NOVOfOrR 1996 $1.

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.CITY LIMITS'
COMMUNITY HOUSING NEWS
.CITY LIMITS'
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PROSPf:CT- lEfFERT$ GARDENS
NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION ~
Sp.- eading the "Good News"
Low Income Housing
Drowning in Debt
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Once and Future Past
-
g
oing back over the last 20 years worth of City Limits arti-
cles all at once is a revelatory experience. What is most
striking is how many themes have not changed. The des-
peration of tenants who are served with eviction papers and
have nowhere to go but the streets; the incontrovertible but oft-
ignored necessity of mobilizing constituencies; the government's
EDITORIAL
.................... .
failure to provide even the most basic services in
the city's poorest neighborhoods; and the ossifica-
tion of nonprofits who sell out for city contracts.
We are celebrating this month, but not without a
sober understanding of the reasons why we do this
work. In a city this large, it's far too easy for gov-
ernment officials and opinion leaders to ignore the
people that really matter-the men, women and
children who have to live with the consequences of political deal-
cutting, bureaucratic thinking and policymaking that ignores the
human factor. That's why City Limits is here. This magazine has
never let the leaders forget that it's the people in the city's neigh-
borhoods-not in City Hall or on Wall Street-who count most.
***
The New York Times ran a moving, carefully researched six-
part series on housing and poverty in New York City last month,
exposing the city's failure to enforce the housing code, describ-
ing severe overcrowding in immigrant neighborhoods and
explaining exactly why urban poverty is preventing many land-
lords from making a profit off their properties.
Important stuff. That's why we've been writing about itfor
two decades.
It's notable that the Times editors-and presumably the
establishment they represent-finally recognize that housing is
not a fringe issue, that code enforcement is not something only
rabid radicals scream about, and that overcrowding and home-
lessness are only two elements of a very complicated housing
crisis. It's a crisis that needs to be dealt with-or it will only
continue to worsen.
***
City Limits thanks its readers, advertisers and sponsors for
making all our work possible. This year, we have received fund-
ing from The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, The Booth
Ferris Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Robert
Sterling Clark Foundation, The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore
Foundation, The New York Foundation, Morgan Guaranty
Trust, The Scherman Foundation, Citibank, The Chase
Manhattan Foundation, and East New York Savings Bank.
Andrew White
Editor
(ity Limits
Vol ume XXI Number 9
City Limits is publi shed ten times per year. monthly except
bi -monthly issues in June/July and August/September. by
the City Limits Community Information Service, Inc., a non-
profit organization devoted to disseminating information
concerning neighborhood revitalization.
Editor: Andrew White
Senior Editors: Kim Nauer, Glenn Thrush
Managing Editor: Robin Epstein
Special Projects Editor: Kierna Mayo
Contributing Editors: James Bradley. Linda Ocasio.
Rob Polner
Desi gn Direction: James Conrad. Paul V. Leone
Advertising Representative: Faith Wiggins
Proofreader: Sandy Socolar
Photographers: Ana Asian. Gregory P. Mango
Interns: Kristine Blomgren, John Harlacher
Sponsors:
Association for Neighborhood and
Housing Development. Inc.
Pratt Institute Center for Community
and Environmental Development
Urban Homesteading Assi stance Board
Board of Directors:
Eddie Bautista. New York Lawyers for
the Publ ic Interest
Beverly Cheuvront. City Harvest
Francine Justa, Neighborhood Housing Services
Errol Louis. Central Brooklyn Partnership
Rima McCoy, Action for Community Empowerment
Rebecca Reich, Low Income Housing Fund
Andrew Reicher. UHAB
Tom Robbins. Journalist
Jay Small, ANHD
Doug Turetsky, former City Limits Editor
Pete Williams, National Urban League
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CITY LIMITS
NOVEMBER 1996
SPECIAL 20TH AMMIVERSARY
PULL-OUT SECTIOM
Twenty Years
When City Limits was founded 20 years ago, cash-strapped landlords
were burning their buildings, and city officials talked of solving
the city's social ills by simply driving low-income people out. That's
when New York City's community housing movement was born, and
with it City Limits. Now, more than 200 issues later, we celebrate
the activists, the organizing-and the work of this magazine's caffeine-
addled editors-all of which helped tum our neighborhoods around.
Georgian Revival
What actually makes comprehensive community development work?
The secret lies in trying, failing and then trying again. Community
leaders in Savannah, Georgia share some hard-learned lessons.
PIPELIMES
HPD's Homeless Promises
The new housing commissioner promises new housing for the
homeless, even as development dwindles.
The 61/4 Cent Solution
Watch the city's booming stock market and imagine each one of those
transactions dropping a few pennies into the city's treasury. It could
close the city's budget gap.
Zone Offense
Bronx Empowerment Zone officials are taking their time deciding what
to do with $51 million. One community group decided not to wait.
By Barry Yeoman
By Glenn Thrush
By James Bradley
By DyulII Foley and Robin Epstein
CULTURE
The Soweto Connection ~
Teens from South Africa and New York City focus on common ground. By Kierna Mayo
COMMEMTARY
Cityview
Tenant Power, Pasta and Politics
Review
Academic Avenger
Spare Change
Quoth The Maven
Briefs
Child's Pay
Rent War Games
Sun Sets on Curfew
DEPARTMEMTS
4,5 Editorial
Professional
Directory
Job Ads
By Billy Easton
135
By Salim Muwakkil
138
By Glenn Thrush
2
3&
37
M
Peg Breen (left) of the Landmarks Conservancy and DHCR's Sylvia Kinard celebrate the
completion of renovations at Brooklyn's 64 Havemeyer St. The ornately appointed building
easily qualifies as the city's most elegant low-income co-op
RENT-WAR GAMES
Four hundred Brooklyn ten-
ants kicked off a drive to save
the state's rent regulation laws
in mid-October, months before
the landlord lobby begins its
time-honored legislative
assault on the system that
keeps rents affordable for a mil -
lion New Yorkers.
Meeting in the auditorium of
downtown Brooklyn's YWCA-
which was literally packed to
the rafters- a coalition of ten-
ants organized by the Fifth
Avenue Committee and the
Pratt Area Community Council
began the drive to educate
people about the huge rent-law
battle expected to rock Albany
next May and June. During the
upcoming session, the state
Senate, controlled by
Republicans, is likely to push
for the decontrol of rent stabi-
lized apartments as they
become vacant.
"This is it, this is the
biggest fight!" bellowed Sen.
Marty Markowitz, a Brooklyn
Democrat. Markowitz and oth-
ers called for massive demon-
strations by tenants, letter
writing campaigns targeting
city legislators who take cam-
paign contributions from land-
lords.
The rent control and rent
stabilization laws were last
extended in 1993 after a bitter
upstate-downstate partisan
brawl. That year, in exchange
for the rent laws' extension, the
Democrat-controlled Assembly
accepted decontrol of apart-
ments exceeding $2,OOO-a-
month.
"We wanted to begin this as
early as we can in the hopes
that other groups will get mobi-
lized early," says Brad Lander,
executive director of the Fifth
Avenue Committee. The orga-
nizers hope their movement will
snowball .
Markowitz, fellow senator
Velmanette Montgomery and
assembly members Felix Ortiz
and Jim Brennan pledged to
oppose decontrol , eliciting
applause and "Right on"s from
the crowd. State Assemblyman
Roger Green was a no-show,
prompting boos and threatened
election-day retaliation from
tenants.
Glenn ThrLIsh
HINS ROLL
REVERSAL
When itCCJl1l8SU) welfare, the
state gMdh beck what Giuliani's
bureaucrats taketh away.
Hearty hal of the more than
__ New York CIly families
and individuals who applied fur
welfare last year were denied
cash and food..lt8mp benefiIs
thanks to stricter screening
procedures instituted by the
mayor. But the stitt has been
rev8l'Sing many of those rejec-
tions because of screw-ups
within the city's Human
Resources Administration,
charges the c--. of the
City Council welfare commiltBe,
"Some percentIge of (the
rejected applicants) are people
who are truly needy and you
screw," Councilman Stephen
Di8rienza said, tatutin9 HRA
commi8siofter Marva Hammons,
who appeared before his com-
mittee in mid-October, "(It's
been) an aby$mII performance
by your agency."
Acc:ordiQatDthe moit recent
Meter's ~ Report
(MMRJ,"'" people l'8qU8SI8d
ancl eliIIained ... hearings to
review their rejtMfted welfare
claims last year. State "fair beer-
int" officar1 determined tbat a
whopping 85 percent of those
cases 58,000 potential public
assistance reclpients-had
baen rejected unfaifty.
Hammons conceded the
high reversal rate is trOUble
some. "We're takint a look at
the fair hearing process and
we're confident we're going to
resolve this," she told Di8rienza.
According to HRA Deputy
Commissioner Me O'Regan,
the high reversal rate isn't the
result of a covert attempt to
pare the rolls; It's due mostly to
lost paperwork.
Kristine Blomgren
Short Shot
York and a two-room walk-up in Hell's
Kit(hen. We scraped by till we began
to get acting work. .. Of course we
never considered having (hildren until
both of us had earned enough of a
future in film and stage to make
parenthood possible,"
housing crisis. 1) Build more
affordable apartments in (linton
(That's what the real estate brokers
re-named Hell's Kit(hen when they
were hiking the rents to $1,500) and
2) create more "Soylent Green"
sequels so that everybody (an get a
job in the movies. Heston also hurls
down this surplus commandment:
deport "illegal" immigrants: "Surely
they are better off deported back to a
(ulture they (an at least understand."
TURNS OUT BEN HUR'S SAN-
DALS fAME WITH BOOTSTRAPS.
(harlton Heston wrote a letter to the
Times responding to their recent
series on housing conditions among
the poor in which he venerated his
own low-income housing experience
thusly: "[My wife and I] went to New
M
MILDEWY THOUGH IT IS,
Heston's example provides two possi-
ble solutions to New York's urban
IF THE PHARAOH'S GIRL HAD
(hu(k's attitude toward poor (hildren,
Little Moses would still be bobbing in
the bulrushes.
CITY LIMITS
TRAINING FOR CHANGE
may also find they aren't cut
out for the job.
tion. "We want to get them into
organizing from the start."
A small but ambitious new
institute for organizer training
opens its doors this month.
uniting two of the city's most
formidable activist groups in an
effort to fuel community
action-and to feed the
groups' own need for dedicat-
ed young staffers that will stay
around for the long haul.
The Northwest Bronx
Community and Clergy
Coalition and ACORN have
joined with Mothers on the
Move. a small Bronx-based
parents' grouP. to create the
Training Institute for Careers in
Organizing (TICO). The insti-
tute's first intensive weekend
session for about 30 would-be
organizers kicks off November
16. And by January, TICO plans
to begin placing about two-
dozen students selected from
the weekend training sessions
into short community organiz-
ing apprenticeships.
The training is also a weed-
ing-out process. ACORN's Jon
Kest says. He hopes at least 25
TICO graduates will land jobs
as community organizers dur-
ing the program's first year. But
he expects that a large number
During the apprenticeship.
students will get 12 weeks of
true-to-life experience. work-
ing the streets with organizers
from TICO's three parent
groups and learning first-hand
the everyday stresses and
excitements of neighborhood
canvassing and community
mobilization.
We wantto get young peo-
ple [interested in community
work] straight out of school,
before they've developed
social service or community
development baggage," says
Mary Dailey. executive director
of the Northwest Bronx coali-
Nowadays many commu
nity organizations hire "orga-
nizers" to do advocacy work
or to get neighborhood resi-
dents to turn out for social
service programs. rather than
working with people to define
their own action agenda
around housing. police. parks
or something else altogether.
says TlCO director Milagros
Silva.
"We want to reclaim the
definition of organizing," she
says. "We can plant the seed
so people don't become out-
reach workers or advocates."
Andrew White
SUN SETS ON CURFEW
Ognibene. dismissing criti-
cism that the curfew would
prompt a massive crackdown
on non-white neighborhoods.
"But I don't mean [we'd tar-
get] Hispanic. Italian. black.
whatever."
A City Council plan to pre-
vent teenagers from going
outside after dark may never
see the light of day.
The bill. introduced by
Queens Republican Thomas
Ognibene. would institute a
"nocturnal juvenile curfew."
giving police the authority to
detain anyone under the age
of 18 found on the streets
from lOpm-6am Sunday
through Thursday and 11 pm
to 6am Friday and Saturday.
Despite the popularity of such
measures in other cities.
however. youth curfews are
getting a chilly reception at
City Hall .
Apart from the opposition of
constitutionalists like the New
York Civil Liberties Union. the
curfew is disdained by the law-
and-order Giuliani administra-
tion. Speaking at a September
town hall meeting in Queens.
Police Commissioner Howard
Safir termed the Ognibene bill
" unenforceable."
"What it comes down to is
[police] stopping people and
asking. 'Can I see your
papers ... said Thomas White.
a Democrat who represents
predominantly black Jamaica.
Queens. "I don't want that in
this city."
But Ognibene isn't giving
up. He says he will reintro-
duce the bill and consider
expanding the curfew's
exemptions. which now
John Harlacher
CHILDREN'S PAY
S47.4 miIion
$44.2 miIioti
S92-4 miIion
__ $14.3 miIion
S74.9 ....
S72mi1ion
$62 miIIieIi
"There's no support in the
counc il for curfews. zero."
says a source close to Council
Speaker Peter Vallone. who is
not likely to even let the mea-
sure come up for a vote in
committee. The only reason
why the bill was even aired.
staffers say. was because
Ognibene. the council's
minority leader. is well-liked
by his Democratic colleagues.
allow teenagers out after
dark if they are accompanied
by an adult or if they are
commuting to work. school.
or adult -supervised activi-
ties.
" It'll be selective enforce-
ment. like anything else." says
The city's child welfare crisis is big business for a handful of huge non profits.
Seven of the top ten city expense budget contracts are paid to agencies that
develop child welfare and foster care services. Besides them. only the telephone
company. a bond servicing firm and Xerox cracked the top ten. Source: New York
Law School's CityLaw. August/September 1996.
Resour(es
"THIS BOOK IS ABOUT TWO
THINGS: MONEY AND POWER,"
begins Andy Robinson's new
"Grassroots Grants: An Activist's Guide
to Proposal Writing." A manual for
people who want to change the world.
the book explains how to get your
goals down on paper in a way that's
NOVEMBER 1996
likely to pry loose foundation funding.
Peeling back the curtain that separates
grant seekers from philanthropists, he
demystifies foundations and explains
what will and won't rock a program
officer's world. One funder' s quote:
"Don't suck up to grantmakers. On the
other hand, don't be impolite."
Available from Chardon Press for $25
plus $4 shipping, PO Box 11607,
Berkeley, CA 94712, (510) 704-8714.
AMERICANS HAVE CAUGHT
THE FEDERALIST
"return more power to the states"
virus in record numbers. at the
expense of the federal government.
Turns out. however, that they don't
trust the states all that much either. A
survey by the Council for Excellence in
Government shows that 64 percent of
those surveyed believed in concentrat-
ing more power in state governments.
But only 24 percent thought the
states knew how to spend tax money
wisely. Taxpayers trust local govern-
ments most of all. according to 50
percent of those polled. So why hasn't
any politician seized upon the "home
rule" issue? The poll is reprinted in
the latest issue of the Rockefeller
Institute of Government's Bulletin. For
a copy. (all (518) 443-5522.
w

PIPELINE ~
,

HPD's Homeless Promise
The city S new housing commissioner says she'll help house the city's poorest families. So far,
she S offered few details. By Glenn Thrush
C
ity housing chief Lilliam
Barrios-Paoli sat before a City
Council committee last month
and made a bold promise: she
will put the Department of
Housing, Preservation and Development
back in the business of building new apart-
ments for the homeless.
"We finally have to create a new
pipeline of new units for homeless fami-
lies," Barrios-Paoli told the council's
housing committee. But the commissioner
offered no more details of her plan, other
than to say that it was being hashed out
with homeless services commissioner
Gordon Campbell.
"At this point I don't know the number
[of units], the amount of money or any-
thing else," she said.
The plan was met with skeptical opti-
mism. "There's a real drying up of federal
and state money, but it was the administra-
tion that cut HPD's capital budget by 17
percent last year," said Veronica Farje,
staff associate for homeless housing with
the Citizens Committee for Children.
"This administration has made no
effort in the past [to develop homeless
housing] so it would be fabulous if they're
serious," Farje added. "We don't see how it
could happen, but we're willing to work
with them."
Cut Mercll ly
During the last three years, the Giuliani
administration has steadily slashed HPD's
homeless housing budget even more merci-
lessly than it has cut the department's other
programs. Since taking office, the mayor
has severed a pipeline that produced 3,000
units for homeless people as recently as
1993. In fact, over the next fiscal year,
HPD will churn out a mere 583 apartments
for homeless New Yorkers, less than half
the amount produced last year.
Most of those cuts come from Central
Management and the Division of Alternative
Management Programs, two sections of the
agency responsible for overseeing the city-
owned, tax-foreclosed housing stock that up
until a few years ago was the single largest
resource for housing homeless families.
With HPD selling these properties to land-
lords, nonprofits and tenant associations at
an accelerating pace, officials are renting few
apartments to the homeless.
"You shouldn't just be getting rid of
properties ... without using it for the cre-
ation of permanent housing and addressing
the issue of homeless ness," Guillermo
Linares, a Democratic councilman from
Washington Heights, lectured Barrios-
Paoli during the hearing.
Some of HPD's slack has been picked
up by the Department of Homeless
Services' Emergency Assistance
Rehousing Program (EARP), which pro-
duces an average of 2,700 units per year.
But EARP depends heavily on federal
Section 8 subsidies, which have been
severely reduced by Washington. With a
court order forcing the city to clear fami-
lies off the floor of its Emergency
Assistance Unit in the Bronx, Giuliani
sorely needs HPD's expertise in providing
permanent housing.
Nonetheless, Barrios-Paoli 's new ini-
tiative will not prompt a great infusion of
scale of such projects is expected to be rel-
atively small, sources said, probably no
more than 40 units at first.
No Indication yet
Since taking over from Deborah
Wright in the spring, Barrios-Paoli has
replaced much of the agency's top staff,
but she has no apparant plans to replace
the agency's Giuliani-era philosophy.
In her testimony before the council,
Barrios-Paoli made it clear she will pur-
sue an agenda similar to her predecessor,
including: a continued freeze on the
seizure of properties in tax-arrears and
the sale of the remaining city-owned
inventory; the shutdown of some HPD
neighborhood offices; and the sale of city
property tax liens to securities firms on
Wall Street.
To coordinate these functions,
Barrios-Paoli is creating a Buildings
Evaluation Unit responsible for deciding
During the last three years,
the Giuliani administration has steadily
slashed HPD's homeless housing
budget even more mercilessly than it has
cut the department's other programs.
new city housing subsidies, but will
involve "some kind of private-public part-
nership," the commissioner said. Leaders
of some nonprofit groups already working
on the plan report the commissioner plans
to use money from the city's long-under-
used "80-20" tax credit plan to create the
units. Under the program, originally
designed to draw the likes of Donald
Trump into the low-income housing busi-
ness, large developers receive tax credits if
they produce 20 units for low-income ten-
ants for every 80 apartments they build for
market-rate residents.
In the past, both classes of "80" and
"20" tenants would be housed in the same
building. But Paoli has told associates she
will explore the legality of placing the
homeless housing in off-site locations. The
which buildings are suitable for tax lien
sales or for sale to private landlords, non-
profit groups or tenants. The unit will also
house HPD's long-awaited early-warning
computer system intended to correlate
city housing and buildings data and give
the agency a better idea of which proper-
ties are at risk of imminent abandonment
by their owners.
But all of these efforts involve the
preservation of existing units and the dis-
posal of the city's in rem stock. When
pressed by the council for a greater commit-
ment to develop new housing, Barrios-Paoli
was polite, contrite and noncommittal. "I
recognize that we're not doing as much as
we used to," she said, before packing up her
briefing books and departing City Hall with
her train of aides .
CITY LIMITS
"Show me another bank that!s
doing that."
We believe Citibank customers deserve
better than to be nickeled and dimed. So,
while other banks continue to add fees,
Citibank continues to eliminate them.
First, we eliminated the fees to use our
ATMs and our PC banking service. Now,
we're the only bank around to dare to do
away with many standard, age-old
service fees.
New: -No charge for bounced checks
that you deposited
-Free stop payment orders
-Free notaries
-Free bond coupon redemption
-Free consular and
reference letters
-Free Safety Check'm
overdraft protection
With just $2,000 in a Citibank checking
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-Free non-Citibank
ATM transactions
-Free official and certified checks
And of course, you still get:
-Free CitibankATM usage
-Free 24-hr. PC banking
-Free 24-hr. phone banking
-Free bill payment by phone,
PC orATM
-Free 90-day account history by
phone, PC or ATM
So, if your bank's idea of a valued
relationship is charging you lots of fees,
switch to Citibank. You'll find when it
comes to giving you more value for your
money, The Citi Never Sleeps.
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THE CITI NEYER SLEEPS
C 1996 Citibank. NA; eitibank FS.B. FDIC Insured. Fee elimination applies to Citibank customers in NY MetrO area and CT.
NOVEMBER 1996
Join a Few Close Friends
for City Limits'
20th Anniversary
Birthday Bash!
at
The Sky Club
6 to 9 pm
November 14
A partlallist of supporters-
Mimi Abramovitz, Sandra Abramson,
Angelita Anderson, Mike Arsham, Howam Banker,
Steve Banks, Eddie Bautista, Bertram M. Beck.
Berman, Gale A. Brewer. Michael Bucci,
Agnes J, Bundy, Rick Cherry, Beverly Cheuvront.
Gregory Cohen, Harriet Cohen, George C. Dellapa,
Harry DeRienzo, Paul de Simone, Jim Drake,
Steve Fahrer. Steven Flax, William R. Frey,
Don Friedman, Norm Fruchter. Kathy Goldman,
Richar'1l Green, Sarah Greenblatt, Jill Hamberg,
0, Lewis Harris, Gary Hattem, Stanley Hill,
Samuel J. Himmeisten, Maria Hinojosa,
Michael J.Hirschhorn, Marc Jahr. Gene Bryan
Johnson, David R. Jones, Francine Justa,
Tom Kamber. Ingrid Kaminski, Lisa Kaplan,
William Kornblum, Jonathan Kozol, Krueger,
Carol Lamberg, Brad Lander. Michael D. Lappin,
WiWredo Larancuent, James Ledbetter.
Barbara Lenniger, Errol Louis, Barbara Lowry,
Barry Mallin, Peter Marcuse, Menlo Marks,
George McDonald, Mclaughlin,
Marina Metalios, Felice Michetti, Akiko Mitsui,
Marjorie Moore, Gail Nayowith, Alice Paul,
Carol J. Parry, Anne PasmaniGk, Penelope Pi-Sunyer.
Rob Polner, Rebecca Reich, Andrew Reicher.
Tom Robbins, Harvey Robins, Phyllis Rosenblum,
Steven S, Ross, Marie Runyon, Susan Saegert,
Julie Sandorf. Leah Schneider, Ron ShifTman,
E.R, Shipp, Micah Sifry, Jay Small, Carol A. Strickland,
Brian SuUivan, Janet Thompson, Michael Tomasky,
Doug Turetsky, April Tyler. Nancy Wackstein,
David Welsh, Sherece West. Pete Williams,
Michelle Yanche, Nancy J, Ylvisaker, Michael Zisser.
Tickets to the dinner gala are
$75 [or indivtduals or
$125 (or corporations.
Make your reservations today!
Call Kim auef at (212) 925-9820
[or more information.

PIPELINE ~
,
:M
The 6
1
/4 Cent Solution
A levy on stock transactions could net New York $4 billion a year and pull the city out
of its perpetual budget doldrums. So why is it such a long shot? By James Bradley
F
or years, Mayor Giuliani has
contended that the only way to
close the city's budget deficit is
to cut services. But a lot of peo-
ple outside the administration
maintain that a boost in revenues clearly is
needed to address the structural imbalance
in the city's budget.
So far, devising a politically feasible
plan to raise revenues without antagoniz-
ing wage-earners, small businesses or
property owners-creating a popular
tax-has proven to be a futile quest. But
now a coalition of labor leaders, grassroots
organizers, public officials and academics
says it has the answer: A stock transfer tax,
which would be levied a few pennies at a
time on each Wall Street stock trade.
Not that it's a new idea. The tax has
actually been on the books for some 30
years, but due to a deal hashed out
between the city and securities firms in the
mid-1970s, only a token amount has been
collected. The result has been a huge rev-
enue loss for the city: It's estimated that
the stock transfer tax could be generating
anywhere from $3.6 to $4.1 billion a year,
enough to wipe out the current deficit and
still have enough left over to invest in
meeting vital social and economic needs.
"If there remains a structural problem
with the budget next year, we're going to
be forced to look at the revenue side, and
this may be one of the things you could get
people behind," says Ed Ott, political
director of Local 1180 of the
Communications Workers of America,
who has been pushing the plan along with
Brooklyn Councilman and Democratic
mayoral hopeful Sal Albanese.
Earlier in the year, Albanese assembled
a group of academics, led by Bill DiFazio
of St. John's University and Stanley
Aronowitz of CUNY, to explore what kind
of revenue the stock transfer tax could
generate. Armed with research and a series
of proposals on how the tax could be
implemented, Albanese and others are try-
ing to put together the same kind of grass-
roots coalition that helped pass the city law
establishing a living wage for pri vate-sec-
tor workers on some city contracts.
"We're trying to get people to take this
seriously," says Bill Difazio. "This city
has to be rebuilt.... Schools, parks, and
housing. We must create a political climate
that forces Wall Street to pay their fair
share."
But any such plan is likely to incur the
full opposition of Wall Street and the polit-
ical institutions swayed by high-powered
corporate lobbying. And some fiscal
experts say the plan will only hurt New
York's long-term economic future and add
to the city's structural deficit.
"It's hard to imagine that this economy
can bear the weight of an additional $4 bil-
lion in taxes," says Dean Mead of the
watchdog Citizens Budget Commission. "I
question relying on as volatile a base as the
securities industry for funding. The city's
already struggling over a very heavy tax
burden."
Hand" Right Back
The stock transfer tax is basically a
sales tax on Wall Street. Any stock trans-
action involving the New York Stock
Exchange, American Stock Exchange or
NASDAQ is subject to the tax, which
ranges from as little as 1.5 cents for each
share of inexpensive stock to 6.25 cents a
share for more valuable issues. The levy
would likely be capped at a maximum of
around $400-per-transaction-even if a
transaction involves millions of dollars
worth of shares.
Creating this new system would be
easy, because the tax is technically already
in effect. In an incredibly illogical system
that would have made Rube Goldberg gig-
gle, the money is currently tallied,
assessed, collected-then handed right
back to the brokers who paid it.
"Usually, the investors get it back the
same day," explains Frank Mauro, execu-
tive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute,
an Albany-based think tank. "The broker
fills out a return, and the state wires the
money right back." Mauro says that the
state must momentarily take possession of
the tax to fulfill the arcane requirements of
its bond agreement with the Municipal
CITY LIMITS
Assistance Corporation.
Under the Albanese plan, the rebate
would end, although exemptions would be
created for some stock issues. In order to
discourage speculation, supporters are also
considering tying the tax to trading vol-
ume: the lower the trading volume, the
lower the tax. A side benefit of the plan
would be to lessen the frenzied volatility
that has periodically gripped the market
since the 1989 crash. Alan Blinder, the for-
mer vice chair of the Federal Reserve
Board told the Senate Banking Committee
in 1994 that "a small tax that inhibited
short-term trading, but had negligible
effects on long-term returns, would
help .... [in) diminishing market volatility."
But in order to get the tax, the proposal
will have to be approved by the state legis-
lature, which has shown no inclination to
hike any taxes in recent years. Even if the
plan makes it through the Democratic-con-
trolled Assembly (and the measure has yet
to attract a sponsor there) its chances of
being approved by the GOP-controlled
state Senate or anti-tax Republican
Governor George Pataki seem extraordi-
narily slim.
The battle has been fought before. On
several occasions, going as far back as
1933, mayors have advocated stock trans-
fer taxes, only to back down when the
New York Stock Exchange threatened to
leave the city. But it wasn't until 1966 that
the Lindsay administration called Wall
Street's bluff and succeeded in convincing
state legislators that the city needed a stock
transfer tax.
None of the exchanges made their
promised exit, but in 1977, they were able
to convince Governor Hugh Carey, with
Mayor Abe Beame's support, to sign a law
phasi ng out the tax and initiating the point-
less pay-and-refund system that exists
today.
As part of the deal, Wall Street agreed to
allow the city to collect $116 million in
stock transfer taxes. At the time, that was
not an insignificant amount. But the $116
million annual figure has remained constant
while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has
skyrocketed, rising from II ()() points just 12
years ago to nearly 6000 today.
The result? A $3.9 billion tax-exemp-
tion windfall for brokers and stockholders.
So far, labor unions and grassroots
groups like the Industrial Areas
Foundation have expressed interest in
building support for the stock transfer tax.
NOVEMBER 1996
But the issue has not been able to generate
great enthusiasm. "It's hard to get people
emotional about [the tax)," says Sal
Albanese. "The issue is a little esoteric;
there's no real catalyst."
Mustering Support
The coalition-building and public
information campaign required to make
the idea fly will be slow and supporters of
the tax say they aren't planning to rush it
onto Albany's agenda until they've mus-
tered the support they need. But Albanese
believes that if the city's long-term budget
woes persist-and almost every major fis-
cal monitor believes they will-interest in
the idea will grow.
''This offers a vehicle for alleviating
some of the pressure that's being applied to
small businesses and average New
Yorkers," he says. Albanese also thinks that
linking the implementation of the stock
transfer tax with the elimination of unpopu-
lar levies, like the unincorporated business
tax and the clothing sales tax, will help.
Nonetheless, some progressive ana-
lysts suggest Albanese and the IAF would
be better off focusing their efforts on
other ways of raising revenue-such as
putting tolls on bridges, which has more
mainstream support, at least among the
majority of New Yorkers who don't own
cars. "The politics of the stock transfer
tax is so overwhelmingly bad," says
Glenn Pasanen of City Project, a budget
watchdog group. "Like so many attempts
to tap the corporate revenue base, the
claim from the corporate community is, it
can't afford it, and if pushed it will move
out of the city."
Albanese, however, hopes to avoid the
perception that he's simply a populist
politician proposing to soak the rich. The
stock transfer tax is a matter of fairness, he
says, and smart economics.
"We have to say to Wall Street, 'This
is the premier city in the world, you have
a stake in the future viability of this
city, '" he says. "This is just giving a little
bit back.".
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PIPEliNE ~
Highbridge
training program
graduate Cynthia
Rios handles
boxes on the job
at UPS.
10M
,
Zone Offense
Quick off the mark, the Highbridge Community Life Center
joins forces with a corporate giant to build Empowerment
Zone jobs. By Dylan Foley and Robin Epstein
E
ight months ago, wben George
Medina moved back home to the
Bronx after living in Puerto Rico
for 25 years, be found work as a
church bandy man. Medina
wanted his wife and three kids to join him in
Higbbridge, but be couldn't afford it.
Now be's finished a training course and
started a part-time job with United Parcel
Service that pays $9 an bour, with benefits,
room for advancement and union member-
ship. "With UPS, I'll be a Teamster," said
Medina, a soft-spoken 39-year-old who was
a cabinetmaker in Puerto Rico. He plans to
bring his family to New York soon.
Tbe organization in charge of the
Bronx Empowerment Zone, the Bronx
Overall Economic Development
Corporation (BOEDC), has yet to issue a
call for proposals for zone-based projects
from businesses and community groups,
let alone disburse any funds. When it
comes to sparking job creation and devel-
opment in the zone, a 700-acre sliver that
wraps around the southern lip of the bor-
ough from Highbridge to Hunts Point,
Bronx Overall still bas a ways to go.
But that isn't stopping at least one
neighborhood nonprofit from swinging
into action. The Highbridge Community
Life Center (HCLC), a multifaceted
social service agency, decided its low-
income constituents didn't have to pin
their hopes of landing a decent job on
BOEDC ironing out its kinks.
Last July, HCLC revved up a job-train-
ing partnership with United Parcel Service,
thereby fulfilling one of the Empowerment
Zone's major goals-helping community
residents get well-paid jobs. There are now
17 Highbridge residents working for UPS
on the 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift. HCLC's train-
ing program psycbed up would-be workers
both mentally and pbysically to unload 600
to 700 packages an hour, some as heavy as
140 pounds, from trucks and containers.
The parcel company will get a tax break
worth $3,000 a year for every person it
hires from zone neighborhoods to work in
its Mott Haven plant. Last month, HCLC
trained another 100 people to take UPS jobs
during the holiday rush.
Brother Ed Phelan, HCLC's
director, says he's committed to
helping these new employees
move into higher-paying, perma-
nent jobs at UPS, ideally driving
the delivery company's brown
trucks for as much as $45,000 a
year. HCLC plans to pay their
union dues and offer them train-
ing in computer literacy and com-
mercial driving.
"This is just the kind of thing
the whole Empowerment Zone
was trying to leverage," says
Noah Temaner, coordinator of
tbe Chicago-based National
Empowerment Zone Action
Research Project.
Forging Links
Phelan says Empowerment Zone offi-
cials could play an important role in forg-
ing links between businesses and commu-
nity-based organizations. "You'd think
they would be fomenting partnerships," he
says, "getting out on the pavement, going
to every company located in the zone and
talking to management."
Asked if BOEDC was doing anything
to stimulate programs similar to the one
begun by Highbridge, Doris Quinones, the
agency's marketing director, made it clear
she thought the UPS training program was
still on the drawing board and that HCLC
would be requesting funds from her
agency down the road. "It's premature for
us to comment on it," she added, revealing
she bad no idea HCLC's first graduating
class was already bard at work.
Learning the program was up and run-
ning, she said, "That's fabulous."
Bronx Overall is concentrating on get-
ting firms to move into the zone and helping
existing companies expand, according to
Quinones. By next summer, the zone will
have welcomed six new firms and eased the
way for four to grow, she says. Among the
companies slated to invest a total of $5.2
million in the area are a commercial laundry
and several food processors.
At press time, Bronx Empowerment
Zone officials said they would soon issue
their long-delayed first call for proposals
for job-training, education, day care and
microenterprise programs.
"I don't have an exact date," said
Quinones.
Remarks Phelan: "We' re looking for-
ward to the day."
$51 Million
New York won designation as one of
the country's six urban Empowerment
Zones in December 1994. Last spring, the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD), Governor George
Pataki and Mayor Rudy Giuliani finally
agreed that the large Upper Manhattan
zone-Harlem, Inwood and Washington
Heigbts-will get $250 million in federal ,
state and city assistance between now and
2004. Tbe Bronx zone will get $51 million.
The Upper Manhattan Empowerment
Zone Development Corporation (UMEZOC),
headed by Deborah Wright, former com-
missioner of the city's housing department,
is much closer to doling out funds. Last
month, its board approved 10 proposals for
development and training projects for
whicb it recommended $1 million in grants
and $13 million in loans. The proposals
were forwarded to the New York City
Empowerment Zone Board, wbich holds
the ultimate purse strings. Including politi-
cal bigs like Rep. Charles Rangel, Rep.
Jose Serrano and Deputy Mayor Fran
Reiter, the board was scheduled to meet
October 30.
Phelan initially approached UPS to
request a $100,000 grant (which it won in
October) to renovate a church building and
turn it into an adult education and job-training
center. One day, while discussing the grant,
Bill Weyrauch, a UPS personnel director, told
CITYUMITS
Phelan UPS was having trouble with entry-
level employees at its Mott Haven facility-
they couldn't hack the physical stress, and
didn't last long on the job. From there, says
Phelan, it wasn't hard to convince Weyrauch
to give HCLC a $17,000 grant to train the
first batch of workers, especially once he
heard that UPS would get a tax break when it
hired the graduates. Companies located in the
zone can file retroactive claims for tax credits
on wages paid to zone residents back to .
January, 1995. The tax break applies to long-
time employees as well as new hires.
Since the training program began, some
participants have come from neighborhoods
outside the zone. And UPS is placing them
at plants all over the region. "This is much
bigger than 'zoneites' working for compa-
nies in the zone," Phelan explains. "UPS is
in this to get good workers and if they can
get a tax break in addition, they'll accept it."
The people Phelan fIrst talked to at
UPS didn't know about the Empowerment
Zone tax incentive, he says.
Corporations are often unaware of tax
incentives, especially new ones, says
Richard Shaffer, Director of the
Empowerment Zone Monitoring and
Assistance Project based at Columbia
University. "There has to be an effort to
market them," he says.
Manhattan zone officials have identi-
fIed 4,000 businesses in Upper Manhattan,
2,000 of which are in the zone, and sent
letters to them all, says Virginia Montague,
UMEZDC spokesperson. They have also
set up a subsidiary, the Business Risk and
Investment Service Center, a one-stop
shop for businesses seeking fInancing and
information about the zone, including
guidance on the tax breaks.
Asked to explain how the Bronx zone
does outreach, Quinones replied, "That is
an ongoing process," and declined to offer
specifics.
Upward Mobility
Cynthia Rios, a 24-year-old single
mother, began her job at UPS in September.
She says she enrolled in HCLC's training
program because her job as a home care
aide didn't provide insurance. She also
hopes to take advantage of UPS' $2,000
tuition reimbursement program while she
studies business administration at Mercy
College in Manhattan.
'The job is great," adds Rios. "It is very
physical and I've got a lot to memorize, but
the people are very helpful. I know I can
NOVEMBER 1996
move up in this company, maybe into cus-
tomer service or to be a driver."
and upward mobility to rise above and stay
off public assistance."
"The point of the Empowerment
Zone." says Phelan, "is to get people the
kind of jobs that have the money, dignity
Dylan Foley is a Brooklyn-basedfreelance
writer.
Nevv York Lavvyers
for the Public Interest
provides free legal referrals for community based and non-profit groups
seeking pro-bono representation. Projects include corporate, tax and real
estate work, zoning advice, housing and employment discrimination,
environmental justice, disability and civil rights.
For further information,
call NYLPI at (212) 727-2270.
There is no charge for NYLPI's services.
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NOVEMBER 1996
once a time when homeless ness was not the only "housing" issue in the
consciousness. Back then, in the 1 970s, a lot of New Yorkers cared about their
of thousands of neighbors who were easy prey for the land speculators and
slumlords running marginally habitable, tumble-down houses and tene-
This outraged people and motivated them to fight back. And in New York
a community housing movement was born.
__ tlIuaJlY, this scrappy crew turned pro and rebuilt large parts of the city. Our
magazine was born in the spirit of that movement. On the following pages, in
excerpts of articles from years past, you will find a taste of the investigative spirit
and uncompromising devotion that made City Limits an important landmark on New
York's map. Times have changed a bit; cynicism about the inevitability of poverty is
more deeply embedded in American culture than at any time in decades. But that ha -
n't stopped us, or the people we write about. Our credo for those striving to build a
better city? Lend them a voice, give them a hand ... and telllheir story.
...
--
THE FIRST YEARS
Abandonment and Planned Shrinkage
C
ity Limits was the child of the late Bob Schur, direc-
tor of the Association of Neighborhood Housing
Developers (ANHD) and a refugee from the city's
housing department. In 1975, he'd been fIred by the
department's new commissioner, the notorious
Roger Starr, guru of planned shrinkage-the theory that the city
would be fIscally better off if it encouraged the abandonment of
low-income neighborhoods like
the South Bronx by cutting
police and fIre services, elimi-
nating code enforcement and so
on. The city pursued "planned
shrinkage" with vigor in the
mid-1970s, and the devastating
results are world-famous to this
day. Starr moved on to join the
editorial board of The New York
Times and ultimately to the
Manhattan Institute. But his
dark vision was captured forev-
er in the pages of City Limits,
the voice of the neighborhood
housing movement. In an early
issue, Schur quoted his former
boss remarking that giving gov-
ernment funds to community
groups was "like giving hand
grenades to the PLO."
But the late 1970s were a
time of hope and struggle, and
scores of grassroots tenant and
community groups were born.
Amid the abandonment, the
seeds of reconstruction were
sown.
DECEMBER 1976
149 Leads the Way
By Jim Harris
T
he tenants at 149 South 4th Street on the Southside of
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, have made history. They recently
voted unanimously to take over management of their build-
ing from the city and buy it, after a trial period, for $200 a unit.
They are the first Los Sures tenants in the Community
Management Program to elect to buy their building.
The 2S-unit tenement was built shortly after the turn of the
century. By 1972 it contained foul, leaking bathrooms, buckled
apartment doors, falling plaster, corroded water pipes and
antique appliances. Its tenants joined with the leaders of the
newborn Los Sures in believing they could restore the building
while the tenants continued to live there, and at a moderate cost.
They were right.
Repairs were made over three years. They not only made it
possible to keep the building fully tenanted; they brought the
old building back to the point where the tenants are willing to
own it. Los Sures has estimated the net cost to the city of this
project (excluding the boiler) will be approximately $88,500
since March 1972. This is $3,500 per unit.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 1977
Mayor Intends to Steal $50 Million
to Balance Expense Budget
By Robert Schw'
C
ity Limits has authoritatively learned that Mayor Beame and
his fiscal cronies intend to cut no less than $50 million out
of the city's Third Year Federal Community Development
Block Grant and transfer it to cover expense budget items. A writ-
ten summary of the city's fInancial plan for fIscal year 1977-78, cir-
culated among high officials, shows this transfer to be part of the
means by which the next budget will be "balanced."
SUMMER 1977
Blackout Illuminates Problems
in City Neighborhoods
By BemaI'd Cohen
B
olts of lightening striking power lines plunged New York
City into darkness July 13, but the blackout actually shed
light on some serious problems such as unemployment and
housing in the city's poorer neighborhoods.
Shortly after the massive power failure ended, four groups
began an investigation into why Consolidated Edison's system
failed. But who is looking into why our social and economic sys-
tems fail all the time for some people? What blue-ribbon panel is
seeking answers about the painful living conditions in the neigh-
borhoods that were ravaged by fires and widespread looting? .. .
Life in East Harlem is harder today than it was nearly 12 years
ago when the fITst major blackout occurred. While community
leaders deplored the looting of furniture and clothing stores and
even a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet along 20 blocks of Third
Avenue, they said the instinct to grab was understandable.
"People don't have enough," said Maria Anglada, a job developer and
counselor for Renigades Housing Movement, a community organization
that originated as an East Harlem street gang. "People have no jobs and
they're desperate. The majority of people here are on welfare. They have
so little money that all it took was a conductor to lead the tune."
JANUARY 1978
City-Owned Buildings: The New Issue of 1978
By Philip St. Georges
H
ousing activists around the city are returning from the hol-
iday season to discover a grim new issue in 1978: more
city-owned buildings than ever before. And more city-
owned buildings than imaginable.
Examine these facts: There are currently 6,000 city-owned
properties; by the end of the year the total number of city-owned
properties will be 31,800-34,800. The approximate total number
of dwelling units: 222,600-243,600.
These fIgures are the result of several years of maneuvering
within City Hall and the City Council over passage and imple-
mentation of the new In Rem tax foreclosure law. The "old law"
had enabled the city of New York to foreclose upon any owner of
private property who was three years or more behind in the pay-
ment of real estate taxes. The controversial "new law" changed
this allowable arrearage time period to one year or more ...
The rationale for this change had been that the new law would
enable the city to prosecute delinquent property owners more rapid-
ly, thereby insuring a timely flow of needed tax revenue into a hard-
pressed city treasury. The result appears to have been the opposite-
CITVLlMITS
J
owners are throwing in the towel en masse and walking away from
properties already hard hit by the inflation of oil, insurance and util-
ities co ts and the disinvestment of mortgage and insurance lenders.
predict the money to fuel the program through the cold winter
months may soon run out, with tenants as captive passengers on a
journey to nowhere.
So welcome to the New Year! Whole neighborhoods are col-
lapsing and coming up for auction by the city. Rehabilitation
mortgages and property insurance of any sort are totally unavail-
able from the private market. City programmatic alternatives
seem not to exist. And no one knows quite what to do.
Expensive contractors' repairs to boilers and other essential sys-
tems-repairs the city's own work crews are generall y not
equipped to make-may exhaust, by March, the portion of the
$41.1 million emergency federal funding that was scheduled to
cover maintenance of the city's residential properties until next fall.
JANUARY 1979 FEBRUARY 1979
City's In Rem Progl'am May Be a Wayward Bus
By Susan Baldwin
Charlotte Street Housing Project Lacked
Solid Planning Foundation
By Bel'l18l'd Coilen
'J\big bus with windows broken and tires mi ssing" is the
way a New York City housing official recently described
the city's beleaguered program to manage its tax-fore-
closed, in rem properties. Sources in and out of government now C
harlotte Street was to have been the first housing outpost in the
new settlement of the South Bronx. It was where President Carter's
crash course in urban pathology took place 16 months ago, where

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after PI'IIIdaRt
I t.d lilt'" MIlD from ...,..
Parudaact, late pnsIdaat rI tile c.u ....
nn. ftuIdatIoL 1_1IaUIr from the
........ 1Iad cuglltllJ.,. -.....-
willie I ...... tIIrauIJb tile IIIcaInIIIg .all
at tile AI ... dast. It daICI'Ibad a
8QIiIr prqiact .. fait 11tII Stnat. tile
repart fIIcIIat8d ..
I .. to -1IeJar. lie would
buy IIJ Idea ar ........ l1li. Blattar.
...,.. uid lie cauIdII't aftbrd my adItIIrIII
tIIaIdJ bit paiItId _ to 29 fait 22Id
Street, .... 11atrodIcad IIIJI8It hoobd a
job and 100II bagIII opanIag my ..,. to the
IIIcndIbIe "-llalp IIIIuIIIg ......... Uon
........ New Yurt Cit;y. AItIIoIgII __
ani ... ar CIf.y lJIRID preceded lIlY
arrIvII, I .... lint fll-tIIna IIIIIDr.
Than .. pIaItJ to write aIIout, lid
wltllllllIx IIIGIItbs I coniIced tile
AIIocIatIoI tIIat we II8IIdad uotIIer
repartIr. ... BaIdwII CIIII 01 board In
......, 1878. Haviag uatIJIr wrIUIIg
IIIIId 01 stair let _ dMtIlIIOI'8 tiIIe to
NOVEMBER 1996
. By Bernard Cohen
we toak _ CGIIJ'" ....... to a Qpaset-
tar down tile street. It .. laid out in the
office by .. deIIgw, IJIuis fuIaonI. Once
It .. priIbItI, s.aa and I would paste an
the IIIIiIIIg IIIbeB and ..... tile capias by
zip CIlIa. Tllallwe'd .... tile ... to tile
bIck fI tile post office 01 34tII Street,
.... WlIavariaIQ would lie told we had
vIeIaIId .... procadn 01' anotIIar.
DuriIg ..., tIne)Wl, CII LiInIt6 cov-
ared tile IIIOIt Importaat
IIouIII& 1aB1I ... Yurt Cit;y. We wruta
about 8III8I'IlIIg hIIIIiIa lid cov-
ared tile debate CMI' auction salas and
damaItIoa. We told paapIa bow to ..
IIIOIIIJ tIIrau;I ftIaI co-ops lid IIDw to
appIyllr waatherizatIon ....... WlIntar-
viewed IIauIIIIg ........ 1Id_
offIciaIL AId Wl1IIIl1ato IIIIIdIIg altar
buIIdiIg In tIIrougIIDal tile
cIQ to tal tile IIDriaI fI ..... orpizIIg
to .. _ .....
It was a dasperata tIa but aIIO a tina
ar .. 8I8I1J aad hope. In I'8IIJOII8 to
I'MtIr viIit8d tIIare
to find out wily had bappanad. We
aIIO IooUd Inward at our own problems,
with a two-part serial an the growl"
pains afIktIng COIIIIIIUIIIt;y housing organi-
zations. It .. a sign Ii our own maturity
II a IIIIMIIBIt tIIat we could taU such a
puIIIc look at how "Iuccass" wu
IIurt.IIIg ..
I .. ...,. In awe flthe
H ." IC8, CUIII'IIJ8, and par-
SIMII'IIC8 fI the people work-
- to ..... the
IIoodL 10 .. the role ar
CIf.y UmII8 .. aJwa,ys to
IUIJIIIII1 their IB'OIc
aIIJrtL lam vary
pruudflwllatwe
1aIIIII1.1M! d In tIIOIe
JIII'I and 8IpIIciaIy
I'ItiIIad to _bow
IIIIICII baItar C/tJ
I.iInb bacaIIa In
the dacadaB tIIat
iIIIMad.
he raised new hopes that the South would rise again.
The plan called for construction by the New York City
housing Authority of 732 units of two- and three-story coopera-
tive apartments on what is now 18 sloping acres of overgrown
lots, abandoned buildings and very few people.
By February 8, when the Board of Estimate voted no on
NYCHA's plan, the project was being defined and analyzed by
people with such widely differing perceptions, motives and crite-
ria that it is no wonder it perished.
There is but a single occupied building in the 10 blocks that
make up a triangle-shaped site for the proposed housing. The
view is dominated by abandoned structures and large tracts of
empty space where the land was cleared years ago for schools
that were never built. Hardly anyone traverses the area on foot or
by car. Children living on the fringes say they cannot get friends
from other neighborhoods to come visit them.
Many of the stores that lined the streets two years ago are
East Harlem residents refuse to allow their community to become
hot property for speculators. as the Upper East Side luxwy housillg market moves 1I0rth
96th Street. Protesters feared middle-income housing proposed by the New York City
Partllership was the leadillg edge of gelltrificatioll.
'M
Photo David
boarded up. The only medium-sized supermarket, Food Pageant,
closed many months ago .... Residents take buses, drive cars or
walk a hefty distance for clothes, food, appliances, medicine and
other necessities.
Police presence has also declined. The 42nd Precinct has been
cut by 21 percent (26 officers) in the past year as a result, accord-
ing to the police, of redrawn precinct boundaries.
Many community residents who were not thrilled with the
site, the cost and the fact that the Housing Authority would build
it, still supported the housing development. They tended to see it
as merely the first turn of the federal aid faucet, more important
for what it would lead to than for what it would be.
City Planning Commission Chairman Robert Wagner Jr. may
have made the most prescient observation of the whole agony over
Charlotte Street when he said that the South Bronx "could become
New York City's Vietnam" by claiming "to do something we cannot
do and serving least well the very people we claim to be helping."
JANUARY 1980
Saving Lower East Side Buildings as
"Age of Abandonment" Nears End
By Bernard Cohen
T
he tenants, 15 to 20 of them, were elated as they left
Housing Court on December 20. Their grievances had
been heard and in their hands was a court order requiring
the landlord to restore heat and hot water and start on the repairs
that would bring their two buildings up to habitable condition.
Or so they thought. Three weeks later they suddenly found
themselves confronting an entirely new owner saying he should
not be blamed for the old problems and demanding his rent.
The mysteries of the legal process and the swift transfers of
property that make moving targets out of owners are familiar
problems for tenants. Now a new element has crept in. There is a
changing make-up at 506-08 East 12th Street that reflects a tran-
sition spreading to many areas of the predominantly Hispanic
Lower East Side. Priced out of neighborhoods they would prefer
to be living in, young, mostly white artists and professionals are
moving into this century-old stronghold of deteriorated tene-
ments and poverty.
"Abandonment has almost finished in this neighborhood,"
says Brent Sharman, an organizer with Adopt-A-Building, a
community organization. "Landlords are holding onto their
buildings now because they smell money. Gentrification is very
well under way here." Serious displacement may literally be
around the corner.
THE EARLY ' 80s:
Revival, Gentrification ... and Reagan
A
s New York began to pull itself back together, the
nation leapt to the right. Commencing a 16-year
disinvestment in public housing subsidies that
President Clinton continues to pursue with vigor
today, the Reagan administration dealt a blow to
the young neighborhood housing groups. Mayor Ed Koch, how-
ever, understood the dual value of building a political base in
the neighborhoods and of co-opting potential grassroots opposi-
tion to his pro-development policies-and with his support, by
the mid-I 980s the housing "movement" had become a very
large nonprofit housing management industry.
City Limits, meanwhile, solidified its reputation as the inde-
pendent watchdog of government, pri vate real estate interests,
NIMBY reactionaries frightened by the prospect of poor people
living next door-and of the nonprofit sector housing groups
themselves, some of which were less than scrupulous in living
up to their mission of preserving low-income housing.
In retrospect, much of this material is relevant and timely today,
particularly Bob Schur's call for a return to community organizing
by the housing groups at a time of crushing government cutbacks.
JANUARY 1981
A Roar in Park Slope
By Tom Robbins
S
hortly before Thanksgiving Day, thousands of residents of
the Park Slope section of Brooklyn received an open letter
under their doors or stuffed in their mail boxes. The subject
of the pre-holiday missive was subsidized low-income housing,
and, according to the letter's authors, the Park Slope community
CITY LIMITS
stands in danger of being deluged with millions of federal dollars
aimed at bringing low income families to the area. "Concentrated
subsidized housing does destroy, and has destroyed neighbor-
hoods," warned the letter from the Park Slope Improvement
Committee, which has devoted most of its energies since its
inception to combating the plans of a community development
organization, the Fifth Avenue Committee.
The letter states, "As you know we are already surfeited with
subsidized housing development in our areas. The tremendous
impact of compacted subsidized housing, just in terms of crime
(original emphasis), affects us all. Our area has more than its share
of these projects" ....
"We think that subsidies as a whole ought to be directed at
neighborhoods where the private market won't come in, not to
places where it is already active," said David Brennan, whose sig-
nature came at the bottom of the open letter.
The private market has been more than merely active in the
Park Slope area in recent years. Large numbers of brownstones
and large limestone apartment houses have either been purchased
by individual homeowners or converted to cooperative housing by
owners. Price tags of $200,000 and up for a brownstone, or in
excess of $75,000 for a co-op, are not uncommon. The resulting
effect on the low and moderate income members of the commu-
nity has been one of rapid and almost universal displacement.
DECEMBER 1981
Tales of Crown Heights:
The Fruits of Harassment
By Tom Robbins
T
hree years ago, a tempest of controversy raged across the
Brooklyn community of Crown Heights. A volatile area to
start with, the neighborhood has for several years been the
scene of an ongoing tussle over turf and power between a large
black and Hispanic population and an expanding community of
Hasidic Jews.
The storm thundered into the open with a wave of rent strikes
in buildings tenanted mostly by blacks and Hispanics and owned
by a prominent Hasidic community leader. And, as television
cameras rolled on scenes of occupied apartments where sledge-
hammers had broken through floors and walls in the name of ren-
ovation, tenants told their stories of harassment.
Then, gusting from another direction, the storm grew when
City Council President Carol Bellamy released a report detailing
major alleged abuses and fiscal irregularities by a Hasidic anti-
poverty and housing organization.
At the center of the storm was Rabbi David Fischer, head of a
host of pri vate realty and management corporations, and director
of Chevra Machazikei Hashcunah, the Lubavitcher Hasidic com-
munity's major housing and social service agency. The rent strik-
ers and their supporters minced no words naming Rabbi Fischer
as the chief culprit in their troubles. Charging that he was bent on
driving them from their homes, they challenged the city to bring
him to account. Some 250 strong, they marched on the Kingston
Avenue building that doubles as Fischer's private management
office and Chevra's headquarters and then on to Fischer's
Montgomery Street home.
At its zenith, the rent strike included a dozen Fischer-owned or
managed buildings, all of which told a tale of strikingly uniform
dimensions: large, four or five-story comer walk-ups, located in
the midst or at the fringe of the Lubavitcher community, all ten-
anted by families, most of them Hispanic or black (one building in
NOVEMBER 1996
the strike, 658 Montgomery Street, housed mostly older, non-
Hasidic Jews); all suffered a sudden decrease, and then a cessation
of essential services upon purchase by a new owner who invariably
emerged as Rabbi Fischer under one corporate guise or another.
The scenario was always followed by offers-and sometimes
threats-to move. Then, as the various buildings shared their tales
with each other, an important link in the stories appeared: all of the
buildings had been accepted for some form of government-subsi-
dized renovation.
But while tenants and others waited for the official response to
their charges and to the Bellamy report, the storm gradually sub-
sided. Soon, the FBI, the Department of Labor and the city's own
investigation department were
scrutinizing the finances and
practices of Chevra. These new
probes, however, turned out to
be only more thunder and light-
ening, signifying no change or
relief for the tenants. In their
wake, the high waters of the
Crown Heights tempest left
power and funds in the same
hands, with only a couple of
name and titles rearranged.
To Rabbi Yisroel
Rosenfeld, executive director
of the Crown Heights Jewish
Community Council, the
charges against Rabbi Fischer
have never been anything more
than "a smokescreen" for polit-
ical interests aligned against
the Hasidic Lubavitcher com-
munity. "If [the allegations]
were true, do you think he'd be
out walking the streets?" asked
Rosenfeld. "Wouldn't he have
been indicted?"
Both 1577 Carroll Street
and 440 Brooklyn Avenue were e
fully occupied when Fischer
sought federal Section 8 funds
to rehabilitate them in 1977.
And, like 836 Montgomery and
other buildings, tenants said
that conditions began to go rapidly down
hill after Fischer took over. But when the
rent-controlled tenants of the two buildings
brought their charges of harassment before
The Creative CommLlnity/or Non- Violence set
LIp "Reaganville", a lelll camp and sJmbolic
graveyard in Washington's w/arelle Park.
Photo by AI Sacco
a departmental hearing officer at the city's rent control board, the
charges caused a flag to go up at the buildings department, block-
ing the renovation permit Fischer sought.
Under city law, the "flag" meant no construction could pro-
ceed until the harassment charges were either dropped or proven.
The complaints appeared to be the kiss of death for the $4.3 mil-
lion project for which, according to the sponsor, Chevra, almost
all the financing was in place.
But in tead of collapsing, the rehab was rescued by some time-
ly maneuvering. Marvin Schick, a former administrative assistant
under Mayor John Lindsay and an influential voice in Brooklyn and
City Hall, was brought in to piece together a rescue plan. Pain-
stakingly, a deal was arranged so the rehabilitation would go forth.
-
--
Under the terms of the agreement, signed by
Housing Commissioner Anthony Gliedman and Rabbi
Fischer in December, 1980, Fischer and Chevra would bow out of
the rehab, turning sponsorship of the job over to the Crown
Heights Jewish Community Council. Fischer, the deal specified,
would have nothing more to do with the project. The estimated
profit on the project to the sponsor was approximately half a mil-
lion dollars.
Yet not one of the major aspects of the agreement has been car-
ried out. In the most glaring noncompliance with the agreement,
Rabbi Fischer has continued to handle all the processing of the
project with HUD and is openly serving as manager for the pro-
ject through Shipur Mashchunna, of which he is. the principal,
despite specific language in his agreement with HPD forbidding
him to do so ....
Sensa Alomar and Eleas Rodriguez steal a moment of intimacy at the
Roberto Clemente barracks shelter for homeless families in the Brollx.
Photo by George Cohen
As things settled down again after the Bellamy report, Chevra's
role as the housing developer for the Lubavitcher community was
quietly passed to the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council,
creating the transparent fiction that the Council was itself a hous-
ing developer. It's a charade that Rabbi Rosenfeld himself readily
admits. Although Fischer is neither board member nor staff to the
Council, he remains its housing packager. As the organization told
Con Edison recently after the utility's public affairs officer visited
the community, "Regarding special housing programs for Crown
Heights, please have your housing specialist contact Rabbi David
Fischer, who heads up our housing corporation."
JANUARY 1982
Back to Basics: Organizing in the Age of Austerity
By Robert Schur
T
he prognosis for neighborhood housing groups in the era
of Reagan austerity is poor indeed-if we look at the situ-
ation purely in terms of dollars for neighborhood organi-
zation support and for housing development projects. The only
thing certain about housing and community development budgets
is that next year and thereafter smaller amounts of money will be
available to cover a broader range of activities.
While state and city officials decry federal cuts, it is clear they
are not going to fill the gaps, especially not in housing programs.
To the extent that state and local governments do try to make up
for lessened federal aid, they are likely to reduce what they now
provide for housing in order to replace some of their lost rev-
enues for welfare, health, food stamps, education and programs
for the elderly.
In this state of affairs, what are neighborhood housing groups
to do?
We suggest that, realistically, there are two alternatives, and
that one of them can lead only to disaster for the housing move-
ment. You can, of course, struggle all the harder to preserve your
piece of the rapidly shrinking pie. Or, you can reassess your situ-
ation and begin doing what has to be done to carryon the strug-
gle for decent and affordable shelter for all people.
Recall that even in the "best of times" we never had a nation-
al, state or local government policy which could resolve the hous-
ing crisis. All we got in the good old days was a few more dollars
and a handful of jobs, for which we were expected (a) to "coop-
erate" with the public policy of the moment and (b) keep our
neighborhoods cool and free from embarrassing confrontations.
And recall, too, how easy it was. Many of us were easy prey
to the co-optation tactics of government officialdom. Like gener-
ations of elected officials from ghetto and minority communities,
the most valid criticism which could be made of us was how
cheaply we were bought... .
Reagan and Koch have clearly written off the inner cities,
the ghettoes and the minorities. Whatever may be given out to
the neighborhoods this time will be even more tokenism than
before and is sure to have tighter strings attached.
Where else can we go for soon-to-dry-up funding? The private
foundations and corporations? Haven't they already made it clear
that they are not going to replace the government trough? And to
the extent that they are still in the neighborhood business at all,
aren't they tightening the screws to make us the opposite of what
we thought we were in business for? Witness the Jolly Green
Giant of them all-the good old Ford Foundation-announcing
its Local Initiatives Support Corporation (USC) which gets
directly into bed with the largest and most reactionary business
corporations in the nation and tells neighborhood groups that if
you want any help, turn yourselves into mini-entrepreneurs capa-
ble of making profits off the local folk you are supposed to serve.
It's time to go back to basics. We must reverse the prevailing per-
ception that neighborhoods of poor and moderate income people
don't count. First, we have to understand what the aims and purpos-
es of this government of ours really are. Put very bluntly, govern-
ment provides benefits to the poor, minorities and disadvantaged,
not because they love them, but because they fear them so. The
extent of government provisions for these elements of society is
directly correlated with the degree to which they generate such fear.
To survive, and to achieve what they were created to do, neigh-
borhood housing groups must become confrontational. To do so
effectively, these groups must, first, organize their communities.
A decade ago, every local housing group was first, last and
always, engaged in organizing. There wasn't much else one could
do then. There weren't any Community Development Block
Grants, nor any Neighborhood Preservation or Community
Consultant contracts; no CETA workers and no NSA designations,
UDAGs or Section 8s to scramble for. And, of course, communi-
CITY LIMITS
"
ty management, Tenant Interim Lease and the rest of the alterna-
tive management programs hadn' t yet been invented.
better at them than we were before. Rent strikes and building
takeovers against landlords who don't make repairs or provide
services-including the city and the Housing Authority and HUD,
wherever they fail to give tenants what they are entitled to.
Demonstrations-picketing, raffles, mass meetings-against
landlords, irresponsible banks, public agencies and officials. Who
can recall the last time a group of housing activists took over a
commissioner's office, or picketed his home or broke up a staid
meeting of an establishment conclave? What happened to the
heady excitement, the enthusiasm, the rallying of hundreds and
even thousands to a protest of just a few years ago?
Today, alas, many of the organizations which were once the
best and most successful organizers no longer do much of that.
Some of them have probably forgotten how. Other, newer, groups
never learned-all it took them to get started was a friendly elect-
ed official or two and a talented proposal writer to make them into
instant neighborhood developers.
We have to go back to communicating with the residents of our
neighborhoods. We have to tell them the truth about why they
can't find decent housing at prices they can afford and why they
are either being abandoned or gentrified out of their homes and
neighborhoods. And if everyone works together, something can be
done about it-but only if we are mad enough and smart enough
to do what we have to.
We have to go back to some of the old tactics-and to become
Reaganomics is a mandate for neighborhood groups to change
their strategies and reaffirm their original goals. Just "getting
funding" will no longer suffice. The ax is poised to fall. If you
don't get it in '82. you will for sure in '83. If we don't get the mes-
sage now, it will soon be too late.
C
ity l.ImIti mission in earIy-
was as vast as its offices were
tiQ: its plant was tine bat-
tered deIb squeezed into a
single, paper-cboked room; its
tools of production were two typawritan,
a drawing table on loan from grapIics whiz
Louis FuIgoni and a IIand-IIeId electric
paper WIllI' often left dangerously
plugged-in for days.
1980-1985
stories then-u JIOW-were sad ones.
AI:tIviItI, sweating to rescue _ building
or _ block, shuddered as aoother block
and a IIIfIrent baiIding were lost to the
wrecIdIg crew of landIurd-arsotists, red-
Ill81'S or poiltlcai indlI'rerence.
Often our own constituents were the
unhappiest with our pages. It was left to
CIty IJmItJ to write IIIICOIIIfortab trutIIs
I'JIi& Marc Jahr, then a city Human Rights
worker, used lis catWa to record the
same streets he now rescues with c0rpo-
rate tax credits. KatII,y Wylde, her Sunset
Park days frash in her 1II8IIIOI'Y,
aJTaQged our first regular monthly adver-
tising. A11111181J11)1oyed Jim Sleeper made
the first to report the InsplriIC story Ii
East Brooklyn CIInhs' IIeItemIah
Researchers KIm
Hopper and Ellen But itsjob was
mII/IIIr: to cover
tIIOIe at work in the
trenches of the citJ's
low Income
neIghborIIoods and
Every Activist, A. Writer
Baxter provided their
startling report on a
dIstBrIJing .. phe-
nomenon: homeIess-
ness.
the maclinations of
the powerful against them.
In tIIat cramped room East
23rd Street, Bernard Collen and SUsaD
BaldwIn WIll about their task with as
much ___ and far lIIOI'8 daIIotion
tIIan 1'Va faund in the ... rooms of"
newspapers. And why noli' The people we
wrata about and the territory we CCMII"IId
were so fartIe with hope.
By Tom BobbiDs
about tenant evictions, bureaucratic
Ietbargy and financial mIsI'euance on the
part of once-vitaI organizations.
WIleR CIty l.ImIti IrucibIe founder, Bob
Scbur, I'8btrIed to the magazine, it was to
scald tIIOIe he bad ICbooIed in an article-
"Back to Buies. " OrganIzIng was what got
here, he wrote, and 0J"gaIizIng is sIiII
our Un task. We agreed wIIoIebeart8dIy
but it was aH lIIOI'8 easily written Ulan
accomplished.
Left to our own
devices, of coune, we were often too
clever by '-too long-winded, too seIf-
rigIIteous to he fair, occuIonaIIy naiVe or
worse, plain wrong. Yet we muddled
tInugh, mucII the same way a far lIIOI'8
potent and sopIisticatad CIty I./mitJ
_ todQ. And despite the monthly
S8JIIItion Ii condIIctIng a high wire act
without a nat, there was raaIIy 110 Itet-
til' job to be bad.
DARE
TO COMPARE
VANITY FAIR
... - ....
.. _
CommunitJ groups born as IttIe lIIOI'8
tIIan rag-tag bands of outraged citizen
warriors, armed only with strong vocal
cIIords and good IIIt8ntions, bad faund ..
clout and sopIistIcation. TheIr spade work
bad yielded a mini-arsenal ..... ag from
tenant managtIIIlIIIIt to antI-redInIng laws.
To use theIII, groups could tum to a t8cImI-
cal assiItaIa nat.t stafred by the best
and the brigIdast, and capable of deIIvaring
energy retronts for turn-of-the-century
t.naJts or complex loan packages
Our poke ... cards called
reportan but Biray task was Idvocacy.
And we saw no coafIct II enlisting tIIOIe
already In the streets to cover their own
actIvItieL Every orguIzar, a wrIbr, MI'J
administrator, a pIIotograpIIer wu our
credo, a decision made euy by our slim
budaIeL It often worked. Then a Brooklyn
tenant organIzar, fature ,.",., and
WIIIIiItgtIJII PtJtJt f'IIIIOI18t' IIchaeI Powell
wrata lis first articles for Do WrIUr-pho-
tograpber CamIIo Vergara, then tethered to
a bureaucrat's desk in New Jersey, provid-
ed lis now famaItI docIIaeItatIIIn of urban
..... -...... -.............
And, for the first time, the ,..... to help
d .. tum was belllgpnMded by __
elations gaIded by astute and caring officers
Ira NBy catIIInan and I.ari SIutJQ,
NatnIIy it _'t tIIat 8IIJ. _
NOVEMBER 1996

Borough Park's Untold Story emerge: a block-long 100-apartment four-story complex vacated
By Tom Robbins in less ilian a after stray dogs were let loose to roam the cor-
ridors, windows over in occupied apartment and a
rage of late-night threatening calls urging residents to flee; anoth-
er walk-up where gas was shut off just before religious holidays
so iliat Oriliodox tenants could have no food for ilie hol-
iday; a four-story where ilie water line to ilie building was neatly
severed with an acetylene torch and a vacate order thus secured.
B
rooklyn's Borough trumpets its successes to whoever
will listen. While ilie Brownstone Belt gets ilie publicity,
Borough is where Brooklyn's hottest real estate action
is to be found. A community that suffered a massive exo-
Hundreds of marchers join in
the "No Housing, No Peace"
demonstration as it crosses town
and heads towards
the United Nations.
Photo by Cindy Reiman
community.
dus of Jewish families, and
again in ilie '60s and '70s as
many Italians beat a sub-
urban retreat, Borough last
boasted ilie most housing
starts in the city. While
Brooklyn lost population over
the last decade, Borough
wiili a now-increasing popula-
tion of Hasidic Jews, has been a
substantial gainer.
Government funds have
given that growth a major
boost. Last summer, Housing
and Urban Development
Secretary Samuel R. Pierce
made a rare community
at the annual dinner
of Borough Park's leading
neighborhood group, the
Southern Brooklyn
Community Organization.
SBCO and its Agudaili
Israel of America, had "demon-
strated for all ilie world the
power of partnership," said
guest of honor Pierce, who left
behind a surprise gift of $5.5
million for new senior citizen
housing.
"Right on Borough Park!"
cheered the Daily News last
January on the occasion of
another federal grant to ilie
Indeed this community where new brick
three-family homes line the side streets,
where a network of over 40 yeshivas swell
to hold more than 20,000 students, and
where major new shuls and institutions
under construction, has much to cheer about.
But ilie gusto wiili which ilie bustling community's boosters
proclaim its merits suddenly vanishes at ilie mention of the price
its older and low-income residents have paid to make way for this
growth. That's the other part of the recent history of this highly
religious and community, the details of which spoken
of little within the community, and outside of it never. The flip
side of Borough Park's current success has been a ruthless expan-
sionism, by often brutal dislodging of long-time residents.
Those activities have left city-funded community groups inert,
housing court judges strangely befuddled, and local elected offi-
cials suddenly In spite of the sizable dimensions of
the problem, it remains officially unacknowledged and totally
unpenalized by government.
In each of iliese buildings, as in other stories in
Borough owners had different plans in store for iliem: ilie
first building was demolished--eight three-family large bedroom
homes, specially designed for Hasidic households, under con-
struction wiili $300,000 price tags on iliem; ilie second building
is-ironically-about to be rehabilitated into government-subsi-
dized senior citizen housing, aliliough it held 20 mostly older ten-
ants before iliey were driven out; within three monilis after ilie
third building was emptied, plans were filed to establish a syna-
gogue and a mikvah (religious bailis) on ilie ground floor while
reconditioning the apartments above ... .
Within the community, those who with aiding ten-
ants eiilier limited by neighborhood and religious politics or
often on ilie same side as the The Southern
Brooklyn Community Organization, Borough major local
development group which was launched wiili Ford Foundation
funding in 1976, receives a $75,000-per-year contract from ilie
city to assist landlords and tenants. It is ilie most logical candidate
to aid or mediate for troubled buildings. Yet in case after case,
SBCO has been found to have ignored the most brutal
and, in some instances, to have encouraged and profited by it.
Sometimes what's sought from Borough older multi-
family dwellings is not the building but ilie land. Such was ilie case
wiili 5501-14th Avenue, a grand, block-long lOG-unit building
which boasted twin turrets and an exterior grass enclosed
by a low brick wall. It was a building that caught ilie eye of every-
one in the community and few failed to notice its rapid deteriora-
tion, or to register shock when bulldozers came to destroy it.
The building was bought by Charles Katz and Steven Farkas
in 1981. Katz is a major Borough landlord and Farkas is a
leading realtor and developer of the long, three-family brick hous-
es sprouting along many side streets. Tenants were told to move,
iliat there would be no heat or services for iliose who stayed, and
there weren't. no tenant organizations were available
to help. "After iliey called everyone else," says Larry Jayson, an
organizer wiili ilie Flatbush Tenants Council (FfC), his group got
a call from ilie tenants in 1982. Only six to eight tenants
remained. Ten days later, said Jayson, iliey too were gone. As soon
as the buildings were razed, Katz and began laying the
foundations for eight three-family brick homes. Selling prices
in the range of $300,000. Katz and carrying out ilieir
construction project under their corporate name, "Joy of Life
Enterprises." ... .
While FTC pinch-hits for ilie ever-absent SBCO, it also steps
cautiously in Borough volatile turf. While slumlord Frank
Sciaccia turned 510 Ocean into what FTC's Jerry O'Shea
termed a "toilet," FTC helped ilie mostly black residents fight back.
But when SBCO's newly-created Ocean Development
Corporation decided to purchase ilie building, empty and rehab it,
FTC obligingly stepped aside. O'Shea, after waming tenants iliey
would be on ilieir own henceforth, joined ilie of ilie develop-
ment group. The brand-new group had no difficulty landing a one-
$25,000 contract wiili ilie city housing department.
CITY LIMITS
Each victimized building tells the same story: pleas to political
and community offices for assistance rebuffed with the excuse that
there is nothing to be done. This massive default in tenant assistance
stretches from groups like SBCO and COlO-the Council of Jewish
Organizations-to assemblymen, city councilmen and district lead-
ers. Only a handful of dedicated city and legal services attorneys-
and the occasional intervention of an outside group-have supplied
what is ultimately a thin and inadequate line of defense.
new housing dwindled. Shelters popped up all over the South
Bronx, Harlem and the far reaches of Queens and Brooklyn.
Herald Square and Times Square became welfare-hotel central.
The city government made sporadic efforts to cope, placing
families in dilapidated city-owned buildings and promising vast
new resources for redevelopment. Papering over the crisis,
however, took Mayor Koch much longer than it took him to
place his flower-pot decals in the gaping windows of thousands
of abandoned buildings.
THE MID-LATE '80s
Boom Times and Homelessness
M
ayor Koch kept going like the Energizer
bunny. And as the economy boomed, the face
of poverty was no longer hidden. For the first
time, men, women and families suffering
from extreme housing deprivation were visi-
ble allover Manhattan. The numbers of homeless New Yorkers
exploded as developers bulldozed single-room-occupancy
hotels to make room for new office towers. Federal funds for
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1985
The Mayor and the Homeless Poor
T
.. W81'811eady - at CIty
LiIrItJ-tIIe 1at8198Os wIleR
Ed 1ocII'1 .... tMI' New York
was about tD crumble and
comption .. ooziIg rr.
tile orifices II MI'J IIMIIcIpa/ IgIIICJ. Or
80 it 1881118d. AntIIony (Fat Tony) GIaIdmaD
.. tile hauling CIIIIIIIIiuiOIa l1liI11III-
... .. l.ecIIIrd SpodIk ( ..... Dracula
1985-1987
By Robert Hayes
S
ix-year-old Joey has blond hair, a dirty face and ragged
clothes. He had just spent the weekend sleeping on the floor
of a filthy and chaotic welfare office in lower Manhattan
with his three younger brothers and his 24-year-old mother.
Joey slept on the floor of the welfare office with 50 other chil-
dren because harried city workers could find no hotel rooms and no
neigIIIIorbood .. tile 1111 MIllY
rap artists. HIs ..... LL Cool J lid
be was just a UIny 16-JIIHId raadJ to
burst ontD the ICIII8. He IIIIWII'Id our
quatioIs politely but ta.IJ ... cIIaI-
...... tD IIIab up a rap tile .. aIIaIl
CIty Umit& H8 did. "CIty liInID, it'l a
-ga-, talking tD _ aIIaIl tile .......
-. CIty lJIIIIU, it'I ........ It'1
.... rr.tIIaIr ........... 1t was
alllllVlng stDry. told by wrItar KatIIIe
Dollie, tIIat INOIrId II tile patIIGI ...
stnnatII rI_ trJInI to 8ICIII8 pur-
&ItorJ."" ta .... tills for tile
CMI'P Me WIJ cauId WI fIId a batt8red
_ wIIID& tD pose far a pIIoto. Pear In
r __ 1Iut ril:llil I'8IIUI'CtfllllII, WI
-lIP willi a clMrlllllltlaL ........ a
I'UIIIpIaII aid rain-
coat I dug out II
lIIIdlord") W8I'8
Iocbd II deadly
COIIbat with fin-
ants' organiza-
tions 011 tile IacaI
and cItrwIde level.
CIty ,.",. was
Uncompromised, Fearless
lIlY clout, .,..,a
Ir8rcIIW tMI' my
IIeId and totJna a
buIgIIg IIIIIppIRg
bI& JIIII'I tI'IIy
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tile CII'WI 011 bouIIIg II1II COIIIIIUIIItJ dMI-
..... 1bIrIes. It dIaeI:IId tile ICIIIII II
..... 1Id ............. profIt ...
before tile IIIinstr8Im .... _had
gottIn a wIiIr II tile ICIIIdaIL And ...
aIwQI, 011 a IhoIIItrIIIg budget tIIIl was
IJ8IWIUIy in peril daspb tile fact that
IIIIIIody else COII8I'8d New York II wei CIty
limItJ did. And stili does.
I ... tD CIty,.",. II tile IIIIIIIW II
_ lid stQIII 011 for two and a half
JIIII'L Now, aftar WIII'kIag for IMMI'II II tile
cIt,y'lliggest IJ8WIIIIII8I'I, it'l clear that
tile OIly place ''vi practiced .......
tIIIl was tnIy ............. lid fearless
wa CIty LiIIIIt& WIllI could buy IISP TIlere
W8I'8 only liar ads In 32 .,... IIowIIere
else _Iliad IIICII'8I11n lIajuunalst.
TIlere .. tile time a young and bud-
ding rap star ,.. Hollis visited the pIusII
33rd Street omc. II CIty limItJ tD be
1IItII ... for a sbJry 011 tIIat Queans
NOVEMBER 1996
By Amlette Fuentes
tile lire sIIIt, '_Itjult WI't quit."
l8agtIIIe CIty IJiJIIID readers _lilt a
... board ........ tIIou!lIIt It .... dastlc
tIIIl WI'd ..,. rr. tile .... fin rI
hausiIIg specific materiaL BIll WI II.- tIIat
CIty liIIIItJ'fubn _II a broader II1II
1IIIII'811c1u11111 .... II "News for tile

daspaIrII& _ ............ at a Red
er.1aGIIt:y .... no. Square. or
course, .... staged phatqIournaIIsm ....
slice ............... at.anstream PIb-
1IcatIaI. oI't8I ..... tile bounds II
good taste and atIIIcs. But II .ai, CIty
,.",. .. tIIert first.

II, tile houIIIIg and bill-
ant IIIJIIIII.ta W8I'8 In
ratraat a. tide rI
homalllllill and tile
.".., shelter system
came to doIIinabI tile
laue rI atrordabIa,
dacaIIt 1IouII_
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doIIIestIc ..... tile
social prubIanI do jour,
CIIy LiIIIItI was .....
with a COIW story aboIt
battIred_ .......

l' that profit-hungry developers and speculators bring with them
homeless men in New York City won a court injunction wherever they go that force people out of their homes. So there.
ordering Mayor Koch to shelter them, homeless children-some of
them newborn infants-sleep on the floor of welfare offices.
Joey was now wide awake and pounding on the locked inner
door of the welfare office, begging for food. The workers ignored
him. Just barely visible through the grime on Joey's tee-shirt was
some lettering which said faintly, "I Love New York."
Such is life in Ed Koch's New York, 1985.
The measure of the Koch administration should come down, as
in most things, to a question of competence. Here, as the court
orders are flied away and after the political debate recedes, is the
true test of any administration. And here is the Achilles heel of the
Koch administration. The mayor has failed miserably in providing
JUNE/JULY 1986
Unreasonable Access: Sexual
Harassment Comes Home
By Annette Flientes and Madelyn Miller
A
isha L. lives in a Bay Ridge building where the landlord
likes to rent to people he can victimize. She's a single
mother on welfare and often has to take money out of the
food allowance to pay rent. Her obliging landlord suggested other
ways to pay her debt to him.
His sexual advances got nowhere with Aisha. But her rejection
only set the landlord off on a campaign of fear. He shut off the elec-
tricity, refuses her rent checks, follows her in the neighborhood and
harasses her 8-year-old daughter. Says a friend, "She's breaking
down as a person. She feels like she's not worth anything."
The super in Jodie Gould's building favors young single
women, tells them how lonely he is since his wife left. He came
to her apartment to change a light bulb and picked up a kitchen
knife. "What would you do if you were raped?" he asked her.
"Would you fight or would you give in?" He launched into a story
about rape as she backed away. Perched on a ladder, he looked
down at her growing arlXiety. "Are you frightened?" he quizzed
her. She was terrified but managed to say no, that they were
friends after all. Bulb changed, game over, he left and she vowed
never to be alone with him again; let the repairs go begging.
By law, landlords and their agents are entitled to reasonable
access to the apartments they rent. But a six month investigation
by City Limits has uncovered a serious nationwide problem, of
patently illegal and health-threatening incidents of sexual harass-
ment by landlords, superintendents and others with access to
women's homes that is anything but reasonable ....
Bronx marchers protest the October 29 police killing of Eleanor Bumpers durillg her
eviction from public hOl/sillg. Photo by Bemard Moore
The targets of sexual harassment by housing owners and per-
sonnel are usually those who men perceive as easy prey. Single
women with no men either living with them or visibly present
around their apartments are especially vulnerable. But being a
woman without a man does not complete the profile of candidates
for sexual harassment. The missing factor is money. "Usually it is
women with no man in the house, who are poor, captive of the
economics of their plight and forced to live in substandard hous-
ing," states Tom McCarter, a fair-housing specialist.
fW
a dollar's worth of relief for the homeless for every tax doUar spent
on their behalf. It's nonsense to continue a system where a few wel-
fare hotel owners hold the city hostage demanding $3,000 a month
rent for a homeless family to live, with rats, in a single room.
NOVEMBER 1985
Neighborhood Newsstand: A Different Slant
By Paul Smith
C
ity Limits got a call from a researcher at Time magazine
seeking some authoritative information on housing.
Where, he asked, were the poor people going who were
pushed out of the city? More specifically, he wanted to know
which suburbs they were gravitating to. Suburbs, we asked, you
mean like Long Island and Westchester? He responded that the
article was going to look at "inner city crime which poor people
bring with them" as they are squeezed out of NYc. He asked if
Teaneck, New Jersey, was one of the places they were heading.
After assuring him we'd love to hear what he discovers, we told
him that most displaced people probably couldn't afford bus fare
to Teaneck. And what's more, City Limits is more interested in
the inner city crimes like gentrification, harassment and arson
"The landlords, they seem to know who to prey on," states
Lenora Casso, who resided at the Women In Need homeless shel-
ter last winter. "The supers. They know who to pick, who's vul-
nerable. You might not have ever sold your body in your life but
it comes to the fact that you got to house your kids. Then you
might take that step and sleep with that landlord just to keep your-
self from a shelter. Guilt doesn't matter when you've got three
kids and you're living in the Martinique."
DECEMBER 1986
Eleanor Bumpers and the Spirit of the Rose
By Peggy Dye Moberg
B
efore winter chilled the city, I walked along the Bronx
avenue that rolls past Eleanor Bumpers' home. I was on a
memorial vigil with the Eleanor Bumpers Committee for
Justice. You remember Bumpers: two years ago, six policemen
went with a shotgun to evict the 66-year-old grandmother for four
CITY LIMITS
months' back rent and they killed her. No one went to jail,
although at press time in mid-November, an appeal was pending
in State Appellate Court in Albany .. ..
The government began to close its paw over Bumpers three days
after she stopped paying rent to her landlord, the New York City
Housing Authority. Here are items in the city's report on the case:
"7/84-Eleanor Bumpers' rent paying record is generally good
with the exception of one late payment... . In July of 1984, she
stopped paying rent. 7/3/84 -Eleanor Bumpers is served a 14-
day notice. 7Il8/84-Eleanor Bumpers is served with a Personal
Demand for rent. 7/24/84-NYCHA mails Petition and Notice of
Petition to City Marshal."
Now, sending the city marshal after Bumpers in less than a
month puzzles me because Bumpers had paid her rent on time
for three years. She got no grace. Her rent didn't amount to a
c-note, either. She paid $53 plus utilities, a total of $96.85.
Bumpers' rent wasn't even new income for the government. It
was welfare money-recycled cash-from the Human Re-
sources Administration that the woman was supposed to pass
over to the Housing Authority.
While Bumpers got no time, the government took plenty in
seeking help for her. When the woman stopped feeding the money
from one bureaucracy to another, NYCHA waited three months-
until October 10-to telephone HRA and say that Bumpers was
being evicted. HRA didn't pay the rent.
MAY 1987
Questions Go Begging for Koch
Homeless Shelter Plan
By Beverly Cheuvront
L
ast October, Mayor Koch announced a $100 million plan to
construct 20 homeless shelters citywide, four per borough.
Although his plan met with a barrage of criticism from bor-
ough officials, housing advocates, communities and the homeless,
he steamrolled his project through the City Planning Commission
and is heading full-throttle toward the Board of Esti mate.
"I don't suggest any evil intent, but they sure are as inept as
hell," says Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins.
The focus of the controversy between the mayor and his oppo-
nents is whether the new facilities should be transitional or per-
manent. Koch argues that there will always be a demand for tran-
sitional housing and that his shelters can be built cheaply and
quickly. Critics say the shortage of inexpensive housing is the
basic cause of homelessness, and that the city will only solve its
problem by building temporary housing that can be converted to
permanent housing in the future.
Underlying these arguments is a much deeper difference: how
the homeless are perceived. Are they victims of New York City's
housing shortage? Or are they deficient human beings-mentally
ill, drug-addicted, crime-ridden malingerers-looking for an
opportunity to sponge off the public largess?
APRIL 1988
PDC Plays Lets Make a Deal
By Doug TUJetsA.y
P
ull into a parking lot near St. John's Episcopal Hospital in
Brooklyn. Take a good look around. The New York City
Public Development Corporation, which sold the site to
the hospital for $19,700 in 1985, credits the parking lot for some
3,000 jobs.
Take a ride over to College Point Corporate Park in Queens.
The Pepsi Cola Bottling Company of New York bought a large
site there from PDC in 1986. Pepsi has yet to break ground for the
new plant, but PDC lists 1,150 new jobs on its 1987 Employment
Report in connection with the sale. Together, the Pepsi and St.
John's land sales account for 54 percent of the job growth PDC
Yl
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NOVEMBER 1996
trJ. A CIII .. IIroekIya ...... 1InIceI
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1987-1988
Small Victory
By Beverly Cheuvront
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links to its 1985 and 1986 sales of city-owned property.
Created some 22 years ago to shore up the city's sag-
ging manufacturing base, the PDC has become a development behe-
moth, with its fingers in almost every major project in New York
City. With 200 staffers and a multimilllion dollar budget, the agency
touts projects for some of the city's biggest developers-and cam-
paign contributors-as they go before the Board of Estimate. The
agency is rife with political cronyism and short on public oversight.
PDC's mandate of industrial job retention and creation seems
to have become lost as the city agency has focused on real estate
deals. Chelli Davadutt, a former
PDC labor services coordinator,
charges that job statistics were
put together simply for public
relations purposes. "I was part
of making them up," says
Davadutt. "I was like Alice in
Wonderland over there."
THE '90s
Poverty Does
Not Yield
B
y 1990 the Koch
and Dinkins
admini trations
had rigged a mas-
sive relocation
Slumlord Anil Agarwal skipped out on
Housing Court agreements-and into
our worst landlords listfor 1991.
system to move families out of
homeless shelters and into
mostly decrepit city-owned
buildings in poor neighbor-
hoods. Meanwhile, the city's
decision to invest more than $4
billion in housing rehab and
development over 10 years
began to show results, and
parts of the South Bronx
became a model for renewal.
Yet even this was never
enough; it took more than
bricks and mortar to rebuild a
community. As neighborhood
groups began to realize the
scope of the programs they needed to
pursue, City Limits branched out, too,
--
Photo by Franklin Kearney
delving ever more deeply into all the
elements of the fight against poverty in New York: drugs, incar-
ceration, youth, education. And of course, the housing market.
NOVEMBER 1990
One Mother's Story
By Lisa GlazeI'
F
ranklin Avenue is a narrow strip of tar in Crown Heights,
Brooklyn, and on a blazing summer afternoon it serves as
a kind of demarcation zone. On one side of the street are
Gwendolyn Smith and her five children, sitting on chairs they
brought down from their apartment. On the other side are a hand-
ful of drug dealers.
"Yo, big-bootie girl," yells one of the dealers. He picks up an
empty glass bottle, throws it in the air and it smashes on the street.
The young men beside him chortle, elbow each other and swagger.
Smith tenses but swallows the insult. The drug dealers are
bored, business is slow and Smith isn't taking any chances-she
lives in the same building the dealers operate from. Smith and her
children used to be homeless, but now they have a home and this
is it: 756 Franklin Avenue. The front door is unlocked and the
stairwell is held up by four wooden stakes. The Smiths live on the
second floor, the drug dealers operate from the third. Their land-
lord is the City of New York.
The Smiths are just one of more than 10,000 families who
have moved from homeless shelters into buildings that are run by
the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Most of these buildings are located in Central Brooklyn, Harlem
and the South Bronx and after years of neglect many are drug-
infested and structurally unsound ....
"I was so glad to move here, really glad. We had no food, no
blankets, no curtains. We slept on the floors, that's how happy we
were that we had a place to call home."
It didn't take long for the euphoria to wear off. The first week
in the new apartment, the drug dealers cut a hole in their floor-
Smith's kitchen ceiling-and used it as an escape drop for drugs.
Shortly after, the police raided the building and the drug dealers
found a getaway route they have used numerous time since: They
jumped down to a landing outside Smith's living room, broke her
windows and ran through the apartment. A while later, her chil-
dren Unik and Shani were playing in the apartment next door and
two bullets were fired through the window.
"When I moved in, [the housing officials) said they would
repair the building and make it secure within three weeks," says
Smith. "No one came out. Since I've been here, we've had four
different managers .... What does it take to make them do things?
Does one of my kids have to be hurt?"
Roz Post, a spokesperson for HPD says, "As far as the drug
dealers are concerned, we have resealed and resealed apartment 3L
and they just break back in. I'm told we had to reseal it five times.
We' re very aware of the situation ... but it's not an easy problem."
.. .It is another summer afternoon and the heat inside Smith's
apartment is so intense the family decides to sit outside again.
This time the drug dealers stroll across the street to chat.
Smith complains to Nicky, the leader of the drug dealers,
explaining that some of the younger dealers were calling her
names .... He's very jovial, apologizing to Smith and promising to
keep his troops in line .... A brown four-door car pulls up and a
young man walks out and hands a plastic bag to Nicky, who dis-
appears into the building. A steady stream of people are stumbling
up and down the stairs. "It's like they've got working papers to do
this," hisses Smith.
Nicky decides to play with Keith, Smith's toddler. He throws a
fake punch and a kick in his direction. Then he turns to I O-year-old
Unik. "What's the matter with you, punk nigger?" asks Nicky with
a big grin on his face. "Why don't you get your ass in foster care?"
Some women turn the corner across the street and Nicky and
his friend Ramone start boasting about their sexual prowess.
They name women from the neighborhood who agree to have
sex in return for crack, and point them out as they walk down
the block.
Smith chuckles nervously, listening but trying to remain dis-
tant. Her daughter Shani is sitting nearby on a milk crate, staring
in the opposite direction with a this-isn't-really-happening-to-me
look on her face. Unik is trying to act tough, leaning against the
wall looking surly. Keith and the baby are quiet and Rashawn is
crouching behind his mother's chair, hiding.
CITY LIMITS
MARCH 1992
East Harlem Renaissance? A turf war
challenges the power brokers of El Barrio.
By Andrew White
E
ast Harlem community groups are grappling for control of
a new $475,000 state social services contract. The fight is
a sign that the influence of the once-indomitable Del Toro
family is fading fast.
The Del Toro brothers, Angelo and William, have dominated
politics and government funding in the neighborhood for more
than a decade. Angelo has been EI Barrio's state assemblyman for
17 years, and William has headed a series of government-funded
anti-poverty agencies in the district since the 1970s. William went
to prison for bribery in the mid-1970s, although the conviction
was later overturned. Last fall, he won the Democratic primary for
a new City Council seat by 34 votes, but state authorities counted
more than 740 voting irregularities and called for a new election.
The second time around, the electorate turned out en masse to
reject Del Toro in favor of Adam Clayton Powell IV.
Two months before the election, the state chose a little-known
organization that runs job training and youth programs, lust Us
Inc., to be the developer and lead contractor on the half-million
dollar crisis intervention center project. William Del Toro used to
be the executive director of Just Us. The organization is housed
in the same building as Del Toro's Hispanic Housing and
Economic Development Task Force (HHEDTF) and Angelo Del
Toro's legislative offices ....
William Del Toro's current connections to Just Us are not entire-
ly hidden. Anibal Soli van, who was William Del Toro's campaign
manager and an employee of HHEDTF, has been the spokesman for
lust Us at several community meetings where the crisis intervention
center was discussed. Solivan was once vice-president of Arawak
Consulting, a fmn that won tens of millions in government con-
tracts before it went broke four years ago. After two years in
bankruptcy, a federal judge liquidated the consulting firm after
she learned Arawak executives had submitted falsified documents
to the court and covered up its extensive lobbying efforts.
The Del Toro machine began to crumble last fall, following
revelations about the real estate dealings of the two brothers, the
failure of William Del Toro's nonprofit HHEDTF to develop any
housing despite more than $765,000 in state funding since 1989,
and the organization's inadequate filings with state regulators. The
charges contributed to Del Toro's defeat in the run-off City
Council election.
The groups opposing Just Us say they are eager to end what
they call a long history of influence peddling and corruption.
"People are beginning to see what's going on" in the community,
says Nelson Denis, counsel to Councilman Powell and a probable
candidate for Angelo Del Toro's assembly seat this fall. "Angelo
has turned East Harlem into his own banana republic. He says if
we do this, we risk losing the money. But we've called their bluff."
NOVEMBER 1993
The Long Road Home
By Jill Kirschenba.um
F
rances Franco had no idea where her children were. She
was imprisoned at the Groveland Correctional Facility
near Buffalo, far from her home in Astoria, Queens, when
she received word from her family that her 12-year-old daughter
and 6-year-old son had been placed in foster care: her mother was
critically ill and could no longer care for them. But no one from
any child welfare agency had contacted her and her grandmother
didn't know where the children were. "They were lost in the sys-
tem," she says. "And I was 800 miles away."
Frantic, for two months she tried to locate them, writing let-
ters, talking to anyone who would listen. A prison social worker
did what he could to help, working his way by telephone through
the labyrinthine New York City child welfare bureaucracy. He
found nothing but dead-ends.
Then Franco was transferred closer to home, to the Taconic
Correctional Facility in Westchester County. Two more weeks
passed. She went to the chaplain there, who tried to help. Still,
nothing. She remembers the day she finally gave up all hope of
seeing her children again.
lid tataI ................. cull ..
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......... ....,. .. fInt. .... u.
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er WOI't priIt--ald 10 IlL TIle 1IIIIard. .
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............. tIIIa II1II MiIIIIIe tIIat it
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JilL 11IoIe WIIIIId Ill .. (ltIIa __
NO I'NSWER.-
You'",e I'>LL.
ALI"': !
i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i ~ ~
NOVEMBER 1996 ~ ~ ~ = = = = = = = = = = = = ~ __________ - = ~ ~ : : ~ ~
"I was sitting in the yard, crying," Franco recalls.
"And the superintendent of the prison happened to be
walking by. He asked what was the matter. 1 told him my kids
were lost."
No one knows exactly how many incarcerated women have
lost their children in such a bureaucratic nightmare. One thing is
certain: the government system designed to preserve families is
actually keeping them apart.
The number of women sent to prison is skyrocketing. In 1982,
there were less than 1,000 women in state prisons and city jails
in New York, according to the Department of Corrections. Today
there are about 5,000. The 400 percent increase has been fueled
largely by "Get tough on drug" laws and mandatory minimum
sentencing guidelines: 73 percent of the women currently in
prison were committed for low-level drug-related offenses.
Latinos and Hasidic Jews have been battling for housing and land in Brooklyn's
Williamsburg section for decades-and living side by side.
-
Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein
Three-fourths of the women in the nation's prisons are single
mothers with sole custody of an average of two children. Two-
thirds of those children lived with their mothers before the women
were incarcerated, according to a study by the National Council
on Crime and Delinquency.
In New York State, that means nearly 8,000 children separated
from their mothers and left in the care of relatives or friends, or
placed in foster care with strangers.
Advocates report that not a single government agency is mak-
ing a conscientious effort to help these mothers stay involved with
their families during their prison sentences, in spite of the fact that
family preservation is a clear mandate of city, state and federal
child welfare legislation. Nor are government agencies recogniz-
ing the particular problems that may prevent these women-many
of whom are trying to recover from the crippling effects of pover-
ty, homeless ness, physical abuse or drug addiction-from return-
ing to care for their children once they leave prison.
It is difficult to quantify to what extent the rights of incarcer-
ated mothers are being violated. CWA has no idea, for example,
just how many of the 48,086 children currently on the foster care
rolls have incarcerated mothers; it does not track those numbers.
And without an understanding of the scope of the problem, the
plight of mothers in prison remains a low priority.
"The general presumption is that a mother who is incarcerated
is a bad mother, that she is not taking responsibility for the care of
her children in general," says Sister Mary Nerney, executive
director of the Incarcerated Mothers Program.
Michie 0., who lives in the Bronx, knows what Sister Nerney
is talking about. "When I was arrested, that tore my family to
pieces. Especially my oldest son. He was very angry with me."
Michie says she was using drugs and associating with the "wrong
class of people, letting go of everything important in my life." She
recalls the difficult four years she spent in prison, the times she
considered suicide, her attempts to see a psychiatrist. "But there
was nothing wrong with me," she says. "I was just depressed
about being taken away from my children. 1 was afraid I'd lose
them." Pausing for a moment, she adds, "I did lose them for a
while. My oldest was nine and the baby was four. 1 didn't get a
chance to see him grow up."
Michie has been clean for four years now. She has a job, her
youngest son just graduated into junior high, and her oldest
recently moved into an apartment of his own.
"I'm still in touch with some of the women 1 met in prison,"
Michie says. "I go to visit my friend Hilda whenever I can-she's
living in a cardboard box over near the West Side Highway.
"Thank God I didn' t let the system beat me."
MAY 1995
Making Millions out of Misery
By Kim Nauer, Andrew White 8111 Jesse Drucker
T
wo months ago, the east wing of a large apartment building
at 142 West 140th Street in Harlem collapsed, killing three
tenants and revealing in very stark terms how low-income
people pay for the errors of ill-educated speculators. Marcus
Lehmann and Morris Wolfson, the principals behind Mount
Wilson Realty, the company that owns the felled building and at
least 11 others, owe millions of dollars in debt on their overlever-
aged properties and are likely to lose their buildings to foreclo-
sure. They may also face criminal charges stemming from the
March 21 tragedy.
Much less evident, however, are the investors who make prof-
its-often big profits-from the business of slumlording.
Alternately known as financiers, mortgagees or operators, this
group makes loans that banks with strict credit rules are unwilling
or unable to make. They play the role of negotiator and match-
maker, hooking up buyers, sellers and people willing to invest
capital for the high interest returns that risky inner-city invest-
ments have sometimes garnered.
A City Limits investigation of the Harlem properties bought
and sold by Mount Wilson over the last decade shows that nearly
all were originally purchased with capital from the private, unreg-
ulated world of alternative financing. Lehmann and WoLfson's
financiers loaned them money-lots of money, at very high inter-
est rates--during the mid-to-Iate 1980s, while the city's real estate
market was hot and the values of buildings in low-income neigh-
borhoods were soaring. Impressively, but in what appears to be
standard fashion, these operators got out of the deal and took their
profits with them just moments before Mount Wilson began to
show signs of serious financial trouble.
Unlike banks, which negotiate a mortgage to last several
decades, private financiers set up short-term mortgage loans with
high up-front interest payments and early principal due dates. On
CITY LIMITS
the surface, it appears that the fmanciers are taking a high-risk
gamble that the landlords they lend to will be able to keep up with
their mortgage payments. But real estate watchers say the true pro-
fessionals, the ones that last in this business, know how to control
their risk and get out of the market before the inevitable downturns.
Mount Wilson's deals follow this pattern. In the case of 142
West 140th Street, Mount Wilson bought the six-story, 71-unit
building for $525,000 from a Yonkers businessman in January
1987. The partners put down $100,000 in cash and signed a
$425,000 mortgage note at 15.5 percent interest with Howard
Parnes, a partner in the Scarsdale-based company, Houlihan-
Parnes Realtors.
Parnes then sold the mortgage to Harvey Wolinetz, another
operator whose office shares the same Scarsdale address. And
Wolinetz turned around and promptly loaned the building own-
ers-Lehmann and Wolfson, a.k.a. Mount Wilson-another
$175,000.
By this time, Lehmann and Wolfson had to make mortgage
payments of $93,000 a year to Wolinetz on this property alone.
Meanwhile, they had purchased a dozen more buildings in the sur-
rounding neighborhood, mounting up debt at a rapid pace.
They had owned the building barely a year when Wolinetz,
having collected tens of thousands of dollars in payments and, in
all likelihood, broker's fees as well, cashed out. Wolinetz sold the
mortgages, and the risk, to Ensign Savings Bank. And Lehmann
and Wolfson promptly borrowed another $450,000 from Ensign
against the value of the building.
Because none of the players in the deal returned calls from
City Limits, there is no way to know exactly what happened to the
money. A Bronx real estate operator familiar with the process says
the best analysis is simple: just follow the cash. Lehmann and
Wolfson put $100,000 down on the original purchase, and after
NOVEMBER 1996
the Ensign deal they had $450,000 cash in hand.
In February 1990, the bank cemented its relationship with
Lehmann and Wolfson with a massive $10.5 million mortgage
loan that wrapped together 13 buildings worth a total of just $6.3
million, according to an RTC appraisal one year later. The bank
also loaned another $1.7 million to the pair. Two months later,
Mount Wilson stopped making their mortgage payments to
Ensign. And in September, the bank, heavily invested in the city's
collapsing real estate market, was seized by federal regulators.
In 1990 and 1991, Lehmann and Wolfson were hit with nearly
two dozen lawsuits and liens, ranging from unpaid oil bills to per-
sonal injury claims. Their corporation filed for bankruptcy pro-
tection in the fall of 1991, owing RTC principal, interest and fees
on $12.7 million in Ensign loans, according to court documents.
The city was also seeking more than $800,000 in back taxes.
As Lehmann and Wolfson's finances spun out of control, the
lives of their tenants steadily worsened. Interviews with some 20
tenants, activists and lawyers involved with the buildings indicate
that the owners all but refused to do work there.
With Lehmann and Wolfson protected by Chapter 11 bank-
ruptcy proceedings, Mount Wilson's mortgages were put up for
RTC auction. They were quickly purchased, along with Ensign's
other bad debts, by an investment group led by Lloyd Goldman,
nephew of deceased New York real estate king, Sol Goldman, and
investment banker Michael Sonnenfeldt. According to Crain s
New York Business, the $45 million deal is expected to net them
more than 100 percent profit. 0
In the last few years, City Limits has prospered. Two decades
has been just enough time to grow up and become a permanent
fixture in the life of New York City. For that, we have our
readers to thank most of all.
/
-
Savannah's
community leaders
and politicians
saw the connection
between fighting
poverty and safeguarding
the local economy.
Nine years later,
their solution is paying
dividends in
the city slow-income
neighborhoods .
By
Barry
Yeoman
....... nti! three years ago, weekends offered
many Savannah teenagers few choices
besides throwing back a couple of malt
liquors and hanging out amidst the
boarded-up Victorians and cinder-block
houses just o u t ~ i d e the city's historic dis-
trict. Over the past 30 years, Savannah's
checkerboard of neighborhoods
watched its white residents flee, its black Catholic school close and
its five-and-dimes go out of business. Today, along Waters Avenue,
abandoned retail buildings sit beside bars and storefront churches.
Strip away the Spanish moss, modify the architecture, and it could be
a low-income neighborhood in any of New York's outer boroughs.
But on a steamy Saturday morning, a spark of change is hap-
pening inside a renovated brick building. Eight teenagers and a
grownup sit around a table, planning the activities of their men-
toring club. They' re ticking off field trips they could take through-
out this coastal Georgia city, when one young man blurts out
something that's been on his mind.
"There's a teacher in my school, he don't like me," says the
boy. He says he feels singled out for talking to his friends during
class, even though he's not particularly disruptive. Carolyn
Carson, the adult in the group, seizes the moment to help the teens
think about dealing with discord. "What's the fust step in resolv-
ing a conflict?" she asks.
A tall , lanky boy speaks up: "I'd go to the counselor and try to
talk to him."
Carson replies: "He's engaging a mediator. That's excellent,
William." One girl suggests that the student transfer out of the
teacher 's class. Carson gently nixes the idea. "Sometimes we
can't run," she says. "Sometimes we have to handle it. But it's
how we handJe it that'Umake it work."
CITVLlMITS
T
he youngsters gathered at the St. Pius X Family
Resource Center are part of an experiment that began
as a narrowly-defined effort to help the county's poor-
est kids succeed in school-but has evolved into an
ambitious effort to break the cycle of poverty and re-weave one
community's shredded social fabric. The Family Resource Center
is the cornerstone of the Chatham-Savannah Youth Futures
Authority (YFA), a uniquely structured collaboration governed by
business leaders, city and state officials, service providers, educa-
tors, health care providers and neighborhood residents.
The story of YFA-born of a meeting of minds rare in any
city-shows that a willingness to get together and think seriously
about the future can go a long way toward rebuilding community.
Faced with rising crime rates along streets fabled for their beauty,
the city fathers didn't just wring their hands. And they didn't set-
tle for the politically easy position of get-
ting tough on poor people and criminals.
Instead, Savannah's government, business
and civic leaders did some soul-searching
and concluded that the fates of the city's
poor, middle class and wealthy residents
were inextricably linked. Then they decid-
ed to spend their collective political capital
on trying to reverse the decline that had
taken hold of heretofore neglected neigh-
borhoods.
After floundering for some time, the
organization that emerged from these dis-
cussions nine years ago has finally begun
to build an impressive track record.
Troubled teens have graduated from high
school and gone on to college. Women
have given birth to healthier babies. Crime
in the neighborhoods where the YFA oper-
ates has leveled out even as crime citywide
has shot up. The authority has also created
a model organizational culture, one that
allows for admitting mistakes, for slowing
down, backing up, and setting off in new
directions.
Part of its success is due to the fact that
YFA didn't have only politicians and cham-
ber of commerce types on board. Thanks to
Otis Johnson, it also had street credibility.
Johnson, who resigned from his social work
professorship at Savannah State University
and gave up his seat on the City Council to
become YFA's executive director, was a vet-
eran of the civil rights movement. The Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to call him
"Moses" for his charisma. Towering and
gray-bearded, Johnson brought to YFA the
ambition and intellectual curiosity it needed
to weather its first difficult years.
Since its inception in 1987, the $4 million-a-year YFA has used
foundation funds, tax dollars and corporate money to create a coor-
dinated system of youth and family services. The organization
offers immunizations, day care, food stamps and WIC vouchers
under one roof. It helps women get prenatal care and parents fmd
work, and it creates jobs for high school drop-outs. And it keeps
tabs on young people: the mentoring program participants are
being tracked in a database, along with their siblings and neigh-
bors, to make sure YFA's programs actually keep them in school.
Still not content, the authority has developed a plan to go fur-
NOVEMBER 1996
ther. "We're not going to social-service our way out of poverty,"
says Mary Willoughby, YFA's senior planner. "We need a broader
set of strategies in a defined area."
That involves everything from renovating houses to nurturing
grassroots political organizations. "You've got to build the social
capital, you've got to build the economic capital, you've got to
build the physical capital, you've got to build the political capital
if self-sufficiency for people in that neighborhood is the goal,"
says Johnson. "And we believe that should be the goaL"
T
he Annie E. Casey Foundation wasn't nearly so ambi-
tious nine years ago, when it offered 10 mid-sized
cities with large minority populations and high pover-
ty rates a chance to compete for one of several $10
million grants to help low-income youth become productive
adults. Recognizing that schools didn' t talk to the health clinics,
who in turn didn't talk to the welfare offices or the recreation
departments, Casey wanted the professionals in each of its target
cities to work together and restructure how public and private
agencies serve youth.
The invitation came just in time. Savannah, founded in 1733 as a
humanitarian farming community where slavery would be outlawed,
had long since lost any hint of its uptopian roots. In Georgia's third
largest city, African Americans, who make up a little over 50 percent
of the population, had an unemployment rate of more than to per-
YFA counselors like
Bridgett Gray (right)
coordinate social
sen'ices-including
daycare-for more than
140 low-income
SQI'annah families.
After-school culOrillg
has helped kids do
better in school anti kept
crime levels from
spiking in the surround-
ing neighborhoods.
cent. Drug abuse was on the rise. Many black businesses had col-
lapsed after integration.
Most visibly, downtown was experiencing a rash of street rob-
beries, which worried local business owners dependent on tourist
dollars. City Council turned the problem over to city manager
Don Mendonsa, who came up with a report detailing the effect of
poverty on crime in the city. Mendonsa warned that life for privi-
leged residents would degenerate if poverty continued unchecked.
Just as the implications of Mendonsa's report began sinking in,
"the Casey Foundation came to town," recalls Johnson, who was
on the City Council at the time. "The attraction of bringing $10
million to Savannah was too much for anybody to resist."
With the help of a $20,000 planning grant, Mendonsa con-
vened a multiracial group of government, business and United
Way leaders to document Savannah's problems and propose solu-
tions. They were startled by their [mdings, among them the fact
that one out of every 10 of the city's African-American high
school-aged girls had become pregnant in 1986. The documenta-
tion and the credentials of the group prompted the state and local
governments to commit $10 million in matching funds. The foun-
dation was impressed and Savannah landed the grant.
T
hings started off rough for YFA. Casey Foundation
officials wanted the organization to focus on children
in the city's middle-schools-and they wanted imme-
diate results. ''They were looking for the five-year
solution," says William Sprague, YFA's former board chair and
the CEO of the city's largest company, Savannah Foods. Youth
Futures responded with a quick-fix
approach. It set up tutoring programs and
health clinics in the schools, but the foun-
dation criticized YFA for taking a piece-
meal approach to reform rather than over-
hauling the system. "It's the same old day-
to-day operations in the schools," one YFA
member told Casey's evaluators.
School officials resented these YFA
interlopers who barged in, set up their own
programs, and publicized depressing statis-
tics about student failure. A YFA member
told the evaluators that personality con-
flicts and power struggles "road-blocked"
fundamental reform. Worst of all, the first
two years' worth of programs weren't mak-
ing an impact. Kids kept dropping out of
school at an alarming rate, and YFA's elab-
orate data-tracking system revealed little
academic improvement.
"It didn't take us long to know that if
we stuck with the original plan, at the end
of five years we would have been judged a
total failure," Johnson says. So when it
came time to submit a second-half plan to
Casey, YFA informed the foundation it was
starting over instead.
Meanwhile, several other cities with
major Casey-funded projects were in tur-
moil. In Pittsburgh, the entire collaborative
resigned, acknowledging that it was never
structured or staffed in a way that enabled it to play an influential
role. In Lawrence, Massachu etts, the program dissolved alto-
gether amid "negative blame-laying, defensiveness and personal
confrontations," according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-
based Center for the Study of Social Policy.
In Savannah, despite the setbacks, things were still salvage-
able. The collaborative went through a fresh planning process, this
time with more than 100 people working on a common vision.
''The exercise was like a bonding experience," Johnson says. "[t
took us two and a half years to really get to the initial stages of
true collaboration."
G
uided by a new vision, YFA officials admitted they
had focused too much on children in isolation and
decided instead to focus on families and neighbor-
hoods. The authority decided to move most of its act
out of the schools and into a cluster of communities racked by
poverty. Known locally by their historic names-Thomas Square,
Eastside, Dixon Park, Midtown, Baldwin Park-they had recent-
ly been lumped together by the Savannah police under the cold
rubric of "Area c." More than 16,000 people, about 95 percent of
them African American, live in the 300-square-block section of
Area C targeted by YFA. That's just over one-tenth of Savannah's
140,000 residents.
The neighborhoods butt up against Savannah's historic down-
town, but the tourist maps stop right at that line. Longtime resi-
dents recall a vibrant African-American community. "The family
unit was intact for most black families," says Louise Hunter-
CITY LIMITS
Smith, a neighborhood activist whose family integrated her street
in 1969. Then drugs came in, crime went up, and white and black
homeowners fled, selling their Victorians to absentee landlords
who subdivided them into apartments.
Sitting in the middle of the community was the old St. Pius X
High School, which had served African Americans until desegre-
gation forced its closure in the 1960s. The abandoned L-shaped
building was a natural place for YFA's new Family Resource
Center. YFA drew up plans for the renovation, but then over-
hauled its design based on feedback it got going door-to-door in
the neighborhood. Residents described a dire shortage of quality
child care; YFA converted an entire wing of St. Pius into a child-
care center. Folks said it was hard to get around Savannah to have
their children immunized, pick up food stamps and AFDC, see
the doctor and deal with Medicaid; YFA gave office space in the
other wing to the Health Department, the WIC program and other
government agencies.
The neighborhood was skeptical at flTst. "Some people said,
' Yeah, right, our center,'" recalls Hunter-Smith. So the Family
Resource Center's advisory board, of which Hunter-Smith
became a member, leafleted the neighborhood, held a picnic at the
construction site, and invited residents to peek inside. "We started
getting a lot of people who were curious," she says-and on open-
ing day in May 1994, a flood of people, especially children, came
to check out the building.
N
Ow, St. Pius is abuzz with activity. On this warm
Saturday morning, a mother thanks Barbara
Shimkus, a local mediator who runs a workshop for
teens who have gotten in trouble with the law, for
her tips on handling her son. "I used to holler," says Evelina
Graham. "I learned to talk calmly." In the gym, a group of visit-
ing fraternity brothers from Howard University leads kids through
a series of step-dance kicks, stomps, claps and leaps while impart-
ing a strong stay-in-school message. Johnson sits nearby, watch-
ing. "They've got 'em in their hands," he says with a smile.
Case managers also work out of the building, coordinating
government services for 140 families, doing lead-poisoning
screenings, looking out for domestic violence. The building has
become a place for social and political meetings, wedding recep-
tions and everyday get-togethers. "It keeps me off the streets,"
says 15-year-old Tina Jenkins. "I used to get in a lot of trouble for
doing things I wasn't supposed to do-stealing." Now Jenkins
participates in a youth leadership group and algebra tutoring. Her
math grades, she says, have gone from Fs to Bs.
Stories like Jenkins' back YFA's theory that the problem was
not with the children themselves, but with the systems supporting
those kids. Youth Futures has the numbers to back up the anec-
dotes. Between 1993 and 1994, infant mortality for adult mothers
dropped by 43 percent in the target area, compared to 2 percent
countywide. Adult women saw their percentage of low birth-
weight babies fall between those two years. Sixth graders in the
target neighborhood moved out of the lowest reading quartile
faster than their classmates elsewhere in the county.
While the rest of the city saw a 25 percent crime increase
between 1994 and 1995, the YFA neighborhoods saw a rise of less
than 5 percent. The numbers are more dramatic when it comes to
arson: The city's numbers jumped by 147 percent while the neigh-
borhoods surrounding St. Pius stayed level. Felony and misde-
NOVEMBER 1996
meanor drug arrests rose at a slower rate than in Savannah as a
whole. "The work they are doing has paid dividends," says Dorothy
Kingery, a sociologist at Armstrong Atlantic State University.
Garland Yates of the Annie E. Casey Foundation says that
watching YFA mature helped the foundation realize that when you
try to deal with education, or any aspect of child welfare, you also
have to take into account substandard housing, unemployment,
unsafe environments and lack of health care. And these days, he
says, fortified by a greater appreciation of "how vital it is to have
an organized resident voice be part of the development process,"
Casey is funding efforts that stress community representation
from the outset. In Detroit, Philadelphia and Baltimore, says
Yates, Casey projects have gone through an intense organizing
process prior to setting their agenda. "They divided the communi-
ty into sections and held elections," he says. As a result, they
developed decision-making infrastructures that include "meaning-
ful participation from forces not historically involved, the lowest
income people, the people most disenfranchised."
D
espite all the work, YFA's neighborhoods remain
troubled. Unemployment is high, and much of the
physical infrastructure is still in decline. That's why
the organization, which currently has 54 employees,
plans to move beyond its current social services orientation. Over
the next year, YFA will focus on economic development, housing
renovation and infrastructure improvements like parks and street
lighting. This feels like a stretch for an organization whose staff
members are more adept talking about food stamps than storm
drainage. "We have a lot of learning to do," Johnson says. And a
lot of recruiting of people with different strengths.
c
~
co
15
bl
A veteran of the civil
rights movement, Otis
Johnson endows YFA \l'ith
credibility. Johnson is so
charismatic, the Rev. Dr.
Manin Luther King, Jr.,
lIsed to call him "Moses. "
-
Perhaps the most far-reaching piece of Johnson's community-
building agenda involves the creation of a spin-off group called
the Neighborhood Improvement Association-the acronym NlA
means "purpose" in Kiswahili-which would serve as a voice for
inner-city residents. Johnson, himself an Area C resident, envi-
sions dividing NlA into eight councils focusing on different tasks.
An Economic Development and Planning Council would promote
cooperative enterprises and provide computer and vocational
training; the Council for Political Action would meet with elected
officials and register voters. Johnson says that, as a neighborhood-
based organization, the NlA would keep the state-chartered Youth
Futures Authority honest and accountable to the community.
The idea of building community self-sufficiency sits well with
many people who live near St. Pius. "The city of Savannah isn't
going to pick up every one of those dilapidated houses and reno-
vate them. We' re going to have to do it ourselves," say Hunter-
Smith. "We have the assets here. We just have to rediscover them."
A
s dusk falls, a crowd files into the green and white St.
Pius gym, adorned with palm fronds and bright-col-
ored tissue-paper flowers. The Sankofa Youth Dance
Company, a neighborhood ensemble, is premiering
The Path, a seven-part suite tracing the black Diaspora.
By the time the lights go down, the room is almost full.
Johnson, wearing a flowing purple robe, announces that The Path
"is trying to build a new generation of young people in our com-
munity who know who they are and how they are connected to the
past-so they can plot and carry out a bright future." Minutes
later, the stage comes alive with young men and women, dressed
in West African garments, dancing while the audience claps along.
The movement takes the audience to the Caribbean slave culture.
It wends its way through New Orleans slave dances, a Kansas
City jitterbug and 20th century Chicago urban dance. Cameras
click and flash; video cameras roll. In the last scene, the dance
comes full circle, symbolizing the return of African Americans to
their cultural roots.
Emblematic of YFA's philosophy, the process of choreograph-
ing The Path has awakened the talents of a couple of dozen ado-
lescents in a community more accustomed to failure. The mere
presence of several hundred residents giving a standing ovation to
their own neighbors, siblings and children, is something that could-
n't have happened here three years ago. In this room, this night, it's
hard to resist imagining the rebirth of a vibrant, viable community.
As the standing ovation dies down, the young dancers give
Savannah choreographer Tonya Sherman-Hunter a bouquet of
flowers and motion her to the microphone. "This is the beginning
of something big," she says. "So the next time you're invited to
see The Path, have your ticket money ready, because this show is
going on the road."
Barry Yeoman is the senior staff writer at The Independent, an
alternative newsweekly in Durham, North Carolina.
Specializing in
Community Development Groups,
HDFCs and Non Profits
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CITY LIMITS
L
ong before the majestic moment in the summer of
1992 when a lanky, white-haired Nelson Mandela
gracefully rose from behind a podium outside
Harlem's Adam Clayton Powell building to address
an expanse of black and brown faces, a link existed between
the struggles of black people here in the United States and in
South Africa.
Writers and historians have long examined this complex
and winding relationship, but award-winning independent
filmmaker Alonzo Speight captures the essence of that historic
interconnection in the best way possible-through the eyes of
young people.
Shot on location in Soweto and New York City a few
months after Mandela's election to the South African presiden-
cy, "Who's Gonna Take the Weight" is a video documentary
CULTURE
and South Africans are the same. "You know, they might try to
fool you and try to tell you that you' re a little bit better off than
them people over there, but that's not the truth. You know what
I'm saying? We're all the same. We all got to struggle," he says.
When Speight poses the incendiary question, "Do you hate
white people?" one young New Yorker answers: "Yeah, you
could say that." It is the South African teens, one after the other,
who unequivocally say, "No." Thandiwe, a South African
young woman, explores her peers' responses to the question in
very plain terrns: "We are very forgiving. If we are not, there
would probably be a civil war in tbis country."
Speight says that in his time spent with the teenagers, the
most stark difference between the two cultures was in their atti-
tude toward education. "South Africans don't take education for
granted," the filmmaker says. Yet many of the young people
interviewed in New
The Soweto Connection
York spoke of formal-
ized education with fear
or disdain.
By Kierna Mayo
NOVEMBER 1996
that offers straightforward interviews with a group of 16- to 19-
year-old teenagers. After years of grassroots fundraising with
the help of family and friends-including actress Ruby Oee-
the 47-year-old director of Hunter College's television studio
set out to elicit forthright
responses to questions
ranging from love to
police brutality and edu-
cation, materialism and
racism in both countries.
The film's backdrops are
just as simple, the places
where teenagers all over
the world live their
lives: school, home, the
streets.
Edgy and urban,
and laced with music
from the late rapper
Tupac Shakur as well
as contemporary
black South African
musicians, the pro-
ject parallels the lives
of these young people focusing on how each group
"assesses issues of leadership, personal values and cultural
identity." Sometimes the differences between the South
Africans and Americans seem as far apart as their homelands;
on other occasions their perceptions are uncanny mirror images
of one another.
Peering straight into the camera lens, one New York teen
offers an explanation of why he believes African Americans
"[Some kids] are
like, 'Nab, school is out.
Fuck that... got better things to do,'" reveals a New York high
school-age girl.
Speight first came up with the Soweto-New York concept in
the mid-80s while teaching a video production class to a group
of unruly students at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Just about every day on the cover of The New York TImes
there was a picture of what was happening over in South
Africa," Speight recalls. "Many times [the photos] were of kids
and it was like they were really taking over. They were at the
leadersbip of the movement. There was a film out called
'Witness to Apartheid' about atrocities that happened to kids
struggling in South Africa, and I said to myself, let me take this
film to my students to watch.
"My theory was that, boom, here are these kids, like 13 and
14, only worried about sneakers and video games, yet here are
these other kids turning a culture around, making the whole
world stand up and take notice," he explains.
It's the importance of engaging in that struggle against
oppression-"taking off the weight"-to achieve the unan-
swered promise of black life that Speight feels is the ultimate
link between South Africa and New York.
"It's really stupid to fight for sometbing all your life and
then when you have a chance to make change ... you don't," said
one South African teen interviewed.
At the moment, though, the filmmaker's struggle is to get the
message heard in his own country. For months he has shopped
bis project around to HBO, MTV and PBS with no success.
The South African Broadcasting Company agreed to air it
months ago .
For more information on screenings of " W h o ~ Canna Take the
Weight, " or to obtain a copy, call 212-927-0034.
w,
CITYVIEW
I
n December, 1994, House Speaker Newt Gingrich made
this announcement: "The weak political constituency for
the Department of Housing and Urban Development
makes it a prime candidate for cuts."
Within two weeks, Bill Clinton caved in to Gingrich's agen-
da, proposing to convert project-based Section 8 rent subsidies
into vouchers that would drive tenants into the tight, overpriced
housing market. Thus began a full-scale attack on the 300,000
New York City tenants who rely on federal rent subsidies and
public housing. Then, in 1996, Newt and his crew dropped a
bomb by trying to eliminate the Brooke Amendment, which
caps rent paid by public housing and Section 8 tenants at 30
percent of their income.
The outlook seemed bleak and many housing advocates
began discussing the "inevitability" of these changes.
While the Senator signed his book, one of our tenant leaders
asked him for a meeting-and 0' Amato, to our surprise, read-
ily agreed. I never knew that $15 could buy so much influence.
When we eventually met with him in the fall of 1995,
0' Amato seemed ready to cut our visit short until a grand-
mother in our delegation presented him with a gift-wrapped box
of imported spaghetti. It worked. The senator sat down and
gave us five more minutes. Then he pledged to oppose
Clinton's voucher plan in writing. Not only had we given
0' Amato an opportunity to make inroads with tenants-we had
given him a chance to criticize the White House.
Later, 0' Amato invited me to testify against the administra-
tion proposa\. He also tore into the voucher plan, which many
Republicans religiously supported. "It doesn' t work in New
York City, where you have a two percent vacancy rate and
Tenant Power,
Pasta and Politics
vouchers can be exercised maybe 65 percent of the
time," he said to the assembled committee.
Tenants won. This fall, Congress passed a major
reform bill which allows virtually no vouchering-
out.
Simultaneously, the battle over public housing
and Section 8 intensified. Two bills were on the
table. We opposed both. The harsher measure, spon-
sored by another Long Island Republican, Rep.
Rick Lazio, would almost totally have wiped out
By Billy Easton
BiliV Easton
is executive
director of
the New
York State
Tenants and
Neighbors
Coalition.
Luckily, tenants did not. Thanks to grassroots pressure and
skillful, creative lobbying, we are winning the war, despite the
opposition of the three most powerful men in the country:
Clinton, Gingrich and Bob Dole.
With a Democratic President
lobbying for anti-tenant legisla-
tion, we had to be smart in select-
ing our political bedfellows. In
New York the key target was
obvious: Senator AI 0' Amato,
the Republican Long Islander
who chairs the Senate commit-
tee with jurisdiction over hous-
ing policy.
But getting 0' Amato's
attention was no easy task. We
had to be persistent, nearly
obsessive. We met with his
staff several times, requesting
a face-to-face with the senator, but each time they
brushed us off with "The senator is a busy man." We sent a
sign-on letter endorsed by 148 tenant and housing organizations
statewide. Still no meeting.
Finally, we got wind that 0 ' Amato and his buddy Howard
Stem were holding a joint book signing in Manhattan. On less than
a day's notice we were able to muster only half a dozen tenants. We
laid down our $15 for 0 ' Amato's autobiography, "Power, Pasta
and Politics," grabbed a book and inched forward on the line.
the Brooke rent caps and included a radical experiment to
deregulate the New York City Housing Authority. The second
bill was sponsored by 0' Amato himself.
The politics here were tricky. Our strategy was this: per-
suade D'Amato to oppose Lazio's bill, while pressuring other
members of Congress not to embrace 0' Amato's bill, which
itself substantially weakened rent caps. Thousands of New York
City tenants wrote letters, we kept up the lobbying and
0 ' Amato held the line. By September, Lazio's bill was dead
and the l04th Congress recessed.
Unfortunately we don't have much time to celebrate. The
current Section 8 law will be in effect for only one year and we
are lobbying for the long-term preservation of the program, as
well as new provisions to give tenants a say over how their
buildings are managed and maintained.
And, ironically, our successful battle against Lazio's public
housing bill may make this year's fight even more difficult.
Because Lazio lost so much credibility last session, 0' Amato's
bill could become the only game in town. If that happens, we
will have to work hard to oppose provisions of the Senator's bill
while trying to maintain the alliance we forged with him on pro-
ject-based Section 8.
Hopefully we can navigate these rough currents, but the
dilemma exposes our fundamental challenge: We need to move
from the defense to the offense. Just a year ago, such a goal
would have seemed unattainable.
That was before we proved Gingrich was wrong. Tenants
are strong. _
CITY LIMITS
--.---..... ~ ...... -
Academic Avenger
arguments with
data-the preferred
weapon of policy
wonks every-
REVIEW
By Salim Muwakkil
where-not rhetoric.
NOVEMBER 1996
"When Work Disappears: The World of the
New Urban Poor, " by William Julius
Wilson, Knopf, 1996, 322pp, $26.00
W
illiam Julius Wilson's new book comes weight-
ed with enormous expectations. In his previous
books, most notably 1987's "The Truly
Disadvantaged," Wilson, a Harvard sociologist,
almost singlehandedly debunked the conventional wisdom of the
Reagan era that welfare programs exacerbated the problems of
poverty. He earned a reputation as an academic avenger, rigor-
ously righting the wrongs of the Right and attracting the admira-
tion of Wonk-In-Chief Bill Clinton, who has
anointed him as the country's
most influential sociologist.
In "When Work Disappears," the meticulous researcher
calmly dismantles the latest right-wing dogma, black and white.
Inner-city ghettoes are not deteriorating because of the decay of
"family values" or a lack of "atonement" but rather because of
an exodus of jobs, he writes. "The disappearance of work and
the consequences of that disappearance for both social and cul-
turallife are the central problems in the inner-city ghetto."
These are not earthshaking statements, but his data-filled
research confers an academic gravity to vintage liberal argu-
ments, which need all the help they can get these days. Using data
compiled through the Urban Poverty and Family Life Study,
which he supervised while at the University of Chicago, Wilson
details "the new urban poverty," which differs from the poverty
of the past because of much higher levels of joblessness in racial-
ly segregated poor neighborhoods.
"For the first time in the 20th centu-
ry most adults in many inner-city ghet-
to neighborhoods are not working in a
typical week," Wilson writes in the
sentence that sums-up the gist of this
convincing book.
But another aspect of Wilson's
work is aimed at ideological dis-
putes within black America. Ideas
like self-help and moral determin-
ism and other notions associated
with black nationalism are gaining
popularity among African-
Americans. The meaning of last
year's Million Man March, for
example, seems to have been dis-
tilled into a message of self-reliance
and internal agency, the black nation-
alist message of Nation of Islam
The World of the New Urban poor
When Wilson attacks reductionist
conservative arguments about a "cul-
ture of poverty," he is also taking on
Farrakhan's critique that "Negroes"
are imbued with self-destructive cul-
tural habits. Wilson concedes that
ghetto cultural styles do aggravate the
problem, but he argues that those
behavior patterns are understandable
leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, who
conceived the march.
adaptations to chronic subordination.
Since employment serves to disci-
pline and organize behavior, jobless
Although debatable, this interpre-
tation is understandable; African-
Americans historically have turned
inward whenever the white mainstream
WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON
communities are plagued by higher
levels of social disorganization.
The men who attended the
seemed hostile or unresponsive to their
concerns. Since white Americans have seldom been less
responsive than during these conservative times, it's hardly sur-
prising that black nationalism is the mood of the moment.
Farrakhan, the most visible black nationalist, benefits from
that development. Like religious idealists everywhere,
Farrakhan assures his acolytes that the solution to their prob-
lems lies within. Unfortunately, his counsel is often used to jus-
tify political quietism; seldom are his followers involved in
political struggles to improve material condition in their neigh-
borhoods. And Farrakhan's audience is growing larger as mate-
rial conditions worsen.
Wilson, a self-effacing, soft-spoken academic, has been
mounting a vigorous challenge to nationalist conceits, which,
like the white conservative positions they mirror, propose solu-
tions with few public policy components. He has toppled their
Million Man March last year were
told to go home, open some businesses and make a positive
change in their personal lives; there are heartening signs that
many did just that. But in that year's time, the gap between the
rich and the poor continued to widen and the structural barriers
to racial equality stubbornly held their ground. Wilson reminds
us that positive thoughts, empowering rhetoric and mom-and-
pop capitalism just won't suffice. "When Work Disappears" pro-
poses that the federal government immediately implement a
multifaceted agenda of social and educational reforms, includ-
ing a public-sector jobs program modeled on the Works Progress
Administration (WPA) programs of the 1930s. Without such a
comprehensive approach, he argues, social inequality is likely to
worsen. And racial tensions are likely to heighten .
Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times and a
contributing columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.
C ommunity D evelopment Legal A ssistance C enter
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Community Economic Development Consulting
SPECIALIZING IN REAL ESTATE
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Applications 501 (c) (3) Federal Tax Exemptions All forms
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KOURAKOS & KOURAKOS
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Attorneys at Law
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(212) 682-8981
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
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CITVLlMITS
SENIOR LOAN OFFICER. Low Income Housing Fund NY. Underwrite
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Requires strong skills in financial analysis; experience in commu-
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education. Salary in 50s based on experience. Excellent cafeteria
benefit package. Send letter of interest and resume to UHF/SLO,
55 John St. , 10th floor, NYC 10038. UHF is an equal opportunity
employer.
DIRECTOR OF SOCIAL SERVICES. Westhab, the leading provider of
housing and supportive services for the homeless, speCial needs
and low income populations in Westchester County, NY seeks an
experienced social work administrator. The Director of Social
Services administers social work programs serving over 200 fami-
lies residing either in emergency apartments or in properties
owned or managed by Westhab and oversees the work of ten
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service delivery. The director will be responsible for designing a
new program to transition homeless families to financial indepen-
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bal communication skills, strong administrative and management
skills and ability to ensure coordination of service efforts with
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with salary history to G. Bishop, HR Manager, 85 Executive Blvd.
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RESIDENT COORDINATOR. Experience working with residents;
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with extensive housing development experience and a commitment
to social change. LEASEUP COORDINATOR with previous experience
compiling and completing documents for Section 8 and tax credit
projects. Fax resume to: AHCNY, (718) 693-3367.
TENANT ORGANIZER. Neighborhood-based organization seeks a
bright community-oriented self-starter to work with individual ten-
ants and groups in privately-owned financially distressed buildings
in Brooklyn. Must have excellent written and verbal communication
skills; organizing, counseling, and advocacy experience desirable.
EOE. Excellent salary and benefits. Resume to PACC, 201 DeKalb
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DIRECTOR. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a 6-year-old NYC-
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BOOKKEEPERIFISCAL OFFICER. The Northwest Bronx Community &
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ORGANIZERS. The Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition
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eMaven
By Glenn Thrush
few weeks ago, a reporter for a 20-year-old urban affairs news monthly called a man whose job title
can best be described as "expert," and asked him to provide a benign little quote-something to do
with finding loopholes in the new welfare reform act.
"How're you doing?"
"Yeah, fine," the expert replied, "What's the question?"
The reporter stumbled over his words. He didn't like the
other man's tone. The question took forever to free itself from
his cottony mouth and when he was done, an answer shot back
instantly.
"I don' t think I can really say anything about it. It's my area
of expertise but I think it's too early in the game for me to be
making a comment."
The blood was beginning to pool in the fleshy parts of the
reporter's face. He looked at the blank place in his story where
the quote was supposed to go.
"Why? What are you talking about?"
''I'm saying that I just don't have an answer for you." The
word "you" was accompanied by something that sounded like
a snort.
"I don' t underst.. .. "
"Look," he said, "I don't have anything to say. I don't have
the time for this." His receiver clicked. There was a pause and
the drone of a siren outside. Then came the dial tone.
Okay, the reporter was me. The expert's tone was so
accusatory it made me want to run over to his office and shout,
"You've got it all wrong!" And then it hit me. He wasn't an
"expert" at all. He was just a regular old source.
It's not that sources are an inferior species, or even that they
know less than experts. It's just that they're too unpredictable to
give good quote: They can be reluctant, shy, disdainful, bland, dis-
trustful and, in some cases, Fatal-Attraction-obsessive types who
phone you at 2 a.m. ("You were supposed to call me last week.
You promised you would call me last week.")
But experts, ahh, they're special . They are smart people,
careful people, people who have the superhuman capacity to
tolerate a reporter's unschooled questions and provide cogent,
quotable newsbites. And in a business where credibility is king,
they never lie. Having their quote in your story makes you feel
like you've just upgraded to a better health plan.
Take Gene Russianoff, oft-quoted staff attorney for
NYPIRG. He knows everything there is to know about good
government and has written half the city's reform laws. So why
not quote him 30 times a year?
Sure, people in my small circle of experts don't always have
the answer. Ray Horton, the head of the Citizens Budget
Commission, gives you his coal-eyed, John Brown gaze and
questions your questions. But Horton will always throw you a
rope and try to redirect you with "I think a better line of thought
would be .... " And his liberal counterpart Penelope Pi-Sunyer of
the City Project will always give you the name of another
expert-not from your circle of experts, but from hers, which is
almost as good.
It doesn't matter if experts are partisan; they can make the cut
if their goodwill and judgment can be trusted. Norman Adler, a
lobbyist who sometimes works for Phillip Morris, often slams
the system he's a part of without ever sounding like a hypocrite.
ACORN's Jon Kest can talk about his own victories and failures
with analytic detachment. Why not use them?
But have I overused them? I fumble through my recent clips
and find their names in horrifying proliferation, blackening the
page like the birds mUltiplying beside Tippy Hedren's bench.
"Russianoff says ... "; "Horton explains .. . "; " ... according to
Adler."
I haven't done anything wrong, I try to tell myself. It's such
a huge city and it's so rare when you can find someone you real-
ly trust. But I know my would-be maven was right. You can' t
just call people up, rent their brains for five minutes and still be
your own man.
I have the urge to go through each and every one of my sto-
ries and take out the quotation marks. Instead I hit my Rolodex
and pluck out the dozen or so fmgerprint-smeared, rumpled
cards and tear them out portentously, letting the white flakes
fall into my melancholy garbage can. Good-bye, my dear '
friends.
If only I hadn't memorized their numbers first.
CITVLl MITS
NOVEMBER 1996
mBankersliust Company
Community Development Group
A resource for the non ... profit
development community

Gary Hattem, Managing Director
Amy BrusHoff, Vice President
280 Park Avenue, 19West
New York, New York 10017
Tel: 212,454,3677 Fax: 212,454,2380
LET US DO A FREE EVALUATION
OF YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS
We have been providing low-cost insurance programs and
quality service for HDFCs, TENANTS, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
and other NONPROFIT organizations for over 75 years.
We Offer:
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DIRECTOR'S & OFFICERS' LlABILTY
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PSFS, INC.
146 West 29th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10001
(212) 279-8300 FAX 714-2161 Ask for: Bola Ramanathan
MY
o CHASE
The Chase Manhattan Bank is pleased to congratulate the
1996 Housing Opportunities (HOP) Awardees
New york (cont'd)
BEC New Communities HDFC, Inc.
Bellport, Hagerman, East Patchogue Alliance H.D.F.C.
Belmont Arthur Avenue Local Development Corporation
Better Neighborhoods, Inc.
BRC Human Services Corporation
Bronx United in Leveraging Dollars, Inc.
Brooklyn Neighborhood Improvement Association, Inc.
Broome County Habitat for Humanity
Broome-TIoga Arc
Buffalo Neighborhood Housing Services. Inc.
Capital District Community Loan Fund, Inc.
Capitol Hill Improvement Corporation
Carroll Gardens Association, Incorporated
Catholic Charities of Broome County
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Brooklyn/Queens
Chautauqua Area Habitat for Humanity, Inc.
Chemung County Habitat for Humanity
Clinton Housing Development Company, Inc.
Common Ground Community HDFC, Inc.
Community Access, Inc.
Community Assisted Tenant Controlled Housing, Inc.
Community Service Society
Cooper Square Committee
Corporation for Supportive Housing
Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation
East New York Urban Youth Corps Housing Development
Fund, Inc.
Eastside Neighbors in Partnership
Empire Housing and Development Corporation
The Enterprise Foundation
Fifth Avenue Committee, Inc.
First Ward Action Council, Inc.
Flatbush Development Corporation
Fordham Bedford Housing CorpOration
Greyston Foundation
Habitat for Humanity - New York City, Inc.
Habitat for Humanity of the Capital District
Habitat for Humanity of Westchester, Inc.
Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement, Inc.
Hill And Yale Affordable Housing, Inc.
Hispanic Association for Drug Free Society for
Promesa, Inc.
Hope Community, Inc.
Housing Action Council
Housing And Services, Inc.
Housing Conservation Coordinators, Inc.
Housing Opportunities, Inc.
Human Development Services of Port Chester, Inc.
Institute For Community Living, Inc.
Interfaith Council for Action, Inc.
Interfaith Council for Affordable Residence
Interfaith Nutrition Network, Inc.
Jubilee Homes of Syracuse
Lawyers Alliance for New York
Local Initiatives Support Corp.
Long Island Housing Partnership, Inc.
Lower East Side Coalition Housing Development, Inc.
Manhattan Yalley Development Corporation
MBD Community Housing Corporation
Mercy Haven, Inc.
Metro Interfaith Housing Management Corporation
Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council, Inc.
CHASE. The right relationship is
C1996 The Chase Manhattan Bank. Member FDIC.