-
tion and capitalism. The questions and
suggested activities that follow are de-
signed to connect these concepts to
real people and experiences close to
the students' lives.
The idea for the workbook came to
Marchant after she noticed how stu-
dents frequently came to class frustrat-
ed and angry after "face-to-face" meet-
ings with welfare caseworkers. These
students expressed their dismay about
the tangled bureaucracy and the way
they were herded through the system;
at times they felt confused by all the
documentation caseworkers constant-
ly asked them to produce. If they got to
class at all after such a meeting,
Marchant recalls, their energy and
ability to pay attention to the lesson
were all but depleted.
Marchant's solution was to help her
students gain more control of their
lives by providing them with useful,
general information about the social
service system. By structuring a way
for them to deal head-on with welfare
issues, she speculated, she could also
connect students more closely to their
education, physically and emotionally.
She was right. In today's class,
Marchant and Yankwitt ask the stu-
dents to make a list of stereotypes
about people on welfare. The students
work in groups, hunched over their
workbooks as they painstakingly write
out each word that comes to mind. Fi-
nally, Yankwitt asks for their sugges-
tions, which Marchant writes on a
large pad of paper: "No respect for
themselves," calls out Teddy Martir.
Others follow her lead: "They cheat to
get medical benefits ... Drug addicts ...
Stupid ... They have babies to stay on
welfare." Occasionally, the list is
counterpointed with a "That's true!"
which prompts the teachers to repeat
the definition of stereotyping.
Joey Vasquez adds a final thought.
"People think that we're good for
nothing.
"I used to think that was my prob-
lem," he says to everyone at his work
table. "Am Ilazy? Am Ilazy? You hear
it so much. But my problem was that I
By Lise Funderburg
couldn't read or write. I know that
now."
Fact-finding, as a way of disman-
tling sterotypes, is a critical piece of
the workbook. Unmasking Face to
Face attacks the widely accepted no-
tion that welfare is one of the greatest
drains on the federal budget. A pie
chart shows that AFDC is actually just
a sliver (1.4 percent) of the budget,
whereas the military (45 percent)
makes for a hearty slice (and all other
government expenses are lumped to-
gether as 53.6 percent).
Iris Lopez, one of the six students
who helped create the workbook, is sit-
ting in on today's class. She says this
chart provides one of the workbook's
most powerful lessons. "What has
made people react more is the num-
bers, the percentages," she says. "They
always thought that the government
has given people on welfare the bigger
piece of the pie, which is not true."
ShutOut
Marchant was filling out the grant
application for the workbook in 1993,
just as public discourse around wel-
fare reform was heating up and politi-
cians increasingly were "pointing the
finger at people on welfare, blaming
them for all of our ills," she says. It
seemed clear to Marchant and her col-
leagues that their students lacked the
most basic understanding of how wel-
fare fits into the country's overall
economy. And not having this sort of
information effectively shut them out
of debates and legislative initiatives
that could change their lives. For these
students, who come into the program
with third to sixth grade reading and
writing skills, it was hard enough just
to complete the paperwork required to
stay on public assistance, much less
learn about their role in the economy,
Marchant says.
She won a $1,000, city-funded
mini-grant from New York's Literacy
Assistance Center (LAC), a clearing-
house and resource organization for
adult educators. The manual is the fi-
nal result.
"Charlotte's proposal just leaped
out at us," remembers Fran Richetti
Joyce, LAC's program director. "So
many of our students are welfare re-
cipients and they need to have some-
thing to say about it ... to stand up for
themselves. "
"There's probably been more re-
sponse to this [project] than any oth-
er," Joyce adds. "And I've been here
six years." Marchant has gotten re-
quests for copies of the workbook from
as far away as Tacoma, Washington,
and she is already trying to pull to-
gether funds for a
third printing. (Peo-
ple who want a nice-
ly bound and printed
copy can send $8.00
to Marchant's office;
or they can get a free
photocopy from the
LAC.)
Obvious Pride
everyone stereotypes someone," Lopez
says. "Like for instance, I more or less
stereotype people that live in the pro-
jects-well, I live in the projects my-
self-but those people that hang out in
front of the building. Then I started
thinking. Who am I to stereotype
someone else, when I don't like it my-
self! So it kind of brought me away
from that. It made me understand a lit-
tle more how tough, how rough things
are now, and maybe how people are
trying just to survive."
It's like a light that goes on."
Does activism have a place in basic
education classes? Marchant and
Yankwitt take turns answering.
Yankwitt addresses questions that gov-
ernment funders might raise. "One of
the things we're asked to explain in
our proposals for public money is how
we're going to contextualize our in-
struction. We say we're going to con-
textualize it by rooting the reading and
the writing and the math in issues in
the students' lives."
Marchant cites the
Brazilian activist,
Paulo Freire, as their
methodological guru.
His idea, she says, "is
that education means
you're not just going
to learn the words,
you're going to learn
about the world." For
Freire, effective edu-
cation has to be root-
ed in people's every-
day experiences.
There's another
Iris Lopez was so
stirred by what she
learned in last year's
workshops and semi-
nars that she has be-
gun to give speeches
about welfare ac-
tivism. "Doing this
project brought up my
self-esteem," she says.
"Before we did this, I
just felt that we didn't
have any say-so in
anything. We had to
be treated the way
they wanted to treat
us and we had to ac-
cept it. And I found
Iris lGpez ... so i ....... .., .......... ill last ,.ar'. Ut.Iq ........... ft tile Ita .., lsues
reason Marchant and
Yankwitt invite stu-
dents to talk about
how they can exercise
power. "We think it's
very important that
[the students] deal
with politics because
otherwise our pro-
grams are going to be
wiped out, which is
what's beginning to
N .......... Cetder, .... Mal ........... rfcllta .ctIwIat.
out differently."
Lopez's daughter, Mary Miller, has
accompanied her mother today, since
this week her high school is on vaca-
tion. She says her mother's activism
has rubbed off on her, and Mary's
pride is obvious. "Kids in my school
think that people on welfare are lazy,"
Mary says. "I tell them I'm not
ashamed. I would rather my mother
receive welfare than for me to be in
poverty and not have a place to live,
no food, no clothing. I'm proud of my
mother because she's trying to better
herself. She's trying to educate people
to wake up and realize that there are
other choices."
Before Lopez could start trying to
bring people together to tackle the
larger, programmatic issues, she had to
confront her own biases, which the
workshops helped her to do. "I think
Catch the Spark
Lopez is the only one from the orig-
inal group of six student authors who
has become deeply involved in welfare
rights activism. Many students in to-
day's class may go to a demonstration
or write a letter to Governor Pataki, but
perhaps only one or two will catch the
spark that Lopez did. Joey Vasquez
could be one of them: "We need to ed-
ucate each other when it comes to pol-
itics," he says at the end of the class.
"Where do we have to go? How do we
meet? How do we begin a rally? A lot
of times we're not educated, so what
happens is, we go into our own daily
routine and we get lost. But if we start
sharing our opinions with one another,
and if we educate each other, then we
have to say, 'Wow, wait a minute. You
mean I could do something about it?'
happen anyway."
It's hard to keep up
with the latest cutback proposals.
Funding for adult literacy programs is
currently threatened in the budget ne-
gotiations taking place in Albany and
City Hall. But Marchant feels obliged to
deliver hope along with the bad news.
"We've had classes where people
just walk away and feel devastated.
It's really important that they not
come away feeling powerless, because
it is overwhelming and it is very de-
pressing and there are days that we
don't feel like we're going to win.
There's so much going against them
and all of us. So the advocacy and the
push toward activism in some way is
what keeps us going." 0
Lise Funderburg is the author a/Black,
White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk
About Race and Identity, published by
Morrow.
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/7
With thousands of apartment buildings in
low income neighborhoods falling
ever more deeply into tax arrears and
bank foreclosure, New York City hous-
ing officials are maneuvering an obsta-
cle course of fiscal constraints and
technological obsolescence as they de-
vise a strategy to prevent a new wave
of abandonment.
Ideally, they say, the city could help
landlords find their way out of finan-
cial trouble before they walk away
from their buildings. The challenge is
to reach these owners before all hope
is lost. "We're not looking for the worst
buildings," says Harold Shultz, deputy
commissioner at the Department of
Housing Preservation and Develop-
ment (HPD). "We're looking for build-
ings that have some viability."
HPD's primary imperative is finan-
cial. For the last two decades, the city
has taken ownership of buildings
Computer technology could
help the city-and tenant or-
ganizers-prevent landlord
abandonment before whole
communities return to their
devastated past
8/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
whose owners failed to pay
property taxes, managing
and rehabilitating them for
sale to private owners, com-
munity groups and tenants.
PROFITS FROM POVERTY
A special report on real estate in
low income neighborhoods
However, for two years now,
the city has refused to take
ownership of any new build-
ings. Officials say HPD can
no longer afford to be the
Last month: Speculation and Collapse
This month: Parts" and 5
city's landlord of last resort.
The Giuliani administration admits
this tax holiday cannot go on forever.
Yet selling the buildings at tax auc-
tions, common in other cities, has an
exceedingly dark history in New York.
So instead, officials have been talk-
ing about setting up some kind of early
warning system, using the city's vast
store of computerized property data to
help identify salvageable properties.
Once a shaky building has been spot-
ted, says HPD Commissioner Deborah
Wright, the city could seek to prevent
foreclosure through negotiations with
the landlord and whoever holds the
mortgage on the property, be it a bank
or a private financier (see City Limits,
May 1995). It is in the city's financial
interest, she argues, to help landlords
restore their financial footing on trou-
bled properties, rather than allow them
to fall into abandonment and costly
city ownership.
The organizing potential of a com-
puterized early warning system could
also be huge, if it were open and avail-
able to tenant and community groups,
advocates say. Local people and tenants
could move quickly to try to forestall
the devastation that comes when an in-
competent landlord runs a building
into foreclosure. The technology for
such a sophisticated system exists: oth-
er cities have devised geographically-
based systems that compile all or most
of the available information on a single
property in one easy-to-use database.
But constructing such a system
would demand an unprecedented level
of cooperation among New York City's
various departments. Such a network
would have to be capable of the build-
ing-by-building monitoring of at least a
half dozen different factors, such as
ownership and sales data, tax arrears,
debt load, code violations processed by
three different agencies, emergency re-
pairs performed by the city, and utility
shut-off notices.
And even if such a feat were possi-
ble, identifying bad buildings is only
the first step toward solving the current
crisis, says Harry DeRienzo, chairman
of the Task Force on City Owned Prop-
erty. Successful intervention by the
city would require intensive follow-up
work, including negotiations, low-cost
loans-and strong penalties for land-
lords who refuse to improve condi-
tions in their buildings. Finally, any so-
lution requires neighborhood-based
tenant organizing, he says.
"If the only assistance the city offers
is talking to the landlords," says De-
Rienzo, "any warning they get will
come too late."
It was in the wake of the city's last waYe
of abandonment that officials institut-
ed the aggressive policy of allowing
HPD to take ownership of buildings af-
ter one year of missed property tax
payments. As the years went on, how-
ever, HPD was criticized by tenant ad-
vocates for perpetuating miserable con-
ditions, and by the private sector for al-
lowing the program, originally billed
as short-term, to degenerate into yet
another housing program for the poor.
Since his election, Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani has made it clear that HPD
would seek private sector solutions to
housing problems.
Today, Wright and her staff are scan-
ning the free market for those alterna-
tives. HPD officials say that the estimat-
ed $220 million a year now being spent
to maintain the city's 42,000 units of
HPD housing could be better spent on
programs to help landlords get out of fi-
nancial trouble. The goal, says HPD
spokeswoman Mara Neville, is to deter-
mine how to identify trouble in its early
stages when "good owners" can still be
helped-with technical assistance or
low-interest loans-and "bad owners"
can be punished with court-appointed
administrators or tax foreclosure.
If this idea is to work, HPD will have
to set up a monitoring system that main-
tains an ongoing intelligence sweep
over the city's hundreds of thousands of
privately owned apartment buildings.
This was attempted one time before, on
the advice of a 1973 study of abandon-
ment by the Rand Corporation, says
HPD's Shultz. The system-triggered by
code violations, emergency repair calls
and tax arrears-failed miserably. "This
was done in the 1970s when aban-
donment was a tidal wave situa-
tion," he says. In deteriorating
neighborhoods, virtually every
buildings would be tagged for pos-
sible intervention. "It didn't dis-
tinguish which buildings you
could successfully litigate on."
Shultz says, however, that two
things have changed. First, the
level of abandonment is not as
high. Second, computer technolo-
gy has improved the level offeasi-
ble monitoring. In the 1970s, he
notes, very few city departments
were computerized.
Today, more than a dozen dif-
ferent city, county and state de-
partments maintain property
records laced with possible early
warning signs. Different databases
spit out housing code violations,
emergency repair calls, structural
problem reports, tax arrears, fore-
closures, legal claims, assessment
values, debt load, sales history,
potential rent roll, tenant com-
plaints, Housing Court histories
and even utility bill shut-off notices.
With good mapping software, such in-
formation could also be overlaid with
neighborhood census data on income
and overcrowding.
Unfortunately, these databases have
been developed independently and are
incapable of communicating with each
other. That, Shultz admits, will make
ongoing monitoring a problem since
HPD does not have the computer tech-
nology to track and map the many
property variables. Using the city's cur-
rent technology, it would be impossi-
ble to set up, for example, an automat-
ed sweep that, each month, prints out a
list of all properties with cases in
! Housing Court, utility shut-off warn-
~ ings, erratic tax payments, and a suspi-
~ ciously high debt load. Without new
hardware and software, any monitor-
ing system will require the same lot-
by-lot, landlord-by-landlord research
that the overworked HPD staff already
pursues in its efforts to litigate against
the city's worst property offenders.
That, Shultz says, is part of the knot
that HPD is currently struggling to un-
tie. It may be that the city opts to con-
centrate on certain geographic areas,
such as the clusters now being targeted
for development under Mayor Giu-
liani's Neighborhood Entrepreneurs
Program. There is no doubt, he adds,
that any early intervention program
will require labor intensive negotiation
-
~ ~ ~ ~ = = - - - - < ~
buildings were in financial trouble and
might be vulnerable to an arson attack.
Using this information, organizers ap-
proached tenants and worked to stabi-
lize the buildings.
However, activists note that most
community groups no longer have the
staff to do such intensive monitoring.
Moreover, money for the intervention
programs, such as low-cost rehab
loans, inspectors for code enforcement
and support for court-appointed build-
ing administrators, has waned in re-
cent years. As a result, current early in-
tervention efforts have limped along.
~ ~ , ~ , ~
A pilot project run by Brooklyn's
Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Cit-
izens Council is measuring the ef-
fectiveness of approaching build-
ings that have received gas and
electric utility cut-off notices.
Since the program began last
summer, organizers have gotten
weekly packets of shut-off no-
tices funneled through the Bor-
ough President's Office. So far,
organizers have worked with 17
buildings-the result of sifting
though scores of possible con-
tenders, says Robert Lowe, acting
director of the project. In all but
two or three cases , landlords
were either nowhere to be found
or hostile to the overtures of the
activists. While the occasional
landlord was willing to sit down
and negotiate, Lowe says priority
had to be given to buildings in
crisis, where tenants relied on the
help of institutions like Housing
Court. "The buildings that you
end up working with are the ones
that the landlord has effectively
abandoned," he says. "It is al-
and follow-up work. "While we need
tools that identify the trends, in the
end we will have to deal with this on a
building-by-building basis."
Tenant advocates have been calling for
a publicly funded early warning sys-
tem for years. But now that the city is
talking the talk, the question arises:
What kind of system-if any-will ac-
tually work?
Early warning systems can succeed,
says Victor Bach, director of housing
policy and research at the Community
Service Society. Working closely with
the city's Arson Strike Force in the late
1970s, organizers reviewed computer-
ized data and, using indicators like
utility service cut-offs and criminal ac-
tivity, were able to predict which
ways a very labor intensive project."
Despite the work, tenant activists ar-
gue that this neighborhood-based mod-
el remains the city's best-and most
cost efficient--option. Success, howev-
er, would depend on HPD's willing-
ness to share information, support or-
ganizing activities and follow up with
recalcitrant building owners.
Chicago is widely viewed as a model, albeit
a small one, for what New York could
do. On the recommendation of a 1985
report by a citywide abandonment task
force, Chicago'S Housing Department
agreed to work with the nonprofit Cen-
ter for Neighborhood Technology
(CNT) to set up the Neighborhood Ear-
ly Warning System, or NEWS. With ac-
Continued on page 12
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/9
A bank builds a
reputation for community
lending on a thinly-veiled
foreclosure scheme.
GreenPoint Bank officials like to boast of
their lending record in low and mod-
erate income communities, where
conventional mortgages are hard to
come by. "We do thousands of loans a
year, many to people who couldn't
get a loan anywhere else," says bank
spokesperson Richard Humphrey.
GreenPoint has carved out a niche
offering what are known in banking
circles as "low-doc" or "no-doc"
loans, requiring applicants to supply
only a bare minimum of credit or em-
ployment documentation in order to
qualify for a mortgage. In exchange
for a high down payment, typically as
much as 25 percent, a borrower re-
ceives little scrutiny-and a high-in-
terest loan with substantial up-front
fees. In many cases, borrowers don't
need any credit history at all. "Most
companies would look at that as a
negative," Humphrey notes. "We
don't. We're a lot more flexible."
Indeed, the bank is counting on
this reputation to carry it through a
regulators' assessment of its recently
announced plan to buy 60 branches
of Home Savings Bank, making
GreenPoint the largest savings bank
in town.
Many Brooklyn residents and com-
10/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
munity advocates are less sanguine
about GreenPoint's claims of largesse,
however. They blame the bank's loose
lending practices for encouraging un-
scrupulous landlords to purchase
buildings they can't afford to manage,
leading to numerous and repeated
foreclosures and dozens of apartment
buildings in rapidly deteriorating
condition. Worst of all, they say, the
bank is using its reputation as an easy
lender to run what they describe as a
ruinous scheme, flipping properties
over and over again-and earning
high profits in the process.
It's only one of several complaints tenant
and community organizers have raised
in recent months about GreenPoint's
practices. Indeed, even as the bank was
touting itself as a valuable resource for
low income inner city neighborhoods,
The New York Post offered its assess-
ment of the Brooklyn bank as one of
the city's 10 worst landlords, thanks to
the horrendous condition of properties
it owns throughout the city. Tenants
themselves are more likely to describe
GreenPoint as a parasite tearing down
their communities than a positive force
for change.
"We had cracks in the walls and
leaks in the bathroom, holes in the ceil-
ing and floors, and a problem with rats
in the building. I mean big rats, rats
that were knocking over garbage cans.
And there was no heat or hot water, "
recalls Junior Gonzalez, a tenant of 111
Grand Avenue in the Clinton Hill/Fort
Greene neighborhood, which the bank
foreclosed on for the third time late last
year. "I called GreenPoint, but all I got
was the runaround. It was like talking
to a wall." The run-down 6-unit apart-
ment building has been through three
different owners since 1988-each of
them incapable of meeting their debt
payments, thanks at least in part to
GreenPoint's loose lending practices.
Adron Muthra, a Long Island-based
operator with holdings throughout
Brooklyn, took possession of the build-
ing in December 1993. A little more
than a year later, when he defaulted on
his mortgage of $93,750, GreenPoint
took it back.
Indeed, 'experts charge that 111
Grand Avenue is just one example of a
banking scheme designed to earn large
sums on the rapid turnover of property.
The more times a property is sold and
foreclosed on, the more a bank can
make off the buyers' large down pay-
ments and up-front mortgage fees .
Since the bank is usually the seller as
well as the mortgage financier, it loses
no money when a deal goes sour. Little
in the way of cash ever leaves the
bank's hands. And after selling the
property four times with a 25 percent
By
Linda Ocasio
&
JI Kirschenbaum
down payment-and foreclosing each
time-the bank has received the full
sale price of the property.
When it comes to low-doc and no-
doc loans, it's quantity, not quality that
counts, explains Marty Leary, former
research director of Boston's Union
Neighborhood Assistance Corporation.
He says investigations by his organiza-
tion into the Fleet Financial Group's
lending practices turned up similar
deals in Atlanta, in which the finance
company was flipping multifamily
properties three and four times and
reaping substantial profits. "As long as
you have a constant stream of people
who are willing to put down twenty-
five percent, presumably after four
times you have your one hundred per-
cent," Leary says.
"They're calling it ownership," he
adds, "[but it's just] stealing your equi-
ty and then starting the whole process
over again."
Frequently, the buyers put so much
debt on the property that they can't af-
ford to manage the building, adds
Brad Lander, executive director of the
Fifth Avenue Committee, a communi-
ty group in Park Slope that has
worked with tenants in several Green-
Point-owned buildings.
"We've got six or eight buildings
where GreenPoint loaned much more
than could be supported by the rent-
regulated rent rolls," Lander says.
"And they are all in foreclosure be-
cause the owners failed to raise the
rents and couldn't pay the taxes and
the mortgage and the maintenance."
Humphrey denies that his bank is using
easy credit terms to exploit what seems
to be a built-in foreclosure rate. But he
readily admits that "we do have a high-
er rate of delinquency and foreclosure
because of the kind oflending we do .. ..
Many people get in over their heads."
GreenPoint foreclosed on some 200
Brooklyn mortgages in a one-year peri-
od between 1992 and 1993, according
to an analysis by Matthew Brinck-
erhoff, a staff attorney with
South Brooklyn Legal Ser-
vices.
Richard Roberto, vice
president for community
development lending at
European American
Bank, calls these num-
bers astonishingly
high. "It is irresponsi-
ble lending, " says
Roberto, adding that
whoever claims that
low-doc loans are the
panacea for redlining is
simply blowing smoke.
"It's [still al two-tiered sys-
tem, when you lend differ-
ently in a low income area
than in a middle income one.
And that bothers me. It's intention-
ally biased."
Bertha Lewis, an organizer with the
Association of Community Organiza-
tions for Reform Now (ACORN), also
faults the notion that low-doc/no-doc
loans are a boon to low income neigh-
borhoods.
"How can you assess anything if you
have no documents?" asks Lewis.
"How can you stabilize a neighbor-
hood when someone within a five-year
period is going to be foreclosed on?
You're constantly destabilizing the
community. You're just turning the
property over and over again."
Critics say this revolving-door of
lending and default has resulted in
scores of problem-ridden buildings left
to deteriorate during foreclosure pro-
ceedings, forcing tenants to cope on
their own with leaking roofs, faulty
plumbing and other unattended needs.
It is a cycle of deterioration that starts
when landlords neglect repairs in or-
der to meet their mortgages. When the
owners slide into default and the bank
commences foreclosure proceedings-
which may take years to complete-the
building's needs go unanswered.
Until recently, GreenPoint rarely
asked the court to appoint receivers
during foreclosure proceedings.
Humphrey says the bank is not respon-
sible for repairs until it actually takes
title to a building. "During a foreclo-
sure proceeding, we do not have any
legal right to go into a building and
make repairs," he said. "And we have
the right, but not the obligation, to ask
for a receiver." He adds that once re-
ceivers are appointed, they can make
repairs as they see fit and the bank los-
es control of its money. "We have a
fiduciary duty to protect our invest-
ment," he says. "We give up control
with the receiver. "
South Brooklyn Legal Services attor-
ney Raun Rasmussen takes issue with
that. "There are provisions in all of
their mortgage agreements that allow
them to go in immediately upon de-
fault. They just have to notify the land-
lord and take control of the property."
During foreclosure, Rasmussen points
out, the bank is the only entity with an
economic interest in the building and
the resources to protect that interest.
Pressure from community groups as
well as city housing officials and the
press appear to have changed Green-
Point's philosophy, however.
Humphrey says that receivers are now
being appointed 70 percent of the time.
Even the end of foreclosure proceedings,
however, rarely spells relief for ten-
ants. Although it is the bank's policy to
try and sell a building at auction after
foreclosure, the bank almost always
buys the building back.
"We'll buy the property for the value
of the mortgage to protect our invest-
ment," Humphrey says. Then, he says,
"We resell as quickly as possible. "
Rasmussen estimates that Green-
Point purchases its own buildings in
foreclosure auctions 90 percent of the
time, and then proceeds to empty
buildings by neglecting re-
pairs. "The truth is , they
don't want to be land-
lords," Rasmussen said.
Margaret Torres is
one of the victims of
a GreenPoint quick
sale. She has lived
in the six-family
apartment house
at 592 6th Av-
enue in south
Park Slope for 20
years. Under the
recent steward-
ship of Charles
Pak, who bought the
building from Green-
Point eight months ago,
Torres and the other ten-
ants-who had to sue the
bank to make repairs prior to
Pak's arrivial-have dealt with a
leaking roof, collapsing ceilings and
rotted plumbing. Lately, they've had to
contend with an infestation of rats.
Torres' two-year-old son was bitten by
a rat in February.
Wall Street doesn't have any prob-
lem with GreenPoint's technique,
however. The bank became a stock-
owned company less than two years
ago, and Bruce Harting, a Salomon
Brothers analyst, has nothing but
praise for the lender.
"[GreenPointl has one of the highest
returns in assets and in equity, and we
have a buy on the stock," he says. And
while the bank's non performing asset
ratio-the number of bad loans carried
on the books-has been high in recent
years, it has declined by 50 percent,
says Harting, from 11.6 percent in 1993
to 6 percent today.
Continued on page 12
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/11
( l111ti11I1I't! /rllm I J / I ~ I ' !I
cess to the city's aging mainframe com-
puters and a city grant of about
$75,000 a year for technical assistance,
in 1991 CNT established a computer
bulletin board offering detailed proper-
ty data for neighborhood groups.
Today, any group with a personal
computer and a modem can dial into
the CNT computer and get a property
snapshot. By typing in an address, for
example, groups can get the building
owner, his address, the property's
identification number, code violations,
Housing Court history, tax arrears in-
formation, and whether the building is
currently at risk of being put up for city
auction. The system can also bring up
all the properties of a given landlord or
along a certain block. Most recently,
CNT received a grant through the u.s.
Commerce Department's community
computer initiative to put the system
on the Internet. CNT now has its own
World Wide Web page and hopes to
soon offer connections to home mort-
gage database sites as well.
The system did have dozens of tech-
nical problems in the first couple of
years, leading more than a few groups
to turn off their modems in disgust.
But many of these problems have been
ironed out and NEWS is becoming
more popular, says Susana Vasquez, a
project organizer for Chicago'S Metro-
politan Tenants Organization. It was an
important tool in her organization's re-
cent two-year Neighborhood Housing
Intervention pilot project. With the
help of NEWS, six community groups
targeted 68 buildings that were being
all but ignored by their owners. Six-
teen buildings with a total of 738 apart-
ment units were eventually organized
and stabilized in those 24 months.
"Community groups had a little more
power," Vasquez says. "They could
say, 'Look, landlord: I've got you. I can
pull you up on my screen. I know what
your tax!'lS are. I know what your other
properties are, and I know what your
history in Housing Court is. '"
The price of this piece of interven-
tion should grab the attention of the
Giuliani administration's cost cutters.
Chicago has put just $250,000 into the
Neighborhood Early Warning System.
That's less than the cost of one six-unit
rehab project. CNT's Michael Freed-
berg maintains that his system was
done on the cheap, put together, as he
says, "with pieces of tape and chewing
gum. " But his dream figure, $1 million,
12/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
would be relatively small change in
HPD's books compared to the cost of
stabilizing or reconstructing a building
once it falls into abandonment and city
ownership.
Ideally, Freedberg adds, New York
City wouldn't need to hire a middle-
man like CNT to build its early warn-
ing system. If HPD officials are serious
about setting up a successful landlord
intervention project, they could make
those dollars go further by sharing
their data, on-line, with community
groups. "You have to get information
out of City Hall and into the hands of
the community." D
C011ti11I/I,t! /rom I J / I ~ I ' J J
Such numbers can be misleading,
however. There are several ways to
knock down your nonperforming asset
ratio that have nothing to do with mak-
ing better loans, says Roberto of Euro-
pean American Bank: foreclose on the
mortgages, for instance, and sell them
to someone else. Or else just make
more loans. And that is exactly what
GreenPoint, with its recent acquisition
Tenants of 58-60 16th
Mt Part Slope meet
}rith orpnizer Dennis
of the F"lfth Av.enue
to discuss threats
eviction by C .... IIIIP'DI8t
I,
of 60 branches of Home Savings of
America, hopes to do.
ACORN recently announced that it
may challenge the purchase under pro-
visions of the federal Community Rein-
vestment Act. The Fifth Avenue Com-
mittee is considering filing a similar
challenge, though it may be futile, Lan-
der admits. It's an ironic situation.
"GreenPoint has an outstanding CRA
rating" because of the high volume of
loans they originate in poor communi-
ties, Lander says. "From [the regula-
tors'] point of view, if you invest dol-
lars in communities and don't discrim-
inate in your lending, then you get a
great CRA rating."
Some in the business community,
however, think the community activists
are simply misguided, and should face
up to the realities of the market.
Says Paul Nadler, a business profes-
sor at Rutgers University: "The same
people who were bitching and moan-
ing about redlining are now bitching
and moaning about low-doc loans. " D
Linda Ocasio was recently appointed
an editorial writer at New York
Newsday.
~ ...
.... ,
CHASE
Community
Development
Corporation
The Chase Community Development
Corporation Finances Housing and
Economic Development Projects,
including:
New Construction
Rehabilitation
Special Needs Housing
Homeless Shelters
Home Mortgages
Small Business Loans
Loan Consortia
For information, call the
Community-Based Development Unit
(212) 552-9737
We Look Forward to Your Call!
14/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
ot far from the Hudson River in Elmwood Park,
Paper is in the midst of a $20 million,
[-OiiCl<:ea expansion of its Depression-era mill.
was spurred by a $3 million low-interest loan
Jersey Department of Environmental Protec-
tion and the sale of $13.3 million in tax4lxempt state bonds.
Soon, the plant will be employing scores more workers and
manufacturing not only recycled-content napkins, bath tis-
sues and paper towels, but also a material made of clay and
recycled paper to be used in agriculture and to cap landfills.
Also in New Jersey, two dozen workers at ReClaim's fac-
tory in Kearny are turning discarded asphalt roofing debris
into paving products. ReClaim, based in Florida, has set up
two factories in New Jersey since the state began an innova-
tive program allowing local governments to award "diver-
sion credits" to haulers that bring their material to compa-
nies like ReClaim rather than to a landfill.
These are examples of how government initiatives have
cultivated enterprises that take materials gathered from
homes, businesses and construction sites and remanufacture
them into marketable products, completing the circle of the
recycling process. Government officials in New Jersey and
elsewhere have long seen recycling's
potential as an engine for economic
growth. And today their foresight is
paying off as markets in many recy-
cled materials expand far faster than
planners ever expected.
But New York City officials aren't
making much of an effort to harness
this maturing industrial work-horse,
charges Louis Weinberg, the former
number two man in the Department of
Sanitation's recycling market devel-
opment unit.
"The job that I was hired for was
never given an ounce of attention," he
says bluntly. "It was embarrassing to
have to talk with people in the recy-
cling industry and never be able to of-
fer them any tangible evidence that
we wanted them to locate in New
York City ... . The recycling office was
by far the most inadequate, poorly
managed, miserable place I ever
worked," he adds. "I felt embarrassed to be an employee of
that office. Embarrassed. There was a tremendous lack of
professional management."
Weinberg says his and other people's efforts to attract busi-
nesses, create jobs and build a business-friendly environ-
ment for recycling in New York City were stifled by bureau-
cratic ineptitude, political infighting, personnel shifts and an
overall lack of commitment from the city's leaders.
The net result, he says, is that mismanagement has left
New York without the human capital necessary to make re-
cycling fully succeed, much less the infrastructure required
to tap these growing markets.
Today, the Sanitation Department's market development
unit no longer exists; it was closed last year after Weinberg
and other staff members resigned. The Mayor's Advisory
Council on Recycling-a consortium of industry representa-
tives, government officials and environmentalists brought to-
gether by the mayoral administration of David Dinkins to im-
plement a citywide strategy-has also been disbanded. In ad-
dition, the city's Economic Development Corporation (EDC)
has largely abandoned its plans for recycling development
and the City Council has yet to pass environmental procure-
ment legislation first introduced years ago.
Worse yet, even the one aspect of recycling the city was
making progress in-curbside collection-has slipped back-
wards. By law, the city is supposed to be diverting at least 20
percent of its waste stream into recycling by this June. In fact,
according to the Sanitation Department, the diversion rate
dropped last year from 14.5 percent to 13 percent, despite
the fact that i 994 was the first year curbside recycling was in
place citywide.
say that such a retreat bodes poorly for the
here. Nationwide, the recycling industry
LU"'U".<V from activist government. Thade publi-
businesses fostered with loans and tax in-
purchasing requirements, low-cost leases
on publicly owned land for start-up firms and municipally
financed partnerships with community development corpo-
rations for the creation of recycling enterprises. Such efforts
have sent the powerful signal that
government is serious about recy-
cling. In many states and cities
around the country, jobs and busi-
nesses have followed.
But Gene Moore, who worked with
Weinberg at the Sanitation Depart-
ment's market development unit, says
agency officials simply didn't believe
in an activist approach to develop-
ment. "They said that the material is
there, so the market will take care of
itself," recalls Moore, who is now the
district manager for Brooklyn's Com-
munity Board 7.
He and other experts say this is a
critical miscalculation. By failing to
develop the local industrial infra-
structure necessary to exploit the
mounds of material generated every
day by the city's recycling program-
the largest in the nation-officials are
turning their backs on much-needed
jobs and long-term tax revenues. Since almost all recycling
manufacturers are located outside New York City, an unrea-
sonably high percentage of the financial rewards of the city's
recycling program currently go elsewhere.
"It's tragic," says Barry Commoner, director of the Center
for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College.
"Everything that has happened since Giuliani has taken of-
fice indicates that he regards recycling as a trivial thing,
something that makes environmentalists feel good, but not
really relevant to what the city has to do." The result, says
Commoner, is that "the city is going to lose its unique eco-
nomic capability to take advantage of this situation."
the early stages of the city's recycling pro-
, environmentalists and some government of-
acknowledged the importance of developing
Both Local Law 19, the city's recycling legislation
in 1989, and the Dinkins administration's 1992 Sol-
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/15
id Waste Management Plan require that the city be proactive
in stimulating demand and fostering an economic climate to
benefit recycling.
Progress has been slow. For one thing, the questionable
quality of products collected under the city's commingled
curbside system-particularly paper and plastic-has left
many manufacturers unwilling to buy New York's raw ma-
terial (see City Limits, May 1994). And for years officials
could point to the lagging markets to explain their own
desultory efforts. But today the markets are vibrant, thanks
in part to initiatives such as an executive order signed by
President Clinton in 1993 which transformed the federal
government into a major purchaser of recycled paper. Some
31 states have market development programs and the paper
industry has invested billions in de-inking technology, rec-
ognizing the financial benefits of us-
ing recycled material. With recy-
cling markets bullish, many say the
time is ripe for the city to take ad-
vantage of these opportunities.
But no one in the Giuliani admin-
istration seems to be listening.
Since Rudolph Giuliani became
mayor, personnel changes and new
policy directions have left the city
without any strong advocates for re-
cycling market development. "A
number of key people at both Sani-
tation and EDC who were interested
in this area have left," explains
Hugh O'Neill of Appleseed, an eco-
nomic development consulting firm
that was commissioned by the Dink-
ins administration to write a report
about recycling and economic
growth. "I guess City Hall has differ-
ent priorities."
"There were strong, constructive
methods employed to bring compa-
nies to New York," adds Moore.
"Then, because of fiscal cutbacks
and reorganization within the de-
partment, there was less and less of
a role for economic development." Sources say only one
person is left in the agency to do market development. An-
other former city official, who for years played a leading role
in this area and requested anonymity, confirms that market
development efforts have been eviscerated, noting, "The
more activist approach to marketing has pretty much fallen
by the wayside." The agency's Director of Economic Devel-
opment, Mark Burstein, also resigned last year and has yet
to be replaced.
"The department has lost some of its market development
personnel," confirms Robert Lange, the Sanitation Depart-
ment's current director of recycling. He says it's simply a
matter of efficiency. "The situation has changed dramatical-
ly from a few years ago. The markets for the material we col-
lect are so strong that the EDC can do development now."
Yet that agency has also suffered staff reductions and is
pursuing few recycling initiatives. EDC officials say they
recognize recycling's economic potential, but are con-
strained by budget cuts. "Due to the change in the budget
picture as well as the change in administration, there have
been some modifications and reassessments," says Chris
i6/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
Ward, a senior vice president. Still, Ward says the city is ac-
tively engaging in recycling development, citing the Bronx
Community Paper Company, a $200 million de-inking mill
slated to turn discarded office paper into pulp. But that pro-
ject is in limbo; last March, a judge voided a lease between
the state and the developer. An appeal is in the works, but
either way, the project will likely be stalled in the courts for
some time.
Some positive work is underway at the state level. In
March, New York State's Office of Recycling Market Devel-
opment joined forces with Bronx 2000, an East Tremont-
based nonprofit local development corporation, to form the
Empire State Center for Recycling Enterprise Development.
The project, funded by the federal Environmental Protection
Agency and the state, will look to create community-based
recycling enterprises modeled after Bronx 2000's own for-
profit and nonprofit subsidiaries, which recycle plastics and
make furniture, flooring and other products with recycled
wood, among other things.
Reports also indicate that the city's own procurement sys-
tem, though lagging in many ways, has improved in recent
months. Today, the city purchases $18 million worth of
goods made with recycled materials, up from $10 million a
year ago, including paper, antifreeze, asphalt, plastic bags,
bathroom partitions, ceiling tiles, traffic cones, barricades
and dust pans. Also, in June, the city will unveil a new $2.6
million, 20,000 square foot pier at the end of Tiffany Street
in Hunts Point in the Bronx that was built with recycled
plastic, known as "plastic lumber."
But projects like the Tiffany Street pier were initiated
during the Dinkins years, and many insiders are skeptical
that Giuliani will promote similar innovations. Despite the
potential for using plastic lumber to replace decrepit park
benches and repair the dilapidated Manhattan piers, no
such projects are in the works, according to the Depart-
ment of General Services. Moreover, the administration
has expressed reservations about environmental procure-
ment legislation, says an aide to City Council Member
Stanley Michels, the bill's sponsor. The legislation calls for
the city to purchase paper with 20 percent recycled con-
tent beginning this July and 30 percent by 1999, and for 25
percent of all city agencies' purchases to include recycled
products by 1997. Also included in the bill are price pref-
erences for postconsumer materials, minimum content
standards for recycled products and requirements that city
contractors buy recyclables. Ivan Braun, the former head of
the city's recycling procurement office in the Department
of General Services, says his research found that an ag-
gressive procurement policy could lead to more than $80
million in environmental purchasing, as opposed to the
current $18 million.
with such limited government support, there
about 200 recycling-related businesses based
according to Appleseed's O'Neill. Some of
are Materials Recycling Facilities (MRF)
and sell the recyclables delivered by the Sanita-
tion Department-albeit often to buyers located in other
states. In addition, businesses have been formed to recycle
scrap metals, tires, wood products, and plastics.
Two reports released in 1993 concluded that recycling
could be a major growth industry in New York if the city
made the effort. The Appleseed study notes that recycling
could create 3,000 to 4,000 new jobs, mostly unskilled and
based in partly abandoned industrial areas such as Hunts
Point and Red Hook. There are numerous business opportu-
nities favoring New York City, the report says. For instance,
the city could easily offer certain industries steady supply as
well as high demand from large local markets for newsprint,
office paper, plastics and building products. And, the report
adds, community-based recycling operations such as buy-
back centers and MRFs could foster neighborhood revital-
ization while ensuring a higher quality of material for man-
ufacturers. Glass, used clothing and household appliances
are also mentioned as potential areas for growth.
A November 1993 study by the Center for the Biology of
Natural Systems (CBNS) went even further, concluding that
recycling could produce 20,000 jobs in New York-but only
if the city broadly expanded the range of materials it recy-
cles. The report also notes that the city already has a num-
ber of existing industries that could be bolstered by recy-
cling, leading to an additional 18,000 jobs. But the Giuliani
administration has adamantly resisted any efforts to expand
recycling as advocated by the CBNS report.
Perhaps the most important thing the city could offer a
company, experts say, is a guaranteed flow of recyclables.
"What companies really want is a long-term supply contract
with the city," explains Karen Backus, who headed market
development efforts at the EDC and is now with the Forest
City Ratner real estate development company. "Before a
company comes in and invests millions in plants and equip-
ment, it needs to have the security of a contract." Backus be-
lieves the city should put together a "recycling bank" that
would keep track of the quantities of different recyclable
materials gathered by the city and regularly seek bids from
private contractors and manufacturers based on the avail-
able supply.
Because of its size and resources, New York City is per-
haps the only municipality in the country able to unilater-
ally control its recycling destiny, observes Jerry Powell, ed-
itor of Resource Recycling, a trade magazine based in Port-
land, Oregon. "It's very difficult to match supply and de-
mand with one marketplace," he says. "A lot of people say,
'Let's keep our recyclables in our community to create
jobs.' But there are only a few governments the size of New
York City that can pull that off,."
But without a coherent strategy that will take advantage
of the city's enormous leverage in securing markets for re-
cycling, the private carters who collect the newspapers,
bottles, cans and jugs will continue to sell their material
where the markets are-outside the city. Kendall Chris-
tiansen, who works for one of the city's major recycling
vendors, Star Recycling/BQE Services, confirms that with
the exception of crushed glass used to pave local roads, all
of the other material his company processes is sold to en-
tities outside the city. "In order to work, recycling needs
strong markets," says Christiansen, who is also chairper-
son of the Citywide Recycling Advisory Board, an over-
sight group mandated by Local Law 19. "And the markets
are strong. They just aren't strong in New York City."
Indeed, in a telling twist, even the $900,000 the city
spent on plastic lumber for the new Tiffany Street pier is-
n't generating anything in the way of economic opportuni-
ty in the five boroughs; the money is going to five corpora-
tions who manufacture the lumber, one based in New Jer-
sey, the others from as far away as Virginia, Iowa and Cal-
ifornia.
he essay read like a recycler'S manifesto: "New
far behind other cities in its commitment to
Recycling can and does work. Seattle recycles
garbage, a success story that should serve as our
skeptics may argue that the two cities are very
UU.H""U', our neighbor across the Hudson River, Newark,
is recycling three times as much of its waste as New York.
"Rather than promote and expand recycling, the Dink-
ins administration has dragged its feet at every step .... The
city must develop a partnership with the private sector to
attract new entrepreneurs and expand the availability of
recycled goods .... Pursuing these initiatives would not only
decrease the amount of refuse in our landfills, but would
also produce community jobs at the same time."
The words of an environmental activist? No, this was
the rhetoric of Rudolph Giuliani when he was running for
mayor in 1993. In September of that year, candidate Giu-
liani released an eight-page position paper on solid waste
issues, including a bold and visionary agenda for recy-
cling. Giuliani called for the city to use its procurement
powers, provide tax incentives and favorable leases on
city-owned property, work with banks under the Commu-
nity Reinvestment Act and use city small business loans to
cultivate recycling-related entrepreneurship.
Much has changed. Backing away from his own cam-
paign position, the mayor has called on the City Council to
lower the recycling requirements mandated by Local Law
19. "It's time to pull back and be reasonable," Deputy May-
or Peter Powers told the Wall Street Journal last January.
The mayor's financial plans have expressed similar
anti-recycling sentiments. In his latest executive budget,
the mayor has for the second year in a row called for sig-
nificant reductions in funding for recycling outreach and
education programs, and proposed eliminating pilot in-
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/17
Tifflny PIer in Nulit's Poillt .11 _It
with recycled plastic. BId tile
companies that manufactured the
construction mlterills come from
outside tile state.
tensive recycling zones in Brooklyn. Despite the cutbacks
in education, the city will begin on June 5 to increase fines
against households and buildings that recycle improperly.
After all, unlike outreach, this program generates money:
recycling fines in 1994 totaled $317,057.
Meanwhile, a variety of initiatives underway through-
out the country illustrate how proactive governments,
working with labor, business, community groups and en-
vironmentalists have helped foster recycling-related in-
dustries. One of the most active groups in this effort is the
Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a Washington,
D.C.-based community development organization. Work-
ing in concert with city governments, the group has facili-
tated bottom-up recycling businesses throughout the
country. Among the many companies ILSR has supported
are Aluminum Waste Technology, which recycles dross
and salt cake wastes generated by aluminum can recycling
in Cleveland, employing 50 men and women at an average
wage of $11 per hour, and the Neighborhood Beverage
Company in South Central Los Angeles, a bottler employ-
ing 250 local people.
A popular concept is Recycling Market Development
Zones (RMDZ), an idea similar to enterprise zones but with
a recycling emphasis. California is leading this effort right
now, with other states making inroads as well. Since 1992,
40 districts throughout California have been designated as
RMDZs, where companies have access to low-interest loans
and capital financing, flexible zoning laws, streamlined
permitting processes and government procurement con-
tracts. The state's Integrated Waste Management Board's an-
nual budget of $5 million a year for low-interest loans has,
so far, invested $17 million in the effort, creating more than
650 jobs and diverting an estimated 3.2 million tons of re-
cyclables from the waste stream each year. By this time next
year, officials hope to have invested $40 million and to
lS/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
have created 1,600 new jobs. The impetus for the program
was California's strict recycling law, which mandates di-
version of 50 percent of the waste stream by the year 2000.
Minnesota also has a model market development pro-
gram. The state's Office of Environmental Assistance has a
$20 million budget and an eight-person staff that works
with local governments, institutions and entrepreneurs,
funding feasibility studies and offering loans to companies
engaged in recycling enterprises. Since 1988, $4 million in
loans have been awarded to businesses that, among other
things, turn old newsprint and waste paper into egg car-
tons, plastic into sheet panels, and low grades of mixed
paper into animal bedding.
To be sure, many states and cities have struggled with
market development: the early-1990s recession, budget
cuts and reluctant business and government leaders have
hampered efforts throughout the country. But in most
places progress is being made, however slowly.
New York City, by contrast, seems to be going back-
wards. Nearly all of the strategies outlined in the 1992 Sol-
id Waste Management Plan have either been canceled or
put on hold, and the decline in the collection rate of recy-
clable materials has advocates shaking their heads. "The
rate of recycling sends out the message that the Giuliani
administration is not interested," observes Barry Com-
moner. "That, I guarantee you, is repelling entrepreneurs."
Meanwhile, reports and analyses on how recycling can
stimulate job growth are gathering dust on the shelves of
city bureaucrats' offices, and many doubt that they will ever
be put into action. "I had a long conversation on the phone
with [Deputy Mayor for Economic Development] John
Dyson," recalls Commoner in frustration. "I sent him a de-
tailed memorandum, showing how the city was losing mon-
ey by cutting the education and outreach budget. I got
nowhere. This city is actively uninterested in recycling." 0
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CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/ 19
Photographs by members of tile South Bronx Photographic
Center, a youth program of All-Saints Lutheran Parish_
20/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
By Geoffrey '--',lll1clU,1 II

knew the codes of conduct were deteriorating when I
1
heard young teenagers saying they'd "rather be judged
by twelve than carried by six." The message on the
street is clear: make a preemptive strike, shoot first
even if you're not sure that your life is threatened at that
moment. Odds are you will live, and if you are arrested and
convicted, at least you will be alive.
When I was growing up in the South Bronx 30 years ago,
there were natural checks on violent behavior. Most of the
violence on my block was done with the fists in what we
called a "fair one": two people fought until one was too
hurt to continue or quit in defeat. There were people
around to ensure the dispute was settled according to the
rules. No "dirty" fighting allowed, no kicking or biting, no
weapons. Violence against men and boys who lived on
other blocks was not subject to the same codes. But even
so, none of us had guns, so knife fighting was usually
the most extreme form these encounters took.
The 1980s and '90s have bred a new generation, the
handgun generation, growing up under conditions of
war, war as a child, war as an adolescent, war as an
adult. War never ending. Not like Vietnam, where
Americans, if they survived, came home. The war to-
day is home. The next generation might be called the
Uzi generation.
Americans have been slaughtering one another in
record numbers over the past decade and a half. This
war's chief victims are our children: almost 50,000
children were killed by guns between 1979 and
1991, according to the Children's Defense Fund.
Handguns have contributed mightily to the escala-
tion of this slaughter. According to the federal gov-
ernment, more than 66 million handguns are now
circulating in this country and over two million
new handguns are produced each year. Yet most
current policymakers fail to address the problem
of the sheer availability of guns.
Young people in our inner cities know that a
war is going on. Most young people I know who
carry guns feel the only way to have a fair fight-
ing chance is to own a gun. Many of them have
figured out that the best way not to be shot is
to shoot first. The rules of conduct on when to
Geoffrey Canada is presi-
dent of the Rheedlen Cen-
ters for Families and Chil-
dren and a recent winner of
the first annual Heinz
Award for "mastering the
art of the possible." This ar-
ticle is excerpted from his
book, Fist Stick Knife Gun:
A Personal History of Vio-
lence in America, published
this month by Beacon Press.
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/21
shoot, or when someone else might shoot you, are unclear.
Some might think violence is new, but it's not. The differ-
ence is that we have so many guns in our inner cities. The
nature of the violent act has changed from the fist, stick and
knife to the gun. But violence, I remember.
m
ike, one of the teenagers on the block of
Union Avenue where I grew up, had al-
ways told me that if you ever face a gun,
your actions should be based on how the
gunman acts. If he is sure and in control, he is probably a
professional; do what he tells you and you might live. If the
gun shakes in his hand, if he's loud and nervous, you have
a real problem. These are the signs of an amateur and you
never can tell what an amateur might do. So be prepared to
fight for your life.
During the summer on Union Avenue, our small apart-
ments were like ovens. It was impossible to stay in them
during July and August. None of us had air conditioning.
Few had jobs. So into the streets we poured by the thou-
sands-men, women, boys and girls. It was like a street car-
nival every day. But the evenings belonged to the young
men. This was the most exciting time to be out. It could be
a quiet night of talk and bragging or it could be a night that
you would never forget.
This particular night started quietly, but I had heard the
gossip. Kevin had been drinking earlier in the afternoon
with a woman who lived nearby. Supposedly they had got-
______ _
on a small stone wall, talking and laughing, passing around
a quart bottle of Rheingold beer. We all looked toward the
street when a car came screeching to a halt 15 yards away.
Out came a man, at least six foot three and huge. None of us
could have gotten our arms around his waist. He weighed at
least 300 pounds. "I'm looking for a guy named Kevin," he
said, anger gleaming from his eyes. "You know where he is?"
Kevin, standing right with us, looked puzzled. We all
knew the drill: never admit anything concerning anybody
else's business. The answer was automatic. "Naw, never
heard of him."
The huge man began to walk away and that would have
been the end of it, except something came over Kevin. I have
seen young men do this time and time again, taking on a
challenge with no hope of winning simply because there's a
threat to one's "manhood." Kevin called to the man's back,
"What you want with Kevin?"
The man turned and approached us. "He called my aunt a
bitch, and I'm gonna kick his ass. Do you know where he is?"
A couple of the guys began to chuckle and the rest of us
tried to hide our smiles. We figured Kevin was in a fix now.
He was going to have to lie and say he didn't know anything,
opening himself up to unmerciful ribbing from the group for
weeks. The rules were you had to fight no matter what the
odds were, but none of us expected Kevin to fight this mon-
ster. So we were shocked when he responded, "Yeah, I'm
Kevin and you ain't gonna kick my ass." Kevin now
had a fight on his hands.
.. W;Ould be almost a certainty. But this was 1966, and
WaI.aIcI tfae eCI ed that although he America's inner cities had not yet been turned into the
was ;l)vlOusly out of shape and slow. A good killing fields that they are today. Back then a man could pull
street fighter should be able to box him and avoid his blows. a gun on a bunch of street toughs with a fair amount of cer-
Kevin and the man went into the street and with much tainty that he had the only gun on the block.
cursing the fight began. It was not much of a fight as fights The man shouted, "Get back! I'm gonna shoot!"
go. The group had been right about the man. He swung wide Everyone stopped. No one moved backward.
arching blows which were easy to duck. Kevin got caught by I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw the concen-
a couple of roundhouse punches, but they didn't really do tration on Mike's face. He was our leader and he was un-
any damage. The fight dragged on. afraid. It was clear he intended to take the man out. I real-
The older guys were impressed by Kevin's heart. He had ized that when I had first faced the gun I'd felt like the hunt-
learned his lessons about street fighting well, and he didn't ed, but really we were the hunters. I wasn't the only one
quit. But neither had he mastered the skills necessary to defeat who felt this. The man began to understand the plan. He
his enemy. It was decided that the man had exacted his re- knew he had misjudged. He was confused and the circle was
venge. Kevin had fought bravely. It was time to stop the fight. tightening, beginning to close off his retreat. We all saw the
All of us got off the wall and walked into the street, Mike and fear come into his face as he began to back up toward his car,
Junior yelling that it was over, that the man had won. the gun swinging wildly. We stopped. A trapped man is
But before we knew what happened, the man had run to more likely to shoot. He kept the gun trained on us as he
his car and gotten a gun out of the trunk. My knees got weak opened the driver's side of the car, ducked in and roared off,
and I hoped I would be able to run when everyone else be- never to be seen again.
gan to flee. I looked at the others and my heart sank. I could-
n't believe that no one had any intention of running. The
group began to fan out in a wide circle. Kevin made matters
worse by saying what most of us would have found comical
if the situation had not suddenly become so dangerous:
"C'mon, motherfucker. I'm not finished with you yet!"
And so it was that at the age of14 I was thinking of Mike's
admonitions about how one should act when a gun was
pointing at you. The group took a step toward the man. He
raised the gun and pointed it first at Kevin, who began to
shout, "Well, shoot me! Shoot me! I'm not afraid to die! " The
man looked like he was thinking about it. The group took an-
other step toward him. Frantic, he pointed the gun first at
one of us, then at another, turning in a half-circle to be sure
we all knew he was armed. "Take another step, I'll shoot!"
The guys took another step. It was like I was in a trance.
Each time they took a step, my feet seemed to move on their
own, and I took a step at the same time.
These days the man simply would have blasted away at
us, knowing that not to do so would probably cost him his
life. These days, in this kind of situation, instead of one per-
son with a gun there would be at least two, meaning that a
s
o many of our young people live under vicious ,
mean and violent circumstances. They react as I did
when I was young. They don' t tell their parents,
teachers or other adults about the constant and real
danger they face. They figure out survival skills for them-
selves.
Yet we as a society are doing very little to reach out to
them and prove that we are worth their trust.
This country has finally realized that violence is a na-
tional crisis of unparalleled dimensions, and that is impor-
tant to me. But it is painful to watch the results, so far, of
this realization: billions of dollars poured into prison con-
struction, more police and sexy but ineffective programs
like boot camps, and lots oftalk about our "war on crime. "
The problem with these initiatives is that they can have un-
expected consequences that exacerbate problems instead of
helping to solve them. Case in point: the "war on drugs. "
New York had a popular four-term governor, Nelson A.
Rockefeller, who served from 1958 through 1974. In re-
sponse to the hysteria about drugs that permeated society
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/23
and was highlighted by the
media in the early 1970s,
Governor Rockefeller pushed
through legislation that came
to be referred to as the Rock-
efeller drug laws.
On the surface these laws
made a lot of sense. Drugs, in
particular heroin, were a na-
tional scourge. There seemed
to be a revolving door in our
criminal justice system when
it came to drug dealers. Cops
lamented that they were
barely done with the paper-
work before dealers were
back on the street. The state
seemed powerless to stem
the tidal wave of drugs com-
ing into New York. So Gover-
nor Rockefeller proposed
laws that would create mini-
mum mandatory sentences
(15 years to life) for posses-
sion of relatively small
amounts of narcotics.
The idea was
enough. But the ~ ~ V " " " - ' ' ' ~ ' '
drug laws had several unan-
ticipated results. One of
these, not widely recognized even by social scientists and
criminologists until recently, was the creation of a whole
new employment market for the city's youth.
As the Rockefeller laws began to have an impact in
poor communities, drug dealers realized that being
caught with drugs could mean doing the rest of their
adult lives in prison. Selling drugs in poor communities
has always me'ant being out on the street so that cus-
tomers can easily find you. Being on the streets after the
laws were passed made dealers vulnerable to police
sweeps, operations in which drug agents would sudden-
ly drive onto the block and arrest them before they could
ditch the drugs or hide.
The answer many dealers came up with was as simple as
it was evil. They began to use children. And many children
were eager and willing to be used. Poverty always provides
these willing kids-whose lives are haunted by tattered
clothes, empty refrigerators, broken dreams-with nerves of
steel and toughened hearts. In many communities drug
dealers are looked up to by children who lack other role
models. Young boys are especially susceptible as they asso-
ciate the power and wealth of the drug dealer with making
it as a man. So the dealers found no lack of boys to help
them avoid the long jail sentences that awaited them if they
were caught selling drugs. What's more, if the boys were
caught with drugs, they would go into the juvenile court
system, which generally was more lenient than the adult
system. Youths could sometimes get caught over and over
again without any major ramifications. Even if the juvenile
got sent away to one of the locked facilities, if he was a
"stand-up guy" and didn't "snitch," when he came home he
received more respect and more status on the block.
At first, these youths were mostly acting as lookouts and
24/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
. Their job was to
on the corner and
an eye open for the
and the dreaded un-
rlPlr("('\'upr narcotics officers,
raising the alarm in time
for the older dealer to es-
cape or hide the drugs.
They also steered cus-
tomers, often having the
buyer wait while they took
money to the dealer and
brought back the drugs.
And so in the mid-1970s
a slow but steady stream of
children aged 13, 14, 15
years old began to enter the
drug business. Heroin was
still America's narcotic of
choice, and although the
number of users was at an
all-time high, a dealer
needed only a few children
to help look out and steer.
We probably would have
had a small but serious
problem but for a new drug
that blew up in our inner
cities like an atomic bomb.
In poor communities
during the late 1970s early '80s, cocaine was certain-
ly present but its high price (it was usually sold in $50
packages) meant that it was at most an occasional treat for
most users. Marijuana, Angel Dust and heroin were much
more popular.
Crack cocaine changed everything. As crack came on the
scene in the early 1980s, we began to notice more and more
of our young boys being killed. Guns didn't become com-
monplace among the young until crack use became epidem-
ic. The sums of money that young people received from sell-
ing crack was in some cases enormous. It was not long be-
fore youths who had once been content to be lookouts or
steerers wanted to run the business and began to recruit
their peers to form their own crews to sell drugs. These
young people made thousands of dollars many times over
but they could not spend it the way the older dealers did, on
cars, homes and businesses. They were too young for that.
So they spent their money the only way they could, on de-
signer clothes, expensive sneakers and gold jewelry. As
could only be expected, other kids began to rob them. The
solution was to buy a handgun for protection.
Where once handguns had been relatively scarce com-
modities, in a very short time they became ordinary. The
young dealers not only set the fashion trends with their ex-
pensive clothes and jewelry, but they also began to set the vi-
olence trend. The handgun had replaced the fist or knife as the
weapon of choice. The codes of conduct on the streets across
the nation were about to undergo a major and lethal shift.
I began to notice these inexperienced, unsophisticated
child drug dealers in the early 1980s, when I left Boston and
returned to New York to work at the Rheedlen Centers for
Children and Families. At the time, Rheedlen ran programs in
several schools in Harlem and Upper Manhattan. I was re-
sponsible for about 200 children, and I watched many of them
grow up. I unfortunately knew too many who are no longer
alive. They never should have gone into the drug business.
t
he first time I heard that Charles was selling drugs in
his housing project in Harlem, I didn't believe it. This
kid was downright immature and much too silly. He
was not what I would call a tough kid, although he
knew the streets. I felt no self-respecting drug dealer would
trust him with their product. Which only shows how naive I
was about the way the drug industry had changed since I left
New York City in 1974.
But when it was brought to my attention that he owed
money on the street, I knew 14-year-old Charles really was
selling drugs. I needed to act, and quickly. I met with the boy
and got the facts. He owed a little more than $100. He said it
was no big deal. I told him how serious it was, that the deal-
ers would make an example of him if he didn't give back
their money, "cop a plea" and promise never to steal from
them again. I implored him to get out of the drug business.
He listened politely to me and nodded his head as if he were
agreeing, but I could tell it wasn't sinking in.
Several weeks later they caught Charles in a hallway and
shot him many times, mostly in the legs. He was one of the
lucky ones; he was to be a living example of what could hap-
pen if you were found stealing money from the dealers.
Charles was the last kid I knew who would live after being
caught in the open by the new breed of child gangster. The
funeral parlors have become rich as a result of young boys'
poor decisions.
I knew Hector for years as a member of our Center 54 after-
school program. Always a wise guy but never really a prob-
lem, Hector was well liked by all. He was a joker, not serious
about much of anything. I first suspected he was selling
drugs when he came in one night after I hadn't seen him for
a couple of years. I was happy he had dropped by. He was
limping and walking with a cane. I asked what had hap-
pened. He said nothing, it was an accident.
I later learned the truth, that the accident he'd had was a
car pulling up next to his and being shot at point-blank range
by the people in it. The other occupant in his car had been
killed. Hector had been taken half-alive to the hospital, where
he was informed that people were trying to kill him even
there. I'd had no idea that he was a major supplier of drugs in
the neighborhood. Other young people I talked with told me
he was quite an investor. It was said he owned a number of
buildings and supermarkets in Manhattan; at age 19 he was
already rich. I was amazed. There he was, knowing people
had tried to kill him and were still looking for him, and he
had walked into the center openly, no bodyguards, no secre-
cy. They killed Hector on the street three weeks later.

1
1's a Wednesday night in October and I can't believe I've
gotten away from Rheedlen's offices in time for the mar-
tial arts class I teach at the center. In October and Feb-
ruary I let new students into my classes and this one is
full of them. I walk into the brightly lit gym and all eyes turn
toward me. I'm walking with purpose, quickly and silently. I
talk to no one when I first come in to teach.
In the quiet of my dressing room, I begin to change into
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CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/25
my uniform and I try to
my mind. It's harder
usual. The city is
youth services
Rheedlen will be
This very center will
closed unless I can raise ~ ~ " . , .....
money privately to keep it ,, .. ----
open. That means more run-
ning around, more late
nights, more lost weekends.
That doesn't bother me, but
it causes me to miss my
classes. For 11 years I have
taught martial arts in this
school. For 10 of them I
hardly ever missed a class.
Now I'm lucky if I can make
it one night a week. My three
black belt students are good
teachers, but they are young
and still need my guidance.
I dress, I go back into the
gym. If you saw me now you
might think I'm stern, even
mean. Suddenly I clap my
hands two times and 50 chil-
dren are dashing every
which way trying to get in
line. The older students
have been waiting for this
moment and know where to
go; the younger students dart around trying to find an emp-
ty place in line. For a few moments it looks like everyone is
playing a game of musical chairs.
I stand in front of them, looking displeased. Everyone
wonders who is out of place or not standing up straight.
This is part of my act. Finally I begin the class and then I'm
lost in the teaching. I'm trying to bring magic into the lives
of these kids, to bring a sense of wonder and amazement. I
can feel the students losing themselves and focusing on me.
They are finally mine. I have them all to myself. I have
crowded all the bad thoughts out of their minds. The test
they failed. The father who won't come by to see them, the
dinner that won't be on the stove when they get home. I've
pushed it all away by force of will and magic.
This is my time and I know all the tricks. I yell, I scream,
I fly through the air. I take my black belt students and I slam
them on the floor and they pop up like those weighted Wee-
ble dolls that can't stay down. I throw them in the air as if
they were feathers and they land and roll and are back up un-
hurt and unafraid. The new students can't believe their eyes.
By the time the class is ending their eyes are wide with
amazement and respect. I line them up and I talk to them
about values, about violence, about hope. I try to build with-
in each one a reservoir of strength that they can draw from.
And I try to convince each of them that I know their true
worth as human beings, their special gift. It is from that
reservoir that they will draw the strength to resist the drugs,
the guns, the violence.
After I dress, students come up to shake hands and we
bow in greeting. I am back to being Geoff then, their friend.
As a group of us walk up 108th street together, I call one of
the youngest over to me. He is only five and comes to class
26/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
with his older brother. I see
that his jacket is open and I
stoop down to zip it up.
The jacket is old and beat
up. The zipper is broken.
He believes I can fix it. Why
not? He believes I can do
anything. His face is filled
with anticipation. It's cold
outside and he has long
blocks to walk. I can't fix
the zipper. Instead, I show
him how to use one hand to
hold his jacket closed close
around his neck. I readjust
his hand several times so he
understands that there is a
certain way to do it that
meets with my approval.
This is also part of the act-
all of the attention to detail
keeps him from feeling
ashamed. He loves the care
and concern. As I watch
him cross the street with his
brother and friends, holding
his jacket closed with his
hand, the spell is broken for
me. No more magic. Just lit-
tle five-year-olds in raggedy
jackets that won't close, try-
ing to stay warm on a cold
night. I scribble a note to myself to remember to find a way
to get some jackets. Winter is coming.
This community, like many others, is not safe for chil-
dren and they usually walk home at night filled with fear
and apprehension. But when I walk with them after class,
they are carefree like children ought to be. They have no
fear. They believe that if anything happens, they'll be safe
because I'm there and with my magic karate I'll dispatch
whatever evil threatens them. When these children see me
on the corner watching them walk into their buildings, they
believe what children used to believe, that there are adults
who can protect them. And I let them believe this even if my
older black belts and I know different. Heroes give hope,
and so I play the hero for them even if I have to resort to
cheap tricks and theatrics.
And if I could get the mayors, and the governors, and the
President to look into the eyes of the five-year-olds of this
nation dressed in old raggedy clothes, they would know
what I know-that children need people to stand with them
on the most dangerous streets, in the dirtiest hallways, in
the darkest hours. We as a country have been too willing to
take from our weakest when times get hard. People who al-
low this to happen must be educated, must be challenged,
must be turned around.
We have failed our children. They live in a world where
danger lurks all around them and their playgrounds are
filled with broken glass and sudden death. The stuff of our
nightmares when we were children is the common reality
for children today. Monsters are out there, claiming our chil-
dren in record numbers. And so we must stand up and be
visible heroes, fighting for our children. I want people to un-
derstand the crisis and I want people to act. 0
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CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/27
Vacancy Decontrol
By Steven Wishnia
City Hall appointees have taken a radical step toward altering the
nature of rent regulation.
D
espite Mayor Rudolph Giu-
liani's recent statements that
he opposes the deregulation of
rents, his representatives on
the city's Rent Guidelines Board are
moving quickly toward a policy that
would virtually eliminate restrictions
on rent increases when apartments be-
come vacant.
Their proposal won the preliminary
approval of the guidelines board last
month. It would temporarily decontrol
any apartment that becomes vacant, al-
lowing the landlord to raise its rent to
match the most expensive comparably-
sized apartment in the same building.
A $500 one-bedroom apartment, for ex-
ample, could be put on the market for
as much as $1,000 if another one-bed-
room apartment in the same building
rents for that much.
The only limit on such in-
cidents of landlords driving tenants in
low-rent apartments out of their homes.
The financial incentive was clear, explains
Robert Katz, a lawyer with the Queens
League of United Tenants, just as it was
during the co-op conversion boom of the
1980s. In 1988, Katz won a $1.35 million
settlement for tenants of the Villas of For-
est Hills complex after their landlord, with
an eye toward co-op conversion, tried to
force them to leave by removing boilers
and other necessary services.
"When you have something this lu-
crative, it's an irresistible temptation
for a lot of owners" to drive out low-
paying tenants, adds Michael McKee of
the New York State Tenants and Neigh-
bors Coalition, a pro-rent regulation ad-
vocacy group.
The proposal won the board's ap-
proval by a vote of 5 to 4. It was spon-
proposal that would establish annual
increases of at least 4 percent on apart-
ments renting for less than $400, along
with a one-time "supplementary adjust-
ment" of $15 per month. This passed
the board by a vote of 5 to 2, with two
members not voting. Members said they
believed rents lower than $400 simply
do not cover an owner's operating costs,
much less a profit.
"Apartments under $400 are what's
causing distressed housing in the city,"
exclaimed board member Barbara Gor-
don-Espejo during the hearing preced-
ing the vote.
Antiregulation Philosophy
Giuliani himself would not comment
on the Rent Guidelines Board proposals.
When Governor Pataki called last month
for the elimination of rent regulation on
vacant apartments, the mayor
IIWe're "ere
said he disagreed because of the
likely impact on the elderly and
others with fixed incomes.
creases would be a rent ceiling
of $1,000. After it is rented, the
apartment would once again
fall under the rent stabilization
rules guiding annual increases,
as long as the new tenant re-
mains in place.
make sure ellery
"The way the Governor
phrased it, it's something I
would oppose," he told the City
Hall press corps, adding that
vacancy decontrol would give
"as all aHord-
Final enactment of the pro-
posal is likely after public
hearings in June, unless one of
the board members changes
his or her mind.
An Open Attack
Tenant groups charge that the plan
will sharply reduce the number of af-
fordable apartments citywide.
"I know [the administration) doesn't
like poor people and wants them to
leave the city, but this is an open attack
on working- and middle-class people,"
says Kenneth Rosenfeld, a lawyer with
the Northern Manhattan Improvement
Corporation and one of the Rent Guide-
lines Board's two tenant representa-
tives. He predicts the proposal will re-
turn the city to the instabilities of the
early 1970s, when then-Governor Nel-
son Rockefeller pushed through a va-
cancy-decontrol measure that lasted
only three years and sent the price of
many apartments skyrocketing.
During that short period of vacancy de-
control there were many documented in-
28/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
able
sored by Giuliani appointee Paul Atana-
sio, a Staten Island resident who served
on Governor George Pataki's transition
team and works as a specialist in public
bond financing on Wall Street. The pro-
posal has two other elements: it gives
landlords the option of setting a mini-
mum rent of $400 for vacant apart-
ments, and also allows them to raise
rents on vacant units by 15 percent.
Board member Agustin Rivera, ap-
pointed by former Mayor Ed Koch, cast
the deciding fifth vote. Afterwards he
expressed misgivings about the size of
the vacancy increases and their poten-
tial effect on minorities and the poor,
but argued that a balance has to be
struck between affordable rents and
maintaining buildings.
"When an apartment becomes vacant
and goes up to market rate, it doesn't
hurt anybody," he said.
The board also approved another
landlords "a natural incentive"
to force out current tenants.
But McKee charges that the
position of Giuliani's appointees gives
the lie to the mayor's expressed support
for rent regulation. "I've been dealing
with the board since 1979, and the chair
doesn't make a move without consult-
ing City Hall," he says.
The antiregulation philosophy be-
hind the Rent Guidelines Board propos-
al is not hidden. Atanasio says the free
market "is a more efficient way of pro-
viding affordable housing. Let the mar-
ket determine what's affordable .... It will
make housing more readily available"
Edward Hochman, also a Giuliani ap-
pointee, says he disagrees with tenant
advocates who say that the proposed
rules would displace long-time renters
and make housing less affordable for
newcomers to the city. "We're not here to
make sure that every tenant has an inex-
pensive apartment or that every landlord
makes a profit," he says, adding that the
cost of housing is not turning people
away from the city. People don't leave
New York because of the cost of housing,
he says. "They leave because they don't
want to ride on the stinking subway."
Allowing landlords to charge higher
rents will not alter the foundations of
housing poverty in New York, however.
According to the federal Census Bureau's
Housing and Vacancy Survey, tenants in
rent-stabilized apartments spent a medi-
an of 28 percent of their total income on
rent in 1993, up from 26 percent in 1991.
Meanwhile 30 percent of all renter
households have incomes below the
poverty line, according to the survey.
The average rent for a stabilized
apartment is $541 a month, but vacant
apartments are on average much more
expensive. Even in the poorest areas of
the South Bronx, studios start at $475
and it's "impossible" to find anything
under $400, says Jeffrey Bonilla ofMott
Haven-based Citihome Realty.
With some tenants paying as little as
$230 for a two-bedroom apartment,
Bronx landlord Mark Blecher says his
22-unit Morrisania building is so un-
profitable he can't sell it. Yet he doesn't
think rent increases will help; "I can't
even get what I'm asking now," he says
of a $625 two-bedroom he advertised re-
cently in the Daily News. Blecher in-
stalled a new boiler and pipes when he
bought the building in 1989-and found
tenants unable to pay the major capital
improvement increases allowed under
the law. "Who did that help?" he asks.
"I ended up evicting people and I didn't
get my money."
Stretched Budgets
Tenant advocates disagree on who will
be most hurt by the proposed vacancy in-
creases. Rosenfeld, along with Victor
Bach of the Community Service Society,
argues the impact will be felt most in
working- and middle-class neighbor-
hoods where tenants are not so poor that
they can't stretch their budgets by cutting
back on other expenses.
Others say extremely low income
tenants will double or triple-up to meet
higher rents. "They'll get their aunt or
cousin to move in," says Hilda Chavis, a
tenant organizer with the Northwest
Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition
in Morris Heights.
"We're particularly concerned about
young adults," adds Leslie Holmes of
the Legal Aid Society, the Rent Guide-
lines Board's other tenant representa-
tive. She believes the increases will
make it impossible for people with mar-
ginal incomes to move, creating grid-
lock for families. In other words, older
people will remain in large apartments
in order to hold on to their low rents,
and young families will be stuck in
small ones.
Allowing steep vacancy increases
may be a poor method for solving the
city's housing woes, experts say. Most
buildings on the verge of abandonment
and foreclosure are in the city's poorest
neighborhoods, explains Kolu Zigbi of
the Association for Neighborhood and
Housing Development, and citywide
rent increases are "not an effective way
of targeting landlords who need relief."
She says breaks on taxes and water and
sewer bills, as well as government pro-
grams that help owners cope with red
tape and access low-interest loans,
make more sense.
Frank Braconi of the Citizens Hous-
ing and Planning Council supports the
board's proposal, but questions its effec-
tiveness. He also says tax breaks and
water and sewer relief would have a
greater impact.
"What most of these people need is
smarts," adds Dick Koral of the Apart-
ment House Institute, a building manage-
ment program affiliated with New York
City Technical College. Heating bills can
be as much as six times higher in a poor-
ly maintained building than in one with
skilled management, he says. "They keep
screaming for rent increases, but their
costs are higher than they should be."
Tenant organizations are lobbying
Agustin Rivera-the swing vote on the
guidelines board-and mobilizing for
the board's public hearings on the pro-
posal, scheduled for June 19 and 22 at
One Police Plaza.
An ad hoc group of pro-tenant
lawyers is also considering challenging
the guidelines in court if they are ap-
proved, on the grounds that the legisla-
ture and the City Council never granted
the board the power to allow "de facto
vacancy decontrol," says Robert Katz.
The group is also considering challeng-
ing the increases on low-rent apart-
ments, arguing that their disproportion-
ate impact on blacks and Latinos would
violate federal fair-housing laws.
"This is very, very dangerous," says
Michael McKee. "We have to get people
off their rear ends to fight this." 0
Steven Wishnia is a Manhattan-based
freelance reporter.
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30/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
----5
S
he's got a Calder in her living
room and a poster of Soledad
By Jill Kirschenbaum
alienate the Establishment," she
says stoutly. The Establishment. Re-
member? That's what we used to call it. Brother George Jackson in her office. She
developed the ACLU's membership list,
and raised money for the Panthers and the
Chicago Seven and the Dr. Spock Legal Defense
Fund. She's got a reputation for holding a
grudge. If there's going to be a fight about some-
thing, it's advisable that you get her on your
side. Her ancestors came over on the boat (as in
Mayflower), and she refuses to be interviewed
until she puts on her lipstick. She may not have
chosen how she got here, but, as a member of
the Hemlock Society, she's damn well going to
have something to say about the way she leaves.
Marie Runypn is having a birthday. The
woman who was a '60s radical when she was 50
is turning 80 this month and talking about re-
Dame Runyon
tirement. Not very loudly, of
course. She's a little busy right
now. The Harlem Restoration Pro-
ject, a housing group she founded
in 1977, has 22 staffers, a $1 mil-
lion budget, and is managing 18
formerly city-owned apartment
buildings.
She's got a lot of opinions. She
divides the world into two types of
people: the real ones and everyone
else. Suki Terada Ports, a fellow ac-
tivist who was on Marie's side of
the barricade in some struggles
and the opposite in others, ob-
serves that "you either worked
with her, or woe be it to you if you
disagreed. The same tactics she
used with you, she used against
you."
Like the time she and her con-
federates blocked traffic on Ams-
terdam Avenue with rocking chairs
to protest the eviction of tenants in
Columbia University-owned build-
ings on Morningside Drive. Or
when she tried to arrange for a he-
licopter to airlift in food to the Co-
lumbia students who were occupy-
ing Low Library during the student
strike in 1968.
Talking to Marie, you get to han-
kering for a little of that '60s, Yip-
pie, "up against the wall" kind of
gumption. "People are afraid to
The Reverend Robert Castle (Jonathan
Demme's Cousin Bobby), says she is one of the
most tenacious people he's ever met. "She and I
haven't always agreed," he notes. Of course.
Marie refers to him as the "pain in the ass priest."
So those of you who have found yourselves
on the far side of one battle too many with Marie
Runyon, and who may be rejoicing at the
prospect of her retirement, you'd better think
again. Says Kathy Goldman, another veteran
from the old days, "Burn out? There's a whole
generation of people who don't know what
those two words mean. They assume there was
a fire in someone's house." Marie is one of them.
"I get called on a lot to march and yell and
scream," says the eternal activist. "When I retire,
I'll have more time to march and yell and scream."
Bum, baby, bum. 0
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/31
~ W A T C H
Spare the Rhetoric
B
ased on the firestorm of contro-
versy that blew up last month
around the proposal for a new
Pathmark supermarket in East
Harlem, you would never know the de-
velopment offers a major opportunity
for new jobs and housing.
The effort to derail the project is be-
ing orchestrated by a coterie of Path-
mark's competitors-led by the owners
of another supermarket chain who have
financed a campaign complete with out-
side lobbyists and organizers. These op-
ponents have won the backing of a
handful of misguided members of the
City Council, but it is time to cut
through the political rhetoric and pre-
sent the facts: the people of East Harlem
need affordable food and support this
opportunity to revitalize one of the most
run-down commercial strips in the
community.
In 1989, Manhattan's Community
Board 11 approved the development of
a Pathmark store on a vacant, city-
owned lot on .East 125th Street between
Third and Lexington avenues. As the
project now stands, two community-
based nonprofit organizations, the Com-
munity Association of the East Harlem
Triangle and the Abyssinian Develop-
ment Corporation, will purchase the lot,
lease the land and build the supermar-
ket for Pathmark. Recently, the Manhat-
tan Borough Board-the borough's
elected City Council members and my-
self-approved the sale of the land. Lat-
er this month, the city's Economic De-
velopment Corporation (EDC) will de-
cide whether or not to approve the deal.
Then it is up to Mayor Giuliani to give
his final okay.
Despite all of the publicity generated
by Pathmark's opponents, the mayor
and EDC should not hesitate to sign off
on the plan. More than $1 million in
state and federal funding and $1.5 mil-
lion in tax credit investment from the
private sector are at stake.
Unprecedented Agreement
Pathmark has agreed to hire and train
East Harlem's Latino and African Amer-
ican residents, promising that 75 per-
cent of all jobs created will go to resi-
dents of Community Board 11. It is an
unprecedented employment agreement.
Even so, jobs are only part of the sto-
ry. While the nonprofit organizations
working on the supermarket are run by
32/}UNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
African Americans, the project will also
likely include 100 units of middle-in-
come housing to be developed by the
East Harlem Council for Community
Improvement, a Puerto Rican-adminis-
tered nonprofit. This last element, it is
hoped, will defuse the criticism leveled
by some that the Pathmark is an entire-
ly African American-backed project in a
mostly Latino community.
In truth, the development of this store
is not about race. Our own City Council
member, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., is
raising race-based criticisms while fail-
ing to listen to local residents or the
Community Board. His efforts are evi-
dently directed by politicians and other
interests from outside the area who have
absolutely no involvement with the peo-
ple who live and work in East Harlem.
While Lower East Side City Council
Member Antonio Pagan has also played
the race card, he hasn't pursued the
All East Harlem will
benefit from
Pathmark's employment
opportunities and
cheaper food prices.
truth. He has the reputation of being the
most prodevelopment official in his dis-
trict's recent history. Yet it's easy to take
an anti development stance in someone
else's back yard, especially when the
opponents of the Pathmark project con-
tributed $1,000 to his last City Council
campaign.
Although it is true that residents in
the store's immediate area are predomi-
nantly African American, all East
Harlem residents will benefit from this
store through employment opportuni-
ties and cheaper food prices. Both non-
profit developers have led the battle to
revitalize this area. They know first-
hand that East 125th Street has the high-
est commercial vacancy rate in the dis-
trict as well as many boarded-up build-
ings and storefronts. The only thriving
entrepreneurs are drug pushers and
prostitutes. Why should neighborhood
people be denied their right to develop
By Eddie Baca
and revitalize commercial businesses?
Failed Attempt
The project's organized opponents
are, in fact, the very same people who
failed to win approval for construction
of their own supermarket on the same
site in 1991, after Pathmark had already
been on the scene for two years. They
include a consultant, Richard Lipsky,
and his former clients, Louis Corona
and Mariano Diaz, who each own small-
er independent supermarkets, as well as
representatives of Associated, which
owns stores throughout the city.
They do not represent bodegas or
mom and pop food stores, though that is
the image they foster in the press. These
small stores have never voiced a unified
opposition to the supermarket before
the community board. A Pathmark on
East 125th Street mayor may not bene-
fit nearby stores; in any case their num-
bers are few. What I find truly offensive
is the way the opposition claims to rep-
resent-even care about-the small
store owners, when in the past they
have frequently opened their own su-
permarkets right next door to bodegas
without the slightest consideration for
their plight.
What's more, while many shoppers
in East Harlem go to their nearest neigh-
borhood stores once or twice a week,
many others travel once a month to
New Jersey or the Bronx to buy large
quantities at Pathmark stores. East
Harlem residents are already shopping
at Pathmark. Why not make shopping
easier, cheaper and more convenient for
our residents?
There are few examples in East
Harlem where business has joined with
the community in a development effort
where both stand to profit. Shouldn't
this type of partnership be encouraged,
especially as government budget cuts
weaken our community organizations?
East Harlem suffers from poor city ser-
vices, inadequate housing and poor
health conditions, partly because
monied interests aren't attracted to the
area. East Harlem should be given the
opportunity to demonstrate that this
type of partnership can work just as suc-
cessfully north of 96th Street as it does
in other areas of our borough. 0
Eddie Baca is the chairman of Commu-
nity Board 11.
The Means of Survival
O
n March 24, the House of
Representatives passed the
Personal Responsibility Act.
This bill , designed to
"change welfare as we know it" denies
most legal immigrants access to feder-
al, state and local benefit programs.
And if it is passed, it will force thou-
sands of battered immigrant women to
remain in abusive relationships.
Take the case of Anita, a South Asian
mother of two and survivor of domestic
violence: "To protect these innocent
children, I left my husband. I had no
one to turn to for support in this crisis.
I had no alternative but to turn to the
welfare system. Without AFDC, with-
out basic necessities, it would be hard
for me and my children to survive. "
Anita and her children are legal
permanent residents or "green card
holders." Today she and other immi-
grant women who are being abused
can apply for public assistance to help
them break free from violent relation-
shi ps. But if the Personal Responsibil-
ity Act (PRA) becomes law, the welfare
doors will be closed to these women
and children.
With a few minor exceptions, the
bill bars legal permanent residents
from receiving AFDC, Food Stamps,
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) ,
Medicaid and many state-controlled
welfare services.
As it is, the financial assistance
these programs provide are meager. In
New York City, the annual maximum
AFDC grant including food stamps for
a family of three amounts to 78 per-
cent of the federal poverty level. Yet
however minimal the assistance may
be, it provides a crucial safety net for
women and children in crisis situa-
tions . How otherwise can battered
women who have no resources of their
own even consider leaving their
abusers? How many of us, faced with
homelessness and destitution, would
take our children onto the streets?
Lack of Support
The decision to leave an abusive
husband or partner is always a difficult
one. Lack of support from friends and
family, little access to alternative hous-
ing, and a shortage of affordable child
care and jobs or job training programs
are all realities that battered women
Prema Vora II procra. coordinator of Sakhl
for South Allan Women, a. ad,ocacy and IUP-
port ce.ter for ,lctlRiI of do.eltlc ,Iolence.
must face. The decision to leave is per-
haps even more difficult for an immi-
grant woman who speaks little English,
feels isolated and unfamiliar with her
surroundings, and, most importantly,
depends on her abuser for her immi-
gration status.
Many immigrant women are "spon-
sored" by their husbands in order to
get permanent legal residency. It is all
too common that abusive men use the
threat of withholding this sponsorship
as an additional means of exerting con-
trol. Often we hear from women that
their husbands have threatened them
with deportation in order to keep them
from reporting abuse to the police or to
prevent them from trying to escape.
Fortunately, in September 1994,
Congress passed the Violence Against
Women Act (VAWA) , which included
groundbreaking provisions aimed at
enabling battered immigrant women to
sponsor themselves without the need
of or knowledge of their husbands. Al-
though the Immigration and Natural-
By Prema Vora
ization Service has been slow to imple-
ment the provisions guaranteed in
VAWA, many battered immigrant
women will eventually be able to use
the act to get their green cards without
having to rely on their batterers for
sponsors hi p.
So it is truly disturbing that six
months after VAWA was passed, Con-
gress has introduced additional legis-
lation that will completely remove the
financial lifeline many abused immi-
grant women need if they are to leave
their tormentors.
In fact , the PRA requires a battered
woman to seek the cooperation of her
sponsor in order to apply for all feder-
al, state and local welfare programs.
How? The legislation counts the spon-
sor's income as though it were avail-
able to the welfare applicant for her en-
tire lifetime, or until she becomes a
u.S. citizen. There is no exception for
battered women.
And the arms of the PRA would be
far-reaching. Under the act, even bat-
tered women's shelters that receive fed-
eral, state or local funds would not be
allowed to apply those grants to ser-
vices for immigrant women who are
deemed ineligible for public assistance
because of their sponsors' income.
If these shelters-almost all of
which are operating at full capacity
with limited funds-must now comply
with this new rule to continue provid-
ing services, they may be forced to turn
away immigrant women who come
knocking at their doors.
The PRA does indeed take up the
mantle of Clinton's promise to "change
welfare as we know it." It does so by
cutting away access to the social safety
net for thousands of hardworking legal
immigrants who pay their taxes and
contribute to life in their communities.
For a decent standard of living, bat-
tered women-like all poor women in
this country-need access to better
jobs, training, education and child
care. The PRA provides for none of
those things. And if it is passed, it will
do nothing to eliminate poverty "as we
know it. " It will simply penalize vic-
tims of abuse, trapping battered immi-
grant women in abusive relationships
with no one to turn to and little hope
for escape. It will deny them access to
the barest necessities of life. 0
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/33
Spin Another Tale
Organizing the South Bronx, by Jim
Rooney, State University of New York
Press, Albany, 1994, 283 pages,
$14.95, paperback.
The history of the South Bronx is a
narrative of extremes, from before its
purchase by Dutch-Swede wheeler-
dealer Jonas Bronck in 1639, through
its land rush development into a low-
er and middle class bedroom commu-
nity of Art Deco and tenement build-
ings in the 1930s, to its collapse and
flame-out in the late 1970s.
At present, the South Bronx is best
known for its decline. Telegenic visits
by two presidents and broadcaster
Howard Cosell's offhand comment
during the 1977 World Series ("the
Bronx is burning"), etched these im-
ages into the slide show of America's
collective consciousness. More re-
cently, news of the "rebuilding" of the
South Bronx is getting out, overdra-
matized and cartoon-like, as with the
previous stages of history.
The story of the ghetto, it seems,
can only be told in exaggerated im-
ages: "Like Dresden, like the ruins of
Pompeii," "like a Phoenix from the
ashes." The cliches are not necessari-
ly helpful to those who live here.
A hodgepodge of books have been
written about the South Bronx, its
rapid decline and its more recent re-
development. Report from Engine
Company 82 , by Dennis Smith, is the
(true) story of the service-provider/ob-
server, the 1970s equivalent oftoday's
far-commuting firemen from Putnam
and Suffolk counties. Fort Apache,
The Bronx, (the movie was based on a
book by the same name), is the (false)
story of a boozy Irish cop and an in-
triguing Puerto Rican junkie nurse. It
made people here quite mad. Jill Jones
wrote. a helpful history, We're Still
Here, with a forward by Daniel Patrick
Moynihan. Only the conclusion-that
it's all being rebuilt, that "it's God's
work"-rang false to one living here.
Fragmentary Study
Now comes Organizing the South
Bronx, by Jim Rooney, a fragmentary
c a s ~ study, not quite as professional as
Jones' work but more up-to-date.
Rooney's book focuses on a particu-
lar initiative in the late 1980s: the ar-
rival of South Bronx Churches (SBC),
34/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
an Industrial Areas Foundation-affili-
ated coalition of congregations best
known for developing low-rise, mod-
erate income "Nehemiah" homes, so-
named for the biblical prophet who
rebuilt Jerusalem. Given the outsider-
controlled nature of so much of the re-
development in the South Bronx,
SBC's tussle for a piece of land to
build hundreds of homes does stand
out. Living here, it is hard to forget
their rally, 8,000 strong, at Site 404 on
St. Ann's Avenue in April, 1989, with
a message for city officials: "On this
land we shall build!"
As it turned out, SBC didn't get the
land. The New York City Housing
Partnership did, and threw up heavi-
ly-subsidized townhouses that the
vast majority of people here couldn't
afford. Undeterred, SBC built more
than 500 homes in Mott Haven, on
163rd Street, and on Trinity and
Prospect avenues.
Rooney tells the story of SBC's toe-
to-toe with the city, the Partnership
and other groups and asks, "Was it a
war?" His conclusion is yes (which is
probably correct). His book, however,
verges on hagiography, and misses
much of the nuance of other, more im-
mutable things going on in the South
Bronx in the late '80s and onwards.
Untold Tales
Still, what most often goes untold in
tales of the South Bronx is the nitty-
gritty of how things get done here.
Rooney, to his credit, goes into great
detail about SBC's efforts to secure Site
404 for their Nehemiah development.
He interviews organizers about their
decision to replace, rather than work
with, South Bronx People for Change,
another faith-based organizing initia-
tive that predated IAF's entry into the
South Bronx, and he quotes IAF direc-
tor Ed Chambers as saying that People
for Change was too Catholic, "too Cen-
tral American .... They did some good
work. And in a vacuum, it looked pret-
ty good." The implication is that since
People for Change didn't subscribe to
the relational, neo-Alinsky style of
power organizing espoused by the IAF,
they were bound for the scrap heap of
history. But Rooney touches only light-
lyon the actual recruiting and maneu-
vering by their opponents that put
them there.
By Matthew Lee
In fact, while Rooney purports to
give the inside story of SBC and
makes a point, for example, of not
censoring the profanities from the
quotes of IAF and SBC organizers, it
appears he either got too close to or
was so impressed by SBC that he
couldn't bear to recount the realpoli-
tik, not-for-public-consumption deci-
sions and actions that any group must
make and take in New York City in or-
der to obtain and develop real estate
(or, arguably, power of any kind).
Such honesty is rare in any book, but
in the type of highly focused case
study that Organizing the South
Bronx claims to be, it is crucial.
Wholesale Relocation
Another area not examined forth-
rightly is SBC's views on the need, at
times, for the wholesale relocation of
the existing, low income residents of
neighborhoods in which Nehemiah
homes are built. There is a legitimate
argument to be made about
economies of scale and building
whole blocks of similar houses. But I
was at the City Planning Commission
hearings in the fall of 1994 concern-
ing the Nehemiah plans of another
IAF-affiliate, East Brooklyn Congrega-
tions. In order to make way for mod-
erate income, single family homes,
the group wanted to demolish an en-
tire row of apartment buildings full of
low income residents on Williams
Avenue in East New York, claiming
that they were unmanageable. (It was
never clear if EBC meant the build-
ings or the tenants).
Rooney does not touch on this dis-
placement controversy. It is his suc-
cess at "going in deep" with SBC that
makes the omissions more noticeable.
But with that said, OrganiZIng the
South Bronx is a welcome addition to
the fragmentary (but growing) South
Bronx library, and is well worth read-
ing for anyone interested in urban
economic or social development,
grassroots community organizing,
churches, sociology or real estate.
Rooney's book is like a Nehemiah
home: stripped down but useful, an-
other brick in the wall. 0
Matthew Lee is a founder of Inner City
Press/Community on the Move, a South
Bronx homesteaders' organization.
ERRORS OF OMISSION
It was with great sadness that I read
Steven Wishnia's review of Janet L.
Abu-Lughod's book, From Urban Vil-
lage to East Village (April 1995). This
book attempts to chronicle the changes
in the Lower East Side for the past
decades by looking at economic trans-
formations, changing ethnicities and
geographies. The review suffers from
the same problems as the book: an
abysmal lack of information and
knowledge about the construction of
the resistance in the Lower East Side,
particularly the role Puerto Ricans
played in the struggle.
Unfortunately, the researchers were
unable to find anyone to explain to
them the bases for the change they re-
port, changes that began to take place
during the 1950s with the dispropor-
tionate share of "slum clearance" and
construction of public housing in the
Lower East Side. The authors also failed
to provide a reasonable account of the
institution building process centered
around the urban renewal struggle.
As one of the major "Puerto Rican
Homelands" in New York City, the story
of the Lower East Side is critical to un-
derstanding how Puerto Ricans have
fared and how our history intersects
with the urban restructuring of the post-
war period. The book is full of misstate-
ments, unclear statements, and poor
scholarship. For example, in Christo-
pher Mele's essay "Neighborhood
'Burn-Out': Puerto Ricans at the End of
the Queue," the author suffered from
amnesia and was unable to document
the building of the Puerto Rican com-
munity and its institutions during the
post-war period. His sources are stan-
dard fare, and even his utilization of
these is incomplete. By limiting the
analysis to census tracts north of Hous-
ton Street, he failed to understand that
some of the greatest battles for urban
land were fought around the Delancey
Street/Seward Park neighborhoods.
(Masaryk Towers, for example, was the
site of one of the best-organized squatter
demonstrations of the 1960s). These
neighborhoods were the sites of some of
the greatest displacement of Puerto Ri-
cans during the 1960s and 1970s.
To add insult to injury, in Part III of
the book, "Contesting Community: the
Issues and the Protagonists," the editor,
Abu-Lughod, states, "Our attempts to lo-
cate a researcher able and willing to
work in this community ended in fail-
ure; the absence of the Puerto Rican
voice remains a defect of our analysis."
This is an insult to Puerto Ricans. Abu-
Lughod's focus seems to be limited to
the available scholarship of those she
personally knows, and definitely failed
to find a voice for one of the groups most
impacted by the restructuring of the
Lower East Side. Even in the definition
of Loisaida, its origins, etc., the authors
did not get their facts straight, but only
from h e a r ~ a y and secondary sources.
It is a sad statement that, in 1995,
Abu-Lughod, the reviewer and even
City Limits contribute to the invisibili-
ty of Puerto Ricans and Latinos, which,
according to the last census, account
for over one of every four New Yorkers.
It is time that those voices are found
and given plenty of support. For how
long will Puerto Ricans and other Lati-
nos continue to be represented by oth-
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ers, as if we were incapable of speaking
with our own voices? The telling of our
history in New York is incomplete: the
chapters on the struggle for better liv-
ing, particularly the role we have had
in the building of housing-centered in-
stitutions around community develop-
ment in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the
Bronx, are major chapters in the histo-
ry of New York City, and not to be dis-
missed by a footnote. Our role in the
housing fights was instrumental in the
development of the whole movement. I
only hope that someone in the not-too-
distant future writes a book on the
Lower East Side using genuine voices.
Luis Aponte-Pares, Ph.D.
University of Massachusetts, Boston
OLD WINE
Thanks for the important article in
your April issue on the city's Neighbor-
hood Entrepreneurs Program ("Soft
Sell," by Kim Nauer). Although there
are, as you point out, different kinds of
privatization, and the involvement of
community organizations before, during
and after ownership transfer can make a
significant difference in people's lives,
one economic fact remains clear: the
city claims it needs to privatize these
buildings because it cannot afford to
own and manage low income housing,
yet it is prepared to subsidize NEP
buildings to provide both fully adequate
maintenance plus a landlord's profit.
Either some of the existing tenants
are displaced to make room for market-
rate rents, which will provide the prof-
it margin, or the city will have to pro-
vide subsidies greater than the cost of
just running the building. The first al-
ternative is unacceptable from a policy
standpoint (where are the displaced
families to go?), and the second--that
the city would be willing to spend
more to put the buildings into private
hands than it would to maintain them
in public ownership--shows that the
motivation behind NEP is not bud-
getary but ideological. Either way, NEP
is old wine in new bottles.
Kenny Schaeffer
Vice Chair, Met Council on Housing
Send your letters to:
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JOB ADS
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. Well-regarded, grassroots community nonprofit for
tenants, seniors, youth of Manhattan's Lower East Side seeks ener-
getic person with ability to manage, supervise staff, programs; counsel
near-homeless families. Qualifications: MSW, good communication
ministrative experience_ Salary: low $30k plus benefits_ ~
CIlGANIZER. Spanish-speaking person to organize low-income tenants,
tenants, info and assistance to seniors. Must work well with others, be
assertive, committed to social justice. Salary: $20k plus benefits. Send
resume to: Sam Sue, Chairperson, It's Time, 139 Henry Street, NYC
10002. Fax: (212) 406-5879. EOE employer.
HOUSINGIECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR. Brooklyn nonprofit corpo-
ration seeks dynamic individual to direct its housing and economic de-
velopment programs. Must have demonstrated knowledge of state and
city programs in these areas with particular emphasiS on real estate fI-
nance and housing project development activities. Salary range: high
$30s to start, with attractive fringe benefit package. Send resume to:
Aatbush Development Corporation, 1418 Cortelyou Road, Brooklyn, NY
11226. EOE.
SOCIAL SERVICES COORDINATOR. Nonprofit CBO seeks bilingual (Eng-
lish/Spanish) MSW with at least three years experience in community
based setting to oversee and coordinate social services department.
Includes supervision of case management staff and social work stu-
dents, program development and coordination with other agency de-
partments. Salary $40,000 to $45,000 DOE. Send resumes to: SWC
Search, 76 Wadsworth Avenue, New York, NY 10033.
SOCIAl. SERVICE ADVOCATE. Specialist in housing and disability rights
(ADA etc.) committed to independent living and consumer control. Ex-
perience a plus. BS/BA, self-starter, bilingual, excellent interpersonal
skills, knowledge of housing law. Send resume to QILC, 140-40 Queens
Blvd., Jamaica, NY 11435.
CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/37
JOB ADS
SENIOR PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIA1L The Pratt Institute Center for
Community and Environmental Development (PICCED), a university-
based nonprofit that provides technical assistance and training to com-
munity-based organizations in low-income neighborhoods throughout
New York City, is seeking an experienced Senior Program Development
Associate to manage its fundraising, communications, and program de-
velopment functions. Applicants should have at least five years of ex-
perience in outreach and communications, development of new pro-
grams, and fundraising in the field of community development, plan-
ning or housing (or equivalent combination of Master' s degree and
hands-on experience) . Excellent writing and editing skills required.
Salary upper 30s to lower 40s plus excellent benefits. Review of re-
sumes to begin immediately. send resume, cover letter and at least two
writing samples to Program Development Associate, PICCED, Dept. CL,
379 DeKalb Ave., 2nd Roor, Brooklyn, NY 11205. An AA/EOE. Women
and minorities strongly encouraged to apply.
BOROUGH COORDINATOR. Citywide Task Force on Housing Court seeks
two housing advocates for Brooklyn and Staten Island. Work with com-
munity advocates and legal service providers at information tables and
tenant workshops; organize reform initiatives in Housing Court; and de-
velop eviction prevention strategies. Candidates should have at least
one year of experience in housing/advocacy/community organizing;
leadership/outreach ability; and strong written/verbal skills. Salary:
$24,600 plus benefits. send resumes to: Angelita Anderson, CWTFHC,
666 Broadway, 410, New York, NY 10012.
HOUSING SPECIALIST. The American Red Cross in Greater New York has
an opportunity for a dedicated individual to relocate 90 families who are
without permanent housing. This will involve asseSSing family needs
and identifying and assessing housing opportunities, assuring a
smooth transition for families rehoused, maintaining records and con-
ducting training. You must have a BSW or related BA, knowledge of
housing issues and social services experience. Experience with building
codes, tenant/landlord laws, housing advocacy and/or work with home-
less population is desirable. Salary $23,745. Mail resumes to: The
American Red Cross in Greater New York, 150 Amsterdam Ave., Dept.
HS595, NYC 10023. EOE M/F/ DjV.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR. Pursue opportunities in community facilities fi-
nancing (child care, health, youth, multi-service) through CDCs in low-in-
come neighborhoods. Qualifications: facilities financing/development,
community development, program development, program management;
strong communications skills; ability to work with diverse constituen-
cies. Based in New York; travel required. Contact: Carol Glazer, LlSC,
733 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017. EOE.
PROJECT COORDINATOR. Direct a citywide, one-year HUD-funded pro-
ject involving housing discrimination practices for Fair Housing
agency. Proficiency in writing, strong analytical skills required and
knowledge of research techniques essential. Knowledge of rental ,
sales, mortgage and insurance housing practices desirable. Under-
graduate degree required. Salary competitive, plus benefits. Submit
resume and writing sample immediately. Equal opportunity/Affirma-
tive Action Employer. Send to: Open Housing Center, 594 Broadway,
Suite 608, NYC 10012.
COMMUNnY ORGANIZING COORDINATOR. Brooklyn housing and communi-
ty development CBO seeks experienced organizer to coordinate work in
community organizing, political education, and leadership development.
Organizing experience, Spanish speaking a must. Salary commensu-
rate with experience. AA/EOE. Resume and cover letter (discussing your
approach to community organizing) to: FAC, 199 14th Street, Brooklyn,
NY 11215.
38/JUNE/JULY 1995 CITY LIMITS
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, COMMUNnY DEVElOPMENT LOAN FUND. Work
with community development director to design a loan program that
will be administered by Asian Americans for Equality, an organiza-
tion serving Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Responsibilities:
research loan fund models and leveraging possibilities, raise capi -
tal from banks and foundations, oversee the implementation and
administration of the loan fund. Requirements: four to six years ex-
perience in finance, underwriting, feasibility analysis, etc. PROJECT
MANAGER. Under Community Development Director, responsible for
direct oversight of affordable housing initiatives, from initial plan-
ning through construction completion. Requirements: BA/BS, with
courses and/or two to five years work experience emphasizing poli-
cy, planning, finance, architecture, construction or related areas.
Prefer (for both positions): Excellent oral and written skills, com-
puter expertise, advanced degree in urban planning or MBA, knowl-
edge of CRA, experience with community organizations and govern-
ment programs, knowledge of Asian community, Asian language
skills. Salary commensurate with experience. Please send a cover
letter and resume to: Mitchel Alexander, AAFE, 111 Division Street,
NYC 10002. AAFE is an EOE.
NOTARIAL SERVICES. Wills, Verify Signatures, Interpretations, EBT,
Translations. Office and Home Visit by appointment. Please call Elsa
Peralta, (718) 692-0767.
PART nME BOOKKEEPER. City Limits needs an experienced bookkeep-
er to maintain accounting records, do bank recs and enter subscrip-
tion data, plus related tasks. 12 to 20 hours per month. Hourly wage
negotiable based on experience. Computer literacy is essential. Call
Andrew at (212) 925-9820.
NUTRrTlON EDUCA110N COORDINATOR. Share our Strength, a nonprofit
hunger relief organization, seeks individual to coordinate national nu-
trition education program in NY. Program organizes volunteer chefs to
teach nutrition education to low income families. Qualifications in-
clude 1-2 years community organizing experience, knowledge of NY's
low-income neighborhoods, good organizational skills, works inde-
pendently, spoken and written Spanish preferred, driver' s license and
car necessary. Salary in the high 20s plus excellent benefits. Send re-
sume to Hadley Boyd, SOS, 1511 K Street, NW #940, Washington,
DC 20005
STAFF EXECunvE. Association for Union Democracy seeks experi-
enced, versatile staff executive: fundraising, administration, writing,
leadership. Learn union democracy principles and advise unionists.
Perspective: become executive director within year. Salary negotiable.
AUD, nonpartisan, nonpolitical , defends rights of unionists to free
speech, fair hiring, fair elections inside unions. Resumes: 500 State
St., Brooklyn, NY 11217
TECHNICAl.. ASSISTANCE COORDINATOR. ANHD, a citywide nonprofit as-
sociation of community housing organizations, is seeking a motivated
individual to help us build the capacity of the housing development
movement. Responsibilities will include involvement in: property man-
agement training, economic development and on-line computer net-
work initiatives. Salary: low to mid 20s, depending on experience. Ex-
cellent benefits. Requirements: BA and/or housing and nonprofit ex-
perience, excellent written and communication skills, and computer
knowledge (programs and on-line facility). Please send resume and
cover letter to: Executive Director, ANHD, 305 Seventh Avenue, Suite
2001, NYC 10001-6008. Fax: (212) 463-9606. This is a good oppor-
tunity for those new to the field of housing and community based
movements. Women and minorities encouraged to apply.
I
JOB ADS
CHAMP DIRECTOR. ANHD, a citywide nonprofit association of community
organizations, is seeking a motivated individual to head up the Com-
munity Housing Association for Managers and Producers (CHAMP).
CHAMP serves the New York City community-based housing develop-
ment and management sector through technical support, training, net-
working, and advocacy. Responsibilities include: policy and program
analysis and advocacy, staffing issue oriented working groups, and co-
ordinating resources and resource sharing for members. Requirements:
SA plus 3 years nonprofit housing experience, excellent written and
communication skills, knowledge of city and state housing programs,
and a commitment to the empowerment of low income neighborhoods.
Salary: Mid $30s, depending on experience, plus excellent benefits.
Send resume and cover letter to: CHAMP Director Search, c/o ANHD,
305 Seventh Avenue, Suite 2001, NYC 10001-6008. Fax: (212) 463-
9600. Women and minorities encouraged to apply.
MORE JOB ADS ON PAGE 37
Advertise your job opening in City Limits.
Reach thousands of potential employees
with experience in the nonprofit community-
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reinvestment, social services and more.
Call for our low rates: (212) 925-9820
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The National Equity Fund(NEF), the largest syndicator of low income
housing tax credits(lIHTCs), is seeking a Director of Portfolio
Management for its New York office to oversee and manage associ-
ated staff which provides expert assistance, guidance and oversight
in monitoring of construction, lease-op and tenant eligibility certifica-
tion, on-going monitoring and support of performance of all invest-
ments and support of CDC/General Partners as well as the under-
writing of all investment proposals.
A Bachelor's degree in Business or related field is required along
with additional academic training in real estate or practical experi-
ence; a Moster's degree is preferred. Must hove a minimum of 2
years experience managing real estate investment portfolios, real
estate development and finance and/or real estate asset/property
management. Experience and knowledge of the lIHTC program or
other affordable housing development and management programs is
essential. Must hove good verbal and written communications skills,
along with strong word processing and spreadsheet software skills.
Previous supervisory experience is also required.
We offer a competitive salary with a comprehensive benefits pock-
age. Submit resume and cover letter with salary requirements to:
W"iam Traylor, Director, NEW YORK EQUfTY RJND, 733 Third
Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10017.
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CITY LIMITS JUNE/JULY 1995/39
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In the South Bronx, 265 units of alfull"dallie
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