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THE WELFARE
REFORM NO ONE
WILL TALK ABOUT
GREENPOINT'S
HOT SLUDGE
TREAT
EDITORIAL
NONPROFITS' BOTTOM LINE
It's a business factoid as much of this moment as
Cisco's stock price was a couple of years ago:
Nonprofits are doing great; better, by many
measures, than for-profit enterprises. The recent
report from the New York City Nonprofits Pro-
ject spells it out in exhaustive detail. In the
1990s, the number of nonprofits in the city
grew by 57 percent; employment in the non-
profit sector increased by nearly 25 percent,
while overall employment remained flat; and in
the last two years, 90 percent of organizations
saw an increase in the number of people they
serve, totaling 2.2 million people each day.
Not everyone is celebrating. City Journals
Steven Malanga, for one, sees very bad news for
New York. Because much of their money comes
from government, and thus from taxes on indi-
viduals and corporations, nonprofits' growth
helps make doing business in New York prohib-
itively expensive, says Malanga. It's "irresponsi-
ble" and "excess," he believes, for the public sec-
tor to pay billions to nonprofits.
Malanga points to Governor Pataki's deal
with Dennis Rivera as an emblem of everything
that's wrong with government spending on
nonprofits. I agree that the 1199 pact was terri-
ble for New York. But to use it to condemn all
government spending on non profits is like
looking at Enron as a typical American busi-
ness. Greedily exploiting the public interest is
toxic, no marter who's involved; as City Limits
readers know, nonprofits do it too.
But even Malanga doesn't try to claim that
their work doesn't need to get done.
From foster care to shelter for the homeless,
government spending on human services isn't
for human services isn't just socially necessary;
in many cases, it's legally mandated. And busi-
nesses are hardly victims here: housing and
health care for low-wage workers help employ-
ers as much as anyone.
Nonprofits are also able to provide public
services at a lower cost than when the city car-
ried them out directly through its unionized
bureaucracies. (Unlike government agencies,
they are not solely reliant on public money:
Out of $14.5 billion in contributions to New
York City nonprofits, only 34 percent comes
from government, and even in human services,
it's 52 percent.) It's not like all that public
money goes down the toilet, either; nonprofits
deliver $43 billion into to the city economy
every year in salaries and spending. They rent
office space, buy computers, employ consul-
tants, hold lots of fancy parties. Increasingly,
those non profits function like businesses them-
selves, relying on commercial ventures as a sig-
nificant source of income.
If it were commercial enterprises growing at
this rate, business publications would praise
the superiority of for-profit enterprise: its lean-
ness, its flexibility, the might of marketplace
competition to weed out the weak and allow
the strong to become more powerful. We've
now had the opportunity to observe some of
the unheralded strengths of nonprofits. Why is
that so threatening?
-Alyssa Katz
Editor
Corer photo by Stephen Hoffman. James Jackson, 71. fires at the Bowery's Sunshine Hotel and shines shoes for a liring.
Centej for an
F
Utroan
u ure
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Go to our website or contact us to obtain any of our recent studies:
., Sympathy, but No Support: Even After 9/11, Albany Continues a Decade-long Pattern of Shortchanging NYC (April 2002)
., After the Gold Rush: The Ongoing Opportunity in Information Technology (March 2002)
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., Under the Mattress: Why NYC's Jobs System Remains a Work Progress, (November 2001)
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io
CONTENTS
14 DUBIOUS BENEFITS
The battle over welfare reform is about everything from marriage
incentives to workfare-everything, that is, except for the
paltry benefits people on welfare actually get.
By Matt Pacenza
19 THE MISSING LINKS
Plans to build a world-class golf course in the Bronx's Ferry
Point Park are sinking just as quickly as environmental
concerns about the $40 million project multiply.
By Alex Ulam
22 BEYOND THE BOWERY
An aging flophouse is getting a full makeover, with
Japanese-style cubicles and attentive caseworkers. With the
new digs come new neighbors-and for old-timers, a
reckoning with a dying way of life.
By Bob Roberts
5 FRONTLINES: GREEN POINT TURNS SEWAGE TO GOLD ... GOOD NEWS ON MENTAL HEALTH ...
ALBANY'S AIDS EXPERIMENT ... NOW PLAYING AT THE COMMODORE: THE END ...
CANARSIE RENTER'S BONUS: A JOB ... BANANA KELLY MAKES AN APPEAL
11 SACRED GROUND
Speculation. Abandonment. Negligence. Harlem residents are
complaining about their neighboring property owners-except this time,
those owners are the churches. By Judith Matloff
28 THE BIG IDEA
Would a check for slavery's historic wounds do anything to challenge
America's persistent racism?
By Hakim Hasan
30 CITY LIT
Taking the Train: How Graffiti An Became an Urban Crisis in New York
City, by Joe Austin. Reviewed by Vee Bravo
MAY 2002
32 MAKING CHANGE
Union power may be fading, but grassroots worker centers are
thriving. What if the two could join forces?
By Hilary Russ
34 NYC INC.
Economic incentives for business typically ignore nonprofits,
despite the jobs they generate and neighborhoods they revive.
Here's how the city could step up for New York's forgotten sector.
By David Lebenstein and Arlene Wysong
2 EDITORIAL
40 JOB ADS
44 PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
46 OFFICE OF THE CITY VISIONARY
3
LETTERS
WAGE WAR
].W Mason's article "Living Wage Junko-
nomics" Uune 2002] ignores the question of
whether "living wage" recipients actually gain
financially from higher wage laws, and serious-
ly mischaracterizes the leading independent
economic study on the subject.
Particularly in New York- home of the
nation's most generous supports for the work-
ing poor-the supposed beneficiaries of "living
wage" laws have much to lose. The Suffolk
County Department of Social Services has cal-
culated that a single mother with two children
who earns $7 an hour will actually have less
disposable income when her wage goes up to
$10.25- the "living wage" that takes effect in
Suffolk this July 1 for employees with no
health coverage. With that higher wage, the
single mom would lose $1,677 in the com-
bined federal and state earned income tax cred-
it, plus Food Stamps, Medicaid coverage and
other benefits.
The proposed New York City wage man-
date is somewhat lower, so the loss of benefits
would be less than on Long Island-but would
be real, nonetheless. Proponents of "living
wages" routinely say they are acting on behalf
of struggling families, rather than working to
help unions build a better climate for organiz-
ing. Strangely, their propaganda never address-
es the question of how much-and whether-
low-income workers will actually gain.
Mason wri tes that David Neumark's
recently released study of "living wage" laws
found only "minimal" impact on employ-
ment. Readers who are interested in the facts
should look up Professor Neumark's own char-
acterization of his work at www.ppic.org. He
found that "living wage" laws reduce low-
income employment by an average of 7 per-
cent. In New York City, that would mean the
loss of more than 9,000 jobs for low-skilled
workers-hardly a "minimal" effect. Mason
also ignores the economist's bottom-line advice
for policymakers, even going so far as to quote
only part of a sentence in the summary ofNeu-
mark's report. While saying, as Mason writes,
that his research "may dispel fears that living
wage laws have the unintended effect of
increasing urban poverty," Neumark concludes
his sentence with a clause Mason chooses to
omit: "but it does not necessarily imply that
living wages constitute the best means of help-
ing the urban poor. " He then adds: "Policy-
makers contemplating implementing living
wage laws ... should give due consideration to
comparisons among alternative methods of
reducing poverty, such as the Earned Income
Tax Credit."
New York City, with its own local income
4
tax, is uniquely well positioned to consider a
local EITC. Such a step would help all low-
income workers - unlike the "living wage"
proposal that helps only those who work
directly or indirectly for government.
Robert B. Ward
Director of Research, The Public Policy
InstitutelThe Business Council of
New York State, Inc.
1. W. Mason replies:
Robert Ward is mistaken that New Yorks liv-
ing wage proposal "helps only those who work
directly or indirectly for government. " Given the
broad coverage of the law, many if not most of
the beneficiaries would be employees of private
businesses that receive city subsidies. As for the
EITC, I personally agree with the Presidents
Council of Economic Advisors, which concluded
in 1998 that the two types of measures should be
regarded as complements rather than substitutes.
However, there are serious problems with the
EITC if minimum wages aren't increased: see
another City Limits piece I wrote, "The Flatter-
ing Tax" Uune 2002].
As for the Neumark study, I am afraid Mr.
Ward has misunderstood its findings. Neumark
does not calculate the "average" employment loss
from living wage laws, but figures out the loss
or gain depending upon changes in other vari-
ables, in particular the amount of the living
wage hike. In just one example, Neumark
writes that a 50 percent increase in wages
would reduce the employment rate for the bot-
tom ten percent of wage earners by 7 percent.
This hypothetical example is the only 7 percent
job loss Neumark mentions in the report. If Mr.
Ward got his 9,000 jobs by multiplying the
affected population by 7 percent, it is not a
meaningful number.
Several points need to be stressed here. First,
that finding of job loss applies only to the bottom
10 percent; in fact, Neumark finds a job gain for
higher wage earners. Second, the scale of the job
loss depends on the amount wages are raised: 50
percent is more than double the increase contem-
plated in New York. Finally, it is a mistake to
ignore the confidence intervals in a study like
this; the finding of job loss is statistically signifi-
cant-but just barely. Many cities that have
implemented living wage laws have seen no job
loss at all. Statistically speaking, Neumarks wage
gain findings are much, much stronger.
In light of all this, I think I was correct in pre-
senting Neumarks study as favorable to living
wage proposals. Nor did I misrepresent NeumarkS
own views. I would refer Mr. Ward to a May 19
New York Times story, where Neumark spells
out the political implicatiom of his findings:
"The evidence points to a moderate reduction in
continued on page 36
CITY LIMITS
Volume XXVII Number 7
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CITY LIMITS
FRONTLINES
The marquee
at the Commodore
may soon go dark.
Williamsburg's Last Picture Show
NOW PLAYING AT the Commodore Theater in Williamsburg: Spider-Man.
But probably not for much longer. The blockbuster movie could be
the 1921 theater's last hurrah, because the owners of the art deco build-
ing are in the process of selling. While the current shareholders refuse to
name the buyer, their attorney says his clients have signed a sale contract.
Responding to rumors that the Commodore's new owners plan to tear
down the theater and build a yeshiva school on the property, a group of
local residents and elected officials have asked the city to dub the build-
ing a landmark, to help preserve it as a neighborhood cultural center. AI
Gorman, the shareholders' attorney, would not indicate what the new
owner plans to do with the space, only saying that his own clients decid-
ed it was no longer profitable to show movies there.
"There's no cultural center in the area that works with youth and artists,"
says David Pagan, executive director of Los Sures, a local community devel-
opment group. On behalf of five other local nonprofit groups, Assembly-
member Vito Lopez and City Councilmember Diana Reyna, Pagan submit-
ted an application to the city Landmarks Preservation Commission in Feb-
ruary to have the old theater landmarked. The commission is currently con-
sidering the proposal and has yet to schedule a public hearing. Landmark sta-
tus would limit the changes the new owner could make to the theater.
Pagan hopes the building's cultural history will speak for itself.
Designed by the architecture firm Groneberg & Leuchtag, the Com-
JULY/AUGUST 2002
modore was built as a one-screen movie house in 1921. Today, in addition
to playing first-run films, it hosts the Williamsburg Film Festival, Pueno
Rican and Dominican concerts, local forums, and school graduations.
If it were up to the North Brooklyn Arts Coalition, as the group of
nonprofits has named itself, they would use the Commodore as a cultur-
al arts center for the largely Latino neighborhood-housing exhibition
studios, filmmaking classes and live music and dance performances.
After getting wind of the yeshiva plan over the winter, they submit-
ted a proposal to the owners to do just that. But their bid carne too late,
says Gorman. "We were really far along with this other transaction," he
says. "We really felt a moral commitment because we had gone so far
with the negotiations."
So now the group hopes Landmarks moves quickly. At least one his-
torian is not sure how much luck they will have. Richard Sklenar, execu-
tive director of the Theater Historical Society of America in Elmhurst,
Illinois, says the space's moderate size-lA2? seats-and little-known
architects could work against it. "It would be a stretch to fmd anything
really significant on that particular building," he says.
Still, landmarking supporters hope history and sentiment win out.
"That was my theater growing up," says Evelyn Cruz of Bushwick. "I
wish I had the millions of dollars needed to purchase it."
. -Elizabeth Olsson
5
FRONT LINES
People with HIV
are moving to
managed care,
but will health
insurers buy it?
By Alex Ginsberg
AFTER THREE YEARS of negotiations and three
more of logistical delays, Howard Schwartz is
hopeful that his clients at Gay Men's Health
Crisis will soon be in for better health care.
As an expert on navigating the tangled webs
of Medicaid and health maintenance organiza-
6
MedicAIDS
tions, Schwartz has seen how people with HIV
and AIDS sometimes fail to seek treatment
until they fall off their medication regimens or
are too sick to function. He is now putting
some faith in the state's new plan to move
some of New York's neediest-and costliest-
Medicaid recipients into managed care.
But first, health care companies will have to
buy into it.
This fall, the state Department of Health
will start entolling some of the 64,000 HIV-
positive New Yorkers on Medicaid into man-
aged care programs as an attempt to save mil-
lions of dollars while giving clients more atten-
tive and specialized care.
"This is truly a grand experiment in financ-
ing and delivery, " says David Wunsch, director
of health policy at GMHC. "We don't know
that it can work." If it does, it would be the
most comprehensive health care program for
people with HIV in the country.
The shift ftom traditional fee-for-service
treatment to managed care-which will be
strictly voluntary for now-comes after years of
negotiations between GMHC and other AIDS
groups and health officials in Albany. The New
York State Department of Health first started
moving people on Medicaid into managed care
in 1995. State officials estimated that by purring
patients in HMOs, it would save about $80 mil-
lion--or 5 percent of its current costs--on HIV
Medicaid costs alone. In 1998, Medicaid expen-
ditures for HIV-positive New Yorkers totaled
about $1.6 billion, or $25,000 per patient.
Concerned that the HMOs might cut corners
on critical care to save money, Wunsch and others
convinced health officials in Albany that a special
Medicaid managed care system was critical for
patients with HIV and AIDS. "The care systems
in the mainstream plans are not designed for pe0-
ple who have an intensive level of needs," says
Wunsch. "There's a lack of coordinated case man-
agement. There's not enough access to specialists."
The new-and-improved Medicaid managed
care system for people with AIDS, first
announced in 1999, attempts to fill in a lot of
those holes. It operates through Special Needs
Programs (SNPs), which hire certified HIV spe-
cialists to serve as primary care physicians. State
guidelines require these doctors to complete a
residency or similar program in HIV and AIDS
care. The Department of Health plans to recer-
tifY SNPs each year based in part on whether
the doctors have taken the necessary classes on
the virus to update their expertise.
But much of the difference between SNPs
and mainstream Medicaid managed care lies in
areas not strictly medical. Patients will be
assigned case managers-professionals with
nursing or social work experience-to help
them find other services, from substance abuse
counseling and mental health treatment to
family planning and affordable housing.
"You can send someone to a pharmacy to
pick up $1,000 worth of drugs, but if you don't
have a fridge or a stove to cook a meal, it's not
going to work," says Michael Kink of Housing
Works, an advocacy group for homeless people
with AIDS which is a partner in VidaCare, a
nonprofit SNP. SNPs, he says, are meant to
provide "360 degrees of AIDS care."
Of course, all of this is nor cheap. The state is
currently doling out $20 million to help get the
programs going, and offering incentives to entice
health care companies to sign on. In New York
City, the incentives include up to $2,810.70 a
month for each AIDS patient, and up to $772.39
CITY LIMITS
for every HN-positive patient (rates are lower upstate).
That's more than 15 times the average monthly payment of
$161.09 the state pays out for mainstream Medicaid man-
aged care. Every other state but Maryland with a Medicaid
managed care system funds HN and AIDS patients at the
same rate as their healthiest patients, and Maryland's rates
still fall tar below New York's.
After much lobbying from Housing Works, Governor
Pataki also agreed to pick up case management and pre-
scription drug expenses. (The latter can run about $14,000
a year for someone with AIDS.) "We wanted to make sure
people were protected from the worst managed care abus-
es," says Kink. If those costs were lefr up to the HMOs, he
worries, they would try to cut corners. That leaves inpatient
hospital costs as the number one expense for the HMOs.
HMOs know this whole thing is a gamble. "Managed
care is not an appropriate vehicle to care for people with
special needs," says Kimberly Noel, director of regulato-
ry affairs for the HealthFirst SNp, a nonprofit that plans
to cover patients in the city and Long Island. "You should
be spreading your risk around. " Despite this, she says, her
company signed on in order to get more resources for the
work they already do with AIDS patients.
But she is not alone in her concerns. Another SNP
administrator compared managed care for people with
AIDS to car insurance. It's like "you put all the people
arrested for drunk driving in the same plan," she says.
Albany recognizes this, and it's offering SNPs reinsur-
ance-insurance for insurers. Under this plan, companies
must fully cover the first $100,000 in expenses a patient
incurs in a calendar year. The state would cover 50 per-
cent of the next $100,000, and 100 percent of any addi-
tional expenses above that.
HealthFirst plans to take things slowly by enrolling
only 20 to 50 patients by the end of 2002. Noel says they
do hope to increase that number to 3,000 afrer three years.
Not many companies are convinced that this is worth
the risk, though. As of May, only seven SNPs had applied
to the Department of Health for a contract. This does
not deter the Department of Health. Ira Feldman, the
agency's depury director for HN health care, says this is
an "adequate response," since current law limits the num-
ber of SNPs in the state to 12.
While Wunsch says he wants to see the program do well,
he still hopes it is not so successfUl that the state ultimately
decides to make managed care mandatory for people with
HN and AIDS. "There will always be populations who
need the basic safety net, who will not fit into the strictures
and follow the rules of managed care," he says.
If the Department of Health decides to expand the
managed care experiment into the standard Medicaid
plan for people with AIDS, it will need to secure federal
approval before making the switch, a fate Wunsch sees as
inevitable: "This train has lefr the station, and the desti-
nation is a mandatory environment. Voluntary is a whis-
tle-stop along the way."
Alex Ginsberg is a Manhattan-based freelance writer.
JULY/AUGUST 2002
FRONT LINES
URBAN LEGEND
Mind and Copy
AT THE AGE OF 43, Ira Minot became so incapacitated by depression he could hardly function.
He needed help, and his girlfriend at the time had little sympathy.
"She was an emergency room nurse, and they're tough," he recalls. "She was like, 'You're
depressed? Snap out of it. I've got people coming in with gunshot wounds and stabbings.'"
If only he could, he would think to himself. But it took 10 years of suffering, two serious sui-
cide attempts, endless stints on antidepressants and finally a series of electroshock treatments
for Minot to pull out of the disabling disease. His once-thriving career as a fundraiser was
destroyed. All that time, he felt terribly alone and ashamed. He could have joined support groups,
learned new job skills and contacted advocates who educate families about mental illness. But
no one ever told him that.
Minot, now 51, is determined to keep others from suffering in such ignorance. For the last
three years he has published Mental Health News, a newspaper brimming with articles by promi-
nent psychiatrists on topics such as post-traumatic stress, suicide, and eating disorders, along
with personal tales of triumph by survivors of mental illness. "It is not meant to give false hope,"
he says. "Mental illnesses do not always have happy endings. But I do want to inspire people."
The paper has an avid readership-about 60,000-among those who treat mental illness,
as well as those who suffer from it. His experience as both patient and social worker certainly
hasn't hurt his credibility. Once an aide in a psychiatric hospital in White Plains and later a psy-
chotherapist, Minot says suffering depression taught him more about mental illness than he ever
learned in social work school. "It was something you couldn't get out of a book," he says. "What
did I learn? What the illness feels like, the pain, the suffering, the losses it creates, the stigma."
Publishing for him was something new. He uses his station wagon to drop off hefty bundles
of papers at bookstores, psychiatric hospitals, shelters, treatment centers and mental health
advocacy offices.
He believes that with the right support, many of those with mental illness can recover. And
his writers agree. "Someone with an anxiety disorder may be going to a million doctors and not
realize that their real problem is anxiety," says Richard Francis, MO, chief executive officer of
Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut and a contributor to the newspaper. "Seeing it in print may
make a difference for them, seeing something written by experts but written in plain and sim-
ple language."
-Maura McDermott
7
FRONT LINES
Swimming
way or another, this container of muck may give Greenpoint a place to play_
Sewage tank
turns rec center,
or is it the
perfect pawn?
By Mia lipsit
GO PLAY IN THE ... sludge storage tank?
That's what some Greenpoint residents
hope to one day be able to say to their kids,
provided they can convince their neighbors it's
a good idea to convert a sewage tank near the
East River into a rec center, complete with a
performance space, art gallery, roonop cafe and
a swimming pool.
"The view of the Manhattan skyline nom
there is spectacular and certainly will draw vis-
itors, " insists Keith Rodan, a 20-year resident
of Greenpoint and an avid proponent of the
proposal, called GreenTank.
But with a developer vying to put up apart-
ment buildings along the river just a block
away, many community members hope to use
8
the sludge tank and the small lot it sits on-
which the city has already promised to the
community once it stops using it in the next
few years-as the bargaining chip they need to
get a park along the waterfront.
"This community is surrounded by water
but has no access to it," says Christine
Holowacz of the local Newtown Creek Moni-
toring Committee. By putting the tank on the
table, she says the community might be able to
win some prime riverside park space from the
Bloomberg administration.
The committee's strategy has been brewing
since 1996, when the city announced plans for
a $1.42 million upgrade of the Newtown Creek
Water Pollution Control Plant to comply with
the federal Clean Water Act. The city Depart-
ment of Environmental Protection expects to
phase out use of the 800,OOO-gallon tank,
which has stored city sewage since 1967, over
the next few years. In its place, the city will
build a force main to pump the sludge directly
from the plant-the second largest in the
nation--<>nto barges that cart the waste off to
nearby Ward's Island.
As part of this plan, Giuliani administration
officials agreed-after much lobbying from the
community board and the Newtown Creek
Monitoring Committee-to demolish the struc-
ture and transfer the property to the community
for open space. Their real strategy behind getting

In Sludge
the tank land: get it and then trade it for water-
front property.
Enter GreenTank. Originally dreamed up by
Ron Shiffman of the Pratt Institute Center for
Community and Economic Development dur-
ing Greenpoint's 197-A waterfront planning
process over the last decade, the proposal keeps
the outside of the building-considered beauti-
ful and historic in some circles--as is, and decon-
taminates and spruces up the inside to make way
for a badly needed museum and recreation cen-
ter. (The neighborhood does not have either.)
"It will be the most unique kind of space
you've ever seen, " gushes architect Meta Brun-
zema. And the idea does have some firepower
behind it. The Municipal Art Society, which
played a lead role in saving Grand Central Sta-
tion and old theaters and neon lights in Times
Square, has raised money to hire Brunzema to
study the project's feasibility.
The results of the study are due out this fall,
but members of local Community Board 1 and
the Monitoring Committee hope to be bargain-
ing for waterfront land by then. The Lumber
Exchange Terminal recently signed a contract to
sell its 21 acres along the East River and New-
town Creek to developer George Klein, who
plans to build apartment buildings there.
Dividing the lumberyard's property are two
acres of city-owned land that Lumber Exchange
leases. While Klein would have the option to
renew that lease for another decade, some com-
munity members hope to convince the city to
permanently transfer that land and the tank
property to Klein-they have no problem with
housing there as long as it's not too tall or
expensive-in exchange for some of his newly
acquired land along Newtown Creek.
While city officials would not comment on
the prospect of a deal like that, a spokesperson at
the Department of City Planning says they are
reviewing rezoning possibilities along the water-
front, including Klein's own proposal. Elizabeth
Counihan of Park Tower Group, Klein's compa-
ny, says they intend to include public waterfront
access for local residents in their project.
This could leave Green Tank in the lurch.
But its proponents are not giving up. Rodan
says that he and his cohorts hope their proposal
will be a part of the negotiations between Klein
and the city .
Mia Lipsit is a Manhattan-based freelance writer.
CITY LIMITS
Homes That Work
BUFFY FARMER HAD been living in the Brooklyn
Women's Shelter for close to a year when her
caseworker told her about a new housing devel-
opment that would not only give her an afford-
able and permanent place to live, but also help
her fmd a job.
In February, she moved into New Life
Homes, an unassuming six-story brick building
on Dewitt Avenue in Canarsie, and three
months later, she landed a job as a receprionist.
For the first rime in more than a year, she is
working and paying rent, achievements for
which she credits the resume-wriring and inter-
viewing classes offered by her building's manag-
er, Services for the Underserved.
New Life Homes is the last of six housing
developments to be built by a team of ciry agen-
cies and nonprofits that provide homeless New
Yorkers who do not fit into a "special needs" cat-
egory, like mental illness, with an apartment and
on-site job training and placement services.
Unril now, "All the supportive housing had
been for people with chronic mental health or
health issues, " says David Gillcrist of the Cor-
poration for Supportive Housing, which fund-
ed the projects along with the ciry's depart-
ments of Homeless Services and Housing
Preservation and Development. "There was
nothing for people who have transitory prob-
lems because of substance abuse or for those
who have not had solid work experience."
A Real Estate Bargain
AS MAYOR BLOOMBERG and Governor Pataki fin-
ished up their budget negoriarions this spring, a
group of advocates for the homeless started lob-
bying for cash from next year's pot, insisring their
plan will actually save the government money.
A coalition of 20 nonprofit groups asked the
state and ciry to budget about $1 billion for the
crearion of 9,000 apartments with supporrive
services-from job training to substance abuse
counseling-for homeless adults with mental
disabiliries as well as for homeless families.
Citing the rise in the city's adult shelter pop-
ularion-about 40 percent of which is esrimat-
ed to suffer from mental illness-the cam-
JULY/AUGUST 2002
For this reason, former Homeless Services
Commissioner Joan Malin spearheaded the
project, called the Supportive Housing Employ-
ment Model Program, in 1995, putting her
agency's $21 million in unspent capital funds
toward what has become a $49 million develop-
ment of 304 apartments in six buildings in
Brooklyn and the Bronx.
At New Life Homes, the pressure is now on
Services for the Underserved to help tenants get
the jobs they were trained for. Like the other
developments-run by East New York Urban
Youth Corps, the Fifth Avenue Committee, the
Jericho Project, Communiry Acrion for Human
Services and VIP Communiry Services--SUS
has reserved most of its apartments (11 of 54) for
graduates of job training or substance abuse treat-
paign's coordinator, Steven Coe of Communiry
Access, says, "We can't wait for another crisis;
we need to start planning today."
Their proposal, called New York/New York
III, would expand a program that has funded
the creation of 5, 115 apartments for homeless
people with mental illness since 1990, when
Mayor David Dinkins and Governor Mario
Cuomo signed the New York/New York I
Agreement. That first deal allocated $194.7
million for 3,615 apartments that were built
and run by nonprofit service groups.
The Pataki and Giuliani administrarions did-
n't take the program any further, unril tragedy
struck: In January 1999, Andrew Goldstein, a
homeless man suffering from schiwphrenia,
shoved Kendra Webdale in front of a subway,
killing her almost instandy. Three months later,
the governor and mayor signed a second New
FRONTLINES
ment programs at the ciry's transirional shelters.
(The rest are for homeless people with mental ill-
ness.) About 35 percent of the tenants had jobs
when they moved to New Life, and since then
another three, including Farmer, have found
work. At the two-year-old Jericho Project build-
ing in the Bronx, about half of the tenants are
now working. The residents pay 30 percent of
their income to rent, either through Section 8
vouchers or other public assistance programs.
As to whether more developments like these
are in the ciry's future, Homeless Services
spokesperson Jim Anderson says his agency
plans to commit to about 200 addirional beds
for supporrive housing programs with job assis-
tance but, given the current fiscal crisis, he says
he can't say how, or when. -Elizabeth Olsson
YorklNew York agreement for another 1,500
apartments. Some of these homes are srill under
construcrion, but, fearing the shelter popularion
will conrinue to grow-the shelters for single
adults are at their fullest since 1990, housing an
average of7,914 adults a night as of March-
advocates hope to get more apartments funded.
They have also asked for 1,500 supportive apatt-
ments for homeless families.
While they were not able to get any funding
allotted in the state budget passed in May, the
campaigners are hopeful for next year. "They
have not direedy said no to us," says Shelly Nom.
of the Coalirion for the Homeless. Her main
argument: It would actually save the ciry and
state money in the end: It costs $40,500 a year
to keep someone in a psychiatric insriturion, but
only $16,300 a year in supportive housing.
-Elizabeth Olsson
9
FRONTLINES
Banana Kelly U-Turn
IT'S BEEN MORE THAN a year since Banana Kelly
Inc., a troubled community development group
in the South Bronx, transferred management of
two dozen of its buildings to a neighboring
organization. At the time, many of the group's
properties were falling into disrepair, and the state
artomey general had just seized five years' worth
of financial records from Banana Kelly for an
investigation.
Now Yolanda Rivera, Banana Kelly's former
executive director and current board chair, is hav-
ing second thoughts: She's trying to get her build-
ings back. While they remain in limbo, hundreds
of tenants are languishing in their dilapidated
apartments, waiting for badly needed repairs.
In late January, the city Department of Hous-
ing Preservation and Development sent a lerter to
Rivera, asking that her group transfer tide of 22
of its buildings to the Southeast Bronx Commu-
nity Organization. SEBCO, a 34-year-old hous-
ing group, has been managing those buildings
and two others since last March, when Banana
Kelly agreed in a five-year contract to relinquish
all control of the properties.
Since then, SEBCO, with the help of the city,
has made emergency repairs, from fixing furnaces
to patching rooftops, says SEBCO's executive
vice president, Phil Foglia. But repairs, he says, are
not going "as rapidly as we would like."
In fact, he estimates another $7 to $8 million
worth of work is still needed to revive those apart-
ments. But according to Foglia, HPD refuses to
put that kind of cash into the buildings as long as
Banana Kelly still owns them.
In a January 25 lerter, HPD told Rivera as
much. "Both the physical and financial condi-
tion of the properties have deteriorated while
under Banana Kelly's ownership," wrote Deputy
Commissioner John Warren. "We believe the
most appropriate next step is to convey tide to
SEBCO so that the viability of the buildings can
be secured."
Rivera, however, does not seem interested in
doing that. In a May 13 lerter, she told Foglia that
Banana Kelly wants to take back the manage-
ment of its buildings by June 1. SEBCO's "inter-
ests in the properties," she wrote, "conflicts mate-
rially with the contract they execute to manage
and protect the owners of the properties."
HPD is trying to fight this move by threat-
ening to begin foreclosure proceedings if
Banana Kelly does not cooperate. The group
does, after all, have an outstanding debt to the
city of more than $3 million in back taxes and
water and sewer charges. According to Foglia,
Banana Kelly also owes more than $1 million to
vendors, including its oil company and mainte-
nance crews.
Several calls to Yolanda Rivera and to Banana
Kelly's director, Joe Hall, were not rerurned by
press time.
At least one Banana Kelly tenant has direct-
ly urged the city ro help SEBCO take over the
buildings completely. Marta Rivera, who is also
chair of local Community Board 2, wrote in a
note to HPD on May 6, "This Community
Board has no confidence that Banana Kelly,
left to their own devices, can improve their
properties. Every effort should be made to
remove Banana Kelly from their ownership of
all the buildings."
-Jill Grossman
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CITY LIMITS
INSIDETRACK
Sacred Ground
As churches make real estate part of their mission,
some Harlem residents pray for relief. By Judith Matloff
WHEN SHE JOINED Abyssinian Baptist Church
15 years ago, Marie Littlejohn believed in its
role as a Harlem leader. Her daughter was bap-
tized by rhe minister, Rev. Calvin Butts, who
was also a guest at rheir home.
That, however, was before rhis March, when
rhe church's real estate arm, Abyssinian Devel-
opment Corporation, started to rebuild rhe
shell next to her family's brick house off 135rh
Street. Wirhout seeking permission, workmen
invaded her garden to do surveys and marked
rheir home wirh orange paint. She is scared to
use rhe backyard because of falling bricks. Cus-
tomers patronizing rhe family boutique on rhe
ground floor contend wirh dust and vibrations
emanating from rhe worksite.
The family called rhe police, rhen took the
church to court seeking a temporary injunction
to stop work. The construction manager, EJ.
Sciame, has since obtained legal permission for
workmen to access Littlejohn's property. But
rhe work to reconstruct Abyssinian's building,
which once housed rhe legendary Small's Par-
adise nightclub, is still causing problems. Win-
dow covers are falling; workmen are digging
under rhe foundation of Lirtlejohn's home.
And for rhe time being, Littlejohn has stopped
going to church.
"I cannot sit rhere in church anymore and
hear Rev. Butts talk about what we can do for
rhe community," she says. ''This church is
going against its own."
She adds: "I go to church to feel serene, not
to feel angry and betrayed. I am upset rhat I
have been disrespected by rhe church. Because
of rhis, I have to rerhink what church in rhis
day and age means."
Lirtlejohn's experience is one of rhe more
glaring instances of strained church-communi-
ty relations in rhe new Harlem Renaissance.
During the ghetto days of shootings and drug
epidemics, Harlem churches were often the
bedrocks of rhe community. Many still provide
vital social services such as day care, yourh pro-
grams and senior centers.
But wirh rhe recent real estate boom in rhe
area, an increasing number of churches have
gone rhe way of Abyssinian and become devel-
JULY/AUGUST 2002
11
INSIDE TRACK
opers, acquiring or building on valuable prop-
erty. What they do, or don't do, with their real
estate has frayed relations with residents out-
side their congregations.
Community activists have accused churches
that have sought to raze or alter historic build-
ings of selling out Harlem's heritage. They
argue that the religious institutions should
instead preserve architectural icons as magnets
for tourism that would benefit the community
at large. Other neighbors are angered when
churches try to sell property to speculators. Still
more decry some churches' practice of sitting
on precarious properties, letting them rot,
while waiting to raise money to renovate them.
"Churches find themselves in the fortuitous
position of being owners of some of the most
desirable properties, especially along main
commercial strips," says Yuien Chin, executive
director of the Hamilton Heights-West Harlem
Community Preservation Organization, an
umbrella of neighborhood groups. "Unfortu-
nately for the community, many churches are
not always able to deal with those properties
they hold if the operation does not relate
directly to the spiritual mission of the church. "
The most visible controversy surrounds the
Abyssinian Baptist Church, arguably the most
powerful of Harlem's religious institutions-
and one publicly associated with the revival of
the neighborhood. Since its establishment in
1989, Abyssinian Development Corporation
has launched millions of dollars worth of proj-
ects to create affordable housing and provide
neighborhood services.
But its plans for the sites of Small's and anoth-
er former nightclub, the Renaissance Casino, have
sparked the ire of community residents. In Febru-
ary, Community Board 10 called for emergency
protection for the buildings from the Landmarks
Preservation Commission. The board argued that
the two properties should be preserved as land-
marks, in light of their history as major venues of
Harlem social life from the 1920s through the
1960s, hosting big bands, politicians, writers and
ordinary folk. Plans for the Renaissance have not
been finalized, but the community board was
alarmed by one proposal to alter the building to
establish a catering hall. (The landmarks commis-
sion has not issued decisions on the marrer.)
As for Small's, Abyssinian Development has
signed a deal to lease the building to the Board
of Education; it is now constructing three extra
floors on top of the three-story structure to
accommodate extra classroom space for nearby
Thurgood Marshall High School. A retail ten-
ant, the International House of Pancakes,
signed up for ground-floor space.
The plans for the site have disappointed res-
12
idents who had proposed that ADC reopen the
nightclub as a historic anchor on the block.
Pointing to the success of the Lenox Lounge,
another Harlem jazz icon, which reopened a
couple of years ago and now draws busloads of
tourists, the neighbors argued that a club
would revitalize the area's economy. "We want
our past history preserved," says board chair
Stanley Gleaton. "We would prefer tourists
coming to visit a revived Small's rather than to
eat at an IHOP."
But reopening Small's is not "economically
viable," counters Karen Phillips, who was CEO
of Abyssinian Development Corporation until
last month. (She's now a nominee for the City
Planning Commission.) Instead, she says, 700
students will benefit. "This was an unique
opportunity to efficiently build a new school
facility, " she says. "The school entails tremen-
dous progress for the community." She and
church leaders declined further comment.
One church owns
a half-dozen
properties that
are practically
falling down.
ANOTHER BIG HARLEM institution under fire is
the Convent Avenue Baptist Church, which
provides valuable services for youth and the
elderly in West Harlem. Under a previous pas-
tor, the church was linked with the civil rights
movement, and on Martin Luther King Jr. Day
it continues to be a Mecca for politicians.
The current pastor, Clarence Grant, has made
a practice of amassing real estate but not devel-
oping it. Some of the church's half-dozen proper-
ties, located on landmarked blocks, are so neg-
leeted that they are practically falling down. For
instance, the interior of the vacant brownstone at
356 Convent Avenue is so decayed that firefight-
ers will not enter in case of an emergency.
Down the street, another Convent-owned
brownstone has caused its neighbors much
grief Josh Weinman, a real estate broker who
lives next door, says he has ftled insurance
claims for thousands of dollars of damages due
to problems like burst pipes and, on last Christ-
mas Eve, a chimney that collapsed.
Weinman says he never received an apology
or even a returned phone call from Pastor
Grant. He believes that by failing to maintain
its own properties, the church is hampering
economic development on the block. "I was
greeted with indifference when I phoned," he
says. "The community should benefit from the
church, not be harmed by it. "
Pastor Grant denies that the church was a bad
neighbor. "If he had come to me I would not
have said, That's your problem,'" he says. "There
is no way a person can say, that I'm aware of, that
the church is not sensitive to the needs of a
homeowner who lives next to a church building."
Pastor Grant says the church currently lacks the
money to develop its sites but wants to hold onto
the properties, so that when funding materializes
it can use them to house social projects like reme-
dial education and youth and health facilities.
The city Public Advocate's office is investi-
gating the matter, with ombudsman Ralph Per-
fetto giving it "priority" status.
Most galling to neighbors, though, is the
ruined former P.S. 186 on West 145th Street,
which Convent's affiliated youth group, the
M.L. Wuson Boys and Girls Club, bought some
20 years ago. Pastor Grant says that his church
does not have enough money to redevelop the
wreck. He explains that the church needs such a
big site for the club, which has only 150 mem-
bers in the neighborhood, for sports facilities
and commercial tenants, who would provide
income for the church to carry out its ambitious
mission. "We saw this building as a way to put
social services on a higher footing. There's an
enormous scope to create an income stream for
the club and services, with retail and commercial
tenants," says Pastor Grant. "You got to own the
property to define the services you provide."
Community leaders like Yuien Chin, how-
ever, say that by leaving the property vacant,
the church is hindering the economic health of
one of Harlem's major thoroughfares. Vandals
and drug users lurk around the site, which has
been abandoned for so long that a tree grows
out of the broken roof Neighborhood preser-
vationists also bemoan the neglect of what
might have been a prime candidate for land-
marking. They say the Italianate school build-
ing with imposing arches is so structurally
decayed now that it is probably beyond saving.
Members of Community Board 9 were
stung by the church's initially uncooperative
response several years ago to a proposal to rede-
velop the building into a new home for the
area's tiny post office across the street. George
Goodwill, the board's chair, said Pastor Grant
repeatedly failed to show up for meetings about
reconstruction. (On May 6, the pastor reported
CITY LIMITS
progress on new plans to finally develop the site.
"In the past, he would cancel a meeting or fail to
show up. But now he's initiated a meeting," says
Goodwill. "We welcome this dialogue.")
The board and other community groups have
taken on other problematic churches in the
neighborhood as well, including St. James Pres-
byterian Church at 409 West 141st Street and
the Christian Science Church down the street at
555 West 141st.
St. James faced strong community opposition
several years ago when the church announced
plans to build a 21-story tower on the site of its
landmarked community house. The high rise,
which would have loomed over a low-rise street,
was meant to provide housing as well as income
for the church's youth programs. However, the
plan violated landmarking and roning regula-
tions, and the project never materialized.
Neighbors have been less satisfied with the
response of the Christian Science Church. In
July 2000, congregation members told the local
block association that they wanted to sell its
building; the church was attended by only a
handfUl of people, most of whom did not live in
the neighborhood. A church representative let it
slip that they would sell to the highest bidder,
and that a promising candidate was a developer
who wanted to erect a high rise on the site, which
would tower over the block of rowhouses.
Community Board 9 issued a resolution con-
demning such a development and invited the
church three times to talk about its plans. The
church declined, and refused further meetings with
the block association. Despite pledging in a letter to
the block association to keep the community's
interests in mind, the church advertised the build-
ing in the New York Times for $7 million (later
reduced to $2.9 million) as a commercial proper-
ty-well above the $1.4 million market rate for
comparable buildings, and in violation of roning
regulations. That property is still on the market.
(Church officials were not available to comment.)
Meanwhile, next to the old Small's, Littlejohn
has hired an architect, a structural engineer and a
surveyor to evaluate what should be done to pro-
tect her building from the construction next door.
She has consulted with a lawyer about her rights
as a property owner. She says she has received a let-
ter from the ADC pledging to correct the damage,
but Littlejohn does not trust the church anymore.
"I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, and
fought that system," she says, recalling her expe-
rience decades ago in the South. "I will continue
to do what is necessary to ensure that our civil
rights are not violated. "
Judith Matloff is a freelance writer living in Man-
hattan.
JULY I AUGUST 2002
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13

IOUS
BENEFITS
As Washington works to improve welfare reform,
why won't anyone admit that people on the rolls
are poorer than ever?
I
f most Americans know anything about
federal welfare reform, round two, it's that
President George W. Bush wants to spend
$300 million to encourage single moms to
get married. Families headed by a married cou-
ple-one man and one woman, of
course-earn more money and have fewer
problems, the president says, so it's smart
public policy to try and convince single adults
who head poor families to exchange rings and
get legal.
The reaction was instant and loud. There
was praise &om the usual corners, like religious
groups, but most voices were furious. Liberals,
of course, were apoplectic, pointing out that
poor women o&en stay single for compelling
reasons, like the fathers of their children can't
get jobs or bring trouble or violence into their
family's households.
Lost in the marriage hullabaloo was the fact
that, really, the president's proposal was a rela-
tively insignificant fraction of what is a massive
federal welfare spending package. In fact ,
Bush's bill reauthorizing Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF) calls for spending
$82.5 billion over the next five years-money
for everything from cash for poor families to
child care to soup kitchens. The president's
$200 million marriage proposal (the other
$100 million would come from the states) is
actually less than one-quarter of 1 percent of
what the feds will spend on TANF between
2002 and 2007.
What's welfare really about then, anyway? It
used to provide money for poor families-gov-
ernment subsidies that acknowledged that
there are times when a family just can't cover its
own expenses. That's changed. Welfare, 2002-
style, has little to do with helping poor families
14
By Matt Pacenza
who don't work. Instead, it's become a program
that supports families who have jobs, even as
many of them actually come to earn too much
to qualifY for welfare's cash benefits.
But of course, welfare as we knew it hasn't
ceased to exist. States continue to issue $11
billion in public assistance cash each year to
millions of recipients. The heated debates over
reauthorization of federal welfare law have
been virtually silent about these benefits.
That's not because there's nothing to say about
them. The welfare checks these families receive
are tiny, wholly inadequate to take care of a
family's basic needs. Adjusted for inflation, in
New York they are lower now than at any
point since the Great Society began. This is the
hard fact of welfare, buried underneath acres
of rhetoric ab<;lut marriage and whether recip-
ients cheat and how hard they should work for
their money.
Want proof? Look at the numbers. What
governments spend on welfare used to be
almost exclusively the actual checks they gave
families, like the $279 that a family of three in
New York City received in 1970. If that basic
welfare grant had kept pace witb inflation, it
would be worth $1 ,289 today. But it's not: a
family of three today, receives a maximim of
$577-56 percent less than in 1970. The slide
in the adequacy of the welfare grant has been
both steady and steep.
That's the real price of welfare reform that's
not being reckoned with. As the system has
shifted to support families who go to work,
it's doing less and less for those who don't or
can't or try but fail. Yet millions of families
across the country, and nearly 640,000 in
New York State, depend on those measly
checks to survive.
S
eated in his lower Manhattan office
during a day trip from his Albany
headquarters, New York State's wel-
fare chief says he's enormously pleased
with the changes that welfare reform has
brought. Before the feds changed the rules in
1996, according to Office of Temporary and
Disability Assistance Commissioner Brian
Wing, New York's welfare system was filled
with incentives that convinced recipients to
avoid seeking work. "Now, we give people a
clear message," the commissioner says proudly.
"When you leave welfare, you make more
money. And we've got a whole series of sup-
ports to help make you self-sufficient."
He's right. In a way that has surprised wel-
fare reform's original critics, who warned that
government was in effect forcing poor people to
try and survive on minimum wages alone, the
last five years have seen a significant increase in
government programs that use TANF dollars to
support low-wage working families. The best
example is the earned income tax credit, which
has become a massive wage supplement for low-
income workers with children.
Consider a mother with two children who
earns the minimum wage, $5.15 an hour, for
full-time work, which works our to an annual
salaryof$10,712. In 1995, that worker would
have earned $13,430, consisting of the salary, a
federal tax credit of $2,528 and a state tax cred-
it of $190. By 2001 , that same worker's income
grew to $15,722, with her federal tax credit
now at $4,008 and her state tax credit at
$1,002. That jump of $2,922 in yearly income
for a minimum wage worker since welfare
reform began is equivalent to raising the work-
er's wage by $1 .40 an hour, and it actually
brings that family above the federal poverty
CITY LIMITS
line of $15,020.
That same worker can also take advantage
of expanded child care programs for working
families. Since 1995, the number of child care
subsidies statewide has more than doubled,
from 72,000 funded slots to 174,000, accord-
ing to OTDA.
Also expanded is health insurance for low-
income children via the state's Child Health
Plus program, designed for families who make
too much money to qualifY for Medicaid. That
plan has grown from an enrollment of 90,000
in 1995 to 530,000 in 2001.
Exact numbers on who benefits from TANF
spending are impossible to pin down-nine
separate state agencies make grants to local
social service departments, which themselves
fund dozens of other facilities, projects and
nonprofits-but Wing says that "almost cer-
tainly" more New Yorkers get welfare-funded
benefits today than did in 1995. Any low-
income adult might take advantage of multiple
TANF-funded services, whether it be a com-
puter class at a community center, a basket of
food from a local church's pantry or a slot for
her child at an afrer-school program.
Because these various income supports have
grown, welfare spending in New York has
undergone a huge shift. The state is obligated
to spend nearly as much money now as it did
before welfare reform, thanks to a federal
"maintenance-of-effort" requirement. But
while much more money is being spent on sup-
ports for working families, much less is going
to direct cash benefits.
With a drop in its welfare caseload from 1.7
million in 1995 to 638,253 by this past March,
New York State went from spending $3 billion
on cash assistance in 1995 down to $1.8 billion
five years later, according to data collected by
Congress' investigative wing, the General
Accounting Office.
New York can do virtually anything it wants
with all the extra welfare money from the fed-
eral government block grants. And the Pataki
administration has-except for one thing. New
York State has spent absolutely nothing to
increase the tiny amount of money families on
welfare actually get.
T
here's a national near-consensus that
welfare reform has been a huge success,
primarily because it has taken place dur-
ing an era characterized by significant
drops in poverty. That's definitely true locally. .
Roughly 2 million New York City residents were
living below the poverty line in 1996; by 2000,
that number had dropped to about 1.6 million.
That broad picture of success has been the
JULY/AUGUST 2002
dominant theme in this year's TANF reautho-
rization debate. Although legislative action
wasn't complete at press time, the broad strokes
of TANF, the sequel, were becoming clear:
tighten and increase work requirements,
slightly expand supports for working families,
INCOME
Welfare
Food Stamps
$576
$350
the same amount in 1997, because of inflation).
Guess what's not in the President's bill-or
in any of the other pieces of welfare reform
legislation that have significant support. Not
only is there no language that addresses the
basic welfare grant; there's no menrion of how
EXPENSES
Rent
Food
Utilities
Other
$408
$350
$100
$125
TOTAL INCOME $926 TOTAL EXPENSES $983
DEFICIT -$57
"How am I supposed to pay all these bills? I end up calling them up saying, 'I can't pay.' Then I have to
tell the kids that they can't stay on the phone much. And now I'm being billed hundreds and hundreds for
anesthesia I received when I was sick. Medicaid won't pay for it. Welfare says just to disregard the bill, but I
won't. I don't think that's right. II
"If I had more money, what I'd love to do is to open up a bank account, to save money for the kids to go
to college. What are they going to do if they want to go to college and can't get a scholarship? I want the
cycle of welfare to end with me. My mom was an it and now me. I refuse to let my children do welfare. "
"I look far bargains: There's a dollar store I can get 78 cent shampoo. It may not be the best brand, but
it'll do. I'm clean. I get mostly hand me downs for the kids. When I was working, I used to go shopping for
them, but now it's like .... "
add some token grants for marriage projects.
As for funding, it is expected to remain level.
much money a family actually gets. Or
whether it's adequate.
President Bush proposed maintaining the
TANF block grant at $16.5 billion a year for
the next five years (although by 2007, that
funding will be equal to a 20 percent cut from
On the national level, the priorities are clear,
even for liberals: Since anyone family can
receive federal benefits for no more than five
years, long-term prospects for work are critical.
15
Any financial hardship arising from inadequate
benefits is by definition temporary, overshad-
owed by the threat of being stuck in low-wage
employment in the long term.
But New York has no choice but to deal with
the people who remain on welfare for extended
INCOME
Welfare $541
Food Stamps $435
Child Support $50
lifetime limit on welfare benefits. In 1997, the
state legislature fought the governor and created
a state- and locally funded welfare benefit pro-
gram. Called Safety Net, it began last winter
and already supports 145,566 households.
New York's welfare grant last increased in
EXPENSES
Rent $153
Food $435
Utilities $70
Diapers $224
Other $175
TOTAL INCOME $1026 TOTAL EXPENSES $1057
DEFICIT -$31
III don't even think about [what I'd like to buy] any more. To not like has become a secondhand thing.
We've taught our kids to not wont things. They understand thot everything costs money, ond we don't have
it. We've hod to change their thoughts. II
IIWe sove every penny that enters this house. Any chump chonge that comes in goes right into the piggy
bonk. We live day to doy. Welfare soys that we get plenty of cosh, but I'm the one who can't offord to buy
my child school clothes. They don't help pay for the uniforms.11
Illf I fall behind, I'll sometimes go get [giveaway food from a food pontry]. But I pretty much don't, on the
basis that other people out there need it more than us. II
periods of time. It is one of five states (the oth-
ers are Massachusetts, Michigan, Vermont and
Rhode Island) that pay public assistance to
recipients who've reached the federal five-year
1990, when it rose to $577 for a family of three
in New York City. (In fact, that was the fourth
time that benefits rose during then-Governor
Cuomo's two terms.) Governor Pataki has been
16
less than interested in raising it. His initial pro-
posal to implement the 1996 federal law sought
to cut benefits gradually as a recipient stayed on
the rolls, so that by the end of four years, cash
benefits would be reduced by 45 percent.
That $577 isn't actually one single grant. It
consists of a grant for basic household expenses
plus a $286 shelter allowance for a family's rent.
(Food stamps are also a typical part of the ben-
efit package, amounting to about $350 a month
for a family of three.) In 1987, Legal Aid attor-
neys went to court challenging the shelter
allowance as not nearly enough money to pay
for rent in the five boroughs. Several years later,
the courts, not surprisingly, agreed, and in
what's called the Jiggetts decision, ordered the
state to pay the difference between the shelter
allowance and the actual rent for families on
public assistance facing eviction.
In the past decade, Jiggetts has become a
substantial addition to the welfare grant. For at
least 17,000 city families, it helps pays their
rem, up to $650 a month for a family of three.
However, it becomes available for a
family only if they're actually facing eviction.
Add in the fact that applying for Jiggetts is
complex-"Even experienced advocates have
to be trained to fill out a Jiggetts form," says
Bob Bacigalupi, an attorney who specializes in
public assistance law for Legal Services for New
York City-and the result is that the 17,000
families who receive Jiggetts are just 7 percent
of the welfare recipient families in the city.
The rest try to survive on $577-or less. One
hallmark of the Giuliani administration welfare
policy was a dizzying array of paperwork and
face-to-face appointments. If a recipient misses
an appointment or a deadline, she is "sanc-
tioned," and her grant is slashed. At least 7 per-
cent of the city's entire caseload is sanctioned at
any given time, according to figures compiled by
the Independent Budget Office. Those sanctions
Cut monthly gtants for a family of three down to
$450 or less.
H
oW do families survive on such tiny
amounts of money? The short answer
is that many don't. The grant is just
not sufficient to pay all the monthly
expenses-rent, food, electric, telephone, cloth-
ing, MetroCards, laundry and everything else
that comes up in any given month.
Poor families are adaptable and creative.
They figure out ways to make every dollar
stretch and every food stamp count, but some-
thing has to give. And it inevitably does. Con-
versations with recipients and social workers
CITY LIMITS
and attorneys who work with them turn up
endless examples of the day-to-day conse-
quences of trying to survive on so little money.
Mom waters down milk for her toddler. A
teenager doesn't go on a school field nip to a
museum because he can't afford the $5 fee. A
6-year-old girl refuses to go to school because
her clothes are so shabby. Mom gets back
together with an old boyfriend-even though
he beats her-because he throws the occasion-
al $20 her way.
One obvious outcome of the inadequate
grant is that families turn elsewhere for sup-
port. Emergency food providers have reported
a sharp increase in demand in recent years for
meals at soup kitchens and bags at food
pantries. The city's largest provider of emer-
gency food, Food for Survival, distributed 27
million pounds of food between July of 1995
and June of 1996. Four years later, the agency
gave away nearly double that quantity: 53 mil-
lion pounds.
Similarly, there's been a pronounced rise in
the number of families seeking emergency hous-
ing. While many of those on the rolls live in fed-
erally subsidized housing, where their rent is set
at a fixed portion of their income, the rest must
brave the private housing market, or live illegal-
ly doubled up. In 1996, the city's shelter system
housed roughly 25,000 people each day. By this
March, that figure had risen to 32,397-an
increase of nearly 30 percent.
Unstable housing is just one way that woeful-
ly low welfare grants actually hinder a recipient
ttom seeking and securing employment. Living
on $577 a month is a time-consuming preoccu-
pation, filled with hunts for clothing giveaways
and hours spent going ttom store to store com-
paring prices. Gerting a job itself costs money.
Says BichHa Pham, public policy coordinator for
Hunger Action Network of New York State,
"You wouldn't believe how many times I've
talked to welfare recipients who talk about how
hard it is to afford shoes for a job interview."
I
n New York, it's up to the state legislature
and the Governor to raise the basic grant.
Capitol observers say they almost can't
imagine a time when a hike has been less
likely-and not just because Governor Pataki
has been so historically hostile to welfare.
Money is truly tight in Albany. The budget
passed in May employed every nick known to
law to avoid huge deficits.
Welfare funds themselves became part of
those ploys. Throughout the late 1990s, the
state treasury contained billions in extra wel-
JULY/AUGUST 2002
fare money. Even mer paying for all the new
programs like child care and the tax credit, the
state gradually put nearly a billion dollars
more in a contingency account called the
"rainy day fund. " That's gone now. The gover-
nor and legislature agreed to drain the entire
rainy day account to plug the general budget
shortfall for programs like college aid and uni-
versal pre-kindergarten classes.
Next year is expected to be much worse.
Thanks not just to the recession and the ter-
rorist attacks, but to Albany policymakers'
unwillingness to either raise taxes or cut spend-
THE CASH BACKLASH
should have less fear in the welfare reform envi-
ronment in making the argument that the
grant is inadequate," says Russell Sykes, vice
president of the Schuyler Center for Analysis
and Advocacy. "If welfare is supposed to be
temporary and just preparatory for work, why
not make that system more adequate?"
Here's why, state officials say: The welfare
grant has to be painfully low, or there won't be
any incentive pushing people to go get a job.
"There's supposed to be a reward for working, "
argues OTDA Commissioner Wing, explaining
why he doesn't think the grant should be raised.
Cash Assistance o Child Care Family Stability
Job Training and Education Administrative Costs Other
ing in an election year, multi-billion dollar
deficits are a given for 2003.
Even so, some advocates for the poor say
there's no better time than the present to at
least bring the grant back to its 1990 levels,
bumping $577 up to $791. They reason that
the very success of welfare reform at getting
hordes of people off the rolls has made it less
expensive to raise benefits for those who
remain on them. Welfare rolls statewide are the
lowest they've been in 37 years, at 638,253,
down from nearly 1.7 million in 1995. "You
Wing is being modest about his program's
force; the reward is already there. Even with a
significant raise in the grant, welfare has fallen
so far behind work that work always pays better.
Even if the monthly grant were raised to $791,
it would still be way less than what even a full-
time minimum wage worker makes--$1,310,
thanks to the earned income tax credit.
Some recent research has shown that raising
welfare grants can actually encourage families
to move off the roles. Minnesota officials have
created a well-regarded welfare-to-work pro-
17
gram that allows recipients to collect full bene-
fits while earning income from jobs. The pro-
gram's recipients are not only more likely to get
higher-wage jobs, but many see marked
boat could capsize it. The legislature and the
governor could agree to raise the basic grant by
$50 or $100, but they might then also restruc-
ture the grant to eliminate the separate
INCOME EXPENSES
Welfare $523 Rent $108
Food Stamps $419 Food $419
Utilities $140
Child Care $260
Other $190
TOTALINCOME $942 TOTAL EXPENSES $1,117
DEFICIT -$175
liThe last fime I went to my welfare office I was so broke I didn't even have $1.50 for my refurn subway
fare. My caseworker wouldn't give it to me. But then somehow the furnsfile took my card. I don't know
why. I was really lucky that day."
IIBilis do go unpaid. Last Thursday, they shut off my electricity; I managed to get some money to get it
fumed back on that day. I budget, but expenses come out of nowhere. My kids' school picfures. My son's
uniform's clothes. A hundred dollars for glasses. I had to soy, 'Tell your teacher I can't pay for glasses right
now.' Thankfully the nurse at school got a pair.
11
Illrs hard for the kids. I have to say, 'I'm just a bad mommy 'cause I can't buy that.' They need clothes. They
want toys. But they have to learn a lesson: There's not enough money to get them everything they want.
11
improvements in family well-being. accounting for a shelter allowance-destroy-
ing the legal basis for Jiggetts in the process.
It's a real fear: Each year, the Governor pro-
poses doing away with the concept of the shel-
ter allowance, and then the Democratic
If the evidence is on their side, why aren't
advocates for the poor making noise in Albany
about the insufficiency of welfare benefits?
Some are willing to admit that rocking the
18
Assembly blocks his action.
"We've kept tens of thousands of families
from being homeless with Jiggetts," argues
Shelly Nortz, deputy director for policy at the
New York Coalition for the Homeless. "You
wouldn't want to see the law that forced them
to make that happen disappear for $100 more
in the basic grant. "
I
t's not just the Jiggetts dilemma. The fact is
that advocates for the poor haven't had
much to say lately about cash assistance.
Indeed, programs like child care for work-
ing families and the earned income tax credit
have become a rare common ground for
activists and bureaucrats. These days, they're
even working together. Activist groups joined
OTDA earlier this year to produce joint rec-
ommendations to the federal government on
TANF reauthorization-"The only one in the
country," Wing says proudly of their collabora-
tion-which focuses on how government can
better help families who have recently moved
into the workplace.
"I think it's sensible social policy," says
Sykes of the Schuyler Center, one of dozens of
groups that co-signed the document, about the
expansion of work supports. "It's government
recognizing the limits of the market."
Recipients organized in membership orga-
nizations have also focused the bulk of their
recent activism lobbying for programs that
help move families from welfare to work.
Groups like Community Voices Heard
demanded that the Giuliani administration
fund public works initiatives to pay decent
wages for work like cleaning parks. They have
also lobbied the City Council and a succession
of mayors to allow recipients to count training
and education toward their work require-
ments, so that recipients can be better pre-
pared to go out and job-hunt.
Even a position paper on TANF reautho-
rization from the city's preeminent anti-pover-
ty organization, the Community Service Soci-
ety, focuses almost exclusively on employ-
ment. It discusses two challenges: helping
working families "move up the ladder" and
supporting parents currently on the rolls as
they move to employment.
The choice to focus activist energy on work is
clearly a strategic one. With benefits so low,
advocacy groups may simply be doing what's best
for their clients by focusing on work supports,
says Donna Rubens, the director of research and
development at the Women's Housing and Eco-
continued on page 37
CITY LIMITS
The Missing Li n ks
Rudy left another sports legacy:
A $40 million environmental mess
where a golf course was supposed to be.
By Alex Ulam
J
ust three days before the end of his term, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani let
New Yorkers know that he was hard at work securing yet another
monument to his legacy. On December 28, 2001, he announced that
the city was negotiating with the Professional Golf Association to bring
a major tournament to Ferry Point Park, a luxury golf course under con-
struction atop a former landfill in the Bronx. The tournament had a
lofty goal: It would be a charity event, raising money for the families of
police, firefighters and rescue workers killed in the line of duty.
"Such a world class facility deserves a world class tournament," said
Giuliani in a press release. ''I'm thrilled that the PGA is exploring how
to bring a pro tournament to the Sports Capital of the World and to do
so in a way that honors the victims of the World Trade Center attack. "
But instead of becoming a world-class greenway, Ferry Point Park is
now looking more like one of the city's biggest boondoggles. While
Mayor Giuliani was inviting the PGA to play at the park, state officials
were shutting the golf course development down. The project's budget
has ballooned from $22.5 million to more than $40 million, and it now
appears that the golf course might not get built at all. Meanwhile, the
endeavor raises serious questions about how private developers were able
JULY/AUGUST 2002
to take possession of a public park without first obtaining legally
required clearance from city authorities.
As previously reported in City Limits ["No Fore Warning," Septem-
ber/October 2001], environmental problems at Ferry Point Park have
included borderline explosive levels of methane gas, stemming from a
city dump on the site that closed in the 1960s. Environmental groups
also strongly suspect that hazardous waste had formerly been disposed
there. When interviewed early last summer, the developers and state offi-
cials disputed that the park was contaminated with hazardous waste.
They also maintained that the environmental problems, such as danger-
ous levels of methane gas, had been brought under control.
Yet almost a year later, the environmental conditions at Ferry Point
Park appear so threatening that the very survival of the troubled golf
course development is in doubt. Engineering plans for the whole project
have had to be substantially revised to address environmental problems.
Currently, the state Department of Environmental Conservation is
reviewing an application by the developers, Ferry Point Partners LLC, to
continue operating what is, in effect, a new private dump. Since August
2000, the developers have accepted thousands of truckloads of con-
19
"The city IS responsible for environmental remediation,"
Cleanup costs
struction and demolition debris at the park. (A public comment period
ended on May 24). According to one of the developers, J. Pierre Gagne,
if Ferry Point Partners does not receive permission to continue its waste
disposal operation, "We'll have to explore options, which may include
abandoning the project."
The golf course development was shut down in December because
his company allegedly exceeded a state permit allowing them to accept
750,000 cubic yards of construction and demolition debris at Ferry
Point Park. Gagne, whose company disputes that it has exceeded the
site's permitted capacity, says that he needs more construction and
demolition debris to provide a thicker insulation against the original
municipallandftll.
But there are indications that the new private dump Gagne's com-
pany is operating at the park is actually linked to the recent environ-
mental problems. In addition, the new dump appears to be playing a
looking a picturesque bend in the East River, next to the Bronx-
Whitestone Bridge. According to a 1998 press release from the mayor's
office, the golf course should have been open this past spring. Ferry Point
Partners, which includes golf superstar Jack Nicklaus and developers
Jonathan Stern, Gagne, Paul Kanavos, and Dan Bythewood, subse-
quently signed the largest-ever city contract providing for the private
operation of a municipal park facility.
The developers' contract with the city contains big plans for the for-
mer dump site. The project includes an l8-hole tournament-quality golf
course, an 850-person capacity banquet hall, a riverside restaurant and a
park encompassing almost a mile of city waterfront.
The contract also puts the 222-acre section of the city park and its new
facilities under the private management of Ferry Point Partners for 35 years.
While the developers will be operating a variety of commercial ventures at
the park, the city will get a cut, either an annual minimum rent totaling
$69.5 million by the end of the 35-year con-
Former Parks Comissioner Henry Stern didn't know the
developers intended to run a disposal operation at the p a r ~
tract, or a percentage of the revenues. But
nowhere in the contract to develop the park
does it make mention of using the site for
waste disposal.
After a year and a half of work, Ferry
Point Park still looks more like a dump
than a budding golf course. On a visit this
winter, plumes of black smoke billowed
into an otherwise clear sky from a fenced-
off area behind a construction trailer. In
another area, plastic bags and sheets
weighted down with rocks had been
placed over piles of grayish dirt, after resi-
dents of a nearby housing complex repeat-
edly complained about the dust blowing
in their windows. Chunks of concrete and
long pieces of twisted metal lay scattered
about.
substantial role in financing the construction of the golf course, because
the developers are receiving fmancial benefit from the disposal of the
debris at the park.
The environmental problems at the park are not only threatening the
future of the golf course; they are also becoming a major financialliabil-
ity for the city. The developers' contract allows them to pass on to tax-
payers a significant part of the cost overruns associated with the envi-
ronmental problems. "It's a dangerous site," says Andrew Goldberg, a
staff attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group. "We
don't know whether they have the wherewithal to finish it. When it's
public property, how can you go forward?"
F
our years ago, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Parks Commissioner
Henry Stern announced plans for a private company, Ferry Point
Partners LLC, to develop a 222-acre section of Ferry Point Park, over-
20
No work has been done on the golf
course in over five months, a serious set-
back to a project with a troubled history.
State environmental officials have repeated-
ly threatened to take action against the
developers for numerous violations of the
waste management permit, including the
disposal of construction debris contaminat-
ed with substances such as metal and asphalt, which by law cannot be
dumped in New York City. There have also been problems stemming
from the original dump, such as the borderline explosive levels of
methane gas, which were so worrisome to state officials that they shut
down the whole site for three days last October.
H
aving a private company build a golf course at its own expense and
then provide revenue to the city was a good arrangement, says for-
mer Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, who signed the contract with
Ferry Point Partners. But Stern indicates that he had had reservations
about Ferry Point Partners LLC before the contract was even execut-
ed. One of his concerns surrounded the developers' demand ro charge
$80 to $90 greens fees, comparable to those at a private suburban
course. Stern says that he had wanted the greens fees set at $40. (The
green fees for Ferry Point Park, which the city regulates, have yet to
CITY LIMITS
says
have
developer Jonathan Stern.
helped swell the construction budget by $18 million.
be established.) with the city over $100,000, before a contract is even signed. On the
Stern also says that he was disturbed by Ferry Point Partner's use of forms, businesses must disclose whether they or their executives have run
what he terms their "political muscle. " According to Stern, the develop- into problems with government agencies in the past. But twice-the sec-
ers "tried to establish their own relationships with city officials in order ond time just this April-the office has rejected Ferry Point Partners' fil-
to improve the deal from their point of view," he says, "and although I ings for being incomplete.
disapproved of it, there was nothing I could do about it." Stern declined A concerned city official or citizen might have good reason to want
to identify the city officials. to learn more about Nicklaus' company, Golden Bear Golf Inc. The
Ferry Point Partners has also spent a significant amount of money in company was delis ted from NASDAQ for failing to meet minimum cap-
lobbying fees for their project. In 2000 alone, the developers spent italization requirements, and it walked out of a contract to build a golf
$162,578, according to lobbying records at the City Clerk's office, the course in Florida for Donald Trump. In March 2000, several months
fifth highest amount of any company in the city. City law requires that before the Ferry Point Park contract was signed, Golden Bear settled a
money paid to a registered lobbyist for all services involved in doing class-action lawsuit for $3.5 million with shareholders after it had to
business with city officials be registered as lobbying fees. (All of that revise misreported loss figures from $2.9 million to $24.7 million for its
spending consisted oflegal fees, says Jonathan Stern; "We've spent zero golf course construction unit. Shortly after the lawsuit, Nicklaus took
on lobbying. ") Golden Bear Golf private.
In order to take legal effect, the Ferry
Point Park contract had to be registered by
the City Comptroller. But the office offor- Last October, state environmental officials briefly shut down
mer City Comptroller Alan Hevesi initially the project in response to dangerous levels of methane.
rejected it. In a July 13, 2000, letter to the
New York City Parks Department, Hevesi's
office gave several reasons, including an
unspecified Department of Investigation
inquiry and missing documents, and the
fact that it had not been approved by the
city's Franchise and Concession Review
Commirtee.
Nevertheless in August 2000, the Parks
Department went ahead and allowed the
developers to start work anyway. "It has to
be registered somewhere along the line,"
says Assistant Parks Revenue Commission-
er Joanne Imohiosen. Because the Ferry
Point Park contract involved no initial out-
lay of funds, Commissioner Imohiosen
says, the comptroller's refusal to register
the contract back in 2000 "has no practi-
cal effect."
Ferry Point Partners had already been
working at the park for almost a year when
a pending lawsuit from environmental
groups challenging the legality of the deal
apparently spurred the Franchise and Concession Review Committee to While the developers have not yet managed to build a golf course at
finally approve the deal at a special meeting on June 1, 200l. Ferry Point Park, they have been quite successful at operating what
The comptroller then finally registered the contract, on June 5, 200l. is, in effect, a new dump. Over 750,000 cubic yards of debris, from hun-
.. Three weeks later, Paul Kanavos and Jonathan Stern contributed $1,000 dreds of construction sites around the city such as the Horace Mann
each to Hevesi's campaign for mayor. In a recent interview, Hevesi, who is School and the New York Coliseum site, have been dumped at the park.
now running for state comptroller, said he couldn't remember his office's Until DEC closed it down, Ferry Point Park was the only permirted dis-
objections to the contract. posal site in New York City for uncontaminated construction and demo-
Imohiosen says that the contract with Ferry Point Partners was put lition debris also known as "clean fi.ll, " according to Tom Kunkel, special
through an exhaustive review process. "This is the most vetted project in assistant to the commissioner for DEC.
the history of concessions in New York City Parks," she asserts. "If some According to Gagne, the debris serves both as protection against the
lime piece of paper isn't quite right, which I'm unaware of, it was fIXed. underlying municipal dump and as a base layer for the new golf course.
This has all been in the public domain for years now." But environmentalists charge that the disposal fees amount to a sizeable
But some important documents are still missing from the Mayor's public giveaway to the private developers, while taxpayers still have to
Office of Contracts. City law requires Vendex questionnaires, available foot the bill for environmental cleanup. "The city could have built this
for public inspection, to be filled out for every concession agreement continued on page 38
JULY/AUGUST 2002
21
22
CITY LIMITS
L
ike most men interviewed for this arti-
cle, he doesn't want to be identified.
Suffice to say he's quick-wined and light
on regrets, and bears no malice toward
Man Damon for lifring the idea for
Good Will Hunting from him at the Mars Bar.
After a casual accounting of the ups and downs
of his 15 years on the Bowery, the ex-bartender
leans back in his chair in the common lounge at
197 Bowery, the building he calls home, and
delivers a final assessment on the state of his
neighborhood: "We got the Chinese coming in
from the South, the millionaires from the North,
the yuppies from the West, and the Hasidim
from the East. This is the end of the line."
So much about the Bowery has changed,
including its physical scale, that it's easy to miss
the Andrews Hotel, tucked between a brand-
new luxury high rise and the bright display
windows of a neighboring purveyor of lighting
fIxtures. A narrow six-story building of sooty
brick, criss-crossed by an iron fire escape, the
Andrews is a typical example of what has
defIned this neighborhood for almost a
century: the flophouse.
What it has offered its residents is basic in
the extreme: a narrow bed in a plywood cubicle,
cheap rent (often paid weekly), and, above all,
anonymity. As one resident puts it, the unwrit-
ten rule at the Andrews has always been, "Don't
bother anybody and they won't bother you."
Only 15 years ago, 3,600 men still lived in
"cubicle" hotels on the Bowery. Now less than a
thousand and perhaps as few as 500 remain,
scattered among eight enduring lodging houses.
One by one, hotels that served the needs of gen-
erations of Bowery men are being transformed.
The Prince will soon become luxury loft hous-
ing. The White House is catering to European
backpackers, who live segregated from the other
tenants, while the Grand and the Sun are home
to Chinese immigrant workers.
But just as the age of the flop draws to a
close, a high-profIle nonprofit is stepping in to
revive the idea of the Bowery style "lodging
house" as a potential response to New York's
homeless crisis. The men of the Andrews, some
of whom have lived in the same cubicle for
more than 30 years, will soon be having guests.
This February, the organization Common
Ground Community purchased the Andrews
Hotel in order to launch First Step Housing, a
program designed to target those elements of
the homeless population who are deemed
Left: Walkillg the halls of the SUllshille
Hotel, olle of the Bowery's last flops.
JULY/AUGUST 2002
"hard to serve": those too scared, too crazy, too
high or too independent for city shelters or tra-
ditional "supportive housing. " For $7 a night,
these guests will be provided shelter for up to
21 days with access to medical care, substance
abuse counseling, and housing placement, all
with a bare minimum of case management.
First Step Housing is the brainchild of
Rosanne Haggerty, the executive director of
Common Ground. Haggerty was traveling and
not available for an interview with City Limits.
But in the April issue of Metropolis magazine,
she explained the reasoning behind the pur-
chase of the Andrews: "Social scientist Christo-
pher Jencks zoned in on the loss of cubicle
hotels as a specifIc cause of the rise of single-
adult homeless ness. Why don't these places
exist anymore? For years I'd get close to the
question and then recoil because these build-
ings were so squalid. The quality housing advo-
cate in me couldn't comprehend how one
could responsibly advocate their resurgence. "
The answer? Not-for-profIt management
could transform the Bowery lodging house,
just as it has the single room occupancy hotels
that Common Ground and many other orga-
nizations now run. "Then it clicked. It's more
of a failure of imagination on our part than
anything embedded in the model. "
"What we're trying to do with the Andrews is
update and enhance the 'lodging house' style of
housing," explains Dave Beer, head of housing
development for Common Ground. "We think
it serves a need for service-resistant men who
aren't going to go into the shelter system and
don't have any good options as far as accessing
permanent housing. " Larry Schan, Common
Ground's ChiefOperacing Officer, hopes to coax
people into "a decent place, where, if you have a
couple of bucks in your pocket, you can rest, get
a shower, and maybe make a decision to get off
the streets."
To realize its vision, Common Ground is
going to refIt the Andrews ftom the basement
up, with an elevator, a new boiler, complete
rewiring and a makeover of the grimy fa<;ade,
adding three floors to the six-story building in
the process. A potent brew of public and private
fInancing will cover the $5.1 million renovation,
including loans from the Industrial Bank of
Japan, Greenpoint Bank, and Deutsche Bank,
along with HUD supportive housing grants.
Funding from DHS and the New York State
Homeless Housing Assistance Program will
cover operating expenses; the state Department
of Mental Health may also eventually join in.
But construction is just one part of what
promises to be a long and difficult process. In
addition to the complexity of gutting and rehab-
bing a hundred-year-old building occupied by
87 elderly men, Common Ground may need all
of its professional expertise in overcoming what,
in New York City, can be an insurmountable
obstacle for landlords: the rent-stabilized tenant.
Pete Lambert, a lO-year resident of the hotel,
is a little sick of how the press portrays Bowery
residents. "I don't want people to get a screwed-
up idea that everybody down here is half-retard-
ed," he says. Since Common Ground acquired
the building in February, Lambert, a slender,
bespectacled man in his early sixties who works
part-time for an architect, has been keeping a
close eye on proceedings. Lambert is among the
roughly 20 men who have been meeting every
two to three weeks at the Holy Name Center for
Homeless Men, on Bleecker Street, with lawyers
from Mobilization for Youth's East Side SRO
Law Project. Recently christened the Andrews
Hotel Tenants' Association, they plan on being
actively involved in the Andrews' transformation.
It was Lambert who contacted MFY when
Common Ground began construction at his
hotel without a Certificate of No Harassment,
a document every developer rebuilding an
SRO must obtain to ensure they treat tenants
fairly in the process. (Within a matter of days,
Common Ground obtained a waiver from
HPD; Beer admits that Common Ground
"jumped the gun.") He has a clear grasp of his
rights regarding any efforts to relocate him and
the other tenants even within the Andrews dur-
ing the upcoming renovation. Notes Lambert,
"They cannot make us move."
"When you're talking of the
Andrews," reflects Father John
Ahearn, who recently retired as
director of the Holy Name Center, "you're talk-
ing of people who have lived lodging house
lives for 40 years." Father Ahearn has been
working with the men of the Bowery for three
decades, and he has been dealing with the
Andrews since 1981. Unci! fIve years ago, he
ran one of the best private shorr-term shelters
in the city in the main auditorium of Holy
Name, with the help of the greatly beloved Sis-
ter Virginia Vayda. He describes two constants
in Bowery life that have drawn men to it: ''A
market for cheap labor and a degree of
anonymity that you control. "
When it came to safety and stability, the
Andrews has always been considered to be in
the top tier of Bowery flops. This was due in
large part to the management of Mike Gano.
23
Whatever people thought of Mike as a person
(assessments range from "gruff" to "He hated
our guts"), it's generally acknowledged that he
ran a tight ship by lodging-house standards.
Drug use, besides alcohol, never went beyond a
little discreet pot on the roof. Violence was kept
to a minimum, even during the crack epidemic
of the late 1980s, when other hotels became
increasingly dangerous. His ledger accounts
were accurate and, as new Andrews director
Shari Siegel discovered when she converted
them to Common Ground's computerized sys-
tem, up to date.
The crowd was always older, and, it should
be said, nearly always white. According to
Gerry Howard, an African-American member
of the Catholic Worker
community on East 1st
Street who lived in
Bowery hotels in the
early 1990s, "It was a
widely held perception
that people of my color
were not welcome at
hotels like the
Andrews."
j/
without the 12 steps).
Like all inveterate New York renters, the men
at the Andrews reserve the right not to know
their neighbors. Of course, this is difficult when
all that separates you from your neighbor is a
thin sheet of plywood. Consequently, who you
live next to determines, to a large degree, your
quality of life. Though it's easy to lump them
together demographically--older, white, with a
high percentage of vets and drinkers-they are
among the most individualistic people you
could meet. They do what they want to do, hang
out with who they want to hang out with, and
any attempt to interfere with their privacy is
treated as presumption.
Rosanne Haggerty is right: The Andrews is
Common Ground has promised to do every-
thing in its power to see to it that, as far as possi-
ble, the current tenants are left undisturbed. As
the new director of the Andrews, Siegel-a nurse
practitioner with 10 years experience in the
MTA's homeless outreach ptogram-has inten-
tionally made no attempt to curb the men's
smoking or drinking. Nor has she or her staff
insisted that they participate in any sort of
mandatory counseling.
The preliminary stages of reconstruction
have already resulted in some real improvements
in the quality of life at the Andrews. A small
mountain of garbage has been removed ftom the
empty rooms, and a massive extermination
effort has curbed the predation of the bedbugs
that historically have
contributed much to
the general misery of
Bowery life. Cheap
snack machines have
greatly improved the
ambiance of the com-
mon lounge. Best of all,
cable TV has arrived in
time for the bulk of the
baseball season. The Andrews is gen-
erally a quiet place, and
life for the tenants fol-
lows set routines. Those
who work get up and go
to their jobs. Others sit
quietly in the dim com-
mon room and watch
TV or playa little cards.
Of course, there are
some men here who
drink. Since the last
"Bowery bar" closed in
1993, men usually take
their beers out to a near-
by park when the
weather's nice or quietly
consume 40s in their
"We are not program peopLe" is a common refrain. Common Ground has
promised to make sure currertl Andrews tenants are Left undisturbed.
But the renovation
of the building is
already proving to be a
difficult experience for
the men. On the Mon-
day after Easter, a notice
went up on the bulletin
board announcing that
the wire mesh lining the
tops of the cubicles
would be vacuumed.
Most of the men, how-
ever, did not realize that
they had to cover their
belongings to protect
them from the years of
caked dust knocked
rooms. Then there are
those who do not leave their cubicles at all: the
elderly sick who realize that staying put is the
only thing keeping them from a nursing home,
and those who simply prefer not to. They rely
on "runners"-men who make trips to the
neighborhood stores for a small fee-to supply
their daily needs. The Bowery Residents Com-
mittee brings by meals twice a week, there's a
visiting nurse who stops in, and those who are
interested know where the senior centers, meal
programs and M meetings are located (though
plenty of people have gotten sober here with or
24
squalid, and it has gotten even more so in the
last few years, as owner Mike grew tired of the
business. The cubicles, two rows to a floor sep-
arated by a narrow cement hallway, barely
accommodate the sole furnishing of an iron
bedstead. The walls are open, topped with a
foot of iron mesh, so noise travels easily. It's
cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and the
toilets often stink. Ventilation is almost nonex-
istent and tobacco smoke is thick.
"We are not program people" is a common
reftain among the men of the Andrews, and
loose during the process.
One, a waiter, came home from the night shift
to find a layer of black dust coating his bed and
belongings. The airborne particulates were also
not appreciated by those (and there are many)
who suffer from chronic respiratory ailments.
Dave Beer freely acknowledges that there
have been some "bumps in the road" and attrib-
utes problems with the cleaning to a "lack of
communication." He emphasizes that regular
meetings are now being held with the men at
the Andrews to advise them about the renova-
tion. But the real test of the relationship between
CITY LIMITS
Common Ground and its new tenants will
come this fall, when the fust wave of relocations
is scheduled to happen.
The second floor is slated to be completely
torn out before work can start on the front of
the building. Interim offices for the staff and a
Staff bathroom will be installed, as well as a
temporary stairway to replace the one in the
front. The second floor shower will be removed
and a new one will be installed
on the fourth floor, and the
seven residents currently living
on the second floor will be
moved upstairs.
This concerns some of the
tenants. Traditionally, Mike
would pur the weakest resi-
dents on the second floor, close
to both bathing facilities and
the street. They'll be asked to
move up to the fourth floor
this fall, but the promised ele-
vator won't be ready by then.
There's also a social dislocation
involved. Loan Mai-Nakagawa
runs the senior center at the
Bowery Residence Committee
on Chrystie Street and knows
many of the men at the
Andrews quite well. For the
oldest men, particularly the
homebound, she says, "moving
to a new cubicle is like moving
to a new neighborhood." Even
moving up a couple of flights
of stairs can disrupt delicate
social relationships that have
been built up over years and
that are especially imporrant
for those who can't (or won't)
leave their cubicles and rely on
their neighbors for help.
room. In the case of the Andrews, at the heart
of the project is an innovation in interim hous-
ing design: the First Step Housing Unit.
Says Rosanne Haggeny, "For many hard-to-
reach homeless, just going indoors represents a
'first step' to stability." In order to discover what
kind of shelter would appeal to the recalcitrant-
something between a dorm bed and a room-
Common Ground interviewed more than 200
insights gleaned from her research and travels
have come together in the simple structures Com-
mon Ground plans to install at the Andrews.
These self-contained 9' x 6.5' x 7' high ply-
wood and fiberglass modules, designed by archi-
tect Marguerite McGoldrick, are twice the size of
the cubicles currently in use at the Andrews.
They contain amenities like a desk (illuminated
in the protorype installed in the ballroom of the
Prince George by an attached
gooseneck lamp) and an
enclosed closet with a sliding
door, fJX(ures that are simply un-
thinkable in the narrow enclo-
sures that now line the corridors
of the hotel. The units each have
interchangeable panels and a
handicapped-accessible sliding
front door (in its current incar-
nation of patterned plastic, it
resembles the Shoji doors found
in Japanese dwellings). These
casita-like cubicles can be assem-
bled and disassembled in a mat-
ter of hours.
McGoldrick stresses that
the design is being continually
fme-tuned with an eye to the
needs of current and prospec-
tive tenants. In fact, the men
themselves will be able to cus-
tomize the units. "It's the erec-
tor set meets Japan meets the
American body!" McGoldrick
says of her "jewelbox of a
design." By the end of the
Andrews refitting, overseen by
contractor Richard Vitto of
Oaklander, Coogan and Vitto,
146 of these First Step housing
units will replace the 203 cubi-
cles now in the hotel.
B
ut the dislocation is nec-
essary if Common
Ground is to realize its
particular vision of transi-
tional housing. Common
Ground has a reputation for
providing cutting edge social
services with style, and it seems
that every project has a distinct
Like most residents, this man wants to remain anonymous.
Relocation is the hot topic
right now. In order to complete
its complex and multistaged
renovation, Common Ground
is asking each man to sign a vol-
untary agreement that would
allow him to be moved two or
three times during construction.
Since the men are rent-stabilized
About 20 Andrews men have been meeting with tenant lawyers.
signature. The Times Square Hotel has a
ground floor Ben and Jerry's that employs resi-
dents; the Prince George features a Victorian
Tea Room, rented out for meetings and events,
as well as a soon-to-be-restored Grand Ball-
JULY I AUGUST 2002
homeless men and women living on the street.
Haggeny followed this with a trip to Japan to
study that country's cubicle hotels (used primari-
ly by business travelets) and to confer with Japan-
ese architects and housing developers. All of the
tenants by law-Common
Ground does not dispute this-the question
narurally arises: What happens if they refuse?
When asked about this, Larry Schau, afrer
expressing repeatedly a deep wish for a peaceful
resolution to all potential conflicts, finally offers
2S
this bottom line: "It is our understanding that
we have the legal right to move them with prior
notice."
Attorney Jim Provost of MFY scoffs at this
notion. "They have to have grounds for eviction
under the law! The only way they can be removed
is if they violate a lease-which they don't have-
or if they're a nuisance. You're not a nuisance if
you get in the way of a landlord's
plan for his building. If that were
the case, landlords all over New
York would be kicking people out
left and right!" Resident Pete
Lambert's in-house rake is suc-
cinct: "They could have a battle
on their hands. "
Also at issue is the language
of the agreements, which is
being negotiated between MFY
and Common Ground's lawyers.
In the first issue of the tenants
association newsletter, published
in May, Pete Lambert lays out
some of the key points that the
men want included. The fust is a
written acknowledgment of the
tenants' legal status. Though
Common Ground has given
assurances that the men's $36-a-
week rent would go up only at
the rates set by the Rent Guide-
lines Board, MFY would like to
see specific mention of the ten-
ants' rent-stabilized status in
order to afford them all of the
safeguards against displacement
that rent regulation entails.
(New residents will not have
such protections: By law, anyone
staying less than 30 days does
not have tenants' rights.)
rooms could conceivably be filled by men being
slowly forced our of the other hotels; men,
moreover, who are already at ease with the cul-
ture of the Bowery lodging house.
Keeping current residents separate from the
new short-term guests is another of the residents'
demands. These men are not simply particular
about who they share space with; Bowery life has
knowing someone or a referral by someone trust-
worthy like Father Ahearn.
Segregation was one of the big topics raised
at a May meeting at Holy Name of the Com-
munity Advisory Board, an offshoot of Com-
munity Board 3. Questioned by Pete Lambert
and fellow tenant Dave Temple about the pos-
sibility for a permanent segregation of guests
and residents, Beer replied that
he would accommodate the
tenants "to the extent possible,
bur we will never leave a unit
vacant." Both Beer and Siegel
have mentioned the possibility
that guests could be limited to
those over age 50, who, in
Siegel's words, would "provide
a better fit for the culture of
the Andrews."
While much of Common
Ground's ultimate plan still
remains on the drawing board,
basic details of the new dispen-
sation are laid out in the con-
tract with the city's Department
of Homeless Services, signed in
October 2001. In return for
$2.5 million in capital funding
and a subsidy of $150 per unit
per month, Common Ground
will provide 60 percent of its
vacant units for DHS referrals
and, after one year, maintain a
total occupancy rate of 95 per-
cent. Dave Beer acknowledges
that this revenue stream lacks
the "flexibility" to allow for the
maintenance of rent-stabilized
housing for any future long-
term guests. In effect, the
Andrews will now become
another adjunct-if quite likely
an extremely well run one--of
the city's overall emergency
shelter system.
As an adjunct to this, MFY
would like to see a provision
that would allow the preserva-
tion of the 87 spots currently
occupied by the tenants as per-
manent, rent-stabilized hous-
ing, and to secure a right for the
tenants to screen new applicants
for these units. After all, the lack
of affordable housing is a prima-
Room to grow: The Andrews' minuscule cubicles (top) will soon
be replaced by Japanese-style modular units (bottom).
Jim Provost is doubtful that
a 21-day program could make
much difference. "People stay
in Tier II shelters for years!" he
says, referring to supposedly
"temporary" family shelters
ry cause of homelessness. According to Siegel,
the men are dying at a rate of one a month.
Given this attrition, and the replacement of
full-time tenants by temporary guests, the end
result of the First Step Housing Program could
be the reduction of cheap housing stock. Those
26
taught them to be justifiably wary of outsiders,
especially younger, possibly violent men. Though
the neighborhood has changed, there are still
some wild and crazy folks walking the streets at
night. Under Mike Gatto, screening was built in,
the criteria usually being previous residency,
funded by DHS. No doubt it will be a chal-
lenge for Common Ground to find long-term
housing for the hundreds of men who will be
passing through First Step Housing each year.
But Beer is hopeful that Common Ground's
housing referral services will make all the dif-
CITY LIMITS
ference, adding "We hope that ultimately some
of these men could end up in Common
Ground's buildings."
He also elaborates on the essential nature of
the screening procedure. "If someone doesn't
come to us clean and sober," he says, "we're
really not equipped to deal with them."
This is a far cry from Bowery lodging house
life as the men at the Andrews and other hotels
like it have known it for the past 50 years. What
made the Andrews work-which it did, in its
way-was not a program but a web of largely
unspoken contracts between men whose com-
mon goal was to be left in peace, all of which
was overseen by a man
whose primary concern
was a modicum of order
and the steady collection
of rents.
But Common
loner style of life ... how many are there who are
35 or 40 years old? People who don't want to
change anything, washing dishes at the Greek
diner, been at it for 10 years, no family-
doesn't want one-just wants to be left alone.
Who's in the pipeline behind these guys?"
Social scientists like Jencks and nonprofits like
Common Ground are promoting the compelling
idea that inferior housing, however unpleasant it
might seem to those who don't have to live in it,
is better than no housing. But the time to preserve
the flop has passed; the damage done by previous
generations of reformers and urban planners is
beyond repair. Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago and
ket has gone almost completely underground.
Illegally subdivided rooms in Queens base-
ments, cut-rate rooming houses in the Rock-
aways, tenements in Chinatown-these are
among the likely choices for poor workingmen
today. For as long as they hold on to employ-
ment, these men are not lodging house people.
Perhaps unwittingly, Common Ground
may be reviving another model of temporary
housing: the rescue mission. Like First Step
Housing, a mission provides basic housing
with few expectations ftom its guests. What a
mission offers beyond that is a standing invita-
tion to accept Christ. Common Ground is
opening a different door
for homeless men: reen-
try into the mainstream,
through the ministra-
tions of trained social ser-
vice professionals.
Ground didn't set out to
run the Andrews Hotel.
(In fact, it initially had
their eye on installing the
First Step Housing Units
at the more capacious
Prince.) The organization
simply needed a place to
experiment with its ideas
concerning emergency
housing. The critical fac-
tor is the building code.
Common Ground can't
just go out and create a
new flophouse, because
housing laws were altered
in 1955 to prohibit them,
on the premise that they
are unsanitary and
unsafe. When asked if
Common Ground's units
could be placed in other
The common room at the Andrews. Longtime residents will soon live
side by side with short-term guests.
Whatever difficulties
Common Ground might
encounter in resuscitating
the lodging house, the
organization does have a
proven track record when
it comes to providing safe
and decent housing.
When the rehabilitation
of the Andrews is finally
complete, anywhere ftom
18 months to two years in
the future, it's going to
look terrific. New
lounges, a shower on
every floor, on-site med-
ical care, all of these will
be great for those guys still
around to appreciate
them. "Between you and
me, it could be worse than
structures, Dave Beer replies, "It's my impression
that we could only do this in buildings that fall
under the lodging house code." They were lucky
to find one in today's market.
F
ather Ahearn isn't quite sure where the
Bowery-style lodging house fits into the
lives of the city's poor these days. "Sub-
stantially, the people we see are not staying in
hotels and probably wouldn't even if they could.
I don't think there's much of a market for the
permanent flophouse resident. There's not
enough 70-year-old street guys to fill the
Andrews, and the younger guys .. .it's not in their
book. A single guy, no attachments, likes that
JULY/AUGUST 2002
San Francisco----all across the country cubicle
hotels have been demolished, and there are
absolutely no plans to resurrect them.
Housing for the poor functions best in poor
neighborhoods, where people can find what
they want: temp labor offices, cheap restau-
rants and bars, check cashing outlets, street life.
Nothing is more unlikely in post-Giuliani New
York than the resurrection of Skid Row on an
avenue dividing two of Manhattan's most fash-
ionable neighborhoods. As for the residents,
this is the last generation. You'd do better to
look to Fukien province than the streets of
Manhattan for their replacements.
The lowest tier of New York's housing mar-
Common Ground," says
Pete Lamben. 'They could've sold it to a Hong
Kong millionaire and got three or four goons to
get us out. I don't knock everything they've
done-what's good is good. The bedbug situa-
tion is definitely better." This is a common senti-
ment even among critics.
The ex-bartender looks forward to the new
cubicles. "Maybe with a little more space you
won't have to listen to the fellow next to you
farting and snoring all night, " he says. Says
another resident, in a refrain as old as the
Andrews, "This is the best deal we could get. "
Bob Roberts is a Manhattan-based freelance
writer.
27
INTELLIGENCE
THE BIG IDEA
I II I
Reparation Anxiety
By Hakim Hasan
''The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its
mineral rights. " -J Paul Getty
IN THE EYES OF many black Americans, the
United States needs to make a fundamental
acknowledgement of slavery. For more and
more blacks, an apology is not enough; that
acknowledgement, they feel, won't be serious
unless it attempts to pay back the fundamental
theft of slavery. This is the basis of the repara-
tions movement.
The idea of reparations for slavery has been
around for a long time. According to New York
University historian Robin D.G. Kelley, who
touches on the topic in his new book Freedom
Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, black
emigrationists first called on the federal govern-
ment in 1854 to provide a '''national indemnity'
as redress of our grievances for the unparalleled
wrongs ... which we suffered at the hands of this
28
American people."
In May, activist Deadria Farmer Paellman
filed a federal class action lawsuit seeking repa-
rations, the first of its kind in the nation, alleg-
ing that the corporations CSX, Aema and
FleetBoston had profited from the slave trade.
Other reparations advocates have suggested a
foundation that would issue individual checks
to descendants of slaves, or fund education and
other social programs for blacks collectively. "I
would go for individual checks via the tax sys-
tem, like a refundable slavery tax credit," says
Dalton Conley, a professor of sociology at New
York University who studies the wealth gaps
between blacks and whites in his book Being
Black, Living In The Red.
"Something needs to be done that says
more than just 'I'm sorry, black folks, for mak-
ing your parents slaves,'" agrees Quanae Palmer
Chambliss, a struggling divorcee and single
mother of four boys who lives in a low-income
housing project in Edison, New Jersey. "What
about brothers who are in arrears in child sup-
port? A tax offset check should go directly to
the mother of the children."
With few exceptions, most of these suggested
reparations have one thing in common: money.
But a growing chorus of black intellectuals is
beginning to worry that monetary compensation
for slavery will not dramatically alter black life in
America and may, in fact, do more harm for
blacks than serve any longstanding social good.
Derrick Bell, a constitutional law professor
at New York University, offers his "interest-con-
vergence theory" as a cautionary tale: No racial
remediation has ever come to blacks, he points
out, that did not also benefit whites. ''This is
uue of the Emancipation Proclamation, the
post-Civil War Amendments, the Brown deci-
sion, and affirmative action," says Bell. "In each
instance, blacks obtained mainly symbolic relief
for the very real injustices, while white Ameri-
cans gained substantive benefits." One of the
underlying reasons for Abraham Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation, for example, was
to stop England and Ftance, which had strong
anti-slavery movements, from joining the Civil
War on the side of the Confederates.
Without confronting racism in American life,
many blacks fear, monetary restitution for slavety
could lead to the foreclosure of a national dia-
logue on this issue. At its best, say conservatives
like John McWhorter, a slavery fund or tax cred-
it would merely reproduce already existing
poverty programs. "The reparations crowd's
move from individual checks to a general fund
will allow community-wide assistance," says
McWhorter, "but this model has done nothing
for forty years now. Who would get the money?
For what purpose?"
Individual reparations might not fare any bet-
ter, and could easily take on the character of an
Afrocenuic lottery. Yvonne Bynoe is the president
of Urban Think Tank, Inc., a New York City
organization that analyzes and disseminates infor-
mation about political, economic and cultural
issues relevant to black Americans ftom the per-
spective of the post-civil rights generation. Bynoe,
who represents a younger generation of intellec-
tuals, believes that while the U.S. economy would
be stimulated by the increased spending if repara-
tion payments were made to individuals, "lime
would be substantively improved in black com-
munities around the nation."
It could even result in a racist backlash.
"This will isolate black Americans from our
natural allies among working-class whites and
immigrants," says Glenn Loury, an economist
at Boston University who is perhaps best
known for his evolution from conservative to
CITY LIMITS
more progressive views. "We need allies to
press for more expansive social policy that can
get aid to those at the bottom."
The challenge for the reparations movement
is to seriously face the consequences of slav-
ery-to create and expand a national discussion
of slavery, race and the socioeconomic predica-
ment of black Americans-without reducing its
horrors to a check marked "Paid in full. "
''1' m concerned that the focus on slavery
alone misses the whole point about how racism
worked through the 20th century to now to
enrich whites at the expense of people of
color," says Kelley. "The
flip side .. .is that some
has had on American life.
Opponents of reparations have long argued
that black American slaves, not their descen-
dants, would have been the only people who
could honestly collect reparations. Yet South
African apartheid did not begin and end with
the Boer War; like slavery, its historical arc
extended well beyond the initial bloodshed.
While there are no survivors of chattel slavery
alive, there are countless survivors of Jim Crow
and its aftermath. Both victims and perpetrators
of segregation, like Rosa Parks or Bobby Frank
Cherry, could be asked to voluntarily testifY
before Congress in an
ongoing rite of national-
massive payment with-
out the elimination of
racism will be used to
shut all black people up,
suggest that we're even,
and should never com-
The black
ly televised reconcilia-
tion. By giving us a com-
mon vocabulary to
understand race, their
testimony could forge
the evil of American slav-
ery into a national refer-
ence point, the way the
television series "Roots"
transfIxed the nation
when it aired in 1976. If
plain again."
THERE IS A deeper dan-
ger; namely, that black
Americans, flush with
compensation-we
dissent on cash
compensation
for slavery_
won!-would likewise avoid any sustained, col-
lective introspection. If Martin Luther King's
image can sell telephones, and Russell Simmons
can promote reparations with the promise of
"Forty acres and a Bentley," then a Macy's Repa-
rations Day sale, with chinchilla shower curtains
for sale, is not farfetched.
The continuous legacy of slavery impacted
the life chances of blacks in structurally concrete
and historical ways that reverberate through
generations of black families.
are the most unpartnered and isolated group of
people in America and quite possibly the
world," writes Orlando Patterson in his book
Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Sldvery in Two
American Centuries, pointing out that 60 per-
cent of black children grow up "without the
emotional or material suppott of a father."
Unless Americans as a people can come to
terms with the contiguous history of chattel
slavery, the subjugation of black Americans dur-
ing Jim Crow, and their consequences as our
national inheritance-including the ongoing
gender crisis between black men and women-
monetary reparations will not help us.
Before any serious discussion of monetary
reparations takes place, let alone disbursement,
Americans need to engage in some serious self-
examination. We need the moral equivalent of
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Com-
mission: televised hearings on the effect slavery
JULY/AUGUST 2002
South Africa, with its
much briefer history of democracy, can create a
national mechanism to face and docwnent its
own gruesome domestic history, then so can we.
Reparations "requires nothing less than con-
fronting our national mythologies about the
foundation of U.S. society and democracy, "
says France Wmddance Twine, a sociologist at
the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Twine, who envisions reparations as a "monu-
mental transformation in our system of public
education," also believes we should have a fed-
eral monument dedicated to slaves on the
Washington Mall.
For blacks, slavery looms as large as the Stat-
ue of Liberty. Yet America has never acknowl-
edged slavery's centrality to American life-both
in the past and the present. Whether it comes in
the form of an oversized check or a moral exam-
ination of American life, reparations opens the
door for us to make our history whole.
never felt the sense that
their country was committed to making things
right specifically with us for the past wrongs,"
says Bakari Kitwana, the author of The Hip-
Hop Generation: The Crisis in African-American
Culture. "The question is do we, as a country,
have the vision and moral rightness to rise to
this challenge?"
Hakim Hasan is the director of the Audrey Cohen
College Urban Institute in New York City.
INTELLIGENCE
THE BIG IDEA
NEW REPORTS
They have higher incomes, spend less time on
welfare, and, if female, are more likely to be
married at the age of 25. Who are they? Children
who grow up in the projects. According to this
new study, public housing kids are better off
than their low-income peers who live in non-
subsidized housing. Why? The report argues
that living in public housing means kids are
less likely to move-and change schools-
and that with predictable housing costs, their
parents can plan their budgets better.
"The Long-Term Effects of
Public Housing on Self-Sufficiency, "
The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management
www.jhu.edu/ipsor410-516-4186
While the nation's top 20 conservative think
tanks will spend more than $1 billion this year,
liberal and progressive policy groups struggle
comparatively. A central problem, argues this
report, is that funders are happy to support pro-
grams helping people but are more reluctant to
support writers making arguments. With the
report's data on the 23 New York City-based pol-
icy analysis organizations studied, we can kiss
goodbye the old stereotype of the white, male
policy wonk: 73 percent of staff at these groups
are women; 49 percent people of color.
"Penny For Your Thoughts? A Look at Philanthropic
and Progressive Policy Advocacy in New Yorlr, "
National Center for Schools and Communities
www.ncscatfordham.orgor 212-636-6699
Everyone's getting involved in trying to "save
the schools, " from nearly bankrupt compa-
nies-anyone home, Philly?-to community
groups. If you're considering the latter, run out
and get this book-the summary of lessons
learned by the Children's Aid Society after a
decade of experience operating in 10 schools
across the city. Their schools offer a blend of
intensive education and supportive services,
like mental health counseling for kids or
advice on social services for moms; The model
has worked, and here's a blueprint for how your
neighborhood's efforts can work too.
"Building a Community School, "
The Children's Aid Society
www.chiidrensaidsociety.orWpublications
or 212-949-4938
29
INTELLIGENCE
CITY LIT
Trained Out
By Vee Bravo
Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City
by Joe Austin, Columbia University Press
348 pages, $24.50
I CAN STill HEAR former MTA commissioner
Dick Ravitch's voice when he opined in 1982:
"I'm not an art critic, but I sure know that graf-
fiti is not an art form."
Famous last words, Dick. As I ride the train
and reminisce about my days as a teenage
graffiti writer, I'm looking at clean, neatly
framed, MTA-sponsored ad campaigns whose
color schemes and typography imitate the vivid,
illustrious graffiti that once beautified a decaying
fleet of subway trains in the late 1970s.
Some 30 years after the initial boom of graf-
fiti art, one would expect an abundance of accu-
rate and relevant scholarly histories from the
field of urban studies. Yet aside from Craig
Castleman's Getting Up (MIT Press, 1982), graf-
fiti literature from academic circles and urban
think tanks has been nonexistent.
Commitment is
Those of us who've emerged from the graffi-
ti underworld seldom complain about, or even
notice, the absence of such works; they're gen-
erally considered irrelevant. But now that hip
hop, punk, and pop are all rolled into a one-
stop shop on MTV, even the most diehard graf-
fiti purist welcomes any alternative media cri-
tique that doesn't cheapen graffiti's legacy by
limiting it to a stylistic music video backdrop.
In that respect, Joe Austin's Taking the Train
could not have arrived any sooner. For Austin,
the evolution of graffiti writing in New York
provided more than just a colorful background
for early rap album covers: During the fiscal cri-
sis of the 1970s and after, as the city's new
image began to emerge, city officials used graf-
fiti to deflect public attention away from the
city's very real fiscal and infrastructure prob-
lems, forever changing New York's discourse on
the daily usage of private and public spaces.
IN THE WAKE of the fiscal crisis, Mayor Lindsay
cut basic services from the most resource-
Tomorro\N starts today
Deutsche Bank's commitment to
global corporate citizenship recognizes a
responsibility to improve and enrich the com-
munities throughout the world in
which we conduct business.
With a focused strategy of support for com-
munity development, the arts and the envi-
ronment, Deutsche Bank partners with local
organizations to build a brighter future.
leading to results TM
Our commitment to a better tomorrow
starts today.
Deutsche Bank
30 CITY LIMITS
strapped neighborhoods, including Washing-
ton Heights, El Barrio and the South Bronx.
It was in these neighborhoods that graffiti
took off. Austin argues-as have many graffiti
writers before him-that by applying graffiti to
subways and streets in the late 1970s, writers
redistributed ownership of the "public sphere"
in a self-contained democratic process.
For a vast majority of poor kids alienated by
public schools, media, and law enforcement,
graffiti was indeed a viable option to be heard
and recognized. As one writer explains: "Shit
was mad deep. You had Viet Nam and all types
of protests, the Black Panthers, the Young
Lords, racism and hatred at a peak and others
fighting inequality and dying trying to put a
stop to it. You can't be unaffected by all that. "
Enter graffiti writers TAKI 183, SUPER
KOOL 223, PHASE 2, COCO, and TRACY
168. In the early 1970s they "hit" the city with
their distinct signatures on buses, streets, and
subways, ready to reclaim public space
through the pursuit of
artistic fame.
leader born out of wedlock and living off the
Cadillac queen's welfare hustle, and so on. Such
images, prevalent in films like Death Wzsh and
The Exterminator, fed the perception that graffi-
ti writers and their homies, not the city's fiscal
problems and massive unemployment, were
somehow responsible for New York's blighted
areas and rampant subway crime.
By and large, Taking the Train is written in a
dense prose that reads like an academic novel of
sorts. For color, Austin relies on culturally
diverse, revealing, and often hilarious anecdotes
from past and present graffiti writers. He also
interviews former media and public officials,
most of whom still don't believe graffiti has any
good thing to offer (although, truth be told, I
have wimessed former city comptroller Elizabeth
Holtzman's nephew at the Rock Steady Crew b-
boy and graffiti festival on at least one occasion).
Like any academic book, Taking the Train
tends to extrapolate too much from too little.
For instance, he limits gender to a quarter of a
chapter, while alluding
to young men's "domi-
As they inspired
other writers to paint on
the trains, these early
pioneers mentored one
another and bonded in
the storage yards and
lay-ups and at the
"writer's bench," a sub-
way station located on
149th Street and the
Grand Concourse where
artists regularly con-
vened after (or during)
school hours to critique
When the city
couldn't make
nant male" complex
as an impetus for
writing in just about
every other chapter.
Austin often attributes
women's perceived lack
of participation to non-
supportive community
and peer nerworks; yet
LADY PINK, who is
nototlous for her
self-determination, is
noticeably absent-not
trains run on
time, graffiti took
the blame.
their moving canvases.
Graffiti writers also organized themselves into
artistic and political organizations, such as the
National Organization of Graffiti Artists
(NOGAl, which in 1982 met with Ravitch and
proposed a public referendum on allowing graf-
fiti masterpieces to run unscathed by the MTA's
clean-up campaign.
But as New York entered the 1980s, leaving
behind the fiscal crisis of the previous decade,
Koch did more than Lindsay to aggressively
fight graffiti; his administration, writes Austin,
turned it into a scapegoat for the city's woes.
Using interoffice memos from municipal
agencies, as well as every single New York Times
editorial on graffiti over a lO-year period, Austin
illustrates how politicians skillfully exploited
news and entertainment media to equate the
kids who invented graffiti with just about every
image of urban crime: the screwdriver-carrying
Puerto Rican from El Barrio, the black gang
JULY/AUGUST 2002
to mention every other
female graffiti writer
that came before and after her.
Likewise, Austin tends to romanticize the
community that developed among writers
from different ethnic and racial groups. But
Austin scores big points with his handling of a
regional history that for the most part has
never been cohesively documented; his sum-
mation of New York City gang culture in the
late 1960s, and its links to the formation of
early graffiti crews, is unprecedented.
Taking the Train shows the connection
berween writing culture and the elite, policy-
making community that fed graffiti's rebel
image. Similarly, his vigorous understanding of
how the city political machine ftamed graffiti as
a social epidemic reveals the roots of the quality
of life campaigns that we reckon with today .
Vee Bravo is a making a video documentary
about hip hop in lAtin America.
INTELLIGENCE
CITY LIT
NOW READ THIS
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden
Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
By John Taylor Gatto
New Society Publishers, $11.95
"School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad
habits are the only curriculum truly learned,"
charges this former New York State (and City)
teacher of the year, in this newly updated version of
a ten-year-old classic. Gatto's audacious critique of
cookie-cutter systems that destroy critical thinking
and self-motivation is stronger than his solu-
tions----end compulsory schooling and return to
local control-but his fierce call to action provokes
a fundamental reexamination of school itself.
The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks
and the Crisis in African-American Culture
By Bakari Kitwana, Basic Books, $24
Who could have imagined even 25 years ago that
an angry musical genre dominated by African
Americans would be the most popular music in the
country? The cruel irony is that the dramatic rise in
rap's influence has paralleled an equally sharp
upsurge in incarceration and unemployment
among young blacks. This convergence of forces is
the subject of this pointed-if somewhat pedan-
tic-analysis by the former editor of The Source,
who seeks to push hip hop away from materialism
and braggadocio and into a vibrant, powerful
engagement with the issues of the day.
After the Trade Center:
Rethinking New York City
Edited by Michael Sorkin and Sharon lukin,
Routledge, $25
On the most exhaustively scrutinized matter of the
moment, most of the architects, planners, sociolo-
gists and other scholars here (including Marshall
Berman, Andrew Ross and Mike Wallace) make
informed and even occasionally daring contribu-
tions to a public discussion that increasingly
revolves around a dismal consensus. Though
many contributors deliver predictable takes on the
topic-capitalism's shaping of city space and the
high price of globalism are popular themes-
some of the best stuff here comes from a humbler
place: their experiences as New Yorkers.
31
INTELLIGENCE
MAKING CHANGE
Organizing
Drivers
By Hilary Russ
KEVIN FITZPATRICK, a rotund, spirited cabbie
with a face full of white hair-imagine a taxi-
driving Santa Claus-enjoys berating the
union that, at least on paper, is supposed to be
organizing him. "Local 74 is like rhe Osama
bin Laden union-no one can find 'em," he
rasps. Others at rhe New York Taxi Workers
Alliance (NYfWA) , where he is on rhe orga-
nizing committee, share his sentiment, even if
they wouldn't put it quite rhat way.
Instead, they might say that rhe union rhat
is supposed to represent New York City's
20,000 working yellow cab drivers has gone
from bad to nonexistent. Like other groups of
workers across the city, cabbies are organized
for action-but not by their union. In their
fight to increase take-home pay and provide
services for rhemselves, about 3,300 yellow
cab drivers have relied instead on the
NYfWA, a nonprofit grassroots group run by
and for taxi workers. "When we go and do
outreach we say we're rhe union," explains
NYTWA organizer Chaumtoli Huq, who
hails from a union family herself, "because to
us, 'union' means who represents rhe work-
force, rhe rank and file .... It's a word that peo-
ple understand."
If anyone could benefit from a union's
32
suength, clout and lobbying power, it's taxi dri-
vers. Under rhe leasing system set up by rhe
Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), own-
ers lease rheir cars, medallions, or both to dri-
vers, instead of hiring rhem as employees. So
cabbies start rhe day in debt: They must first
make back rhe leasing fee, usually over $100
per shift, before rhey can begin to make any
money. At rhe end of a typical 12-hour day
shift, drivers might take home $75. They have
no healrh or unemployment insurance, paid
vacation, or pension, and usually work seven
days a week. They cover their own insurance,
gas and car repair. The irony of rhis system,
which some have called "urban sharecropping,"
is rhat rhe yellow cab drivers' own union helped
put rhem in rhis wicked predicament.
Back in rhe 1970s, cabbies had a function-
ing, rhough much-reviled, AFL-CIO-affiliated
union. But in 1979, rhe Taxi and Limousine
Commission legalized leasing; then, under
pressure from garage owners and over rhe vocif-
erous protests of rhe union's own members,
rheir union ratified a contract rhat allowed for
"voluntary" leasing. By making it possible for
owners to hire drivers as independent contrac-
tors, rhe new contract cost rhem rhe protection
of rhe National Labor Relations Act and made
it perfectly legal for rhe garage owners to refuse
to bargain collectively wirh rhem.
Whether rhe union was complicit in rhis
deal or merely failed to fight hard enough, all
sides agree it was a mistake. "I certainly felt
rhey were complicit in it," fumes Henry Zeiger,
a rank-and-fller who organized a dissident
group wirhin rhe union. While Ed Ott of rhe
AFL-CIO's New York Central Labor Council
flatly disagrees wirh rhat notion, he concedes,
"There's no doubt rhe union was wrong."
Which has left Local 74 with only one
viable course of action: trying to overturn rhe
leasing system. While NYfWA represents cab-
bies against rhe TLC, Local 74 is collecting
pledges from City Council members to end
leasing. The union's last contract expired in
1997; Local 74 hasn't collected dues since rhen.
Larry Goldberg, Local 74's business repre-
sentative, is the first to state simply that "there
is no union" for rhe drivers. "If somebody says
we're not doing enough, we're probably not,"
he retorts, with a frustrated laugh. "The reali-
ty is we're not doing enough because we can't!
Legally, it's just not gonna happen until they're
not independent contractors. "
To that end, rhe union also appealed a
National Labor Relations Board decision con-
firming rhat independent contractor status.
And even though orher AFL-CIO unions can't
organize taxis-rhat would be "raiding," a
jurisdictional trespass-Local 74 won't do it
until that happens. "There was no value in
throwing money away until you settle rhat
case," Goldberg laments. "To bring in a slew
of organizers to fight for workers you can't
even represent would be foolish. "
YET GROUPS LIKE NYfWA often do just rhat.
As surges in immigration and subcontracted
labor have transformed the workforce, com-
munity-based worker centers have come up
like wildflowers through cracks in rhe labor
foundation. Normally powerhouses for work-
ers' rights, unions sometimes lag behind com-
munity groups in organizing low-wage labor-
ers. In industries rhat are virtually impossible
to organize, worker centers are often the first
line of defense. "To join a union, your shop
has to be organized," says labor activist Saru
Jayaraman. "To join a center, you just have to
walk in."
As worker centers make inroads where tra-
ditional unions have floundered, unions have
taken note, and once hostile and competitive
relations between the two have begun to thaw.
"What we're doing is not working," admits
Ott, so there's "more dialogue wirh communi-
ty organizations and labor groups now rhan
rhere has been even, say, 10 years ago. "
In some cases, community worker centers
have even begun to function, for all practical
purposes, as unions. Wheels of Justice, a new
independent project of rhe NYfWA, mount-
ed a serious challenge to the union! communi-
ty-group divide when organizer-tumed-lawyer
CITY LIMITS
Huq filed a federal lawsuit against the TLC for
revoking cabbies' licenses-essentially their
livelihoods-without review.
In late December 2000, lawyers for the city
challenged NYfWA's right to bring the suit,
claiming they didn't have the legal standing to
collectively represent drivers' interests in court.
Looking to the back of the room, where sever-
al taxi drivers were sitting, Brooklyn Federal
Court Judge Raymond Dearie noted that the
cabbies themselves would likely disagree: "If it
walks like a duck and talks like a duck," Huq
says, paraphrasing the judge's reply, "it must be
a duck!" It led to a small but important suc-
cess: In early May, NYfWA won its tempo-
rary injunction against the TLC's revocation of
licenses without hearings.
To represent drivers, Huq is drawing on
whatever legal means she can find. "We're
going backwards and seeing, what did labor
use before the NLRA," explains Huq. Such
creativity spawned of desperation is a mainstay
of worker center methodology. One commu-
nity-based workers' group has even succeeded
on what many consider exclusively union turf:
collective bargaining. Using union tactics like
card-signing campaigns and even strikes, the
Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a grassroots
collective of tomato pickers in Florida, negoti-
ated pay raises for seasonal farm workers, who
fall outside the protection of the NLRA. In
1997, after talks with an arbitrator appointed
by Governor Jeb Bush, all four huge national
growers located in and around Immokalee
agreed to a pay raise. The win represented mil-
lions of dollars to over 450 workers.
For some groups of workers-especially
those who are immigrants, poor, or excluded
from the NLRA-"unions just don't think
they're viable," says Immokalee coalition staff
member Greg Asbed. But that doesn't alleviate
the need for action: "It just comes down to
who's got a stronger base, and how creative
you can be."
IN THE TWO YEARS that it has operated its
Workplace Justice Project, the Bushwick-based
nonprofit community group Make the Road
By Walking has recouped over $200,000 for
about 50 people in overtime, wage and hour
disputes, and back wages through its mix of
lawsuits, media pressure and pickets. When
Make the Road filed a Department of Labor
complaint on behalf of one worker, as it
recendy did at a notorious local sweatshop, all
175 workers stood to win back money,
because the government agency is obligated to
investigate the entire factory.
JULY/AUGUST 2002
But that doesn't necessarily make for a sig-
nificant, ongoing presence in the workplace.
For all its victories, Make the Road "still can't
do what unions do," sighs staff attorney
Stephen Jenkins-namely, secure collective
bargaining agreemems. 'The Department of
Labor investigating and awarding back pay
doesn't necessarily change the power dynamics
in the shop, " says Jenkins. "The next day when
they say 'Fuck you, you can't go to the bath-
room,' people either have to take it or leave it."
To change that, they'd need a broader base,
a much bigger operating budget, and legal
bargaining power-all of which are more
As labor union
membership
declines,
independent
worker centers
rev up grassroots
. .
organizing.
accessible to unions. "A union represents the
fact that the workers have the collective
strength to challenge the employer," Jenkins
explains. "Whether you call it a union or a
banana, that's the most effective way to
improve working conditions. We rarely can do
that, if at all. We don't have enough workers in
any given shop."
For these reasons, Make the Road and
many other worker cemers, including groups
for greengrocers and WEP workers, have
reached out to unions for help. At the same
time, a few unions have chosen to direct capi-
tal to their own community-based worker cen-
ters. With foundation funding, the hotel and
restaurant workers' union HERE Local 100
just opened its Restaurant Opportunity Cen-
ter of New York to serve a group of workers
who are not, technically, part of any existing
shop: Windows on the World employees dis-
placed by the destruction of the World Trade
INTELLIGENCE
MAKING CHANGE
Center. But unlike most unions, HERE is also
offering job training, career help and ESL
classes at ROC-NY for workers who are not its
members. Using ROC-NY as a base, HERE
hopes to build a "separate, parallel member-
ship that's non-union," says Jayaraman, who
directs the center.
"This model is not a magic formula," says
Danny Feingold of Los Angeles Alliance for a
New Economy, a broad coalition of unions
and community and religious groups, but it is
"essential to maintaining and expanding the
ranks of unionized workers."
It's not always as easy as it sounds, though.
Unions and grassroots groups that organize in
the same industries are hardly ever on good
terms. The animosity runs deepest in sectors
where workers are treated the worst.
Yet the ability to organize workers in
unrepresented industries-even, perhaps, taxi
workers-may hinge upon unions and com-
munity groups listening to each other and col-
laborating. "If we're not effective representa-
tives, people are gonna struggle to find other
forms," says Ott. "It makes sense, and it's not
something to be threatened about. "
At least some coalition-induced stress is
avoidable, says Thomas Wheadey of the New
York branch of Jobs With Justice, a network
founded nationally in 1987 by union leaders
looking to expand and experiment. "Too often,
we see that tensions arise because it wasn't until
the last moment that they started talking, " says
Wheadey, adding that unions and community
groups often have very similar interests but dif-
ferent institutional cultures. "They tend to
engage the entire community in the fight, " Ott
says of grassroots labor groups, "ftom the cler-
gy to the tenants to whatever social structures
are in the neighborhood. "
For the Coalition of Immokalee Workers,
groundbreaking victories were possible because
they were backed by unions, other community
groups, religious organizations, and students.
As the coalition wrapped up a nationwide tour
of Taco Bell boycotts, the protesters, roughly a
hundred in number, had to have places to stay
and food to eat. Often, unions or churches
stepped up to meer these needs.
"We go to union actions, rallies, pickets,
with as many people as we can," says Asbed.
Speaking like a union man, he says, "What we
can put on the table is nor money, but we can
put 30, 40, 50 people ar actions. We're strong
in mobilizing an action, and we'll lend this to
unions." On the other hand, "unions are
stronger in terms of resources," he says. "More
and more, there's a willingness to share."
33
INTELLIGENCE
NYC INC.
The Nonprofit
Margin
By David lebenstein
and Arlene Wysong
WITH ALL THE MONEY the government pours
into nonprofit organizations, it's hard to
believe policymakers would miss an opportuni-
ty to put those dollars to work.
Yet when it comes to one of the city's major
economic development priorities-fostering
alternative business districts in areas such as
downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City and
Harlem-the city has long been asleep at the
switch. Planners eager to encourage growth in
these and other areas have fashioned a set of
incentives that offer relocation benefits to every-
one from Fortune 500 companies to failing dot-
corns. These same incentives, however, exclude
nonprofits-which have both a proven track
record and an aptitude for the assignment.
Nonprofits have two things that make them
right for the job: pioneering spirits and tight
budgets.
Just as struggling artists looking for large,
inexpensive live/work spaces are often the first
to colonize what later become desirable resi-
dential areas, nonprofits are frequently willing
to be trailblazers, and their presence can help
support a retail base and other amenities upon
which a thriving neighborhood can be built.
Simply making an area feel more vital makes it
more attractive to companies that are looking
at more than the bottom line when they decide
where to locate-a category that includes most
for-profit businesses.
Which leads to the second attribute: Most
for-profits share the mantra "location, location,
location," but in the nonprofit sector, it's all
about price. Nonprofits, in other words, will
follow the money-which means that even rel-
atively small incentives can have a tremendous
effect on where these organizations choose to
locate. And unlike other cost-sensitive compa-
nies-say, startups on shoestring budgets-
when they arrive, nonprofits tend to be a stable
and stabilizing force.
Take the case of Lower Manhattan. In 1995,
when many of downtown's old Class B buildings
had already stood vacant for years, the city imple-
mented the Lower Manhattan Revitalization
Plan, which offered various incentives to land:
34
lords and tenants in an effort to give the area a
boost. Among these incentives was a real estate
tax abatement for buildings built before 1975,
which was to be passed along to tenants through
rent reductions and a cut in energy costs.
The plan succeeded, and one of the reasons
it did is that it didn't exclude any prospective
tenants from taking advantage of some sub-
stantive benefits. Although fmancial firms con-
tinued to move to Midtown and Jersey City,
the program, combined with lower-than-aver-
age rents, and attractions such as the nonprofit
building at 120 Wall Street and the IT building
at 55 Broad Street, drew new tenants including
dot-corns and nonprofits to an area that had
long been a financial-services ghetto. The high-
flying dot-corns hit the ground hard; the non-
profits, however, came, contributed and stayed.
Even since September 11, although many of
them were themselves economically hard-hit,
nonprofits have proven to be both committed
and constant. They helped bootstrap a declin-
ing neighborhood, and stuck around when the
tough times unexpectedly returned. Who
could ask for anything more?
Still, officials equate economic value with
business, and business with payers of business
income taxes-to such an extent that econom-
ic incentives are most often offered in the form
of business tax credits and rebates. Nonprofits
don't pay business income taxes, which means
they are often excluded from participating in
incentive programs simply because of how
these programs are structured-and unfortu-
nately, the city seems to like it that way.
For example, the Relocation and Employ-
ment Assistance Program (REAP) provides as
much as a $3,000 per-employee business-
income tax credit to firms that relocate from
Manhattan below 96th Street to qualified
buildings anywhere else in the city.
Nonprofits are not eligible for this benefit, the
city says, because they are already exempt ftom
paying income taxes. Case closed, right? Howev-
er, for-profit businesses that are operating at a
loss, and therefore also pay no business income
taxes, are given a direct grant instead of a tax
break. In other words, if you are a failing dot-
com that agrees to relocate to Harlem, or to one
of the outer boroughs, the city will simply write
you a check. In New Jersey, where nonprofits are
eligible for benefits under a comparable reloca-
tion program, nonprofits receive credits against
taxes they cUJ pay-their state withholding taxes.
A similar structural issue prevented non-
profits downtown from participating in the ini-
tial federal benefits programs after the Septem-
ber 11 terrorist attacks.
Why should nonprofits get economic
incentives? After all, the city has argued, non-
profits already get plenty of money from the
government. They don't pay business taxes, so
they don't contribute to the city's coffers. Plus,
most nonprofits' constituencies are local-they
have no incentive to leave the city, so why offer
them incentives to stay?
While it is true that most nonprofits are
unlikely to relocate out of state, some of the
major national nonprofits can-and have. The
United Negro College Fund, for example, moved
its headquarters to Virginia. Others have gone to
Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Chicago and, of
course, New Jersey, taking jobs and services with
them. And while local organizations are unlikely
to move out of state, where they choose to locate
within the five boroughs can have a strong
impact on the success of the city's economic
development goals-and that's where some tar-
geted benefits could make a big difference.
For example, unlike most for-profit busi-
nesses, nonprofits are looking for a reason to
move to the outer boroughs or Harlem. They
poke around these areas regularly, hoping for
bargains. What they are finding these days, how-
ever, is that in places such as downtown Brook-
lyn and Long Island City, rents are not only not
a bargain, they are comparable t<r-and in some
cases higher than-those in parts of Manhattan.
Take the case of one large nonprofit that
was considering relocating to Harlem. The
organization's leadership thought the move
would be an appropriate expression of the
group's mission and priorities, and there was a
property in Harlem they found attractive.
Then they learned the terms of the deal, and
discovered that, without any incentives or ben-
CITY LIMITS

NYC INC.
efits for the move, the deal was no better than
those they were being offered in Midtown-
one of which they ultimately took.
Other organizations have had similar experi-
ences, inquiring about Harlem or the outer bor-
oughs, only to learn that they can stay in central,
easily accessible Midtown for the same money.
Downtown Brooklyn, in particular, would be a
viable option for many groups if they could real-
ize some significant savings for their efforts.
As in lower Manhattan in the mid-1990s,
there are some incentives available to nonprof-
its that relocate to these areas-but in this case
they have not proven to be enough to make the
difference. For example, the ciry offers several
bond programs for nonprofits, but because of
the high transaction costs often involved, these
have been of use mainly to the largest organiza-
tions. And bond programs by their nature
mean borrowing-an increase, not a decrease
to the bottom line.
It is still unclear whether the building will
be eligible for benefits under the city's Industri-
al and Commercial Incentive Program-one of
the conditions for tenants to be eligible for
REAP incentives. But even if it is, those bene-
fits would be unavailable to nonprofit tenants.
Nelson thinks this is a mistake. "To the extent
that the ciry is trying to use REAP benefits to help
jumpStaft certain areas, nonprofits may be more
willing to be the first pioneers, and they are more
price sensitive. They would be the most willing to
take the risk, so I think it makes a tremendous
amount of sense to offer them these benefits."
Skeptics argue that extending these types of
economic incentives to nonprofits will merely
open the giveaway goodie bag to thousands of
new outstretched hands. But the truth is that the
ciry is already under constant pressure to help
nonprofits foot the bill for high rents--in the
form of funding hikes to organizations facing
increasing overhead
Without access to the
same incentives for which
for-profit businesses are
eligible, nonprofits find
themselves largely priced
out of the very neighbor-
hoods the ciry is seeking
to develop, and that is bad
economic policy.
There are those who
see the potential of non-
profits as economic devel-
opment tools: For exam-
ple, the Brooklyn Eco-
nomic Development
Corporation has begun to
Sometimes the
best thing
organizations can
do for a struggling
neighborhood is
just show up.
costs-and in many
cases it already does so.
Making nonprofits eligi-
ble for a program such
as REAP would both
decrease the pressure
and the paperwork, and
would allow the ciry to
target its dollars in a way
that furthers its broader
economic agenda.
In addition, there
are ways to test the
effectiveness of includ-
ing non profits in such
programs without
market the former State Workers' Compensation
Building at 180 Livingston Street to nonprofits,
in an effort to establish it as an economic devel-
opment anchor there.
"We got involved in marketing the space for
this building not only because we think it will
help nonprofits to be clustered together," says
Joan Bartolomeo, president of the Brooklyn
Economic Development Corporation, "but
also because the project serves our economic
development mission to help revitalize down-
town Brooklyn."
Nonprofits can help do this not only by
supporting a retail base and creating a sense of
activiry and life around a neighborhood, but
also by providing area residents with jobs, adds
BEDC Real Estate Coordinator Margaret Nel-
son. "Nonprofits create more of a local employ-
ment base, which has its own multiplier effect,
in terms of keeping money in our communi-
ties, and in the ciry."
JULY/AUGUST 2002
encouraging a raid on the treasury. The ciry
could experiment with a limited amount of
money; it could set a cap on the amount of
money available to anyone organization; it
could focus incentives on one particular area of
the ciry at a time.
It is an experiment worth trying. Nonprofits
have been and could continue to be a catalyst for
neighborhood development in the ciry. If policy-
makers want to help new or struggling districts
thrive, they should take non profits into account
when strucruring and marketing new incentive
programs, and they should seriously consider
amending existing programs such as REAP, to
allow nonprofits to get into the game .
David Lebmstein is director of sales and leasing
at Time Equities Inc. Arlene wysong is senior
managing director of Newmark & Company
Real Estate Inc. Both specialize in advising and
assisting nonprofits with their real estate issues.
THERE
IS NO
SUCHTlDNG
ASA
FREE LUNCH
But there is free
legal assistance
Not-for-profits, community groups and
organizations working to improve their
communities in New York City are eli-
gible for free legal assistance through
New York Lawyers for the Public
Interest's (NYLPI) pro bono clear-
inghouse. The clearinghouse draws on
the expertise of lawyers at our 79 mem-
ber law firms and corporate legal
departments.
Our network of attorneys can
work with you
on a wide variety of legal issues:
Establishing your group
as a not-for-profit
Lease negotiations and other
real estate matters
Establishing a long-term
relationship with one of our
member law firms
Representing your organization
in litigation matters
If you believe your organization
can benefit from legal
assistance, call Bryan Pu-Folkes
at (212) 336-9317,
or email at bpufolkes@nylpi.org
to see if you qualify.
All legal services
are free of charge.
NYLPI
151 West 30th Street, 11th Floor,
New York,. NY 10001-4007
35
RrF
of
NEW YORK
INSURING LOW-INCOME
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AND TENANTS FOR
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For information call:
Ingrid Kaminski
Senior Vice President; ext. 213
BOLLINGER, INC.
R&F OF NEW YORK DIVISION
One Wall Street Court
P.O. Box 982
New York, NY 10268-0982
www.rfny.com
Phone: 212-269-8080 . 800-635-6002
Fax: 212-269-81 12
Your Neighborhood Housing Insurance Specialist
Need a Lawyer Who
Understands Youth Programs? ~
New York City's youth are vital to the future of our
neighborhoods. Nonprofit groups are providing
after-school programs, job training, mentoring,
leadership activities and other innovative services
to help young people throughout the City achieve
their full potential.
Lawyers Alliance for New York's staff and volunteer
attorneys are committed to providing expert corpo-
rate, tax, employment, real estate and other business
law services to nonprofit groups dedicated to these
young people.
For more information, call us at 212-219-1800 x 223.
330 Seventh Avenue
New York, NY 10001
212219-1800
www.lany.org
36
Lawyers Alliance
for New York
Building a Better New York
lETTERS-----
continued from page 4
urban poverty. If you love living-wage laws, that
probably makes you jump up and down. If you
hate living-wage laws, it puts you in a bind. "
DIALOGUE, AT LAST
Thanks for your thoughtful story "Good
Neighbor Policies" [April 2002), about commu-
nity organizing to address the NIMBY challenge.
Through 25 years as neighbors working
together for a vibrant, diverse community, the
Fifth Avenue Committee has come to believe
that it makes sense to build decent, affordable,
supportive housing in our neighborhood for
homeless people and ex-offenders.
What John Crow [Letters, June 2002] calls
"the criminal element," we think are largely
neighbors who made bad decisions in bad cir-
cumstances. If they get no community support
after leaving prison, they are far more likely to
fail-harming themselves and our community.
We know not everyone feels this way--almost
no one thinks their block is an appropriate place.
That's why we reached our so extensively in our
effortS to develop 572 Pacific Street. We knocked
on every door on Pacific Street and adjacent
blocks and held two community meetings on the
next block, several focus groups five blocks away,
and a tour of other FAC housing in the neigh-
borhood.
In response to feedback, we made several
major changes. We invited block residents to
have representatives on the screening committee,
extended the length of stay to reduce turnover,
and pledged that we would shut the project
down after a year if three-quarters of the adviso-
ry committee of local residents voted to do so.
Unfortunately, Jim Vogel [Letters, June
2002] chose not to attend any of our meetings,
focus groups, or tours, not to speak with us
when we were on the block, and not to engage
in any dialogue about how we could make the
project work. Instead, he and some other resi-
dents waited for the forum held by the com-
munity board and carne our in full opposi-
tion ... and then accused us of not listening.
In the end, we had several supporters on the
block (though not as many as we hoped) and
many from the surrounding community. We
were heartened that Community Board 6
(which has opposed some supportive housing in
the past where there was little local outreach)
and other local leaders supported our project.
While we were disappointed not to receive
scarce New York State funds co develop the pro-
ject, we believe that we took the right approach.
Through genuine community organizing, we
can build much-needed bridges between sup-
portive housing and community development.
Brad Lander
Executive Director, Fifth Avenue Committee
CITY LIMITS
Dubious
BENEFITS
continued ftom page 18
nomic Development Corporation in the Bronx,
which helps about 400 welfare-to-work clients in
the Bronx each year. "A welfare check is a lousy
substitute for a paycheck," notes Rubens. "You
can't access the earned income tax credit. On
workfare, there's no protection for you as a
worker. It's just a bad deal. "
There's also the desire to have influence on
an ongoing state and national conversation that
is focusing so intensively on how to support
families who have made the transition from
welfare to work. Although advocates for the
poor don't like to see themselves as insiders who
will do anything for a seat at the table, many
also acknowledge that they're tired of bringing
up an issue year after year that seemingly has no
political future. Rather, they justifiably point
out, the earned income rax credits and expand-
ed child care they've won have helped out work-
ing families who themselves remain poor.
But not as poor as the more than 640,000
still on cash welfare in New York State. Some
activists wonder if more than a few of their
colleagues haven't forgotten that day-to-day,
the most important thing for these families on
welfare is having enough money to do laundry
and buy school clothes. Not how big the tax
WANT
ONE
OF THESE?
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
L _____ ~
credit will be if they ever get to work. Not
whether a college internship they'll probably
never have a chance to take will count toward
their work requirements.
"There's an animus towards welfare that's not
just in political culture but that has also seeped
into advocacy culture, " says Tun Casey, a senior
staff attorney with the NOW Legal Defense and
Education Fund. "Sometimes people who
should know better don't talk enough about how
little money families on welfare actually get. "
O
n a warm May afternoon, nearly a
hundred repotters, government offi-
cials, policy analysts and curious
onlookers packed tightly into a
Queens college classroom for what promised to
be an interesting announcement: the first clear
revelation of the Bloomberg administration's wel-
fare vision. Like every other state and municipal-
ity in the country, the city's welfare agency and
mayor would be presenting their recommenda-
tions on TANF reauthorization to the feds.
The city's recommendations impressed crit-
ics of the previous administration's often harsh
welfare policies. Bloomberg urged the federal
government to allow welfare money to pay for
housing subsidies without counting against
time limits-something long called for by
advocates for the homeless. His plan also calls
for increasing the amount of time that a welfare
recipient is allowed to spend in training and
education. And it urges the feds to count sub-
stance abuse treatment and domestic violence
services towards work requirements.
All of those recommendations for improv-
ing TANF, plus others, were contained in the
document that the city presented to the press
that afternoon. But they weren't what the
mayor chose to highlight in his verbal remarks.
Instead, Mayor Bloomberg emphasized again
and again the need to maintain tough anti-
fraud controls and strict work requirements for
welfare recipients. Without them, he warned
darkly and repeatedly, the city would return to
the dismal days marked by a "culture of depen-
dency. " As if you can call anyone dependent
who lives on a check that covers a fraction of
their family's needs. As if recipients--even
before welfare reform-hadn't always worked,
informally or formally, to supplement their
meager public assistance wages.
Bloomberg's reproachful rhetoric highlights
the gaping hole at the center of the welfare
reform debate. Peel away all the talk about
dependency and self-sufficiency and learning
how to work hard, and families on welfare are
still left with that same tiny little payment. The
one that leaves them with nothing lefr-and
bills stilllefr to be paid. That makes their kids
ashamed, and their hopes for a future with
more money and bigger dreams buried,
beneath yards of worries about laundry and
school clothes and a new pair of shoes .
Get a cool poster of our invite cartoon! Send $5 for postage and handling to:
CITY LIMITS POSTER
120 Wall Street, 20th Floor, NYC 10005
JULY/AUGUST 2002 37
The Missing Links
continued from page 21
project itself by capturing the revenues from the
disposal of construction and demolition debris,"
says Leslie Lowe, former executive director of
the Environmental Justice Alliance, who has
fought the project for the past two years.
The amount of debris that has been dumped
at Ferry Point Park is worth close to $17 million
in disposal fees at the rate of $675 per 30 cubic
yards charged by Browning Ferris Industries,
one of the city's biggest commercial waste haul-
ing firms (which does not dump at the park).
But Ferry Point Partners won't divulge exactly
how much of a financial benefit the company is
receiving from the disposal of construction
debris on public property. "It doesn't make
money," Gagne says. "What it has helped us do
is reduce the cost of the project."
Until contacted by City Limits, former Parks
Commissioner Henry Stern didn't even know
money was being charged for the disposal of the
debris. Stern says he had been under the
impression that the developers were paying for
the cost of the whole project through the rais-
ing of private capital. "If there are unexpected
revenues, they ought to be shared with the city,"
says Stern, who lefr the Parks Department in
early February to run a good-government group
called New York Civic. "Certainly the develop-
er should not be the sole beneficiary. "
Joanne Imohiosen, who remains in the
department, says "I don't have an idea" of what
the developers were making in dumping fees.
Imohiosen contends that such information is not
pertinent, because the developers are "taking this
horrible dump and making a wonderful recre-
ational facility at basically no cost to the city. "
But Ferry Point Park is actually turning into a
multi-million dollar financial liability for the city.
As it stands, the only fully completed feature
at Ferry Point Park is a mile-long trench filled
with stones that extends along one end of the
park. The trench is supposed to vent methane
gas that special monitoring wells-placed at the
edge of the site after construction began-have
identified as being at explosive levels. Decaying
garbage underneath the former dump generates
methane gas; the trench is intended to keep it
from migrating to the residential neighborhood
ofThrogs Neck across the street from the park.
"Nobody had quite known, nor could they
have known, what was our there-the landfill was
closed and capped 30 years ago," says developer
Jonathan Stem. He says the methane problems at
the edge of the golf course are linked to the large
amount of construction debris being deposited at
the site, which compresses material from the origi-
nal dump and press the gas out at its edges. "Imag-
ine a sponge," he says. "If you push down on the
sponge, the water's going to come our the side. " He
adds that his company has spent about $1 million
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building the trench to address the methane prob-
lem. ''We're ptobably a year behind, and 90 per-
cent of that being a year behind is because of the
environmental difficulty with the site."
The expense of addressing unforeseen envi-
ronmental problems is the primary reason the
cost of the project has jumped from $22.5 mil-
lion to over $40 million, says Jonathan Stern. He
also says that his company's contract allows him
to bill the city for most of those costs. "The city
is responsible for everything that involves envi-
ronmental remediation over $50,000," says Stern.
Despite the terms of the Ferry Point Park
contract, city officials are taking steps to cut
potential losses. On December 28, 2001, the
same day that Mayor Giuliani announced
negotiations with PGA officials, the city's Fran-
chise and Concession Review Committee
voted to amend the contract with Ferry Point
Partners. According to Imohiosen, the city is
putting a $6.9 million cap on the amount that
it will reimburse the developers for fixing envi-
ronmental problems at the park.
But as recencly as this past May, lawyers for
the developers were taking the position that the
city is still responsible for the cost of cleaning
up Ferry Point Park. According to Ed Wallace,
a lawyer with the firm of Greenberg Traurig,
the $6.9 million is only a "working cap." Says
Wallace, "If the number went higher, we'd be
enticled to have it raised. " At press time, the
FCRC amendment was not even legal ly
enforceable, asserts the office of new City
Comptroller Bill Thompson, because it had
not yet been registered by the comptroller.
The developers are eager to get back to
work. In February, Ferry Point Parmers sub-
mitted a three-volume application to the State
Department of Environmental Conservation
for permission to take 550,000 cubic yards of
additional construction and demolition debris.
The application argues that the additional con-
struction debris will have a negligible environ-
mental impact on the site.
Unmentioned in the developers' application
is any potential financial benefit of the addi-
tional debris. At the rate quoted by Browning
Ferris Industries, 550,000 cubic yards of debris
is worth another $12.3 million in disposal fees.
The developers say they are addressing the
environmental issues. But environmentalists
remain unconvinced, contending that city and
state officials as well as the developers blundered
in the initial environmental review, which failed
to anticipate the need for coscly environmental
remediation. "The concession agreement leaves
the taXpayer on the hook for the environmental
problems created. And what if Ferry Point Part-
ners walks?" asks Leslie Lowe. "In this time of
budget deficits, where is the city going to find the
funds to stabilize the evironmental mess that
could be lefr behind?"
Alex Ulam is a Manhattan-based freelance
writer.
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FORSALE
Beautiful Knoll work stations, brand new, 10
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them up, in Riverdale. They are packed and
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RENTALSPACE
Not-for-profit seeks tenant for 2600 of finished
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including utilities. Call 212-471-0817 for
information.
OFFICE SPACE AVAILABLE: At 275 7TH Ave.
(25th St.) Chelsea Area. Nonprofit has large
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SPACE AVAILABLE FOR DAY CAREIPRE-SCHOOL
PROVIDERS: Not-for-profit has space available
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each). NYCCS is currently accepting RFP's for
the development and operation of a day care
center or pre- school. Seeking inquiries from
not-for-profit organizations and/or individuals
who are existing providers of day care/pre-
school services; entering into some form of
partnership or strategic alliance with an exist-
ing or new provider of day care/pre-school ser-
vices; or developing a new day care/pre- school
40
program under its purview with direction from
a qualified individual. RFP deadline 6/28. Call
Shelly Blair at 718.284.0039 ext. 144 for infor-
mation.
JOBADS
The Pratt Area Community Council (PACC), a
growing, neighborhood-based not-for-profit
dedicated to improving the Brooklyn communi -
ties of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Bedford
Stuyvesant, is seeking an ASSISTANT PROJECT
MANAGER. Supervise apartment preparation
and moves for temporary and permanent relo-
cations, assist tenant with Sector 8, organize
tenant meetings, collect documents, submit
reports, and requisition funds. Other duties as
assigned by supervisor. Community organizing
or individual counseling experience preferred.
Competitive salary commensurate w/exp. EOE.
Send cover letter and resume to: PACC, 201
Dekalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205. Fax (718)
522-2604. pacc@prattarea.org.
The YWCA of NYC seeks a dynamic and enthu-
siastic candidate who is a creative, flexible
self-starter for two positions: BUSINESS SER-
VICES REPRESENTATIVE To recruit , interview,
& screen job candidates to fill occupational
openings. Coordinates the professional and
managerial staffing activity of the company,
including internal and external recruitment
and placement, and adherent to programs are
consistent with the corporation's commitment
as an equal opportunity employer. BA in human
resources management or counseling .. 2-3
years job experience. Computer proficiency in
all Microsoft software programs; Exceptional
written/verbal skills. FT, mid to upper $30's.
EMPLOYMENT SPECIALIST: Coordinate inter-
nal/external workshops/activities for job
preparation/readiness for participants Provide
information and general assistance to facili-
tate implementation of recommended inter-
ventions. Prepare statistical and data man-
agement records. Develop liaisons and link-
ages with community-based and city-wide
organizations. Minimum 2-3 years job experi-
ence. Computer proficiency in all Microsoft
software programs; Exceptional written/verbal
skills. FT, low to mid $30's. Send resume/cover
itr to: jross@ywcanyc.org., fax: 212 838-0649
REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE: Coor-
dination of the departmental activities,
fundraising and general administration to
implement neighborhood improvement pro-
jects, including housing and commercial
development, for immigrant communities.
($32-$45K plus benefits). REAL ESTATE PRO-
JECT MANAGER: implementing neighborhood
improvement projects, including housing and
commercial development for the immigrant
communities. ($35-$50K plus benefits) For
more details, go to www.aafe.org. Contact:
Connie Lee: MFE, 277 Grand Street,
3rd fl. New York, NY 10002. E-mail:
human_resources@aafe.org
HELP USA, a homeless housing provider has
the following opportunities available: HOUS-
ING SPECIALIST: Opportunity for an individual
with prior experience to assist families in
securing permanent housing. Real estate
and/or government low income housing lease
negotiation experience with Dept of Social Ser-
vices preferred. BA or related deg required.
Lease negotiation skills desirable. Computer
literacy required. Bilingual (Span/Eng) skills
are a plus. Salary starts in low-mid $20s.
TEAM LEADER: Candidate being sought to lead
an interdisciplinary team of social service pro-
fessionals. Must be able to coordinate the work
of three counselors encompassing 63 cases
ensuring support services and weekly contacts
provided to client families. Ability to handle
fast pace and a multiple task environment is
key. Supervisory, case management and clini-
cal experience required. Will also manage the
electronic case record system for caseloads.
Special Requirements: MSW (preferred) or
related necessary. Computer literacy required.
Salary: starts in mid-to-upper $30's. Send
resumes, indicating position to: Tabitha
Gaffney, Dir of Social Services, fax# 718-485-
5916.
DIRECTOR: Queens settlement house seeks
creative, self-starter to develop and implement
a job readiness and employment support pro-
gram for immigrant, TANF and Safety New pop-
ulations. Qualifications include: a minimum of
Bachelor's degree with 5 years experience in
employment and education services with
adults, familiarity with issues impacting upon
populations to be served, supervisory experi-
ence, solid communication skills and organi-
zational skills, able to start program from
ground up, team player. Fax resume: Att:Mary
Abbate, Assistant Executive Director (718)
592-2933.
ACCOUNTANTS (2): Maintain accounting sys-
tems and all transactions involving the finan-
cial requirements of the company. Monitor
financial budgets. Prepare monthly billings
and budget variance reports. Post MIE journal
entries and prepare monthly bank reconcilia-
tion. Qualifications: B.A.lB.S. degree in
accounting, economiCS, finance, business or
similar discipline. A minimum of 3 years paid
bookkeeping/accounting experience in a not-
for-profit environment. Working knowledge of
Microsoft Excel. Knowledge of American Fund-
ware a plus. Strong analytical skills and excel-
lent oral and written communications skills are
necessary to support critical functions of the
position. The ideal candidate will understand
the value of maintaining business relation-
ships and is committed to working as part of a
team. Job#:4078s-FAMNSA-0502-CL. VIP
Community Services is a CARF accredited,
multi-service behavioral health organization.
We offer a competitive benefits package that
includes health insurance, pension, and more!
Send resume with salary requirements and job
code number to: Ms. D. L. Thomas, Personnel
Manager, VIP Community Services, 1910
Arthur Avenue, 4th floor Bronx, New York 10457
fax: 7181299-1386 or e-mail :
vipworks@aol.com. Visit our website at
www.vipservices.org EOE.
Medicare Rights Center seeks VOLUNTEER
COORDINATOR to recruit, train, supervise and
retain volunteers and interns. Responsibilities
include drafting training materials and publi-
cations, conducting monthly meetings and
supervising support staff. Strong writing/inter-
personal skills required. Must be mature, com-
passionate and enjoy working with people of
all ages. $35,000 a year plus excellent bene-
fits. Send cover letter, resume and writing
sample to Denise Grant, MRC, 1460 Broadway,
11th Floor, NY, NY 10036; fax (212) 869-3532;
email dgrant@medicarerights.org
STAFF ASSOCIATE FOR JUVENILE JUSTICE AND
YOUTH SERVICES: Citizens' Committee for
Children of New York Inc. (CCC) is a 58 year-old
non-profit, public interest organization that
works to improve the quality of life for New York
City children. CCC seeks a full-time STAFF
Staff Associate to carry the juvenile justice and
youth services portfolio. Staff associate's man-
age several task force and analytical projects
that evaluate the effects of policies on children
and families and assess whether adequate
services are available to meet their needs.
Staff associate advocacy work includes five
core functions: public education; policy and
program development, analysis, and imple-
mentation; community outreach and con-
stituency building; and participation in and
direction of issue based coalitions. Staff asso-
ciate written work includes: testimony and pre-
sentations, survey development, task force
reports, background papers for educational
use, and ongoing correspondence with city and
state officials. Staff associates testify at pub-
lic hearings, engage in state and city budget
and legislative advocacy activities, and partic-
ipate in public speaking engagements. Mini-
mum Qualifications Include: Two to three years
experience working in the areas of juvenile jus-
tice, youth, or human services; knowledge of
state and local government; strong organiza-
tional, writing, computer, and communications
skills; and a Master's Degree or equivalent in
related field of public policy, social welfare, or
law. Interested individuals should provide
three references, a writing sample, and salary
history. Jennifer A. March-Joly, Ph.D. Associate
Executive Director, Citizens' Committee for
Children of New York, Inc. 105 East 22nd
Street, 7th FI. New York, NY 10010
ASSISTANT DISTRICT MANAGER: Supports
community board's advisory role in City land
use decisions, budget process and service
delivery. Responsibil ities include liaison and
trouble-shooting activities, administrative
support, special projects with District Manag-
er. Excellent opportunity for graduates of poli-
cy, public affairs or planning with 2- 4 years
experience. 35K, excellent benefits. BAIBS
minimum, MS preferred; strong organizational
and computer skills; NYC community develop-
ment experience desirable. Reply to District
Manager, 330 W. 42nd St., 26th fir, 10036 or
via www.ManhattanCB4.org. Manhattan CB 4
is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.
Leading advocacy and direct service organiza-
tion is seeking a creative individual to help
build and launch our newest initiative - an
Education Resource Center that will provide
social support and educational advocacy ser-
vices for homeless children and their parents.
The SOCIAL WORKER will be part of a multi-
disciplinary team that provides crisis interven-
tion and short-term counseling to children and
CITY LIMITS
parents, assess children's educational needs
and ensure that they receive immediate and
appropriate services, facilitate workshops for
parents, assist with children's transition
between schools, and work with school person-
nel and administrators to build their capacity
to address the needs of homeless children and
their families. Candidates must have at least
two years experience working with children
and families, providing individual and group
counseling and establishing and running sup-
port groups. MSW degree required. Bilingual
preferred. Excellent salary and benefits.
Resume with cover letter and salary require-
ments to: Director, Human Resources, The
Partnership for the Homeless, 305 Seventh
Avenue, Box SW-1 NY, NY 10001. AAlEEO
M/F/oNISO
Gay Men's Health Crisis seeks SUPERVISING
ATTORNEY to provide leadership, supervision
and substantive assistance to staff attorneys
and legal advocates in the legal areas of land-
lordltenant and family law. Specific responsi-
bilities include oversight of case handling in
the specialty area, monitoring of internal sys-
tem for distribution of cases to legal staff,
monitoring for compliance with govemment
funded contracts, coordinating training needs
of staff, monitoring for quality control and
direct client representation. The successful
candidate will have a JD from an accredited
law school and admission to the New York Bar,
as well as proven professional experience with
a general legal practice, including litigation
experience. Proven experience supervising
attorneys and paralegals in a legal services or
social services organization required. Exper-
tise in Federal, state and local laws, judicial
precedents and regulations pertaining to land-
lord/tenant and family law, and superior
research and writing abilities are musts. Qual-
ified individuals should send resume with
cover letter that must include salary require-
ment to GMHC, HR Dept, 119 West 24th Street,
New York, New York 100 II, or electron ica lIy to
jobs@gmhc.org. GMHC offers a competitive
salary and benefits package and is committed
to staff development. We value diversity and
are proud to be an equal opportunity employer.
GRANTS ADMINISTRATOR: Provide administra-
tive support and assist program staff in mak-
ing new grants and grant portfolio manage-
ment. Screen grant requests, schedule site
visits, and draft letters and other correspon-
dence. Send out applications, grant contracts
and checks. Manage ongoing correspondence
with grant recipients and maintain databases
and files of all proposals and grants. Prepare
materials and minutes for board meetings and
correspond with board of trustees. Handle
general administrative duties including mail
and phone inquiries, scheduling, and updates
to website. Qualifications: B.A. minimum; pro-
ficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel and Access;
excellent written and oral communication
skill s; strong organizational skills and atten-
tion to detail ; interest in non-profit field. The
liger Foundation supports organizations in
NYC in the areas of education, job training,
and social services/youth development, with
the goal of working to break the cycle of pover-
ty. Send letter of interest and resume by June
JULY/AUGUST 2002
7th to Phoebe Boyer, Executive Director, liger
Foundation, 101 Park Avenue, New York, NY
10178. For more information visit
WNW.tigerfoundation.org.
STAFF ATTORNEY, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS PRO-
JECT: Responsible for significant federal court
litigation on behalf of immigrants and
refugees, litigation back-up, for policy advoca-
cy on a wide range of immigrants' rights
issues. Two to four years of federal court litiga-
tion experience relevant to bringing constitu-
tional or civil rights claims on behalf of immi-
grants. Respond to: lucas Guttentag, Director,
ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, 405 14th
Street, Suite 300, Oakland, CA 94612 Attn: NY
Attorney Position.
Workforce Development Division of Brooklyn-
based CBO seeks three JOB DEVELOPERS with
experience working with culturally diverse pop-
ulation including limited English speakers. A
minimum of one-year experience required. BA
preferred. Please send resume, cover letter and
salary history. Email LeonoraS@CAMBA.org,
fax (718)287-4716
Workforce Development Division of Brooklyn-
based CBO seeks three OUTREACH AND
ASSESSMENT SPECIALISTS to conduct out-
reach and/or assessment for job training and
placement programs, including security,
human services, and customer service. Candi-
dates should be able to develop and imple-
ment outreach strategies to recruit partici-
pants and/or implement assessment tools to
determine customers' skill levels and apti -
tudes. One-year experience and/or
BA preferred. Please send resume,
cover letter and salary history. Email
leonoraS@CAMBA.org, fax (718)287-4716
Workforce Development Division of Brooklyn-
based CBO seeks two CAREER COUNSELORS
to conduct intensive assessment, to establish
short and long-term career goals for partici-
pants, and to provide pre and post-placement
counseling and support. BA and some experi-
ence required. Please send resume, cover let-
ter and salary history. Email
leonoraS@CAMBA.org, fax (718)287-4716
Workforce Development Division of Brooklyn-
based CBO seeks one CAREER CENTER
INSTRUCTOR to develop job search resources,
and to provide resume and interviewing prepa-
ration and job search assistance for individu-
al s and small groups. Resourceful , creative,
Internet savvy individual with advanced com-
puter skills required. BA and some related
experience required. Please send resume,
cover letter and salary history. Email Leono-
raS@CAMBA.org, fax (718)287-47l6
CHlDC, a community-based agency, seeks a
PARENT INVOLVEMENT COORDINATOR for PS
89, an alternative public school co-founded by
CHlDC, local parents, and Community School
District 19. Plan and organize meetings and
activities of parent groups, family literacy, and
parent volunteering. Requirements: Bilingual
(EnglishlSpanish), experience with groups,
and in low-income communities. MSW pre-
ferred. Salary $28-351<, DOE. Send/fax resume,
cover letter to Emily Blank, CHLOC, 3214 Ful-
ton St, Brooklyn, NY 11208lfax: (718) 647-
2104. EmilyBlank@yahoo.com
National gay & HIV legal rights organization
seeks COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR to super-
vise Communications team from NYC HDQ.
See WNW.lambdalegal.org for details. Appli-
cants of color especially encouraged. letter,
resume, writing sample to M. Adams, lambda
legal, 120 Wall St., Ste. 1500, NY, NY 10005,
Fax: 212 809-0055
One of the nation's pre-eminent Harlem based
community development organization is seek-
ing a DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT AND COM-
MUNICATIONS. Responsibilities include: Cre-
ating and implementing a diversified fund-
raising plan. Demonstrated success in fund
raising, special event management, and a his-
tory of coordinating Board relationships. We
seek a talented, innovative, goal-oriented pro-
fessional with prior management experience.
Ideal candidate will possess knowledge of
housing, economic and community develop-
ment issues. Qualifications: Must have a min-
imum of five years of development experience,
at senior management level. Excellent writing,
presentation and interpersonal skills are
essential. Experience in Raiser's Edge
required. Education: Bachelor'S Degree
required. Master's Degree preferred. Advanced
training in fundraising practices and proce-
dures a plus. We offer an excellent salary and
benefits package. ADC is an equal opportunity
employer. Send cover letter and resume to:
Abyssinian Development Corporation, Human
Resources Department, 131 West 138th Street
New York, New York 10038
Abyssinian Development Corporation "ADC, "
one of the nation's pre-eminent Harlem based
community development organizations seeks
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER. Position requires
exceptional leadership and communication
skills, as well as proficiency in real estate
finance, community revitalization strategies,
and human services. Commitment to working
with community based organizations is essen-
tial , as well as the ability to work with govern-
ment officials, corporate and foundation exec-
utives. Proven track record in cultivating
fundraising contacts is essential. Excellent
written and verbal skills are a must. Graduate
degree and seven years senior experience in
community development required. Competitive
salary and excellent benefits. Send cover let-
ter and resume confidentially to Patricia Hol-
ley, Director Human Resources, Abyssinian
Development Corporation, 131 West 138th
Street, New York, NY 10030. No phone calls
please. ADC is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
SOCiAl SERVICES CASE MANAGER for East
Side Settlement house, BAlBSW preferred.
Experience with seniors. Salary $30k. Good
benefits. EOE. Resume and cover letter to W.
Zi nman, LHNH, 331 E. 70th Street, NYC 10021.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR lenox Hill Neighborhood
House has been providing outreach to street
dwell ing adults on the Upper East Side for
JOBADS
close to 20 years. We are seeking a Director for
our professionally staffed Homeless Outreach
Project. The successful candidate will have
exc. Clinical skills & experience with mentally
ill and/or substance abusing homeless.
Administrative and supervisory experience
required. Pref. MSW w/ min five years post
master experience; equivalent degree w/rele-
vant experience considered. EOE. lHNH values
& seeks a diverse workforce. Resume: Tena
Frank, CSW, Director, Homeless Services Dept.,
lHNH, 331 E. 70th Street, New York, NY 10021.
No phone/faxes.
Emmanuel Community Economic Development
Corporation, a new, faith-base community
development corporation, seeks an EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR (CEO) . Responsibilities: Imple-
menting the Corporations Economic Develop-
ment Plan; directing fundraising activities,
including grant proposals and contract nego-
tiations; recruiting, hiring, supervising, and
evaluating job performance of all staff; devel-
oping programs consistent with the Corpora-
tions Mission Statement, goals, and annual
workplan; representing the Corporation in the
community and promoting its goals and inter-
ests. Duties: Developing an annual workplan
consistent with the Economic Development
Plan; advising the Board of Directors on all
revisions to the plan, recommending projects;
preparing and distributing regular reports to
the Board on workplan implementation and
other activities; preparing and managing the
annual budget; preparing monthly variance
analysis, managing overall operations; and
performing other job-related tasks at the
Boards discretion. Qualifications: At least
seven years administrative/supervisory experi -
ence. Demonstrated skills in entrepreneur-
ship, team-building, and collaboration. Salary:
$65,000.00. Send resume and cover letter with
salary history to: Executive Search Committee,
Emmanuel Community Economic Development
Corporation, 36 Saint James Place, Brooklyn,
New York, 11205. Fax: 718-622-3343. Dead-
line ASAP.
God's love We Deliver, a NYC non-profit, non-
sectarian organization providing meals to pe0-
ple living w/AiDS and HIV, seeks 2 VAN ASSIS-
TANTS to assist drivers in safely and timely
delivering of meals to GlWD clients in the five
boroughs and Hudson County, NJ. Candidates
must be 21 years of age due to ins. regs., hold
a NYS valid drivers lic. wIno convictions or
accidents in the past 3 yrs, and be able to lift
up to 701bs. Knowledge of the 5 boroughs a
must. Must be able to work a flexible schedule
including oft and holidays. Excellent benefits
including medical, dental, disability and pen-
sion. Send, fax or e-mail resume or letter of
interest incl. qualifications to: Human
Resources, GlWD, 166 Avenue of the Americas,
NYC 10013 or Fax 212-294-8101;
recruitment@glwd.org. EOE
Citizen Action seeks COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS
in NYC and U to direct new public transit pro-
ject or organize on health care, education,
other justice issues. Organizing/electoral expe-
rience (director) or strong interest; bilingual
(health organizer) especially welcome. Diverse
staff, team approach; we win real change!
41
JOBADS
Info. at: www.citizenactionny.org Competitive
pay with benefits. Fax letter and
resume to 718-694-2511 or email
mail@citizenactionny.org.
Drug Policy Alliance, the nation's leading orga-
nization promoting alternatives to the war on
drugs, is looking for a DIRECTOR OF MEDIA
RELATIONS for our national headquarters in
New York. The Director of Media Relations will
develop and execute strategic media cam-
paigns on a variety of issues related to domes-
tic and international drug policy reform. Duties
include: Recognizing "newsworthy" compo-
nents of organization's work and developing
media messages; Generating media attention
regarding organization's agenda; Managing
media campaigns involvi ng researchers, web
administrators and spokespeople; Developing
relationships with media to promote coverage
of drug policy reform issues; Writing and edit-
ing press releases, fact sheets and other press
materials; Identifying and training spokespeo-
ple; Writing, editing and placing op-eds and
letters to the editor; Gathering and organizing
relevant news clippings; Developing, main-
taining and updating press lists; Working with
policy staff and coalition members to carry out
advocacy strategies; and Developing final
reports on successful communications cam-
paigns. Qualifications: Proven experience coor-
dinating and executing communications cam-
paigns, including developing strategy, pitch-
ing reporters and writing background materi-
als. Interest in drug policy reform related to:
treatment instead of jail for non-violent
offenders; marijuana law reform; needle
exchange and other harm reduction interven-
tions; and social, racial, and gender justice.
Outstanding written and oral communication
skills. Salary based on experience. Please
email cover letter and resume to Dani McClain
at dmcclain@drugpolicy.org or fax to 212-
548-4670 by Wednesday, May 1. No calls
please. For more information about Drug Policy
Alliance please visit www.drugpolicy.org.
Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Envi-
ronment, a statewide group of environmental ,
affordable housing and public policy organiza-
tions, is seeking EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR to
implement ambitious statewide agenda,
including: affecting state policy on issues of
importance to the membership and their con-
stituencies; raising the profile of the Coalition;
activating the mernbership around grassroots
and statewide issues; and providing a strate-
gic direction to the Coalition. Requirements:
extensive experience (including supervisory)
with community-based and/or public policy
organizations; strategic planning experience;
strong written and verbal communication
skills; commitment to grassroots organizing
and community empowerment; experience in
public/media relations, legislative process,
and fund raising. For a complete job descrip-
tion contact (609) 278-5656 or
housing.environment@verizon.net with fax
number, e-mail or US mail address.
The Homelessness Outreach and Prevention
Project of the Urban Justice Center seeks a
LEGAL ADVOCATE to run an outreach clinic and
represent clients. BA required. Spanish prefer-
42
able. Deadline May 17, 2002. Send cover letter,
resume and writing sample to HOPP Search,
666 Broadway, 10th floor, NY, NY 10012
New York Unemployment Project: ORGANIZER
The New York Unemployment Project, a new
initiative of the National Employment Law Pro-
ject (NELP), seeks committed, motivated bilin-
gual individuals to organize unemployed New
Yorkers to fight for better unemployment bene-
fits and good jobs. There are irnmediate open-
ings for intelligent, hard-working, and highly
motivated individuals who are strongly com-
mitted to building a movement for the unem-
ployed by organizing the unorganized. New
York City has experienced a boom in unemploy-
ment and an ongoing disappearance of good
jobs. In many communities unemployment is
well over 10%. Responsibilities: Meet and
develop relationships with unemployed New
York residents through canvassing at job train-
ing centers, job fairs and check cashing cen-
ters; Build and maintain cohesive local orga-
nizing committees of unemployed New York
City residents through constant contact, edu-
cation and organizing; Educate and inspire
unemployed New Yorkers to fight back for
unemployment benefits that are accessible
and pay the rent; Plan actions that build power
for unemployed New Yorkers and build leader-
ship among the organizing committee's mem-
bers; Conduct "Know Your
Rights" trainings at houses of worship, com-
munity based organizations and government
agencies to educate low-wage workers about
their right to benefits when they lose their
job. Qualifications: Experience with bottom-up
community or union organizing campaigns
preferred; Ability to communicate well , both
verbally and in writing; Ability to establish
close relationships with people from different
cultural and economic backgrounds; Ability to
pay thorough attention to details; Willingness
to work hard and put in long hours; Preferably
- ability to speak another language (in addition
to English), especially one of the following:
Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Haitain Creole,
Russian, Bengali , or Polish. Experience is not
necessary. Training will be provided. Salary
and Benefits: Competitive salary depending on
experience; Excellent health and life insurance
(including families and domestic partners)
Send resume and cover letter to: Organizer
Search, New York Unemployment Project 121
Avenue of the Americas Suite 507 New York, NY
10013 NYUP is an equal opportunity, affirma-
tive action employer. Women, people of color,
the disabled, lesbians and gay men, and peo-
ple of transgendered experience are encour-
aged to apply. The New York Unemployment
Project: If you think the system is working, ask
someone who isn't.
HOUSING DIRECTOR To join a growing organi-
zation offering programs and services to per-
sons with disabilities. Plan, develop and man-
age community-based accessible and afford-
able housing including group homes and
apartment buildings. Supervise professional
and non- professional staff. Experience work-
ing with or providing housing to disabled per-
sons a plus. Full benefits. Send resume to:
Director of Human Resources Cerebral Palsy of
North Jersey 515 Valley Street Maplewood, NJ
07040 Phone (973) 763-9900, ext. 302 Fax
(973) 763-9905 e-mail : rwilson@cpnj .org
Equal Opportunity Employer
The HARM REDUCTION COORDINATOR will be
responsible for on going oversight of the SRO
Harm Reduction Program. The Coordinator will
supervise program staff, ensure monthly tar-
gets are met and implement program activi-
ties as needed. Quality assurance is a major
job responsibility. Please email:
csmpraxis@aol.com.
DIRECTOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES PROJECT
Leading nonprofit organization is seeking a
talented professional who can develop innova-
tive programs to assist homeless children and
families on their journey from city shelters to
permanent housing and independence. The
Director will oversee the entire operation of the
project, create city-wide and neighborhood-
based programs, and participate in our advo-
cacy efforts on issues such as family reunifi-
cation, housing, access to child care, and pub-
lic school education. This position offers a
unique opportunity to work in a creative envi-
ronment and to help build resources necessary
to effect social change. Send resume and cover
letter to: Director of Human Resources The
Partnership for the Homeless 305 Seventh
Avenue, 13th floor New York, N.Y. 10001
AAlEOE M/F/O/VISO
Bronx Green-Up COMMUNITY HORTICULTUR-
IST Community Outreach and Education Pro-
gram seeks individual to assist in the develop-
ment of new and established community gar-
dens in the Bronx through garden design and
installation assistance, technical assistance,
training, and related services. Will design and
conduct community gardening workshops;
conduct site evaluations; promote and
enhance program participants' gardening
skills. Must have degree/certificate or equiva-
lent experience in Horticulture; experience in
teaching instruction, and/or community pro-
grams. Valid driver's license; demonstrated
leadership ability; and excellent problem solv-
ing and multitasking skills required. Spanish
fluency helpful. Work schedule includes some
nights and weekends. Competitive salary with
excellent benefits, including 4 wks vacation.
Send resume and salary requirements to:
Recruiter - CH, The New York Botanical Gar-
den, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Blvd., Bronx,
NY 10458. Email : Jchoy-hughes@nybg.org.
AAlEOEIM/F /O/V
The JEHT Foundation is a newly established
national foundation based in New York City. Its
Community Justice Program focuses on ame-
liorating the impacts of crime and the collater-
al damages of the criminal justice system on
low-income African-American and Latino com-
munities. The Foundation's International Jus-
tice Program is considering ways to encourage
the United States to promote international jus-
tice issues in this country. The ASSISTANT TO
THE PRESIDENT reports directly to the Presi-
dent of the JEHT Foundation and provides
administrative support to hirn
Description/Responsibilities: Screen, route,
and forward President's calls; Maintain Presi-
dent's calendar; Draft and/or type President's
correspondence; Sort President's mail and
respond to inquiries about the Foundation;
Organize and maintain President's files; Com-
municate with Trustees of the Foundation and
prepare materials for Board meetings; Orga-
nize President's travel plans, itineraries and
internal meetings' Assist in maintaining
grants database (Gifts for Windows) and the
Foundation's Web site. Work on special projects
with the President; Provide back-up support for
other administrative staff of the Foundation as
needed. Qualifications: Strong administrative,
organizational , and analytical skills. Team-ori-
ented, non-hierarchical, anticipatory working
style; Creative problem-solving skills. Excellent
communication skills with ability to relate
effectively to potential grantees and other non-
profit professionals, staff, trustees, and con-
sultants. Computer literacy, including MS
Word, Excel and Microsoft Outlook; Attention to
detail; Undergraduate degree; Not-for-profit or
foundation experience a plus; A strong com-
mitment to the JEHT Foundation's values and
mission. How to apply: Send letter and resume
to: Debra Kendall , Administrative Director JEHT
Foundation 120 Wooster Street New York, NY
10012 No telephone calls, please. Salary
range is in the high 30's to low 40's with excel-
lent benefits. The Foundation hires without
regard to race, color, religion, national origin,
age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status,
or disability. Deadline: May 24, 2002 Start
Date: July 1, 2002 or sooner, if possible.
The Treatment Action Group (TAG) is the
nation's only organization focusing exclusively
on advocating for more and better AIDS
research, with the goal of finding better treat-
ments, a cure and a vaccine. We seek the fol-
lowing: POLICY DIRECTOR To help shape, coor-
dinate and implement overall TAG policyagen-
da by working with community-based,
research, non- and for-profit organizations
involved in AIDS research, treatment and poli-
cy; and in supervision, recruitment and coordi-
nation of TAG Antiviral , Oncologyllnfections
and Basic Science project staff, to ultimately
shapeannual organizational strategic plan
and manage TAG's day-to-day policy, program
work. Policy director will represent TAG in select
policy forums, coordinate TAG's public educa-
tion, community empowerment, and scientific
planning programs; coordinate material for
TAG' website and monthly bilingual newsletter,
TAGline. Will be expected to keep track of cur-
rent scientific, popular literature on antiretro-
viral research/treatment, attend
national/international research conferences,
develop written and oral policy materials, rep-
resent TAG with the press as necessary, and
participate in community-based, government,
and industry-related panels, committees
involved in developing/implementing basic
and applied HIV/AIDS research. Reports to the
Executive Director. Ideal candidate will have a
broad background with an understanding of
science, government and policy, and extensive
experience managing highly-qualified people
in policy roles, especially in AIDS research,
treatment, policy, advocacy and education,
public health, and federal affairs areas,
including experience with executive, legislative
government branches, or in related communi-
ty-based non-profit, public health, govern-
CITY LIMITS
ment, or private sector organizations. Salary
commensurate with experience, skills. TAG
offers a generous benefits package including
comprehensive health care, long-term disabil-
ity insurances and four weeks' vacation. To
apply, send, fax or e-mail cover letter, resume
and references (no phone calls, please) to: Pol-
icy Director Search Committee c/o Regina Gillis
Treatment Action Group (TAG) 611 Broadway,
Ste 612 New York, NY 10012 (212) 253-7923
fax tagnyc@msn.com TAG is an equal oppor-
tunity/ADA-compliant employer.
SUPERVISOR Use a combination of your clini-
cal and supervisory skills to support the direc-
tor of a 80-bed adult male residential facility.
Responsible for conducting clinical assess-
ments, monitoring charts, staff supervision
and quality assurance. Requires: MSW, or
maIms in psychology. CSW welcomed. Prior
experience with special needs populations and
a minimum of 2- years paid supervisory expe-
rience. This is a multi- task driven position
requiring excellent interpersonal and time
management skills. Ideal opportunity for a
individual who enjoys working with staff in
areas of skills building as well as working with
other treatment units in an interdisciplinary
approach. Bilingual (SpanishlEnglish) a plus.
Resume to: ms. D.I. Thomas, personnel man-
ager, job code:3031mrsvp0402cl, VIP Commu-
nity Services, 1910 Arthur ave., 4th fl., BRONX,
NY 10457. Fax: 718/299- 1386 e-mail:
vipworks @aol.com. Visit our website at
www.vipservices.org. EOE
COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Planned Parent-
hood of New York City, Inc, a leader in repro-
ductive health care, education and advocacy
for over 84 year, is currently recruiting for a
full-time Communications Manager position in
our Public Affairs Department located in our
Executive Offices at 26 Bleecker St. NY 10012.
Working directly for the Associate Vice Presi-
dent of Communications, the successful can-
didate is responsible for proactively publiciz-
ing PPNYC views, clinical services and educa-
tional programs and responding to press, and
actively promoting PPNYC's clinical services
and advocacy positions through external
advertising and internal and external market-
ing campaigns. Drafts press releases, state-
ments, media advisories, letters-to-the-editor
and guest editorials. Organizes press confer-
ences and media component of agency events.
Provides written content for the agency's web-
site. Develops, coordinates, implements and
evaluates marketing concepts and initiatives
including patient recruitment and public edu-
cation campaigns about health and policies.
Has direct access to the CEO, the chief
spokesperson for the agency, in dealing with
urgent public relations matters and the Vice
President of Public Affairs as well as other key
spokespersons. Requires Bachelor's 2-3 years
of proven related and/or applicable media,
public relations and marketing experience in
political or social issues setting. The success-
ful candidate has excellent organizational and
communication skills (especially writing and
editing), a proactive approach and thrives in a
fast-paced and fluid environment. NYC Media
contacts expected. Experience marketing clin-
ical services a plus. Bilingual/Bicultural pre-
JULY I AUGUST 2002
ferred. We offer a salary in the low to mid-40k's
and an excellent benefits package including 4
weeks vacation. Interested candidates should
send their resume with cover letter indicating
salary requirement and mediaiwriting sam-
ples to: Assistant Director, Human Resources
via fax at (212) 274-7243 or by email at
resume@ppnyc.org No phone calls, please.
Planned Parenthood of New York City, Inc is an
equal opportunity employer committed to a
diverse workplace; women and minorities are
encouraged to apply. For more information on
our programs and services, please visit our
website at www.ppnyc.org.
TEAM LEADER. HELP USA, a nationally recog-
nized leader in the provisions of transitional
housing, residential and social services seeks
a candidate to lead an interdisciplinary team
of social service professionals. Must be able to
coordinate the work of three counselors
encompassing 63 cases.ensuring support ser-
vices and weekly contacts provided to client
families. Ability to handle fast pace and a
multiple task environment is key. Supervisory,
case management and clinical experience
required. Will also manage the electronic case
record system for caseloads. Special require-
ments: MSW (preferred) or related necessary.
Computer literacy required. Salary: starts in
mid-to-upper $30s. Send resumes to: Tabitha
Gaffney, Dir. Of Social Services. Fax: 718-485-
5916.
POLICY ANALYSIS & ADVOCACY PROGRAM
COORDINATOR. The Puerto Rican Legal
Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) is seek-
ing a Coordinator for our Pol icy Analysis and
Advocacy Program to develop and oversee pro-
jects in a variety of policy areas for our PRLDEF
Institute for Puerto Rican Policy Division. These
include our NYC Bilingual Education Project,
the Latino Judiciary Project, the Latino Non-
profit Study, the Puerto Rico Racial Justice Pro-
ject, and the NYC Municipal Priorities Project,
among others. The Coordinator will be working
with the PRLDEF Senior Policy Executive as
part of the IPR Division's management team.
Requirements include a Master's in public pol-
icy or a related field; excellent analytical and
writing skills; experience in quantative
research using SPSS and large data bases;
ability to speak and write in English and Span-
ish; among others. Salary: $45-$55,000,
depending on experience, plus benefits. Dead-
line: May 10, 2002 Send cover letter, resume,
writing sample and three references to: Mil-
dred Jurado, Administrative Assistant, PRLDEF
Institute for Puerto Rican Policy, 99 Hudson
Street, 14th Floor New York, NY 10013, 212-
739-7516, Fax: 212-431-4276,.
SENIOR PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE
Supportive housing developer seeks senior
program development associate to plan new
initiatives, focusing on innovative models of
housing and services to meet the needs of
subcategories of homeless and others who are
at risk. Responsibilities include recruitment of
government partners and others who will
assist in program development through fund-
ing, information sharing and allocation of
staff time. Masters degree preferred with expe-
rience in planning and program development.
Cver letter with salary requirements and
resume to Director, Housing Development CGC,
14 East 28 Street, New York, New York 10016.
Facsimile 212-471-0820. E-mail
resumes@commonground.org.
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT PIT Leading com-
munity services organization seeks PT Entry
Level Assistant to support Development/Com-
munications Department w/ clerical duties.
WP, office filing, mailings, phones. Reqs excel-
lent organizational skills, ability to multi-task
& enthusiasm. 2 years work experience, BA &N
career interest in development. Pref. 3 days
week flexible. Send resume/cover letter: Devel-
opment Director, Lenox Hill Neighborhood
House, 331 East 70th Street, New York NY
10021. EOElNo calls please.
CLIENT SERVICES COORDINATOR Leading
advocacy and direct service organization has
a unique opportunity for an organized, client-
focused individual to be an integral part of its
inter- disciplinary team in our 24 hour multi-
service center for frail, elderly homeless indi-
viduals. Assist with initial client screenings
and referrals and oversee general day-to-day
facility operations, including supervision of
maintenance and monitoring staff. The Client
Services Coordinator will interact with clients
on a regular basis and manage multiple
tasks in a busy environment. Direct social
service experience required, bi-lingual a plus.
We offer excellent salary and benefits. Send
resume and cover letter to: Human Resources
Rep., The Partnership for the Homeless, 305
Seventh Ave. NY NY 10001. ANEOE
MlFIDN/sO
SOCIAL WDRKERISUBSTANCE ABUSE COUN-
SELOR Leading advocacy and direct service
organization serving homeless clients con-
fronting the challenges of substance abuse is
seeking a dedicated, team-oriented individ-
ual to work with homeless elderly clients in
our 24 hour multi-service center. Candidates
must have experience working in a harm
reduction environment and in providing both
individual and group counseling and estab-
lishing and running support groups. The
Counselor will also help address other critical
issues facing clients, including issues relat-
ing to mental health and housing. MSW and
experience working with substance abuse
population required. Bi-lingual preferred.
Excellent salary and benefits. Resume with
cover letter and salary requirements to:
Human Resources Rep. The Partnership for
the Homeless 305 Seventh Ave NY NY 10001
AAlEEO MIFIDN/SO
Care for the Homeless, a growing non-profit
agency is seeking an experienced BOOKKEEP-
ER/ACCOUNTANT for general accounting func-
tions. On-line PayChex experience necessary.
Responsible for payroll , employee benefits, AP
and journal entries. Knowledge of fund
accounting, spreadsheets, accounting soft-
ware (MIP) preferred. We offer excellent bene-
fits. Mail resumes to: Care for the Homeless,
12 West 21st Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY
10010. EOElMinorities encouraged to apply.
JOBADS
PIT ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT for environ-
mental education program. Must posses
strong computer skills: Microsoft word, email ,
internet. Assist in preparing fundraising mate-
rial, proposals, letter & budgets. Must be
detailed oriented, able to meet deadlines,
multi task and prioritize. 17.5 hours/week
$18/hour. Fax cover letter and resume to: 212-
788-7913.
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT Offices of Client Ser-
vices & Public Policy, Quality Assurance. HELP
USA, a leading not for profit housing and
social service provider, seeks and Executive
Assistant to provide administrative support &
assistance to the Senior Vice President of
Client Services & Public Policy, & the Director
of Quality Assurance. Candidate will coordi-
nate, process & complete written correspon-
dence, review & analyze monthly & quarterly
statistical reports, collect & prepare data &
informational reports, maintain files &
records, maintain calendar & schedule
appointments, provide support for special or
on-going projects as needed. Requirements:
BA degree required, as well as the ability to
handle a large volume of work, often simulta-
neously with shifting properties. Candidate
should have strong organizational , communi-
cational & interpersonal skills. Must have
Word, Outlook & Excel experience. Send
resumes to: Help USA, 116 East 27th Street,
8th Floor, New York, NY 10016, Attention
Human Resources. Fax: 212-679-9274. EOE. A
drug free workplace.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR INTERNATIONAL ADOP-
TION: Spence-Chapin one of the City's oldest
adoption agencies is seeking a senior execu-
tive to manage its growing program of inter-
national adoption. Good management and
organizational skills are a must, as is the abil-
ity to lead and direct staff in a growing pro-
gram that helps children come to the United
States from all over the world. The candidate
must have a strong commitment to high ethi-
cal standards and quality services, and be
knowledgeable about family and children's
issues. Will handle country specific issues,
and will initiate and oversee new adoption and
humanitarian aid programs. MSW degree is
preferred, but other relevant degrees such as
law or public administration, as well as candi-
dates with social services experience will be
considered. Ten or more years of management
experience required, and international travel of
3-4 times a year is necessary. Send resumes
with cover letter to Winsome McFarlane,
Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Chil-
dren, 6 East 94th Street, NY NY 10128, or e-
mail to wmcfarlane@spence-chapin.org, or
fax to (212) 369-8589
ORGANIZINGIMEOIA ASSOCIATE. National
grassroots organizing, coalition building,
media work, writing/editing for six-month
campaign (may become year or more) to coun-
teract national effort by the medical establ ish-
ment to take away rights of injured patients to
sue malpracticing doctors and hospitals. Prior
organizing experience required. $35,000 to
$42,000 (annually) depending on experience
Send, fax or email (preferred) letter, resume
and writing sample to: Joanne Doroshow Cen-
43
JOB ADS
ter for Justice & Democracy 80 Broad St.,
17th Floor New York, NY 10004 Phone:
2121267-2801 Fax: 212/764-4298 email :
joanne@centerjd.org http://centerjd.org
SENIOR MAJOR GIFTS OFFI CER. Develops and
ensures implementation of cultivation and
solicitation strategies for a significant number
of Major Gifts prospects nation-wide. This will
include achieving an establ ished number of
donor and/or affiliate contacts and successful
attainment of revenue goals. Bachelor's degree
with a minimum of 5-7 years experience in
developing measurably successful personal
cultivation and solicitation approaches with
individual prospects and the ability to men-
torlteach others. Reply to: CJ Fragola, Director
of Major Gifts, 125 Broad Street-18th
Floor, NY, NY 10004; fax: 212- 549-2467;
email: cjfragola@aclu.org.
RECREATI ONAL GROUP LEADER, lower Man-
hattan based domestic violence agency seeks
creative and caring individual with excellent
interpersonal skills to facilitate socialization
groups, organize recreational activities, pro-
vide childcare, participate in advocacy and
outreach efforts and provide administrative
duties. A.A. required. Experience with children,
flexibility and computer literacy a must. Bilin-
gual (Eng/Spanish) preferred. Please send
resume and cover letter to: Denise J. Garner,
CSW/Sanctuary For Families/P.O. Box
1406IWail Street Station/New York, NY 10268-
1406.
VOCATIONAL COUNSELOR, Seeking dynamic,
moti vated individual for supported SRO serv-
ing mentally ill, formerly homeless adults.
Excellent benefits, professional development,
flex work schedule. Prefer MSW or equivalent.
Bachelors degree with relevant experience con-
sidered. EOE. We value and seek a diverse
workforce. Resumes: Lori Stanlick, Casa
Mutua, 159 E. 102nd, NYC 10029.
CLINICAL CASE MANAGER, Supported SRO
seeks motivated individual with strong clinical
skills to provide services to MI, formerly home-
less adults. Excellent benefits, professional
development, flex work schedule. Prefer MSW;
equivalent degree with relevant experience
considered. EOE. LHNH values and seeks a
diverse workforce. Resumes: Lori Stanlick,
Casa Mutua, 159 E. 102nd, NYC 10029.
Public interest firm seeks certified SOCIAL
WORKER with child welfare experience to
assist clients in obtaining services needed for
Family Court matters; analyze agency case
records; assist attorneys in court; and super-
vise social work students. Qualifications: CSW
and minimum three years experience. Fluency
in Spani sh a plus. Salary commensurate with
experience. Send resumes to Lansner &
Kubitschek, 325 Broadway, New York, NY
10007 or fax 212-349-0694.
RESEARCH ANALYST, Intersystems. Motivated
individual needed to manage field research
studies in the behavioral sciences. You will
coordinate such current projects as the design
and testing of CD-ROM delivered interventions
for adolescents at risk for substance abuse
and HIV. Graduate degree required. Excellent
written and oral communication skills. Facility
with MS Office programs. Must be organized,
responsible, and able to thrive in entrepreneur-
ial, small business, and team work environ-
ment. Unlimited growth potential. Competitive
benefit package. For the past 12 years, Inter-
systems has specialized in health behavior
research. We have a record of winning NIH and
other grants and contracts, largely through the
Small Business Innovation Research program.
Position carries one-half time appointment
with Columbia University. We are located in
downtown Manhattan. Send email with
resume attached as Word document. Unusual
compensation package will appeal only to
motivated self-starter. With unlimited upside
potential, salary starts with a $30,000 base
and is enhanced with a 60% performance
bonus for an additional $18,000 contingent on
meeting quarterly performance objectives.
Send resume & cover letter to: Intersystems, 30
Wall Street New York, NY 10005
PARENT INVOLVEMENT COORDINATOR CHLOC,
a community-based agency, seeks a parent-
involvement coordinator for PS 89, an alterna-
tive public school co-founded by CHLOC, local
parents, and Community School District 19.
Plan and organize meetings and activities of
parent groups, family literacy, and parent vol-
unteering. Requirements: Bilingual
(EnglishlSpanish), experience with groups,
and in low-income communities. MSW pre-
ferred. Salary $28-35K, DOE. Send/fax resume,
cover letter to Emily Blank, CHLOC, 3214 Ful -
ton St, Bklyn, NY mOB/fax: (718) 647-2104.
EmilyBlank@Yahoo.com
HOUSING STABILITY CASE MANAGER Help
Yonkers' tenants with history of housing crises
to devise/implement plans to stabilize their
households & improve self-sufficiency; con-
duct workshops on housing and related issues.
Qualifications: Associate Degree or more; 1
year minimum comparable social work/case
management; Bilingual Spanish-English. Fax
resume to (914) 376- 1336.
Upper Ease Side non-profit seeks 26+ hour/wk
OFFICE ASSISTANT for multi-task postion. PC
skill s req., 60 WPM, database experience +.
Must be detail oriented.
Benefits EOE. Fax: 212-288-0722 or email :
tmuckle@lenoxhill .org.
DEPUTY DIRECTOR Convent Avenue Family
Living Center located at 456 West 129th Street,
New York, New York 10027. Seeks a Deputy
Director to assist with the overall development
and management of facility program opera-
tions. Responsibilities: Identify potential fund-
ing streams; serve as liaison to service
providers and community leaders; prepare
budgets, operational plans, and necessary
reports. Establish procedures for purchasing
supplies, equipment and furnishings. Qualifi -
cations: BA degree required. Master's degree in
related field and/or 5-10 years professional
experience. Demonstrated ability in staff and
program management. Demonstrated knowl-
edge of and experience with homeless, plan
management and program development.
Salary: $45,000-$50,000 per annum. Please
mail or fax resume with cover letter to: Floyd
Williams, Director Convent Avenue Family liv-
ing Center, 456 West 129th Street, New York,
NY 10027. Fax # 212-865-8471. No telephone
calls, please.
STAFF ASSISTANT. Provide paraprofessional
back-up for Projects' Development and Public
Education. Organization and a disciplined
approach to work and either course work in, or
experience with computer databases are
essential. The ability to write well , a college
degree, and some experience in communica-
tions, development or community relations are
desirable. Reply to Matthew Coles, ACLU Les-
bian & Gay Rights and AI DS Projects, 125
Broad Street-18th Floor, NY, NY 10004.
SENIOR GIFT PLANNING OFFICER. Responsi-
ble for actively promoting gift planning among
PROFESSIONALD IRECTORY
44
SPECIALIZING IN REAL ESTATE
J-51 Tax Abatement/Exemption 421A and 421B
Applications 501 (c) (3) Federal Tax Exemptions All forms
of government-assisted housing, including LISC/Enterprise,
Section 202, State Turnkey and NYC Partnership Homes
KOURAKOS & KOURAKOS
Attorneys at Law
Eastchester, N.Y.
Phone: (914)395-0871
ADVERTISE
IN THIS
SPACE
call (212) 479-3345
Consultant Services
Proposah/Gnn, Writing
HOO Granu/Govt. RFPs
Howing/Program Developmen,
Real Esb'" S.I..,tRenrais
Technical Asaiatance
Employment Programs
Capacity Building
MI(HA(L 6. BU((I
CONSULTANT
HOUSING, DEVELOPMENT & FUNDRAISING
Community Relations
212-765-7123

mgbuccl@aol.com
451 WEST 48th STREET, SUITE 2E
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10036-1298
CITY LIMITS
AClU members and donors, nationwide,
through an on- site, face-to-face cultivation
and solicitation program in cooperation with
50+ affiliates across the country. Four years
experience in fund raising or a related field;
familiarity with gift planning vehicles; ability
to travel regularly; excellent communication
skills. Reply to AClUF Development-Dept.
SPGO, 125 Broad Street-18th Floor, NY, NY
10004.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH COORDINATOR AlMA
is seeking an individual dedicated to commu-
nity work and individual empowerment
through education for its highly respected
national1V411 video, print, and web adult lit-
eracy project. The Coordinator is responsible
for building partnerships with community
organizations (e.g. libraries, health clinics,
community centers) that further our goals of
providing widespread media based literacy
education. For complete job description, con-
tact aquinn@edc.org. EDC is an Equal Oppor-
tunity/Affirmative Action Employer. EDC is
committed to diversity in the workplace.
City limits, New York's urban affairs news
magazine, is seeking a SENIOR EDITOR for its
web site, www.citylimits.org. The Senior Editor
will create, launch and staff a new web-based
news bulletin delivering essential information
and insider intelligence to professionals work-
ing in community development, social ser-
vices, legal advocacy, government, philan-
thropy and other fields committed to the
improvement of New York City and its neigh-
borhoods. Will also edit monthly columns on
trends and issues in public policy, social advo-
cacy and nonprofit management. At least
three years of experience editing and/or report-
ing for news magazines, newspapers and/or
news web sites required. Experience in busi-
ness journalism or non profits a plus. Commit-
ment to social justice and high standards of
journalism essential. This is a new position,
joining a tight five-person editorial staff. Must
be highly self-motivated but also able to work
collaboratively, well-organized, and highly pro-
ductive under demanding deadlines. Salary to
mid-40s. Please send resume and clips to:
Web Editor position City limits 120 Wall
Street 20th floor New York, NY 10005 or email:
editor@citylimits.org
SPECiAl ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR OF
DEVELOPMENT Writing, editing and proofread-
ing donor and other communications; utilizing
databases to monitor and create various
reports for gift giving; maintaining and track-
ing budgets and expense reports. An associ-
ates degree and a minimum of three years
related administrative experience orthe equiv-
alent in education and experience required.
Reply to: Donna McKay Director of Develop-
ment, AClUF, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, NY,
NY 10004.
PARAlEGAL, National legal Department Man-
aging document discovery; collecting and ana-
lyzing statistical data; drafting affidavits; cite
checking briefs and memoranda; preparing
background memoranda on selected policy
issues. Committment to assisting the AClU in
its mission to defend civil liberties; excellent
research and writing ability; strong computer
skills. Reply to: David Baluarte, AClU, 125
Broad Street, 18th Floor, NY, NY 10004.
PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATE, lesbian &
Gay Rights and AIDS Projects Coordinates Pro-
jects' publications, including assessing the
need for new or updated materials, coordinat-
ing the writing and production of those mate-
rials and developing plans to disseminate
them to key audiences. Demonstrated commit-
ment to and understanding of progressive
lGBT issues; strong writing skills; sold inter-
personal abilities; attention to detail. Reply to:
Eric Ferrero, lesbian & Gay Rights and AIDS
Projects, ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th floor,
NY, NY 10004.
CUCS is currently recruiting for the following
positions for its Transitional living Communi-
ty, a successful mental health and housing
placement program located in SoHo. CASE
MANAGER (Evening Team, 2:30pm-10:00pm)
Resp: Case management, individual and
group services, crisis intervention. Reqs: HS
Diploma or equivalent + one year direct expe-
rience in mental health or housing placement.
Bilingual SpanishlEnglish required. Good ver-
bal and written communication skills and
computer literacy pref. BA pref. Salary: $25K +
full benefits including $65/mo in transit
checks. Send cover letter and resume to Trace
Rosel. ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Provide
administrative support for program manage-
ment and direct service staff in busy psy-
chosocial rehab setting. Resp: Various duties
including, but not limited to, mail distribution,
reception, filing, supply purchase and invento-
ry, management of agency funds, word pro-
cessing, and reports and database manage-
ment. Reqs: HS Diploma or equivalent, 2 years
relevant experience, advanced computer skills,
good interpersonal and organizational skills,
effective written and verbal communication
skills. BA pref. Salary $29K + full benefits
including $65/mo in transit checks. Send
cover letter and resume to Nadine Sapia.
ASSISTANT PROGRAM DIRECTOR Resp: Assist
Director with program oversight, development
and management; supervision of clinical staff;
contract and regulator compliance; oversee
JOBADS
intake process. Reqs: MSW/CSW required; four
years applicable post masters direct service
experience with populations serviced by the
program including supervisory expo Bilingual
SpanishlEnglish pref. Salary: $51K + full ben-
efits including $65/month in transit checks.
Send cover letter and resume to: Julie lorenzo.
Send cover letter and resume (include posi-
tion) to CUCSlTlC, 350 lafayette St., New York,
NY, 10012. CUCS is committed to workforce
diversity.
The New York Civic Participation Project seeks
a PROJECT DIRECTOR. The Project has been
developed by a newly formed collaboration of
five union, advocacy and community organi-
zations in New York City, which serve low-
wage immigrant workers. The Project's goal
is to help build grassroots partnerships with
community organizations, immigrant advo-
cates, religious groups, worker centers, and
others, to advance worker justice, immigrant
rights, and community services. The Project
also seeks to support existing alliances and
campaigns across the City; it will not provide
direct services. The Project will start in large-
ly Latino communities. Responsibilities: In
association with the Project 's volunteer Advi-
sory Board, develops strategic plan for orga-
nization including Project administration,
grants development, policy campaigns,
strategic plan for target neighborhoods;
Hires, supervises, coordinates and evaluates
Project staff; Develops and coordinates staff
work plan including outreach, applied
research and public policy research, leader-
ship training etc. Represents the Project to
the public at large, other union partners, city-
wide immigrant and labor rights coalitions,
community organizations, media and foun-
dations. Qualifications: Prior leadership posi-
tion in organizing and policy campaigns;
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
MICHAEL DAVIDSON
Nonprofit Management Services
MANAGEMENT SUPPORT & ASSESSMENT
BOARD DEVELOPMENT & TRAINING
STRATEGIC PLANNING
INTERIM MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENTS
Hands-on solutions to help
nonprofit organizations achieve their vision
Tel: (212) 662-1758, 523 West 121 St., NY, NY 10027,
Fax: (212) 662-5861, midavidson@aol.com
Committed to the development of affordable housing
GEORGE C. DELLAPA, ATTORNEY AT LAW
15 Maiden Lane, Suite 1800
New York, NY 10038
212-732-2700 FAX: 212-732-2773
Low-income housing tax credit syndication.
Public and private
financing. HDFCs and not-for-profit corporations. Condos and co-ops. j-51
Tax abatement/exemptions. Lendingfor historic properties.
JULY/AUGUST 2002
Hand Mailing Services
Henry Street Settlement Mailing services is a revenue
generating, work-readiness program offering battered women and
shelter base families on the job and life skills training.
We offer hand inserting, live stamp affIXing, bulk mail, folding,
collating, labeling, water sealing and more.
For more Information please call Bob Modica,
212-505-7307
OFFICE SPACE PROBLEMS?
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(845) 5661267
Expert Real Estate Services - once
available only to major corporations and
institutions -
Now offered to NYC's Non-Profits .. .
at no out-or-pocket cost,
or at specially reduced rates.
Visit our web site: www.npspace.com
Call for a free, no-obligation consultation.
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45
ILLUSTRATED MEMOS
om CE OFIHE CIlYVISIONARY:
.
FRESH KILLS RECLAMATION
The largest piece of
PLAN NO. 52614-C
-L.----\..... ___ _
open land in New York City
could become its greatest
work of art.
-z..- -L-.. -- --1... .
- L ...
Why not commission
Christo to bring a little
culture (and a lot of tourists)
to Staten Island?
GOT AN, IMPRACTICAL SOLUTION
TO AN INTRACTABLE PROBLEM?
SEND IN 't(@(W{R1
OFFICE OF THE CITY VISIONARY
CITY LlMITS MAGAZlNE
12.0 WALL ST., 20
TH
FLOOR. NY NY 10005
ootcv@ citylimits.
46
CITY LIMITS
Experience in team building and developing a
new project; Excellent writing and presenta-
tion skills; Seasoned organizational develop-
ment and planning skills; Hands-on experi-
ence with labor and immigrant rights issues
and organizations; Fluency in English and
Spanish is required. Compensation & Bene-
fits Compensation dependent on years of
experience. Excellent benefits package. Appli-
cation Procedure: E-mail a cover letter,
resume and three references to Yvie Renda at
yrenda@seiu32bj .org. Please submit as soon
as possible and no later than May 29, 2002.
The Project is an equal opportunity, affirma-
tive action employer. Women, people of color,
the disabled, lesbians and gay men, and peo-
ple of transgendered experience are encour-
aged to apply.
The New York Civic Participation Project
seeks three FIELD ORGANIZERS. The Project
has been developed by a newly formed col-
laboration of five union, advocacy and com-
munity organizations in New York City, which
serve low-wage immigrant workers. The Pro-
ject's goal is to help build grassroots part-
nerships with community organizations,
immigrant advocates, religious groups,
worker centers, and others to advance work-
er justice, immigrant rights, and community
services. The Project also seeks to support
existing alliances and campaigns across the
Reach
City; it will not provide direct services. The
Project will start in largely Latino communi -
ties. Qualifications: Experience in member-
ship organizing in community or labor con-
texts; Coalition building and outreach skills
among community institutions, grassroots
organizations, unions, churches, service
agencies, etc.; Team building and leadership
development skills; Experience implementing
grassroots action and policy campaigns.
Ability to communicate in Spanish and Eng-
lish is required. Compensation dependent on
years of experience. Excellent benefits pack-
age. E-mail a cover letter, resume and three
references to Yvie Renda at
yrenda@seiu32bj.org by June 15, 2002. The
Project is an equal opportunity, affirmative
action employer. Women, people of color, the
disabled, lesbians and gay men, and people
of transgendered experience are encouraged
to apply.
Bronx CDC specializing in affordable housing,
employment services, youth programs, real
estate development and asset building pro-
grams seeks 6 VISTA members. VISTA com-
pensation includes a living stipend and edu-
cation award to be used for education loans
or post secondary education. Other benefits
included. Please call Brenda D. Jones, VISTA
Coordinator, at 718-294-4319, ext. 12 for
more information about the VISTA program
and job descriptions for the FINANCIAL lIT-
ERAcy AND ASSET-BUILDING SPECIALISTS;
WORK INTERNSHIP and COMMUNITY DEVEL-
OPMENT COORDlNATDRS.
CASE MANAGER for a 72 unit Housing Support-
ive Housing Facility for Persons living with
HIVIAIDS. This position requires a CSW with
experience in the population noted along with
a track record in working with homeless and
substance abusing individuals. You must have
excellent writing skills and demonstrate com-
puter literacy. The responsibilities of the posi-
tion comprise the full range of case manage-
ment, assessments, referrals and crisis inter-
vention. Forward cover letter, starting salary
required, along with your resume to: Bob
Raphael , Executive Director, Clover Hall, 333
Kosciusko Street, Brooklyn NY 11221. You may
also fax to: 718-602-9107. EOE.
The Urban Justice Center is seeking two
STAFF ATTORNEYS and a DIRECTOR OF COM-
MUNICATIONS in its new Community Develop-
ment Project (CDP). The CDP provides direct
representation and technical assistance to
grassroots community groups in the areas of
non-profit law, low-income housing develop-
ment, job creation and economic develop-
ment, environmental law and worker rights.
Applicants sho uld be members of the New
York State Baror should be sitting for the July
JOB ADS
2002 exam. The Director of Communications
will be responsible for policy research, media
contacts and community outreach and edu-
cation. Graduate degree in a relevant field is
preferred but not required. Salary range, all
positions: $37,500 - $55,000 DOE. Appli-
cants of color and individuals with foreign
language abilities, particularly Spanish,
Asian and South Asian languages, are strong-
ly encouraged to apply. Interested applicants
should send their resume and cover letter, by
mail , postmarked by May 22, 2002, to Ray
Brescia, clo Urban Justice Center, 666
Broadway, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10012.
Please submit inquiries, but not
applications, bye-mail only to
rbrescia@urbanjustice.org.
ASSOCIATE LEGAL DIRECTOR Developing and
implementing legal strategies for the ACLU;
Administering and supervising the ACLU's
legal program and staff; Enhancing collabora-
tion among the programmatic units in the
Legal Department; Coordinating with ACLU
affiliates and other public interest organiza-
tions; Engaging in public advocacy on behalf
of the ACLU. The position requires a litigator
with substantial experience in complex consti-
tutionallitigation, strong analytic skills, and a
broad knowledge of constitutional law. Reply
to: Steven R. Shapiro, ACLU Legal Director, 125
Broad Street-18th Floor, NY, NY 10004.
20,000 readers in the nonprofit sector.
Advertise In CITY LIMITS. Call Anita Gutierrez at (212) 479-3345
JULY/AUGUST 2002
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 15 years.
We Offer:
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FIRE LIABILITY BONDS
DIRECTOR'S & OFFICERS' LlABILTY
GROUP LifE & HEALTH
"Tailored Payment Plans"
ASHKAR CORPORATION
146 West 29th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10001
(21 2) 279-8300 FAX 7 14-2 16 1 Ask for: Bola Ramanathan
47
BROO KLY N H0 USIN G SUM MIT
Over the past decade, Brooklyn's housing costs have risen at a fast pace.
Despite a national residential housing boom, the borough has produced only a
small fraction of the moderate and middle-income housing that it so urgently
needs. Many residents, especially younger families starting out, have no option
except to seek housing outisde of Brooklyn or to live in crowded and unsuitable
accommodations.
As part of Borough President, Marty Markowitz's affordable housing
agenda, the Borough President, in conjunction with the Pratt Institute Center for
Community and Environmental Development and the Local Initiatives Support
Corporation, has organized this Brooklyn Housing Summit to bring attention to
the need to produce more housing, to coordinate renovation and revitalization
efforts, and to address the challenges and opportunities available.
Morning General Session Welcome
Marty Markowitz, Borough President
Keynote Address
Kathryn S. Wylde, New York City Partnership and Chamber of Commerce
What is the Brooklyn market: How many rent? How many own? What are typical neighborhood
rents? Vacancies? What has happened since the 1990 Census?
Michael H. Schill, Professor of Law and Urban Planning, New York University
What are the realities of development and finance?
Joe Riley, J.P. Morgan/Chase, Denise Notice-Scott, Managing Director, Local Initiatives Support
Corp. (LlSC), Joshua Muss, President, Muss Development Company
What are the social issues with housing? What is the gap between the rent and the ability to
pay, particularly for the independent elderly, mentally challenged, homeless, victims of domestic
violence, those in need of assisted living, people living with AIDS?
Carol Corden, Executive Director, New Destiny Housing Corporation
What are the tools at the disposal of New York City?
Jerilyn Perine, Commissioner, New York City Department of Housing Preservation &
Development
Afternoon Session Concurrent sessions will occur throughout the afternoon on a range of issues.
\:~fpieced ~yorkCity
Attendance is free. However, seating is limited. Early registration is strongly encouraged.
TO RS\IP, call (718) 802 4042 and state your name and daytime telephone number.