City Limits Magazine, October 1994 Issue

--_ . --_----------_. _. _-- -. .
--------
-----==::. -. . _ti
-------. "
$2. 50
. . . . . _-. . . . . . . . . -
:
' , ' I
--October 1994 NewYork' s UrbanAffairs NewsMagazine
TIMES IcaUA~E TW. 9~STEP. _{I!UBLIC _!IOU"'!. RE-gRGAN~~
-WH~N ENV~R~NMENTAL MOVEMENTS COLLIDE . .....
I
. ,
- - - - - IJ IOND - G 0 0 l l 1 IUV& - .:
__ - - .. TreatI: ii .......... dl eut=8ke el tizeD s- -
. . --- . _ _ . -- . . -~ - . -. _ -. , . ' I C" -' _
-
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~-
~-. .-. --~. . . . . . . . . _____ ----.
- - - - - - - - - - - - : : : : : : ...
" - - _ _ _ _ _
-""'. ''':100. .
-
-
.... -. .
-
- - - _-
, _
--. .
. -
-_
. . . . . . ~. -~. ----
~
-
-_
. _
-
--
-"--. _. , . ---
-
- - - ......- -
. . . : - - .
. -
--.
-.
Citv Limits
Volume XIX Number 8
City Limits is published ten times per year.
monthly except bi-monthly issues in June/
July and August/September. by the City Limits
Community Information Service. Inc . a non-
profit organization devoted to disseminating
information concerning neighborhood
revitalization.
Editor: Andrew White
Senior Editor: Jill Kirschenbaum
Associate Editor: Kim Nauer
Contributing Editors: Peter Marcuse.
James Bradley
Production: Chip Cliffe
Advertising Representative: Faith Wiggins
Office Assistant: Seymour Green
Proofreader: Sandy Socolar
Photographers: Steven Fish. Andrew
Lichtenstein. Gregory P. Mango
Sponsors
Association for Neighborhood and
Housing Development. Inc.
Pratt Institute Center for Community and
Environmental Development
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board
Board of Directors*
Eddie Bautista. New York Lawyers for the
Public Interest
Beverly Cheuvront. City Harvest
Errol Louis. Central Brooklyn Partnership
Mary Martinez. Montefiore Hospital
Rebecca Reich. Low Income Housing Fund
Andrew Reicher. UHAB
Tom Robbins. Journalist
Jay Small. ANHD
Walter Stafford. New York University
Doug Turetsky. former City Limits Editor
Pete Williams. National Urban League
Affiliations for identification only.
Subscription rates are: for individuals and
community groups. $20/0ne Year. $30/Two
Years; for businesses. foundations. banks.
government agencies and libraries. $35/0ne
Year. $50/Two Years. Low income. unemployed.
$10/0ne Year.
City Limits welcomes comments and article
contributions. Please include a stamped. self-
addressed envelope for return manuscripts.
Material in City Limits does not necessarily
reflect the opinion of the sponsoring organiza-
tions. Send correspondence to: City Limits.
40 Prince St.. New York. NY 10012. Postmaster:
Send address changes to City Limits. 40 Prince
St.. NYC 10012.
Second class postage paid
New York. NY 10001
City Limits (ISSN 0199-0330)
(212) 925-9820
FAX (212) 966-3407
Copyright 1994. All Rights Reserved. No
portion or portions of this journal may be
reprinted without the express permission of
the publishers.
City Limits is indexed in the Alternative Press
Index and the Avery Index to Architectural
Periodicals and is available on microfilm from
University Microfilms International. Ann Arbor.
MI 48106.
2/0CTOBER 1994/CITY UMITS
Giuliani's Plan
A
few hundred people congregated in a Bedford-Stuyvesant auditorium
one rainy day last month to hear Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and
Housing Commissioner Deborah Wright announce their new strategy
for turning over to the private sector hundreds of occupied, city-
owned in rem apartment buildings. The plan includes three components,
most notably the Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program (NEP), which aims
to sell buildings to small property owners in Harlem, Central Brooklyn and
the South Bronx. The other two pieces include an improved tenant owner-
ship program and community-based nonprofit management.
The NEP program will be managed by the New York City Partnership;
potential owners will have to spend three years learning the ropes and
proving their competence before actually gaining title to the properties. They
will also be subject to the oversight of a neighborhood "task force" of business
people and community leaders. The buildings' residents are mostly low
income families who cannot afford to pay the kind of rent that would make
private ownership profitable, so the city will pair the occupied buildings
with empty ones that can be rehabilitated and rented at higher rates; the latter
will subsidize the former.
It is good news that the administration is setting out a coordinated strategy
for investing in the rehabilitation of this vital housing stock. But so far, the
plan remains vague. There are no regulations yet, no list of specific buildings
and it is not clear who the "entrepreneurs" will be. There has been talk of
forming joint ventures between large established management firms and
small, relatively inexperienced local entrepreneurs.
Also unanswered are a few fundamental questions. If in rem buildings are
sold, we will lose a critical resource for housing homeless families at a time
when the shelters are so full that hundreds of families continue to spend their
nights trying to sleep on the floors of welfare offices.
And what role will tenants have in deciding whether their building goes
into the NEP program or one of the other alternatives-that is, tenant or
nonprofit ownership? After all, they are the people with the most at stake.
Will they have a role on the neighborhood task forces that act as NEP
watchdogs? Commissioner Wright answered this question by saying "tenant
organizations" will have a role. But this is not necessarily the same as
including the tenants of the buildings themselves. This should be clarified.
In Bedford-Stuyvesant, when one tenant asked this question, Mayor
Giuliani's response sounded good. "The desire here is to work with you to
establish the very best plan for your building .... If you are the best people to
run your building, you will be it." But tenants have heard these promises
before. Let's hope this administration lives up to them.
* * *
A couple of updates:
The dream prevails: The East New York Urban Youth Corps reports that
the open air drug market highlighted in "Drugs and the Dream" (Feature, May
1993) has been shut down. Now, on Friday evenings, parents sit on the
sidewalks of Williams Avenue while their children play. The block was
closed to car traffic for much of the summer, creating a vibrant playground-
and a much happier community.
Also, a state Supreme Court judge has enjoined the city from awarding a
contract to Personal Touch, a for-profit home care service for the elded y. The
contract was supposed to replace the work of four nonprofit agencies at a
cheaper cost. But as Irwin Nesoff wrote in his Cityview column ("The
Profitization Vanguard," August/September 1994), Personal Touch didn't
have to comply with the same city operating guidelines as the nonprofit
agencies. The judge has at least tentatively agreed, saying that the contracting
process was not fair and equal, as the City Charter requires. 0
Cover design by Lynn Baldinger. Illustration by Justin Hawkins.
~
SPECIAL REPORT ON HARM REDUCTION
Quality of Mercy 18
There's a new approach to dealing with drug addicts: treat them with
respect. by Jill Kirschenbaum
The Frankfurt Resolution 20
European cities are trading in police cars for mohile medical units.
by Stephen ArrendeU
The Legalization Debate 22
Foes claim legalizing drugs will dramatically increase their use. Support-
ers say statistics show otherwise. by Stephen ArrendeU
Race, Drugs, Imprisonment 24
As the saying goes, whites do the lines, blacks and Latinos do the time.
FEATURE
Bitter Justice 14
A fractious debate over a proposed paper recycling plant in the South
Bronx threatens New York's environmental justice movement.
by James Bradky
L.A. REPORT
New Age Dawning 6
Forty poor families took ownership of their decaying apartment building
from an absentee landlord, and the city of Los Angeles kicked in the
money to do it. Sound familiar? by Lucille Renwick
PIPELINES
Spiked 10
The strange story of Farkas v. Farkas, a custody decision of critical
importance for battered women. by Kim Nauer
Restoring Trust 12
Public housing tenant associations are waking up to their potential-and
this time they have the money to make a difference. by Kate Lebow
COMMENTARY
Planwatch 26
Times Square Fleece Train by Robert Fitch
Cityview 27
Housing and Jobs Together by Nancy Biberman
Review 29
Build Them Up by Bob Blauner
12
14
18
CITY UMITSIOCfOBER 1994/3
BRIEFS
Crime Bill Woes
Little funding for youth
Now that Congress has finally
ended debate over the crime bill
and President Clinton has signed
the $30.2 billion measure into law,
it's time to take a look at some of
that "pork" Republicansopposed
with such passion.
When senators like New York's
own Alfonse O'Amato mocked
the bill's soft money, they were,
of course, talk-
ing about the
measure's
crime preven- -_
tion programs.
As it turns out,
their jeering worked. When the
eleventh-hour negotiations con-
cluded, two-thirds of the $3 bil-
lion in cuts had come from the
Shelter/Union Squabble
Labor activlets continue to
charge the citY. largest n0n-
profit shelter operator, Homes
for the HomeIeII. with union
busting and unfair treetment.
more than two .,..... after the
first complaints were aired.
In late summer, the non-
profit withdrew recognition of
the union representing em-
ployees at a Queena shelter.
Shortly after, a
union orga-
nizer filed as-
sault charges
agaln8t two
administrators
and a aec:urIty
guard at the
facility, claiming they had
beaten him.
MI haven't experienced this
kind ofviciousne. from any of
our employers. "says organizer
Ben Weinthal of DistrIct Coun-
cil 1707 of the AmerIcan fed-
eration of State, County and
Municipal Employees. DC 1707
repre.ents about 35 ca.e-
worker. and social .ervice
professionals at the Saratoga
Interfaith Family Inn in Jamaica,
the Isrgest of Homes for the
Homeless' four shelters, hous-
Ing more than 220 families.
The Saratoga workers voted
to join DC 1707 in November
1992. After two years of wran-
gling with management the
caseworkers unanimoualy
ratified a contract in late July.
Or at least they thought they
had ratified a contract.
Weinthal says the company
immediately disavowed the
contract and then pulled out a
decertification petition signed
months earlier by a number of
workers oppoeed to the union.
When Welnthal subsequently
attempted to visit shop ateward
Freddie Toomer on August 10, he
says a security guard knocked him
down. He was charged by police
with treapa88lng.
Homes for the Homeless Vice
President Aurora Zepeda says
that the nonprofit withdrew re-
cognition of the
union citing
Mbad-faith neg0-
tiations- and
calls DC 1707's
union-busting
charge.
Mabsolutely
false." She says Homes for the
Homele. has never harassed
union members and that it never
agraecl to the contract workers
ratified. Zepeda adds that it was
Welnthal who started the fight at
the Jamaica shelter by shoving
two administrators after he was
denied access to the building.
All of the organization's work-
ers are unionized, she continues,
and the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRBt has never found
the company guilty of any wrong-
doing.
In the last two years, at least
nine charges filed by the union
have been withdrawn, settled out
of court or found to be without
merit. However, the NLRB did
issue an unfair-practices com-
plaint-roughlythe equivalent of
an indlctment-egainst Homesfor
the Homeless in September 1993.
That complaint was settled out of
court after the company agreed
to stop harassing workers and
pay a suspended union member
prevention side, reducing spend-
ing on such programs to $6.9 bil-
lion over the next six years. In
contrast, law enforcement was
granted $13.5 billion and prisons
$9.8 billion.
Youth programs were hardest
hit. Funds for youth employment,
anti-gang activities, after school
programs, police partnerships
and-you guessed it-midnight
basketball were all eliminated.
Nearly $1.3 billion in funds for
eight youth programs (and one
for senior citizens) was reduced
her loat wegee, Welnthel says.
Earlier that year, the board
iHued another complaint
against Homes for the Home-
less for Illegal surveillance of
workers and failure to recog-
nize 8 union during an orgen-
izlng drive by the Commun-
Ication Workers of America at a
Bronx shelter. This too was
settled out of court according
to Ed Sabol, a CWA organizer.
~ i 8 i. the first union to
come in that ian't completely
controlled by rnanagement and
they're completely freaked
out, - says Lauria Scocozza, a
former recreation specialist and
member of the union's negoti-
ating committee. She says it's
Mcompletely untrue- that
Homes for the Homeless hadn't
accaptedthe contract. Scocozza
says she quit a week before the
vote after being told she would
have to either take a nonunion
aupervisory position-where
she could be fired atanytirne-
or be cut to part-time status.
Five of the committee's seven
original members have been
fired, laid off or forced to quit.
according to Weinthal.
DC 1707 has since filed five
new charges with the NLRB,
alleging that management's
recent activities. including
those having to do with the
contract negotiations and
Scocozza'squitting,constituted
unfair labor practices.
'"It's the moat devastating
environment you can work In.''
insists Toomer. the union rep-
resentative at Saratoga. MEver
since I've been part of the union,
I've been harasaed.lwouldhave
quit. but I don't want to betray
my coworkers."
....... "
toa single$380 million state block
grant.
So what remained? Billion
dollar grants for new courts
dedicated to drug cases and for
combating violence against
women survived. There was also
significant new support for
community education programs,
drug treatment, urban parks and
recreation, and" gang resistance"
training.
Observers point out, however,
that the law is poorly defined.
"Now there will be a long period
in which [the agencies] translate
this vague language into opera-
tions," says Lynn Curtis, presi-
dent of the Milton Eisenhower
Foundation, a fund supporting
innovative crime prevention
programs. At this point, he adds,
it's not even clear which govern-
ment agency will oversee the
prevention programs.
Ultimately, funding for all of
the crime bill programs will prob-
ably be much reduced from what
the law provides. Congress
okayed the bill on condition that
the cost of its programs be offset
by cuts in federal jobs over the
next six years. Critics think this is
unrealistic; some predict that the
law, which touts 100,000 new
"cops on the beat." will end up
funding as few as 20,000 because
of built-in budget constraints.
Prevention programs could face
worse cuts, Curtis says. "You can
be sure prevention will be getting
less."
Still, there's no denying that
there are big bucks in the offing
for savvy non profits. Staffers at
the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now
(ACORN), for example, are already
looking beyond prevention pro-
grams. opting instead to target
the fat $8.8 billion allocation for
beat cops. About $1.3 billion of
that is slated for community
policing.
Steuart Pittman, ACORN's
national campaign director, says
he is doing his best to convince
Justice Oepartment officials that
at least half of this money should
be set aside for community
groups. "People agree that
community policing doesn't
work without community orga-
nizing," he says. "And if you want
community organizations to
uphold their end of the deal,
you've got to give them money."
...........
Evictions Loom
Squatters occupy Lise offices
The Local Initiatives Support
Corporation (LlSC) is staring down
a group of Lower East Side squat-
ters who are demanding the with-
drawal offunding from a housing
effort that will force their eviction.
Inc., a nonprofit group formerly
headed by City Council member
Antonio Pagan. Their plan calls
for a gut rehabilitation and the
creation of 41 apartments, 12 of
them for homeless families. The
remaining apartments will be for
families with annual incomes of
less than $25,000 for a family of
four, and will be distributed by
lottery.
BRIEFS
MThis project is going to pro-
ceed," LlSC New York director
Marc Jahr told representatives
from the five squats at a meeting
i n early September. The discus-
sion was arranged after about 25
protesters occupied LlSC's Third
Avenue offices on August23, dur-
ing a visit by LlSC national direc-
tor Paul Grogan.
In June, the City Council voted
to designate the project as part of
an Urban Development Action
Area, allowing the city to sidestep
the standard land-use review
process on the grounds that the
bui ldings are "vacant" and
"blighted."
~ ..... ...., but ... ~ I I t r ...... conIinueto blossom
Jahr says he will take moral
responsibility for the evictions
Mbecause this will create low in-
come housing."
Squatters have been living in
the buildings, located on East 13th
Street between Avenues A and B,
since 1984. Between 70 and 100
people live there now. Dubbing it
Mself-help housing," they've re-
paired the roofs and brickwork,
put in new floors and installed
new wiring and plumbing.
MWe've been in open and notor-
ious possession for 10 years,"
says David Boyle, one of the orig-
i nal homesteaders at 539 East 13th
Street. "The city can't make plans
without us."
But the city is turning the
buildings over to Lower East Side
Coalition Housing Development
~ the ThIs _, In .......... '. HeI'.ICItdIeII ............... , Is t.nded
.., RoIIbIe Crosbr .... Join lJIJ. TIle prden took the place of YKMt lot
.... .... In ..-rt, to &I1IIIl from the CIIIans CommItI8e for New YOIt ~ .
The $3.9 million cost of the
project will be provided by a $2.5
million low-interest loan from the
Department of Housing Preser-
vation and Development, in
addition to federal tax credits
channeled through the New York
Equity Fund-a joint venture of
LlSC and the Enterprise Foun-
dation that has financed the
development of more than 6,000
low cost apartments since 1989.
A similar plan for the site
stalled in 1990 after LlSC with-
I;Jli.lIJ;lSli Anti-Drug Action
For anyone struggling to wage a successful war against drug
dealers encamped in their building, the Citizens Housing and
Planning Council has just published a concise and very valuable
pamphlet, How to Get Drug Enterprises Out of Housing, by
Timothy Vance. It is a step-by-step manual that anyone manag-
ing a building can use; Vance makes clear that it doesn't take
cash to get rid of dealers so much as tenacity and brains.
Copies are $4. Call CHPC at (212) 391-9031.
drew funding rather than back
evictions. Not this time. "We' re
not going to involve ourselves in
the politics of a project if the
mission is low income housing, "
Enterprise Foundation Director
Bill Frey said in late July. Squat-
ters accuse LlSC and Enterprise
of being" manipulated" by Pagan,
who described the squatters as
Mcriminalsand drug dealers" on a
recent radio talk show.
Families in the NYC Shelter System
and Where They Stay
At the September meeting,
the squatters discussed the situa-
tion with Jahr. Ml'm a Vietnam
veteran. I' ve lived in that house
long enough for my child to have
two birthdays there. What's your
position as a human being?"
squatter Butch Johnson de-
manded. Jahr was unmoved, re-
sponding that buildings available
for low income housing are scarce
and have to be allocated "on the
basis of need, not just on some-
body moving in and squatting."
He added that he was "troubled
by displacement," but the discus-
sion ended there.
:I
"i
If
'&
J
E
:::I
Z
o
IJ88 8189 8191
Source: NYC Department of Homeless Services.
8192 8193
........ ." ..... In
... bPe ." ......... ,8194:
o OIlIer
T .. F ......
3,923
o
944
312
441
5,620
"I was surprised to see him
hold the line so hard," squatter
Peter Spagnuolo said after the
meeting.
There are at least 10 other well-
established squats in the neigh-
borhood. With the number of
vacant buildings in the area
dwindling, the city is likely to go
after these as well. Local
non profits that have so far been
hesitant to back evictions may
end up changing their minds if
they want new buildings to
develop. Steven Wishnia
CITY UMITS/OcrOBER 1994/15
New Age Dawning
Following New York's lead, the city of Los Angeles helps low
income tenants become co-op owners.
T
wo years ago, the three-story
apartment building at 738 South
Union Street in Los Angeles'
Westlake section was rapidly
decaying, another victim of poor
management and neglect destined to
join the ranks of this city's dilapidated
housing.
The residents' problems were no
different than those of many tenants
living in slum dwellings throughout
L.A. They slept in cramped rooms amid
roaches and rats. They breathed the
stench of urine and feces that wafted
from vacant apartments teeming with
trash.
Community and Liberty Hill foun-
dations to hire a building manager and
to complete an architect's study to
enlarge the apartments.
In order to ensure that the project
moves smoothly to completion, local
affordable housing advocates helped the
tenants put together a board of directors
that included a number of community
representatives. Over the next two years,
the building will be converted into a
truly tenant-controlled cooperative by
phasing out most of the community
representatives and giving tenants
majority control, says Neal Richman, a
UCLA planning professor active in
housing rehabilitation projects around
the state. He joined the tenant effort in
the summer of 1993 as a consultant and
helped them organize Communi dad
Cambria. Allan Heskin, head of the
California Mutual Housing Association,
a two-year-old group that has been
involved in resident take-
By Lucille Renwick
time, but they are unified and they have
a clear sense of where they want to go,"
says Elena Popp, a Legal Aid attorney
who has helped the tenants hone their
leadership skills.
The move to buy the building, which
lies in the heart ofWestlake-one of the
most crowded neighborhoods west of
New York City-began merely as an
effort to force the landlord, Morris
Davidson, to clean it up. The once grand
91-year old structure, with 66 units in a
three-story walk-up, began to seriously
falter soon after Davidson bought it in
1991. There were broken windows,
rotted plumbing, and the place was
infested with roaches. Violations
reported by city building and safety
inspectors prompted few repairs. By
October 1992, tenants were fed up with
the ramshackle conditions. A few of
them left, and the manager filled the
empty apartments with prostitutes, drug
The 40 tenant families, most of them
working poor Latinos who speak little
English, were frustrated. But they didn't
move. Instead, they mobilized. And with
moxie, guidance from a tenants' rights
organization, public interest lawyers and
government money, they helped form a
tenant-run nonprofit organization that
bought the building.
After a long uphill battle, starting
first with a rent strike that lasted 10
months, the organization, Communidad
Cambria, finally bought the building in
late May, making it the first such pur-
chase in L.A. of a privately-owned slum
dwelling, according to Barbara Zeidman,
assistant general manager of the Los
Angeles City Housing Department.
Zeidman said city officials are keeping
close tabs on the project to determine
whether they will invest more money in
similar ventures.
overs of single-family "Somos los
homes, helped find fund-
ing and cajole the owner
into selling the building.
dealers and gang
members, Marcial
recalls. Squatters took
over other vacant units
and the building be-
came a haunt for
troublemakers.
President of the Board
"Somos los duenos! [We're the land-
lords.] Los Duenos," exclaimed a jubi-
lant Teresa Marcial after signing escrow
papers at a tenant meeting late last
spring. Marcial, a six-year resident of
the building, is president of the board of
directors of Communidad Cambria.
The tenants could not afford to con-
tribute any of their own money to buy
the building. All of the $600,000 they
needed was provided by the city's
Housing Department through federal
Community Development Block Grant
money. An additional $1.4 million was
provided in federal funds for rehabili-
tation. And $45,000 in loans and
donations came from the California
8/0CTOBER 1994/CITY UMRS
duefiosl [We're
Heskin patterned the
purchase after New York
City's 20-year-old home-
steading and Tenant
Interim Lease programs,
which help low income
tenants buy their build-
ings and take responsi-
bility for keeping them
up to code after the city
pays for rehabilitation
work. "L.A. has been
the
playing catch up to New York City in
affordable housing issues," he says.
Community development corporations
have developed several affordable hous-
ing projects, he continues. "But no one
has taken over an occupied building to
rehab it."
Astute Advocates
The experience still amazes the
tenant leaders, four single mothers who
were nervous and insecure at initial
meetings but who have grown into astute
advocates, aware of their rights and the
law.
"The tenants have been living under
really bad conditions for a very long
Several tenants
turned to the Legal Aid
Foundation of Los An-
geles, whose attorneys
encouraged them to
start a rent strike and
put their money into
an escrow account.
Their goal was to force
Davidson to make
repairs. But they didn't count on his
response: he fired the building manager
and stopped paying the bills-electric-
ity, garbage collection, a $3,000 debt for
gas-and the mortgage.
"We just had to start taking over
because there was no one to do it for us,"
says Josephina Guzman, 40, a native of
El Salvador. She and other tenants
collected money to pay utility bills and
begin a massive cleanup of the worm-
infested garbage cluttering the hallways.
With no results from the rent strike,
tenants turned to Inquilinos Unidos
(Tenants United), a 14-year-old tenants'
rights organization based in Pico-Union,
a neighboring community. Enrique
Velazquez, director of the organization,
suggested that the tenants buy the build-
ing after he saw a newspaper story about
an offer by another slumlord to sell his
dilapidated building to tenants for $1.
Those tenants declined. These tenants
didn't.
Buy the Building
"When Enrique said for us to buy the
building, we laughed," Marcial recalls.
"We didn't think it was possible to go to
that extreme." But once the tenants
agreed to make the purchase, the pro-
cess gathered speed.
Marcial, Guzman, Teresa Lopez and
Maria Contreras were chosen as tenant
leaders. By early 1993, Legal Aid attor-
neys were teaching the tenants about
their rights. That spring, tenants who
had been skeptical of buying the build-
ing started attending meetings and of-
fering solutions. By fall of 1993, after
Heskin and Richman became involved,
the tenants had won city support, formed
the cooperative and applied for loans.
The biggest hurdle was getting the land-
lord to sell to them.
Davidson had pleaded no contest to
40 counts of code violations and lost the
building to foreclosure. The new
owner-a woman living in Minneapo-
lis-soon put the building up for sale,
asking for $1.2 million. Within a week,
the price dropped to $700,000 and
finally to $600,000. By maneuvering to
give the owner the impression that
Communidad Cambria was an organi-
zation run by UCLA professors, Heskin
persuaded her to sell them the building.
"She had to believe in us. We knew she
definitely didn't believe in the tenants."
Graffiti-scarred Hallways
The purchase won't instantly solve
problems that have festered for years.
The stucco edifice is still plagued by
drug-dealing cholos, problem squatters,
graffiti-scarred hallways and unsafe
living conditions that will take time to
eliminate.
Communi dad Cambria is embarking
on a renovation project to enlarge the
tiny studio and one-bedroom apart-
ments. Over the next year, they plan to
install new kitchens, bathrooms, floor
tiles and staircases. A seven-member
board of three tenants and four commu-
nity representatives meets every Tues-
day, sets guidelines, enforces the rules
for the building and handles the
administrative work. No decision is final
until it's approved by all of the tenants,
who vote as a collective.
For Guzman this means that she and
her two children will no longer have to
walk to a hall bathroom from their
single-room apartment and will have a
real kitchen, instead of a refrigerator
propped against the wall and a hot plate
crowded with pots.
"Sometimes you live in a condition
for so long and you start to think that's
the only way you were meant to live,"
says Guzman. "But I had to believe
something better would happen because
my kids were getting too old for us to
live on top of each other like that. "
"This is more than just a building
we' re working under," says Neal
Richman. "We're in the incipience of a
resident movement." 0
Lucille Renwick is a city reporter for the
Los Angeles Times.
Advertise in
Ci ty Limits!
Call Faith Wiggins
at (917) 253-3887.
!lBankers1i:ust Company
Community Development Group
A resource for the non-profit
development community

Gary Hattem, Managing Director
Amy Brusiloff, Vice President
280 Park Avenue, 19West
New York, New York 10017
Tel: 212 .. 454 .. 3677 Fax: 212 .. 454 .. 2380
CRY UMITSIOCTOBER 1994/7
ership
You Can
Count
I
n the South Bronx, 265 units of affordable housing are financed ...
On Staten Island, housing and child care are provided at a transitional
facility for homeless families ... In Brooklyn, a young, moderate-income
couple is approved for a Neighborhood Homebuyers MortgageS
M
on their first home ...
In Harlem, the oldest minority-owned flower shop has an opportunity to do business
with CHEMICAL BANK. .. And throughout the state of New York,
small business and economic development lending generates jobs
and revenue for our neighborhoods.
This is the everyday work of Chemical Banks
Community Devdopment Group.
Our partnership with the community includes increasing
home ownership opportunities and expanding the availability
of affordable housing, providing the credit small businesses
need to grow and creating bank contracting opportunities
for minority and women-owned businesses.
In addition, we make contributions to
commUnity-based organizations which provide vital

human services, educational and cultural programs, and housing and
economic development opportunities to New York's many diverse
communities. CHEMICAL BANK - helping individuals flourish, businesses
grow and neighborhoods revitalize. For more information please contact us at:
CHEMICAL BANK, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT GROUP, 270 Park Avenue,
44th floor, New York, NY 10017.
Ex eel more from us.

Community Development Group
c '993 Chemical Banking Corporation
8jOcrOBER 1994jCITY UMITS
Free Water
Surve
The New York. City Department of Environmental Protection
encourages all residential building owners and home owners in
New York City to take advantage of a free Water Survey Program.
You can reduce your water/sewer bill by saving water lost to
plumbing leaks.
N. no charge, we will perform a water leak survey of your home
or building and install free water-saving devices when
applicable. In less than half an hour, we will survey your
plumbing for leaks and install:
, FREE high efficiency shower heads
, FREE low-flow faucet aerators
, FREE water-saving toilet devices
Call '8005457740 today

or
(718) 937-6600
to Schedule Free Water Leak Survey only
Water Survey Teams have picture I . D . ~ and wear uniforms
Participation in this program is voluntary DE:P
New York City
Department of
Environmental Protection
IlJdolph W Giuliani. Mayor
Marilyn Geber. Commissioner
For all other water, sewer, air and noise issues call 71 8-DEP HELP
em UMITS/OcrOBER 1994/9
Spiked!
Why a crucial court case supporting the custody rights
of battered women never made the law books
F
or Jeanne Farkas, leaving her
husband and getting a restrain-
ing order against him were not
enough to stop the violence she
endured during their marriage. Howard
Farkas still had the right to visit their
son, Jonathan-and at their Long Island
meeting spots, Howard would routinely
slap and curse his estranged wife before
returning the boy to her care.
In a particularly brutal attack later
noted in State Supreme Court, Howard
pulled up in his car with Jonathan doz-
ing in the front seat. He got out and
ordered Jeanne to get her son. When she
leaned in, he slammed the car door on
her back. The impact broke the window
and nearly sent Jeanne to the hospital.
After years of what is described in
court records as a relentlessly violent
marriage and separation, Jeanne Farkas
filed for divorce and won sole custody
ofJonathan. In 1992, Judge Elliott Wilk
cited the car door incident as an egre-
gious example of the way Howard
Farkas had taken advantage of his visi-
tation rights to terrorize his wife. The
judge cut off almost all contact between
father and son, allowing only pre-
screened letters and videotapes. With
the court's permission, Jeanne and
Jonathan moved out of state so Howard
could never find them again. "To per-
mit Mr. Farkas to learn the whereabouts
[of his former wife and son] would be a
betrayal to them both," Wilk wrote.
Wilk's decision in Farkas v. Farkas
broke new ground in case law for bat-
tered women in New York by ruling that
courts must consider violence in the
marriage as a factor when deciding
custody arrangements. Unlike 38 other
states which have explicit laws requir-
ing judges to hear evidence on marital
violence in custody cases, New York' s
judiciary can-and frequently does-
ignore such history.
Routinely Ignored
Yet in a strange twist, the Farkas
decision is every bit as hard to find as
Jeanne is. It has never been published in
the law books, nor cited as precedent in
another judge' s reported decision.
Indeed, no one knows of any New York
judge who has followed Wilk's lead.
And to this day, advocates say, an on-
10jOCTOBER 1994jCITY UMITS
going pattern of violence against a
spouse can be routinely ignored by the
courts.
While Farkas v. Farkas has become
something of a cult case within New
York City's tight battered women's ad-
vocacy network-it's been talked up in
newsletters and journals, dis-
cussed at educational seminars,
taught in law clinics and, just last
May, featured in a New York City
Bar Association panel presen-
tation-the case itself was never
published in the state's official
book of case law.
The result? Oblivion, as far as
the courts are concerned. While
the case's unpublished status
poses no problems for Jeanne
Farkas (for her, the case is closed),
it does leave other battered women
without some potentially power-
ful ammunition in their courtroom
struggles to secure safe custody
Tc
..-, _.-.. __ ._-,
..
.. 0
arrangements. Any lawyer unconnected
with the informal Farkas network would
never know the case exists.
Battered women' s advocates had
hoped the Farkas decision would help
knock family law onto a new trajectory,
enabling women with extensive proof
of abuse at the hands of their husbands
to gain sole custody of their children.
Studies show that a large percentage of
men who beat their wives abuse their
children as well: according to a study by
By Kim Nauer
Yale New Haven Hospital, the number
is as high as 50 percent. Yet the New
York legislature has refused to require
judges to even consider marital vio-
lence when making custody decisions.
That's why advocates considered Wilk's
ruling important.
Eerie ftidence: ...... -4mm pictunIs of
young JonatIuIn Fartlas and his violent father
were exlllbited In ItIte court.
"This is the first case-the first
case-based in New York to say
that violence must be a factor when
considering custody decisions. It
brought New York State into the
twentieth century," says Kristian
Miccio, a clinical law professor
and director of the Family Vio-
lence Litigation Clinic at Union
University's Albany Law School.
Miccio was the founding director
of the Center for Battered Women's
Legal Services at New York City' s
Sanctuary for Families. She was
also instrumental in getting top-notch
legal help for Jeanne Farkas, and is dis-
turbed by the lack of attention the case
received in New York's mainstream legal
community.
Unpublished Decisions
Lawyers and judges regularly use
rulings in prior cases to bolster their
own arguments and conclusions. For
exactly this purpose, law libraries are
stacked with volume upon volume of
..
legal decisions stretching back over the
years.
In theory, a lawyer has the right to
use an unpublished case in his or her
court arguments. But in reality ,lawyers
can't find unpublished decisions
through any of the standard research
methods. They are not indexed or
reprinted in the New York Supplement,
a privately published record of New
York judicial decisions, nor are they
available through on-line legal research
services, such as Lexis and Westlaw.
Even if a lawyer finds such a case
through word of mouth, problems
remain: judges and their clerks can't
easily double check the accuracy of a
lawyer's citations, so they may be skep-
tical about their validity.
Now, two years later, with no measur-
able progress in the courts, advocates
are wondering why the Farkas case never
became part of the state's accepted body
of case law. "We want to hold some-
body accountable," Miccio says. "We
want to know who makes these edito-
rial decisions."
Court Reporter
Conventional wisdom in the legal
community holds that the judges them-
selves decide what is published. But at
the trial court level, such as the State
Supreme Court, that is not the case.
As it turns out, one man in Albany,
the state Court Reporter, decides the
future of New York's lower court case
law. That man is a 20-yearveteran court
staffer named Frederick Muller. By.
mandate, his office, the State Law
Reporting Bureau, must publish all
decisions from the state's two highest
courts, the Appellate Division of the
Supreme Court and the Court of
Appeals. Any remaining staff time can
be used to edit and print lower court
decisions. Muller himself determines
which cases from the trial level are
worthy of publication although, he adds,
judges do lobby the bureau and can
exercise the rarely used option of
appealing his decisions to a judicial
panel.
"I read opinions in the evenings and
on weekends. I personally read every
opinion unless I'm on vacation, which
is rare," Muller says. His goal is to find
decisions which set out and defend a
new way of thinking about existing law.
In the Farkas case, Judge Wilk
believed his decision broke new ground
on how physical and psychological
abuse should be weighed at custody
hearings, and he sent the case to Muller's
office for consideration. As he told a
meeting of the New York City Bar
Association last May, the bureau was
the first of a half-dozen publications
that, to his surprise, didn't find the
decision important. "My guess, just from
the way this case was treated, is that
there is a greater reluctance to deal with
this as seriously as other issues."
Liberal Visitation
It is an opinion echoed by many
lawyers who work in this small but
growing area of the law. Attorney Julie
Domonkos, director of Victim Services'
Westside Office Legal Project, trains
private lawyers who volunteer to rep-
resent battered women. In her experi-
ence, she says, New York courts bend
over backwards to give liberal visitation
rights to abusive husbands, despite
statistical evidence that men who beat
their wives are also likely to beat their
children. Courts are loathe to cut off, or
even severely restrict contact, she says.
Paradoxically, those very same courts
are often quick to find a mother guilty of
neglect if she fails to get her children out
of an abusive home, Domonkos adds.
Mothers can be accused by child wel-
fare officials of "failure to protect" their
children, even in cases where only the
mother is being abused. Given this
attitude, she says, it's not surprising
that fathers like Howard Farkas con-
tinue to use court-ordered visits to
intimidate and, all too often, beat the
mother. "Today, we're still dealing with
exactly the same issues as we saw in the
Farkas case," she says.
So why was Farkas spiked? Muller
says he does not remember the specifics
of his decision, but adds it's unlikely
the case received short shrift because of
the subject matter. If anything, cases
that explore emerging areas of the law
are more likely to get published, he
observes. These include domestic cases,
those related to AIDS and HIV,
homelessness and housing rights.
"In family law I probably accept a
higher percentage of cases than in any
other area," he notes. "We receive
relatively few opinions that involve
battered women's issues, and I would
say the majority of cases that we do
receive, I accept for publication."
Following his conversation with City
Limits, Muller now says he's intrigued
and would eagerly reconsider his deci-
sion on the Farkas case. He says anyone
who is interested can resubmit the case
for consideration.
Legislative Answer
Meanwhile, a legislative solution may
be at hand. For the last six years, Brook-
lynAssemblymember Helene Weinstein
has submitted legislation requiring
courts to consider a batterer's violent
history in custody decisions. The
provision, which enjoys strong support
in the Assembly, was not included in
the sweeping court reforms that passed
through the state legislature last June,
following the murder of Nicole Brown
Simpson. However, Weinstein reports
her bill may fare better this session
since the Republican leadership of the
Senate has for the first time agreed to
address the proposal.
Advocates agree that new legisla-
tion, rather than evolution of old law,
would be best for all concerned. In the
end, it is society's judgment that really
matters, Wilk observes. "[Farkas] only
becomes a serious decision if we
acknowledge that this is a serious
problem." 0
IRWIN NESOFF ASSOCIATES
management consulting for non-profits
Providing a full-range of management support services
for non-profit organizations
o Strategic and management development plans
o Board and staff development and training
o Program design and implementation
o Proposal and report writing
o Fund development plans
o Program evaluation
20 St. Johns Place
Brooklyn, New York 11217
(718) 636-6087
CITY UMITS/QCfOBER 1994/11
Restoring Trust
Tenant organizing in public housing is about to get
a desperately needed boost.
W
hen Sandy Campbell took
over as tenant association
president of Edgemere
Houses in Far Rockaway,
Queens, the New York City Housing
Authority unceremoniously presented
her with keys to her new office. Here,
she envisioned, would be her commu-
nications headquarters, the nerve center
for a new tenant campaign to improve
maintenance and safety at this ragged
1,400-unit complex.
But when she opened the office door
last spring, she found nothing. Not even
a phone. Just four peeling walls, a floor
and "lots of waterbugs." As she later
found out, she was lucky to get that
much. Public housing tenant leaders
have traditionally received little in the
way of financial or organizational sup-
port from the government.
decide. They can also apply for addi-
tional grants under HUD's year-old
Tenant Opportunity Program. The
housing authority will receive $10 per
unit for related costs, such as election
supervisors and third party mediators.
"This amounts to some substantial
money," says Rowland Laedlein, direc-
tor of community affairs for the New
York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).
"It's certainly more than [tenants] have
traditionally been used to having."
Company Unionism
Change can't come fast enough for
many tenant activists in New York City's
vast public housing system. Consider-
ing the sheer number of people who live
there-more than 600,000 residents
reside in NYCHA's 330 developments-
By Kate Lebow
Officials will only negotiate with tenant
associations whose bylaws they
approve, and they retain the right to
intervene in tenant association elections,
even to overturn the elected board in
certain circumstances.
"[NYCHA] claims they want this to
be a democratic process," says Janet
Cole, president of the tenant associa-
tion at Queensbridge Houses in Long
Island City. "But this is the housing
authority's process."
Witness Sandy Campbell's problems
at Edgemere.
Like other public housing tenants,
Edgemere's residents have a host of
legitimate complaints. They can point
to holes in their ceilings, mice in the
hallways and appliances that go hay-
wire. The grounds have been ill-kept
and all of the buildings
lack basic protections like
intercoms and entry
locks. Believing that the
previous president had
done little to improve the
situation, Campbell says
she and a slate of five
others, all trained by the
Association of Commu-
nity Organizations for
Reform Now (ACORN),
ran for office last Febru-
ary in the hopes of mak-
ing some real changes.
The flyers and out-
~ reach they did for the elec-
(/)
~ tion worked, Campbell
'"' says. Her slate won and
g dozens of tenants began
New regulations from
the federal Department of
Housing and Urban
Development (RUD) are
expected to change that.
The rules, which took
effect in late September,
give public housing
tenants unprecedented
authority in the operation
of their own associations.
Pending expected Con-
gressional approval of
$35 million in new fund-
ing, tenant groups will
also have the money to
operate their offices and
pay for services they feel
will do the most good in
their community.
It's revolutionary, says
Maxine Green, chair of the
National Tenants Or-
'INs "ofIIce" In tile blllllllllt of ~ ....... was tile IIIOIt IIIPIIOft teunt ........
SIadJ c..npbeI CGIIId expect "-tile IIauIInc ~ -.
showing up for meetings.
The officers quickly had
a list of grievances to deal
with. But when they went
ganization and a chief architect of the
rules. For the first time, she says, "our
social and economic development pro-
grams will be operated and controlled
by tenant councils."
Each tenant association will receive
$15 per unit in their complex-a huge
increase over the 40 cents per unit they
now receive. An association represent-
ing 1,500 apartments will now have
more than $22,000 a year to spend on
training leaders, paying office staff,
hiring security or whatever else they
observers say the tenant movement has
never lived up to its potential.
A big reason has been the housing
authority'S grouchy response to aggres-
sive community action, tenants charge.
Activists complain that NYCHA's much
touted tenant participation program is
nothing more than "company union-
ism." They say that NYCHA, which
requires associations to submit their
bylaws, budgets and grant applications
for approval, uses its oversight to
undermine independent organizing.
to work, soliciting the building man-
ager with requests for improvements,
all they got was hostility. Despite a
protest sit-in at the district manager's
office and complaints to the highest
levels of NYCHA, the manager refused
to work with the new leaders, Campbell
says.
When basic improvements are not
done, tenants have little reason to believe
in their leadership, Campbell adds.
"We're here, but NYCHA doesn't allow
us to do anything. Now we've got
residents who are disenchanted, who
are screaming at us. They're saying, 'We
don't need a tenant association. It's not
doing anything. '"
Share of Trouble
Campbell is convinced NYCHA does
not want to work with outspoken
organizations. "They want you to be a
bridge club," she says.
ACORN-trained activists have had
their share of trouble with the housing
authority. Residents of Hammel
Houses, also in the Rockaways, say that
a NYCHA district official told them they
could not hold an ACORN meeting in
Hammel ' s community center. The
residents were organizing to challenge
the incumbent Hammel president-who
also happened to be secretary, treasurer,
paid head of the tenant patrol and chair
of the advisory committee for the
development's community center.
Laedlein explains that any organiza-
tion other than the elected tenant asso-
ciation would have to apply specially
for use of public areas. "If an outside
organization wanted to come in ... and
meet residents in opposition to an asso-
ciation, we might not allow that."
Meanwhile, Hammel residents com-
plain that every time they tried to get
information about the current associa-
tion' s bylaws, registration procedures,
or membership from NYCHA, commu-
nity affairs officers directed them to
deal with the president-despite the
fact that she refused to cooperate.
Finally, the night before nominations
were due for a new tenant board, ACORN
member Maxine Davis and her col-
leagues acquired a copy of the bylaws.
She and three other ACORN members
are now running for office unopposed;
the incumbent president has decided
not to run. Elections were to have been
held on August 18, but NYCHA post-
poned them until authority officials
could secure a copy of the registered
voter list, something Davis had been
seeking for months. "People become
disheartened," she says. "You stick your
neck out and you wonder what for."
Power of Stasis
ACORN is not the only outside orga-
nization that has criticized the way
NYCHA handles tenant activists.
Michael Goldblum, a volunteer fellow
of the Municipal Arts Society-a pro-
fessional organization composed
primarily of architects, preservationists
and urban planners-describes how a
group of teenagers he works with in
Claremont Village in the Bronx came up
with the idea of cleaning up the play-
ground in front of their building.
"The manager said, 'One drop of paint
and I give you all $100 fines, '" Goldblum
reports. "Especially at the local mana-
gerial level, NYCHA people can be
cautious and difficult. Any attempt to
make changes usually boils down to
efforts of the do-gooders versus the
powers of stasis. "
NYCHA's attitude toward outside
organizations is important because many
activists have found that, despite
NYCHA's policy of recognizing only
one legitimate tenant body, it is often
more effective to work outside the formal
tenant association structure. Goldblum
helped an informal committee of tenants
in Claremont Village secure $70,000
from NYCHA to redesign and rebuild
the grounds of Morris Houses. And hun-
dreds of public housing residents have
organized with church groups like
Brooklyn Ecumenical Cooperatives and
South Bronx Churches' Tenant Union
for Public HOllsing to demand repairs
and improved security.
Winners and Losers
NYCHA's Laedlein insists his office
would never use its power to weaken or
dismantle legitimate tenant leadership.
"They can agree with us or disagree
with us," he says. "Our position is that
it shouldn't make any difference to us as
a department who wins and who loses."
Still, he concedes, the perception is
understandable. His office is just now
completing a two-year survey that
. reveals a tenant council system in dis-
repair. Many associations are only
sporadically active. Others haven't been
following the rules. Most haven't had
elections in the last three years and in a
few cases, more than a dozen years had
gone by. "Very, very few-probably only
a handful-were within the terms of
their bylaws, " he says.
Today NYCHA is trying to clean up
after a decade of neglect. As a result, the
last year and a half has been marked by
disputes with some tenant leaders who
had come to believe that their proce-
dures were legitimate. "Many have re-
solved the issues," Laedlein concludes.
"For the few that did not, we have
[gathered] the residents and re-held
elections. "
But some association presidents feel
NYCHA is going overboard. Janet Cole
of Queens bridge Houses is one of several
leaders who have been given NYCHA's
ultimatum. Officials told Cole they
would hold new elections unless the
tenant association changed a bylaw
reqUlrmg residents to attend nine
meetings before being eligible to run for
office.
Laedlein charges that the rule is un-
democratic and that Cole opposes
broader tenant involvement. But Cole
feels her nine-meeting rule is reason-
able and could be defended in court.
Cole was one of a group of tenants who
successfully challenged NYCHA in
court over interference in elections in
1992-and she says she will do it again.
Cole' s attorney, Judith Goldiner of
the Legal Aid Society, says the housing
authority has a real problem yielding
control. "My view is that NYCHA would
like to control the associations as closely
as possible. And if people get elected
who they can't control, they want to get
rid of them."
Detailed Regulations
Presumably, BUD's new regulations
will end the disputes over bylaws and
election procedures. The rules are very
detailed and provide a way for associa-
tions to appeal grievances to BUD. If
NYCHA follows the guidelines, tenants
will no longer be able to argue that the
agency is making up its own rules.
There is no getting around the fact
that HUD's new regulations will require
large doses of cooperation between
tenants and the authority. Over the next
year, NYCHA and tenants will have to
hammer out dozens of new procedures
together. And this begs a question: will
a plan that depends so heavily on coop-
erative planning be successful in New
York City?
For his part, NYCHA's Laedlein
promises that resident groups will
control the new budget process. "We'll
have to develop some general guide-
lines, but I think the intent is for us to
accept any reasonable recommendations
for how the associations want to spend
their money."
As for Sandy Campbell, she says she'll
stick with her strategy of screaming and
yelling. In early September, NYCHA
called to tell her that Edgemere's prob-
lematic building manager had been
transferred. Days after the new manager
took over, staff began attending to the
many festering maintenance problems.
Workers have even begun installing new
intercom security systems, Campbell
says. "It was shocking, " she says glee-
fully. "They told me: ' Well, Ms.
Campbell, you really put the Rockaways
on the map.'" 0
Kate Lebow is a Brooklyn-based
freelance writer.
CITY UMITS/OCTOBER 1994/13
shouting match spilled out onto the streets of
Mott Haven a few weeks ago. It didn't have
anything to do with love, or much to do with
traditional Bronx politics. It was a fight about
the future of the neighborhood, environmen-
talism, jobs, and who should decide how empty land
is put to use.
The odd thing is that the participants were leaders of well-
respected South Bronx community groups-and they were at
each other's throats, just a
punch or two away from a
full-fledged brawl.
battered ecology. Sustainability is their mantra, a vision of
clean methods of production for all sorts of products, conver-
sion of the waste stream into a raw resource for manufactur-
ers, improved means of transportation, new development
carefully planned to minimize pollution. The paper com-
pany project appeared to be a perfect symbol of this kind of
future. Even Vice President Al Gore has given his blessing to
the plan.
Over the past few years, several efforts had been under-
taken to bring such an op-
In one corner was the
Banana Kelly Community
Improvement Association,
a multimillion-dollar non-
profit that manages and
develops affordable hous-
ing. (Its name comes from
the banana-shaped curve of
Kelly Street, where the
group was born 17 years
ago.) In the other, the much
younger South Bronx Clean
Air Coalition, a scrappy
alliance of neighborhood
activists who originally
joined forces in an attempt
ustice
eration to the South Bronx.
One involved a Florida-
based company called Pon-
derosa Fibres, which until
recently sought to build a
newsprint de-inking mill in
the Harlem River Yard. At
the same time, Banana
Kelly and the Natural Re-
sources Defense Council
(NRDC), one of the
country's most prominent
environmental organiza-
tions, pursued similar
BY JAM E S
to shut down a medical waste incinerator in
Mott Haven in 1991.
BRADLEY
plans of their own. In Feb-
ruary, 1993, NRDC even
paid for several borough
and city officials, along
with Yolanda Rivera of Banana Kelly and
Banana Kelly wants to build a paper recy-
cling plant in Mott Haven and is lining up
developers and financial backers for the project.
The Clean Air Coalition disagrees with the
proposed site for the plant-the abandoned
Harlem River rail yard-and wants more
details; its members say their demands for
wider community discussions and public
participation have been ignored. So when the
state Urban Development Corporation, one of
the project's sponsors, scheduled a one-hour
.A 50utll Bro ...
Nina Laboy of the South Bronx Clean Air
Coalition, to travel to Sweden and meet
with officials from MoDo, a paper recycling
firm.
paper mill plan
So when Ponderosa dropped its plan
last April, Banana Kelly stepped in and on
May 6th the new deal was announced.
According to the preliminary plans, which
still must undergo a number of approval
and permitting procedures, the $200 mil-
lion plant will be owned by Banana Kelly,
splinters tlte
enllironmental
mo"emen'
public hearing in the mitldle of a work day last month-and
didn't tell anyone in the neighborhood except Banana Kelly
and the community board-serious trouble was just around
the bend.
ew people associated with the Mott Haven plan
I!Ul!I!IIIIII'If-U'U anything about this project to turn sour. Press
,age has been glowing; environmentalists around the
" ~ t l ' ' ' are already citing Banana Kelly's proposed "Bronx
Community Paper Company" as a model scheme,. the long-
awaited nexus of progressive neighborhood revitalization
and the cutting edge of environmentalism. Urban planners
have spent years searching for new ways to promote eco-
nomic growth and jobs without further damaging the city's
S.D. Warren, a Boston-based subsidiary of
Scott Paper Company, and MoDo. It will be a state-of-the-art
de-inking facility designed to turn discarded office paper into
high-grade pulp for use by a paper mill in Maine.
The project's promoters also promised 275 new full-time
jobs for local residents, as well as a day care center and quality
job training services. The South Bronx would gain a major
new business; its residents, new employment opportunities.
And NRDC could guarantee an ecologically-sound industrial
facility that would produce no affronts to the air, land or
water. Supporters thought the community-based credibility
of the project would be further boosted by the fact that NRDC
had in its employ Vernice Miller, a longtime Harlem environ-
mental leader and executive director of West Harlem Envi-
ronmental Action (WHE ACT). Miller has been widely recog-
nized as a pioneer in the field of environmental justice,
organizing against the siting of polluting industries in com-
munities of color.
Why, then, a few months after the proposal's unveiling,
has the air in Mott Haven become so toxic with vitriol and
rhetoric that environmental activists all over the city are
choking on it?
NRDC and Banana Kelly's repeated claims
community support, the paper recycling
a long way from winning the unqualified backing
Bronx residents. Indeed, a number of local people
these organizations with having arrogantly presumed
that neighborhood residents would support the plan simply
because a local nonprofit was involved.
"They're coming in saying, 'Take my word for it. It's a good
[project],'" says Carlos Padilla, a member of the South Bronx
Clean Air Coalition. "It might very well be. But we just want
certainly emerged from the grassroots of Kelly Street, that
was many years ago. Like many activist organizations of the
1970s that have grown into technically proficient housing
and service providers, Banana Kelly has its critics. "Banana
Kelly has a reputation in the community as an agency. That's
what they are. They're not a movement," protests Vicente
"Panama" Alba of the National Congress for Puerto Rican
Rights.
And the "extremists" Hershkowitz condemns include a
number of people with a solid reputation for demanding-
and getting-real grassroots participation in community plan-
ning. The successes of Nos Quedamos are well known. And
it was the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition that dogged
officials and journalists for years, directing them to stay on
the tail of Remtech, the private company that built Bronx
Lebanon Hospital's notorious medical waste incinerator.
Ultimately, these activists helped uncover the inept financial
planning of that project, leading to its untimely bankruptcy
and a congressional investigation.
Now, the same organizations have focused their
Sout h
Clean
the facts. They said they
had no need to answer
them, that they know it's
safe and that should be
sufficient." Several mem-
bers of the Clean Air Coa-
lition say they are await-
ing proof of the plant's
environmental sound-
ness, and that they are
unwilling to take the de-
velopers' word-no mat-
ter whose it is-that all
'A suit ' hem
Coalition
NOR'l'llBRONx
CLZAN AIR
Ri IS g tiled as a chaJ/
ad' Ver Yard Ventures plan which. enge the approval ofalla"'e
lS8Sterous e1fect on the econom a
CCO
d
rdlng to plaintiffs wil1 ha In
Y an erJvironm ' ve
COALITION,
eln PlU!ss_
rUHiHONI'l'v
WILL SI enl of Ihe Bronx.
WILL GNIFrCANlLY INCREASE
ON 'l'/IE HOvE:
is well.
"This project is be-
ing rammed down our
throats," agrees Yolan-
da Garcia, leader of
REDUCE NEW JOBS FROM 23 TRAFFIC ON AREA ROAD
APPROX1MATEL Y 800 S
"Stnce freight llIil .
SOO! as trudcs engines 8CIlcrale about 0
lJU&sj IR Ptoponion 10 .he l<>adslb ne"cnlb as mUCh eliesel
D8 OIl' on a valuable op cany. Ihc oily is
;:",,,,,",,on. and ,'.... air IlOrtlWly 10 n:du", lruclc
polJUtion .t generates,"
KloaoflhcSierra ClUb.
Nos Quedamos (We ""'1'1
Stay),agroupofSouth
Bronx residents who ").,
Greenpeac;e
turned the traditional
city planning process While IIouw. ""'Qed
"w.,. !he.....
on its head last year reeyel ... Jobs v c.
by demanding-and
winning-the right v .... bIe -roe =',l.nI.
J ..... Ada"'.. 4"
to redesign a city H H., raJ
arlem River Yard Ventures H ,U R_ius DeI_ Councit West q
blueprint for their State offie aJ . . ar,em En
neigh b or ho 0 d, I s SlII1IlarlYdefeoddleirdeeisioo to award 99vlronmental Action t:
Melrose Commons. a -Year lease bed;:
as 00 a short-teno study not a
Down at West 20th Street in Manhattan, Allen . :l
Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with NRDC, dismisses the attention on the Harlem River
critics. He says they represent a disgruntled minority and Yard, a wide swath of land at the southern tip of the Bronx. !
should not be taken too seriously. "Grassroots organizations In 1989, the state awarded a 99-year lease to Harlem River
that have been fighting to take over their community have Yard Ventures, a group of politically-connected developers
finally gotten the opportunity to control $200 million of (See City Limits, "Stopping Freight Dead in its Tracks,"
investments," Hershkowitz explains. "But the whole opera- January 1994). The developers plan to build an industrial
tion is being fought by a small group of extremists." park on the site, despite the $175 million the state and city
..
But who, exactly, defines grassroots? While Banana Kelly have spent to build a link to the yard so that it can become the ;::l
centerpiece of a revitalized, modern freight rail system.
Environmentalists have long argued that New York lacks
adequate freight rail facilities, contributing to a tremendous
increase in truck traffic and air pollution.
What's more, critics say, the Harlem River Yard develop-
ment deal was shrouded in secrecy, with no community
involvement beyond a few discussions with political leaders.
Unfortunately for Banana Kelly and NRDC, the proposed
paper plant is part of the Harlem River Yard industrial park
development-along with a waste transfer station and a
scaled-down version of the freight rail facility. On August 17,
the Clean Air Coalition and several other groups, along with
67 individuals, filed a lawsuit against the State of New York,
challenging the legality of its lease with Harlem River Yard
Ventures. "We happen to be caught in the middle ofit, " says
Vernice Miller ofWHE ACT and NRDC.
ina Laboy of the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition
that the site of the paper plant is not the group's
"When you have a de-inking facility that will
sulfur emissions, next to a power plant, next to a
station, [there is] the communal effect of all
those facilities," she says. "There needs to be public input."
According to Hershkowitz, community concerns are un-
founded. He says the facility will be the cleanest, most
efficient, most advanced de-inking plant in the world. The
mill will take in 600 tons of office paper a day, turn it into 470
project. "From the moment it was conceived we used a very
extensive process to make sure that the community was in
favor of[the de-inking mill] and that they knew what we were
doing," she says. Rivera cites two organizations she has
worked closely with on the project: ACT Mott Haven, the
local chapter of Agenda for Children Tomorrow, an organiza-
tion that seeks to improve coordination of services for youth;
and the South Bronx Community Collaborative, a Hunts
Point group that organizes meetings bringing together local
nonprofit social service providers.
Confirming these accounts proves difficult, however. John
Sanchez, cochair of ACT Mott Haven, says the group will not
endorse the Banana Kelly plan until final environmental
impact reports are proffered. Moreover, he says ACT has
never considered the question of rail freight in the Harlem
River Yard. "Banana Kelly, which has participated in our
group, came up with one idea, and that's what we con-
sidered," he says. "Tomorrow, if someone comes up with
another idea, we would probably want to consider that [too]."
As for the South Bronx Community Collaborative, Hunts
Point nonprofit leaders say it is essentially a creature of
Banana Kelly itself, designed to coordinate an application for
social service funding from the state. Yolanda Rivera serves
as its chair.
And contrary to Hershkowitz's assertions, Community
Board 1 and other elected officials have not endorsed the
paper plant. Robert Crespo, CB l's district manager, admits to
knowing little about it. "We have met very briefly with
Banana Kelly, just to hear the concept," he says. "We have not
tons of pulp and transport it to Maine by rail.
The pulping process will use water, not chlo-
rine, says Hershkowitz. The plant's source of
power will be a natural gas fired steam boiler,
which will emit less than 25 tons of nitrogen
oxides per year, within the limit mandated by
the state.
me Harlem
done any research, we have not taken any
action concerning this particular project." A
spokesperson for Fernando Ferrer says the
borough president is reserving judgment on
the plan until backers present an environ-
mental impact statement. Bronx State Sena-
tor Joseph Galiber, whose district borders
the area, has been publicly critical of both
the Harlem River Yard deal and NRDC's
advocacy of the de-inking mill, which he
believes is bad for the area. State Senator
Pedro Espada offers tentative support for the
project, adding that he is awaiting an envi-
ronmental analysis.
.iverYarel
delle'opmeat
But the mill will also produce consider-
able amounts of sludge, more than 125 tons of
it every day. How that sludge will be dis-
posed of is another community worry.
Hershkowitz says it will go into a number of
alternative uses such as fertilizer, composting
and capping to seal up landfills; he guaran-
tees none will be landfilled or incinerated.
dea'.as
shrouded in
s e c r e c ~ IIIIifh
no community
Meanwhile, NRDC and Banana Kelly con-
tinue to maintain that the de-inking plant is
a separate issue from the Harlem River Yard
Both NRDC and Banana Kelly insist they
have gone out of their way to inform the
community about the de-inking mill.
inllo"'emeat.
Hershkowitz says he has five volumes of journals detailing
his correspondence with the community over the years,
adding that community board leaders and all elected officials
are strongly behind the project. Vernice Miller says there
have been "hundreds" of meetings with community groups,
churches, local development corporations and residents.
"Environmental groups can be faulted in the past for never
considering local communities. Not this time," she says.
Yolanda Rivera, executive director of Banana Kelly, is
equally adamant that the South Bronx is strongly behind her
Ventures industrial park project. "[Some
people] are opposed because they don't like the developer,
because the state gave up the land without consulting them,"
says Yolanda Rivera. "But we had nothing to do with that."
Activists reject this vehemently. "They say they have nothing
to do with [Harlem River Yard Ventures]," observes Matthew
Lee of Inner City Press/Community on the Move, a group of
mostly Latino activists also demanding more community
input. "Then why do they want to put the plant there?
[Harlem River Yard Ventures] is the owner of the plan. You
can't have it both ways."
As for the waste transfer station, Rivera says it's not going
to happen. "We made it very clear when we started negotia-
tions on this lease that certain standards had to be met," she
says. "They may have had that notion initially ... but those
plans are no longer being pursued."
Not according to Harlem River Yard Ventures. Gary Lewi,
a spokesman for the company, says a waste transfer station "is
still in the plans," and adds, "we're looking at a coalition of
solid-waste disposal companies who would take it over."
the Urban Development Corporation
corporation that, among other things,
to provide public subsidies to private
projects-arranged for a hearing on the paper
they set aside a lunch hour on a Thursday in early
September. For legal notification, they published an ad in
New York Newsday.
Air Coalition and Vernice Miller's West Harlem Environ-
mental Action Coalition (WHE ACT).
Miller was one of the leaders of a group of activists that
fought for years to force the city to fix a foul-smelling, badly
designed sewage treatment plant on the edge of West Harlem.
She says she understands many of the disagreements that the
Bronx activists have about the state's 99-year lease for the
Harlem River Yard, but she disagrees with their criticism of
NRDC and its paper plant, insisting the entire process has
been open from the start.
But when a reporter posed some of the questions raised
previously in interviews with Mott Haven residents and the
Clean Air Coalition, her responses were furious and antago-
nistic. Asked why NRDC is backing a plan that the coalition,
the Regional Plan Association, the Sierra Club and others
believe will undermine any chance of a decent rail freight
system in the city, she replied with charges ofracism. "We
have all these white folks running around, talking about rail
Members of the Clean Air Coalition say
they heard about the meeting only by acci-
dent the night before, when they were alerted
by a community organizer working in the
nearby Melrose Commons neighborhood. She
had been called by a Banana Kelly board
member, who mistakenly thought she might
want to speak in support of the project.
MlIslring us a
question 'ike
that is 'ike
freight.. .. All of them, up and down the line,
are white men, some of them have never even
stepped foot in the South Bronx, and yet they
want to talk about what the South Bronx
should look like." Asked whether the plant
operators intend to landfill any of the sludge
they produce, Miller became enraged. "Ask-
ing us a question like that is like asking the
NAACP if they support the Ku Klux Klan,"
she fumed, and stormed out of the interview. Twenty people showed up for the meet-
ing; at least six were opposed to the plan.
After a UDC official made a presentation and
announced a $400,000 grant to Banana Kelly,
Americo Cassiano of the Clean Air Coalition
stood and accused the UDC of pushing
through a quick hearing without adequate
community participation. Calling it a "hustle"
and a "scam," Cas siano demanded the meet-
aslring file
NAACP if flier
Padilla and others say this conduct is
peculiar, but they have come to expect it
from NRDC, which, they charge, refuses to
take community residents' questions seri-
ously. "Vernice Miller is someone who has
been through the struggle," Padilla notes.
But, he adds, "she has to be more sensitive.
support file
Ku IUUJf IlIan, "
Mi'lerlu.e ..
ing be canceled. Several others in attendance, including
Yolanda Garcia of Nos Quedamos, were also furious and
demanded to know why the hearing was held in the middle
of a workday with no public officials taking part.
Cassiano shouted down supporters of the plan when they
tried to speak, clearly intending to use classic disobedience
to prevent UDC from going forward with the hearing. He
succeeded. Finally, as a representative ofBanana Kelly began
cursing at Cas siano and the argument spilled out onto the
street, the UDC officials quietly picked up their papers and
slipped away. Others weren't so anxious to leave. After both
sides traded insults, organizer Eddie Bautista of New York
Lawyers for the Public Interest had to restrain Cassiano from
slugging Rick Soto, a board member of Banana Kelly.
his dispute is more than a Bronx street fight, however.
plant proposal is described by some as a fiasco that
a deep divide between two of New York's leading
Ull.'llU:U justice organizations-the Latino-led Clean
We're not asking unreasonable questions.
We're asking the same questions Vernice Miller at one time
was asking herself."
"It was a big struggle to get groups [like NRDC] to come
around and oppose environmental racism," says Bautista,
who has been advising the Clean Air Coalition. "But we
wanted them to help community groups, not to supplant
them. So the big question remains: are they going to be the
BOO-pound gorilla or are they going to be a facilitator in
getting community concerns met?"
Right now, he adds, "there's a level of hostility that's a
little overwhelming. And this may become an obstacle that's
irreparable. You don't have a real environmental justice
movement if you don't have people from Harlem, the South
Bronx, Brooklyn, even Staten Island, all at the same table." 0
Subscribe to City Limits!
Call (212) 925-9820
....... or the most part, 32-year-old Michael Mosby has
managed to keep his drug use in check since
moving into his East Flatbush apartment least
year. He hasn't maintained the sobriety he
achieved during his six-month stay at an inpa-
tient treatment program in 1992. Still, with the
help of a case manager and other staff members
of the supportive housing program that got him his apart-
ment, Mosby has learned to handle his money more carefully,
eat healthfully and refrain from the out-of-control crack
binges that led him to seek treatment in the first place. Now,
he is even working as a volunteer helping others like himself.
Not that his life has become trouble-free: Mosby is HIV-
positive and fighting tuberculosis. Five months ago, de-
pressed and discouraged by steamrolling personal problems,
Mosby took all the money from his public assistance check
and blew it on crack.
"One day I just said, 'Michael, forget everything. Give your
money to the dealer,'" he recalls. Three days later, he found
himself exhausted, strung out, friendless-"When your money
is gone, they're gone "-and without so much as subway fare.
Fortunately, he says, there were people at the housing group
ready to help him, not judge him or threaten him with
eviction. A staffer came to his house and got him to wash up,
change his clothes and eat a meal. She made calls to detox
programs, but there were no openings. With her support-a
detox slot never did materialize-Mosby made it through the
next week. And with the aid of his case worker, he worked out
two plans-one to get his financial affairs back in order, the
other to help him deal better with his drug use.
M
ichael Mosby is a client of Housing Works, an orga-
nization that provides services to homeless people
with AIDS or HIV and who also may be mentally ill
or addicted to drugs. Housing Works is only four years old,
but it is at the forefront of a growing movement known as
"harm reduction."
Two-third's of Mosby's rent is paid by the government.
Most of his neighbors don't even know he uses drugs. Obvi-
ously, the notion that the government should pay to house
addicts-and that communities should accept them into
their midst before they have proven their ability to get
straight-is a radical one.
But harm reduction supporters point to people like Mosby
and say that theirs is a purely pragmatic-and absolutely
necessary-approach: if we are to succeed in cutting the costs
of substance abuse, both to society and to the individuals in
addiction's thrall, we must treat addicts like citizens in need
and do what we can to avoid driving them underground and
out of reach. Rather than attempt to eradicate drug addic-
tion-an impossible task-harm reductionists seek to mini-
mize its most harmful effects.
In most cases, this means stabilizing drug users' lives so
they can get the services they need when they need them,
from housing and health care to counseling and, if and when
they are ready, detoxification. In the most basic terms, harm
1.8/0CTOBER 1994/CITY UMns
UALITY ~
Special report Of)
A new ethic for the treatmc
reduction means reducing HIV infection and other diseases,
dealing with mental illness and preventing homelessness.
"It's very nonjudgmental," explains Don McVinney, a
social worker and consultant to Doctors of the World's
Streetside Health Project. "In the United States, most chemi-
cal dependency professionals presume that if you come to a
by J ill K i r
~ harm reduction:
~ n t and care of drug addicts
program, you have to be abstinent. You are actually pun-
ished, thrown out, if you can't maintain abstinence. That is
not the goal of harm reduction."
Forcing the sobriety issue, he explains, places addicts at
tremendous risk of things that are more dangerous than the
drugs they ingest. "Whether we want them to or not, people
schenbaum
are using drugs. They may be willing to stop some time in
the future, but you can still work with them in the mean-
time."
Tiptoeing between drug possession laws and faced with
opposition from civic leaders, community groups and main-
stream substance abuse professionals, a handful of activists
is bringing harm reduction to New York City. Not only are
they pushing the envelope of drug treatment-indeed, many
of their ideas are already showing up in more middle-of-the-
road programs-they are also challenging the way addicts are
treated by society.
H
arm reduction has become the public policy of choice
in several European countries faced with entrenched
drug problems and the consequent violence, crime
and disease. Since the mid-1980s, countries such as Great
Britain, the Netherlands and Germany have developed alter-
natives to the traditional law-and-order response. Policy
makers there have concluded that strict drug possession laws
have not reduced the numbers of hard-core addicts in their
communities (see sidebar, p.20).
This has not been the case in the United States. Here, the
federal and state governments have continued to invest
billions of dollars on a zero-tolerance war on drugs as prison
populations have swelled.
The state Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services
(OASAS) estimates there are 500,000 addicts in New York
City, half of whom are intravenous drug users. Studies show
that at least 150,000 of them are infected with the HIV virus.
Yet the men and women who work with addicts on the street
are quick to point out that there is no comprehensive city or
state policy to address this crisis.
Part of the problem is the drug treatment infrastructure
itself. According to OASAS, there are 50,000 government-
funded treatment slots available for the half-million addicts
living in New York City. All but 10,000 of those are in
methadone centers for heroin addiction. Most of the
remainder are in detox, outpatient or traditional residential
facilities like Phoenix House and DayTop Village. But the
success rate of those programs-that is, for those participants
who complete them and stay clean-is barely 15 percent,
according to the National Development Research Institute in
New York.
Meanwhile, little is being been done to assist the hundreds
of thousands of New Yorkers whom these programs have
either failed, proven inaccessible, or scared away with their
hard-bitten, boot-camp approach.
Howard Josephers blames the treatment industry itself. A
member of Phoenix House's original graduating class of ' 67
and founding director of ARRIVE, an HIV peer education
program for ex-offenders, Josephers says much has changed
since he kicked heroin. "What was once a movement of
addicts helping addicts has become a mega-industry driven
by professionals," he charges. "It's a horrible monster, co-
opted by government funding. And they have a vested inter-
est in keeping the status quo.
"We've been bamboozled by so-called experts who for
years have blamed and demonized the addict for the failure
of drug treatment," he says.
Whoever is to blame, the impact of society's inability to
deal with the crisis has been devastating. By 1995 it is
anticipated that the greatest number of new AIDS cases will
be among intravenous drug users-at a higher rate of growth
than among gay men. Currently, in the South Bronx, between
10 and 20 percent of the entire population of 25- to 45-year-
old men are infected with the HIV virus, according to a study
in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
The interrelationship between prison and drugs is no less
significant. In a 1992 study by the National Institute of
Justice, 70 percent of all men and women arrested in New
York City, San Diego, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
tested positive for one or more drugs. Almost 90 percent of
the women on parole in New York State have a history of
substance abuse.
Compare that with the phenomenal results of a compre-
hensive harm reduction project in Liverpool, England. In a
speech before a Baltimore conference on drug policy last fall,
Dr. John Marks, director of Liverpool's addiction main-
tenance and treatment program, reported that the British
system, which provides clean needles, medical care and
maintenance drugs, including heroin and cocaine, has led to
"zero drug-related deaths, zero HIV-infection among inject-
ing drug takers and a ... reduction of 96 percent in crime"
related to drug purchase and possession.
THE FUILIFURT RESOLUTION
N
eedle exchanges, the most basic form of harm reduc-
tion, were first introduced to the United States in
1989, when it became clear to AIDS activists that IV
drug users continued to share needles: they were not re-
sponding to educational efforts about the spread of the
deadly disease.
lllegal at first-in New York State, syringes may be pur-
chased only with a doctor's prescription-today there are
five organizations in New York City permitted to exchange
clean needles for used ones at no cost to drug users. Harm
reduction proponents believe this is the first step toward
government's recognition that there are thousands who use
drugs and who may not get into a treatment any time soon.
"I didn't want to come here at first," concedes Virginia, a
client of the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center
(LESHRC). "I was afraid they were going to trap me into a
program." A soft-spoken woman of 42 with short dark hair
and quiet ways, Virginia has been showing up weekly at the
exchange'S storefront on Avenue C, where she is given
needles, a bleach kit, alcohol and cotton swabs, as well as
condoms, to protect herself from infection. She's been smok-
ing or injecting cocaine and/or heroin since 1970, and heard
about LESHRC from other drug users on the street.
"I was getting arrested, taking chances, getting hurt hus-
tling for needles," Virginia admits. "But now, they helped me
get public assistance and Medicaid. I haven't been as sick as
I used to be. I use the alcohol swabs now to clean my skin
before injecting and I didn't before. And the needles are
In Frankfurt, Germany's banking capital with more than
two million residents, addicts have tended to congregate
After years of employing pugnacious, U.S.-style drug inthecitycenter.Duringthelate1910s,nearly1,OOOusers
enforcement tactics, the trend in cities such as Amsterdam, and dealers were meeting, buying, and selling drugs each
Frankfurt, and Zurich is to help addicts stabilize their day within a ODe square mlle region that includes the
lives, avoid disease and death and possibly reenter the banks,arailwaystationfor80,OOOcommuters,andthecity
mainstream. hall.
A major push to revamp attitudes and treatment of drug This led to a massive police crackdOWll in February,
users in Europe occurred about four years ago when a 1980. Addicts were offered abstinence. strict treatment
consortium of officials from Amsterdam, programs with abstineDce 81 the goal. or
Frankfurt, Hamburg and Zurich, drafted jail. It didn't work. Despite the police ac-
the Frankfurt Resolution, which defines tion, the scene grew five times 1atpr by the
the principles of a drug policy based on end of the 19808.
harm reduction. Since 1990, at least 11 Public outcrY forcedGennanofflcialsto
more cities have signed on and more than pursue a different tack. In early 1991. wm:k
50 other cities and counties now ing with Frankfurt's drug treatment spe-
rate some of the document's goals in their cialists. the city stationed ambulances near
drug policies. a central city park to exchalJ88 sydaps,
The resolution begins with the admis and offer .mecUca1 to addicts.
sion that "the attempt to eliminate both the Orpni.zers also 8I'l'8Qg8d puhUe meeUntt
supplX and consumption of drup in our L-. _____ where drug usera tJad the oppomuaity to
society has fai1ed." And, it reads, "drug policy whida
attempts to combat drug addiction solely by cr.bniDallaw with CIft1cial"COIIIIDlIter8" clY1c leaders. M a I8IUlt of
and compulsion to abstinaDce, and which makes the those meetiIl8I and the patk the city .....
motivationforabsthumcetheprerequi8iteforstateal4.W u.hedte ..... centen .. ...
fai)ed." .., 1ItCiIk
2O/0crOBER 1994/CIJY UMITS
clean. I don't have to use anyone else's."
"They don't down you here. They don't
try to tell you to do this or that. It's changed
my attitude about myself."
Today Virginia can say she's injecting
drugs in a safer, more responsible way.
The needle exchange is what draws
hard-core addicts through their doors,
people who have been extremely reluctant
to reveal their dependencies to other social
service agencies, says Allan Clear, execu-
tive director of LESHRC. By building a
relationship based on trust and respect,
the staff can then begin to open other doors
formerly closed to addicts. "It's about treat-
ing people as human beings," he says. "It's
irrelevant whether or not a person used
heroin that day. We'll help them."
Not surprisingly, the theory and prac-
tice of harm reduction is controversial. Dr.
Mitchell Rosenthal, chairman of the New
York State Advisory Council on Substance
....... redudion ,...... .. more dllclplne ..... thouIId becMIIe)'Oll .... to tIIInk
.bout,.... dl1ll ..... " ..,. KeIIII ~ , coexlClllhe director of IIouIiac WOltls. "Why ....
)'011 doInI dnIp? WIut ... the consequences?"
Abuse and president of Phoenix House, wrote a scathing
critique in the March 1994 issue of the Journal of Substance
Abuse and Treatment. He argues emphatically against needle
exchanges, going so far as to charge that "the transmission of
the HIV virus by drug abusers is far more a function of their
characteristically irresponsible sexual behavior than their
projects and other services, as well as a guidebook on
how to find them.
Frankfurt's approach was markedly different from
that taken by Zurich in the late 19808. In an effort to
contain drug use, officials decided to tolerate its use in
one park and provide services there. By 1990, after the
park drew addicts from all over Europe and authorities
didn't know how to handle what they called "intoler-
able" conditions, they closed the park.
Frankfurt took measures to avoid such problems.
Ambulances offering needle exchange and other se ....
vices spread out across the city to keep all of Frankfurt's
users from descending on the single downtown loca-
tion. Once the 16 service centers opened throusIwut
Frankfurt, the city closed the park outreach sites.
Learning from the Frankfurt successes, Zurich lead-
ers signed the Frankfurt Resolution in 1990 and began
taking a more comprehensive approach.
Since implementing the harm reduction policy,
Frankfurt has seen significant drops in crime and vio-
lence in the city, as well as fewer overdose deaths,
reports Frankfurt Drug Policy Coordinator Werner
Schneider in an interview with The Drug Policy News-
letter. Nearly all of the addicts who used to congregate
near the railroad station are gone, making it safer for
commuters ........ Art
limited access to clean needles."
In a less shrill analysis, Judith Corman, Phoenix House's
director of public information, suggests that harm reduction
workers are misguided in their willingness to accept clients
who are still getting high. Such an approach, she says,
"throws away the key"-that is, abstinence-to drug treat-
ment. "It sends the wrong message," she says.
These attitudes are clearly reflected in government fund-
ing priorities. OASAS, the state agency that distributes treat-
ment monies, spends over half a billion dollars a year on
traditional substance abuse services. It has yet to fund a single
harm reduction program, despite extensive research indicat-
ing that needle exchanges are effective in reducing the spread
of HIV. By contrast, an October 1993 study by the federal
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended
that "substantial federal funds should be committed to pro-
viding needle exchange services." The report concluded that
"in almost all cases, the cost per HIV-infection averted [by
needle exchanges] is far below the $119,000 lifetime cost of
treating an HIV-infected person."
I
n the strongest language, Allan Clear takes issue with the
critics from Phoenix House. "Do you deny users ser-
vices?" asks Clear. "Do you deny those people's right to
live?" And the need is indisputable, he says. LESHRC distrib-
utes 20,000 clean needles each month. The Bronx/Harlem
Needle Exchange gives out twice that amount.
"What disgusts me is that they are not offering any alter-
natives," he continues. "Drug users have never been pro-
vided with the means to protect themselves. They've been
denied the means to protect themselves."
There's a saying on the street, observes Don McVinney:
"Dead addicts don't recover."
Equally incensed by the critics is Keith Cylar, coexecutive
director of Housing Works and himself a former heroin
addict. From the point of view of a user, he says, their
arguments are irrelevant. "Unless you have the means to help
me stop using drugs right now, you need to get out of my face.
Because I am strung out. I have reached the point where I am
no longer a social user. I am addicted. And addiction is a
physiological, biological condition, and therefore needs to be
treated," he says. "Unless we are willing to address those
issues, we need to not tell people not to use drugs."
An offshoot of ACT UP, Housing Works has become the
largest housing and service provider in New York City for
homeless men and women with AIDS and HIV. The organi-
zation has assisted more than 2,000 clients and placed some
500 of them in safe, affordable apartments. Funded by city,
state and private gr/illts, Housing Works itself manages some
180 scattered site apartments throughout the city.
True to its ACT UP origins, the organization has assumed
a controversial stance: How are addicts expected to become
drug-free without a secure place to live? Homelessness is an
insurmountable hurdle for the very people who need help
most. Yet, virtually no other nonprofit agency providing
scattered site housing allows active drug users to apply for
their programs. They require that applicants be at least six
months drug-free.
"You can't strip someone of their principal coping mecha-
nism," says Leslie King-Levy, Housing Works' harm reduc-
tion coordinator. "Are you going to ask someone who is
homeless and HIV -positive to get into a program, kick drugs-
and then go back to living on the A train?"
Similarly, Cylar makes no apologies for homeless people
TIE LE81L1DDOI DEllTE
Even though many people on both sides of the question
now agree that a drus-free society is an impossible goal,
legalization of drugs in the United States is still a long way
ott.
This political truth surfaced dramatically late last year
when U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders
called for studies on the issue oflegalization,
citing the violent crime that's endemic to the
illicit drug scene.
Utera1ly minutes after Elders spoke, Presi-
dent Clinton put the word out that he's "not
inclined in this case even to study the issue,"
and reaffirmed his commitment to a law-
and-order strategy in the war on drugs.
Ofcoune, not everyone who opposes legal-
ization takes Clinton's narrow position and
supports the current focus of the war on
drugs. There are moderates, such as Herbert
Kleber, of Columbia University's Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse.
Kleber argued recently in the New England Journal of
Medicine that the most effective method of dealing with
22/0crOBER 1994/CITY UMITS
who use drugs. "My baseline assumption is that if I was a
homeless person on the street, I'd get high. It is wholly
appropriate and reflects the reality of what it is like to live on
the street, where you don't know where your next meal is
coming from, where you can't find a place to go to the
bathroom, where you don't know where to get a drink of
water," he says.
From the start, Housing Works began to develop what
today has become a holistic approach, including one-on-one
case management for each client in the scattered site housing
program, job training, support groups, a needle exchange and
a harm reduction center. Driven by the needs of the clients
themselves, the center helps people assess their drug use and
find ways to manage it better.
Some people, says Cylar, are horrified by the notion of
managing addiction. "They say, 'You just want people to do
drugs.' No, that isn't what we're about. Harm reduction
requires far more discipline and thought because you have to
think about your drug use. Why are you doing drugs? What's
the emotional issue around your drug use? Do you have time?
What are the consequences? You have to think about it, and
you have to budget for it before you get high."
It is very much like the notion of having a designated
driver, Cylar says. "That's a harm reduction technique. Soci-
ety says, 'Drink as mu<;h as you want, but don't drive.' But [it's
not okay] when I come out and say that about drugs."
Michael Mosby, the Housing Works client in East Flatbush,
knows what Cylar is talking about. "You have to learn to put
yourself first. If you want a better life, if you want to get an
education, or a job, you have to leave the drugs alone. It's like
hard-core drus addiction would be to expand treatment
services. He says flying spy planes over Peruvian poppy
fields and sealing ottU.S. borders won't keep drugs out of
the country.
While Kleber says it is important to continue to discour-
age drus production and distribution abroad and to pun-
ish high-level drus traffickers in this country, he adds that
"the current federal ratio of expenditures to
control supply and demand-65 percent to
reduce supply and 35 percent to reduce de-
mand-is misguided. A 50:50 ratio is more
likely to be effective."
But Kleber believes that the forces in favor
ofliberalization have an Olympic-sizeAchil-
les heel "The reality is that those who favor
legalization lack a comprehensive plan to
deal with cocaine. Cocaine is the b8te noire
of the legalization movement," he says.
Unlike opiates, Kleber explains, cocaine
immediately stimulates the desire for further
use. Binges are common, and given the drug's pharmaco-
logical properties, "the argument that legalization would
lead to only a minimal rise in use seems disingenuous," he
says.
one of the case managers told me, 'Do it once a week. Don't
do it the day you get paid.'
"You have to think about the consequences," Mosby adds.
"That you won't have any money to eat, or buy clothes."
Harm reduction is a slow process, acknowledges King-
Levy. At Housing Works, they try to teach clients basics such
as nutrition and the effects of drugs on their immune systems.
T
o some New Yorkers, such a nightmarish list reflects
the exact reasons why they don't want active drug
users living in their neighborhoods, or services offered
them before they commit to getting clean.
"Until they make the step to stop. you volunteer to be the
victim by providing a way out for them," says Richard
Green, director of the Crown Heights Youth Collective. "That's
a real cop-out." At the same time, they work on issues such as
self-esteem.
How
"Most of these people come to us believing
they're no good," says King-Levy. "They've
adopted society's values."
Every new Housing Works client also
becomes a member of the organization. with
the right to participate in its policy making
and day-to-day operations. They may also
enter Housing Work's 12-month job-training
program; graduates can apply for paid staff
positions, including working at one of the
organization's two thrift shops, on the intake
and case management staff, or for the apart-
ment maintenance crew. Currently, 15 such
graduates are Housing Works employees.
are addicts
expected to
become
drug-free
without a
stable place
to live?
Mary Dailey, executive director of the
Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy
Coalition, a closely knit network of neighbor-
hood and tenant organizations, has seen too
often what happens when poorly managed
supportive housing or scattered site programs
are dumped in neighborhoods already coping
with drug-related crime. It's all well and good
to do needle exchanges. But Dailey charges
that too many nonproflts are placing addicts
in buildings that are already unstable or
located on blocks with active drug markets.
When a dozen vacancies accumulated at
2081-2085 Morris Avenue thanks to poor con-
ditions-800 code violations and an unre-
Sobriety is not a prerequisite for receiving
services at Housing Works, but living responsibly is. There
are six cardinal sins which, ifbroken, are grounds for imme-
diate eviction of anyone in the scattered site housing pro-
gram. These include drug dealing, physically violent behav-
ior, arson or attempted arson, theft or destruction of property,
prostitution. and unlawful possession of weapon.
A pair of Harvard Medical School professors diaapes.
In another article in the same issue of the New Bngland
]oumal of Medicine, Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar
contend there is simply no proof that sign1f1cant chanps
in the laws or their enforcement would create a wide
upswing in the use of drugs. They point to 1914, when
opiates were first banned under federal law ,and argue that
the percentage of the population using such drugs then
may not have been very different from today's.
In the 19108, 10 states essentially decrlm'naUud p0s-
session of small amounts of marijuana by reducing the
penalty to a fine, or, in the case of Oregon, to a civil
violation. Studies of these legal cbanses conclude that
there have been substantial reductions in law enforcement
and criminal justice costs, while there has been no effect
on the rates of marijuana use or public health and safety.
Advocates for legalization point out that resources now
going into the war on drugs could be channeled into
battling the chief causes of drug abuse and other social
problems-poverty, unemployment, poor housing, illit-
eracy, and family disintegration. "Gang warfare and drive-
by shootings would no longer spread everyday terror in
our cities. The profits of organized crime would decline
precipitously. A threat to the Bill of Rights would be
sponsive landlord had prompted the tenant
association to organize a rent strike-the landlord went to the
163rd Street Multi-Service Center, which runs a scattered site
program, to fllll0 of those apartments. "Suddenly. a building
that had never had a drug problem before had drug traffic in
and out of the apartments," Dailey recalls. "All kinds of
problems ensued."
removed, and the prisons would be half empty," write
Grinspoon and Bakalar.
So the debate continues, spurred on by pro-legaHzation
organizations such as the Drug Policy Foundation, Drug
Strategies and the International Network of Cities on Drug
Policy.
When the International Network of Cities on Drug
Policy met last year in Baltimore, decriminalization, or in
its stead the "medicaUzation" of drugs, was a rallying cry
of the conference. To "medicalize" a drug is to permit
physicians to prescribe maintenance doses of drugs to
addicts. The meeting's cosponsor, Baltimore's maverick
mayor Kurt Schmoke, predicted that drug policy innova-
tions in the U.S. would come about as they have in Europe
and Australia-from the cities rather the national govern-
ments. Local governments and their communities, reasons
Schmoke, bear the heaviest burden of failure under cur-
rent punitive drug policies.
"The United States' war on drugs and similar cam-
paigns in other countries have failed," he said at the
conference. "Only a harm-reduction policy, led by public
health experts and emphasizing treatment, can be ex-
pected to reduce addiction, stop drug-related crime, and
slow the transmission of AIDS. II ....... an u
Still, she concedes that housing people with substance
abuse problems can work if its done properly. "Yes, if you are
filling only one or two apartments in a building, and offering
some recourse if the tenant doesn't work out." She says she
has heard no complaints about Housing Works' 38 clients in
the Bronx. "If it works out, you never hear about it."
Housing professionals who work with drug users say they
understand that people generally assume drug users in-
evitably have a damaging impact on neighborhoods. But it
doesn't have to be so, says Julie Sandorf, executive director
of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, which provides
financing and technical assistance to organizations devel-
oping housing for people with special needs. "It comes down
to behavior," she observes. "Can that person live as a good
neighbor and respect the community? What Housing
Works is doing respects the social contract and helps the
individual. "
Della Jackson, a 40-year resident of East New York and a
member of the 75th Precinct's Community Council, agrees.
Many East New York residents, Jackson included, have
family members who have had drug problems. "I'd much
rather [provide] housing and clean needles than see people
become homeless or get AIDS," she says. It may promote drug
use, she adds. "But it may help them to stop, too."
L
argely in response to the wildfire of HIV among intra
venous drug users, some treatment programs based on
the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step model have begun
incorporating aspects of harm reduction. Unlike conven-
tiona112-step groups-many of which identify harm reduc-
tion as the worst sort of "enabling" -maverick programs like
La Fuente in the South Bronx have embraced harm reduction's
bedrock principles: active drug users should be able to
participate and programs should be easy to join. This way,
addicts can get help the moment they decide they need it.
Virtually all other detox, methadone or treatment programs
require applicants to have two forms of identification and
health insurance or Medicaid.
But La Fuente and similar programs have not left the 12
steps behind. They believe it is their professional, ethical and
moral responsibility to show drug users the path to absti-
nence and, hence, a better life. They say that any program that
doesn't do this is missing the mark. Their method has come
DCE, DRUGS, IIIPRISOIIIIEIiI ca't;!:::t ~ : : ~ : : e : ~ i s t purely to discourage
While national surveys show that people of all races dangerous drug use "is really hypocritical," observes Emest
and ethnicities use illicit drugs at more or less the same Drucker, director of the Division of Community Health
rate, there is a vast difference between the number of and a professor of epidemiology and social medicine at the
blacks and Latinos imprisoned on drug charges compared Montefiore Medical Centerl Albert Einstein College of
to the number of whites. Medicine. "Especially in a society that doesn't care if
Only seven percent of the drug offenders incarcerated people have homes or if children have medical care.
in New York State are white, according to the Correctional Suddenly, why are they so interested in the health and
Association. But whites occupy 43 percent of the state- well-being of these poor junkies? The answer is, they're
funded drug treatment slots. not."
"If people end up being identified as substance abusers, Drug use, he says, "is taken as a basis for very extreme
race is the largest determinant of whether they do time or forms of social control and oppression. "
drug treatment," observes Joanne Page, ex- .-----------'\ Similarly, a Florida study of pregnant
ecutive director of the Fortune Society, an women reveals other societal biases. While
organization for ex-offenders. Currently, the rate of drug use by clients in public
one-third of New York State's prison in- clinics versus those in private practice was
mates were convicted of nonviolent low- found to be the same. private doctors were
level drug offenses. Among women prison- less likely to turn their clients in to child
ers, the number leaps to 70 percent. welfare authorities. whereas public clinics
It is not surprising, then, that many are mandated to do 80 by law.
advocates of harm reduction also ardently Although the National Institute of Drug
support the decriminalization of U.S. drug Abuse estimates thet every dollar spent on
laws. They point to what they characterize drug treatment saves $4 to $1 in reduced
as the racist inconsistencies of the federal costs to the public, state and local govern-
government's mandatory sentencing guidelines for drug ments spend less than a quarter of their drug control ~
offenders, which include incarceration for a minimum of budgets on education and treatment outside prison walls. ~
five years for possession of five grams of crack, a cheap The recently signed omnibus crime bill allocates $1 u
form of cocaine that is most prevalent in poor city neigh- billion to establish new courts specifically for drug ~
borhoods. To get the same sentence for powdered co- offenses and funds programa that offer treatment instead ~
caiDe- more expensive and more likely to be used by of jail. But to acc:ess these services, a drug user must be ~
white middle-cl8S8 people-an offender would have to be arreated first. ~
~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ ~
to be known as "recovery
readiness. "
These advocates,
observes Adolfo
Profumo, director of
the Bronx/Harlem
Needle Exchange, are
the vanguard of a
revolution that is forc-
A firm supporter of
needle exchanges, La
Fuente director Tony
Ortiz says that if, after
completing the eight-
week program, which in-
cludes acupuncture
detox, daily meals and a
variety of 12-step and
other support groups, a
client does not resume a
drug-free life, there's
nothing La Fuente can do
but refer them elsewhere.
"l1Ie AnpIof It. "". A--," SouIII Bronx ...... excURp dinIctDr JoJce lIMn-
BecIIInIn, helped B.B. Clemente, Jr. 'aboNl pt his life tDpther. Hooked on heroin llnee
tile VIetMm War, he _ ediII Street Ccner ......
o ing society to accept
~ responsibility for its
~ failures. It will take
1;: nothing less, he says,
~ if harm reduction is
" truly to take root in
the United States.
"What we say is
"We don't beat them up to stop using," Ortiz says. "We try
to let them know the advantages ofliving a drug-free lifestyle.
But it is my firm belief that if a program cannot help an
individual get clean, the program is failing.
"Some people don't want to stop," Ortiz adds. "So no
program can help them."
But harm reduction addresses the needs of those very
people, experts say. While 12-step and recovery readiness
programs may help some people get off drugs, they won't
solve the problems of all chronic users.
"Harm reduction doesn't include a recovery model," states
epidemiologist Ernest Drucker, director of the Division of
Community Health at the Montefiore Medical Center and
editor of the first book on the subject, The Reduction of Drug-
Related Harm. "It's not antagonistic to it, but its essential
element is tolerance of drug use, believing that if you are
tolerant and thoughtful and supportive, most people will
control their drug use."
"Getting people to become drug-free is not my motive,"
adds Cylar. "But! will tell you that people come in to Housing
Works and use harm reduction and move towards recovery."
S
upport here for this European alternative to the drug
wars is growing in some public policy circles, due in-
part to the efforts of urban mayors who have waited in
vain for federal interdiction programs to work. Baltimore's
Kurt Schmoke, one of the most visible and vocal advocates of
harm reduction, hosted a conference on the strategy last year.
Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan recently followed the
lead of Mayor Frank Jordan of San Francisco and declared a
public health emergency to circumvent a state law requiring
prescriptions for syringes. Both cities now have sanctioned
needle exchange programs.
Elsewhere, there are people like New Haven Police Chief
Nicholas Pastore, who implemented a comprehensive needle
exchange and community policing program in 1990. It has
cut the rate of new HIV infections by one-third, a Yale
University study concluded. It has also contributed to a 40
percent drop in drug-related crime and a 25 percent drop in
overall crime, Pastore reports.
that evil does not ex-
ist. You cannot judge. And in that context, we fit right in with
the Bible, which says, very clearly, 'Thou shalt not judge.
Revenge is Mine alone. '"
W
hen B. B. Clemente, Jr. first heard in 1990 that a
woman was giving out clean needles in the South
Bronx, he didn't believe it. "She was more like a
myth, really. A rumor," he recalls of the woman known in
junkie circles as "the Angel of St. Ann's Avenue."
But sure enough, says Clemente, 43, a writer and artist who
became hooked on heroin while serving in Vietnam in 1971,
there was such an angel. Her name was Joyce Rivera-Beckman,
and she showed up at the corner of st. Ann's and 139th Street
every Saturday morning between 9:00 and 11:00. "She told
me that as long as God gave her strength and the law stayed
off her ass, she'd be out there," says Clemente.
Rivera-Beckman changed his life, he says. She took an
interest in his drawings and stories, and when she finally
received permission from the city to operate a legal needle
exchange-which she named, appropriately enough, St. Ann's
Corner of Harm Reduction-she asked him if he'd take a job
helping to edit a newsletter called Street Corner News. But, he
says, he wasn't ready yet. "I was on the street. 1 couldn't hold
a stable position." He did begin to contribute articles and
illustrations, however, and three and a half years later, he was
ready to take the job; today he is the monthly's assistant
editor. He still uses heroin daily.
"She could have found someone else, no doubt," Clemente
speculates. "But she believed in me, and nurtured me, and
motivated me. And she accepted and understood that 1 was
a drug user. She never said, 'Ben, stop. I'll give you the job if
you stop.' Never. Never mentioned that 1 had to quit, like
every other program does.
"That's when 1 finally saw what she meant by harm
reduction. It's a step-by-step process, in which negative
behavior is reversed without someone sticking their finger in
your face. It's a subtle way of change without your knowing
it. Slowly but surely, 1 see now that 1 have gone from one step
to another, without even being aware ofit. That's what harm
reduction is." 0
~ W A T C H
Times Square Fleece Train
By Robert Fitch
L
ike any truly public-spirited in-
stitution, the New York Times
has donated substantial energies
to promoting neighborhood im-
provement. Just between 1985 and 1989,
the Times devoted nearly 200 stories
and editorials to Times Square redevel-
opment. That's more coverage for one
street than it devoted to the entire bor-
oughs of Brooklyn or Queens.
Such emphasis may seem surpris-
ingly parochial on its face. That is, until
you realize that, unlike many New York-
ers, the good gray Times stands to gain
hundreds of millions of dollars in en-
hanced property values if the Times
Square "clean up" ever gets beyond the
press release stage. That the cost to the
rest of us for sprucing up the paper's
backyard may now be more than $1
billion in the latest agreement concluded
this summer has not been mentioned by
the neighborhood activists who run the
Times editorial page.
"It has been nearly [twenty years]
since a neighborhood priest organized
community pressure to clean out the
area's crime and sleaze," the paper of
record noted recently. The editorial,
titled "Progress in Midtown," went on
to point out that the city and the state's
Urban Development Corporation (UDC)
have renegotiated the terms of the
original 1984 project with the develop-
ers, George Klein and the Prudential
Insurance Company.
Long Way to Go
Understandably, the Times can't wait
to see the agreement go through.
Although the terms, conditions and costs
of the revised deal are nowhere men-
tioned, it concludes, "The street has
come a long way since that first commu-
nity protest in the early 1970s. It still
has a long way to go-the faster the
better."
Ah, yes, sure, 'n begorrah, there's
nobody here on 42nd Street but us New
York Times clean-teamers and old
Father O'Flanigan, fighting the good
fight against whisky and drugs. Please,
gentlemen. Spare us the fake gemein-
schaft.
To understand the real motives un-
derlying the Times Square project, as
well as the magnitude of the present
sell-out of city interests, we would do
28/0crOBER 1994/CITY UIIIR
well to forget kindly old Father
O'Flanigan and substitute the Regional
Plan Association (RP A) and the Ford
and Rockefeller Brothers foundations.
As early as 1968, in the Second Re-
gional Plan, the RP A called for office
towers in Times Square. In 1977, the
Ford Foundation embroidered the
scheme with a comprehensive plan for
Times Square called "The City at 42nd
Street." Then the Rockefellers came up
with what became known as "The Mid-
Town Plan"-an even more audacious
and successful method
for using subsidies and
zoning mechanisms to
swing development
gins), an extension of the tax subsidy
from 15 to 20 years and an additional 50
percent tax break for 99 years.
The total cost of the subsidies is in
the billions and depends, as the
Municipal Art Society explains, on how
you value the surrounding sites. In 1984,
the Pru-Klein team agreed to make
"payments-in-lieu-of-taxes" (PILOTs) to
the city of about one-quarter the property
tax rate paid by surrounding owners.
Accounting for inflation, the yearly
PILOTs may now have declined in value
to about one-tenth the
neighbors'tax.
Meanwhile, the" de-
velopers" have been
from the East Side to
the west-where the
family had acres of
interests.
The New YorkTtmes
Company
sitting on undeveloped
property for a decade.
Why do we, the pub-
lic, owe them? The
reason, cockamamy as
it may be, is this: ini-
tially, the developers
paid for the property
with $88 million in
cash and a $241 mil-
lion letter of credit.
229We.t<4MSt..,N.Y. l0036
Times Square, they
reasoned, was a
'.Classic ZIT -a "zone
in transition"-just
waiting to be con-
verted, and the
Rockefellers wanted to
force the pace. To-
AJmIUR OCHS SULZBIRGER, C""inna"
and ChUf E_utiw Offir
LANCB R. PIIIM1S, l'rai{knt
LAURA J . CORWIN, &clWary
KATHAIUNE P. DARROW. SmiorVi<e Preaidml
DAVID L. GOIIHAJoI. &nWr Vi<e Praidml
and Chief Financuu Offir
RICHARD G. THOMAS, Trecuu",r
gether with the Ford Foundation they
created the 42nd Street Development
Corporation to clear the underlying
leases and bring new land uses to the
street. But with legal costs mounting
and lacking powers of eminent domain,
UDC and the city had to be brought in to
pick up the growing tab.
Astringent Analysis
Ed Koch liked the concept, but at the
last minute, in 1984, he cut the
Rockefellers out of the deal and brought
in his own guy, George Klein. At the top
of the 1980s real estate market, Klein
and Prudential, as the Municipal Arts
Society explains in its astringent new
"Analysis of the 42nd Street Develop-
ment Project," worked out a deal requir-
ing the developer to invest $91 million
in subway renovation, $18.2 million in
theater renovations, and commence
tower construction within one year of
clearing the site.
And here are the terms of the revised
deal Klein negotiated this year: invest
zero dollars in subway renovation, about
50 percent less in theater renovation
(depending on how soon the work be-
UDC appears to have
cashed the letter of credit. Now we have
to pay the money back. Our payments
will stretch out for 99 years: $50,000 a
day until 2082.
Finally, in this agreement which the
Times finds so "progressive," there is
no limit on when the developers have to
start construction. Will they ever? And
why should they? Why put up another
four office towers-4.1 million square
feet? It may be churlish to point this out,
but New York City already has more
than 60 million square feet of empty
office space. Downtown, the vacancy
rate now approaches 30 percent. Own-
ers there are asking for subsidies to tear
down several dozen towers.
At a time when the mayor is laying
off thousands of workers, where is the
justice of handing out billions to George
Klein and the Pru? How can higher
vacancy rates and reduced tax collec-
tions be presented as "Progress in
Midtown?" Only if you understand the
sub-text of the Times' famous motto:
"All the news that fits our agenda." 0
Bob Fitch is author of The Assassina-
tion of New York {Verso}
Housing and Jobs Together
By Nancy Bib.nnan
B
y now, government officials ac-
knowledge something residents
of low income neighborhoods
have long known: it takes more
than housing to rebuild communities
shattered by years of arson, abandon-
ment and disinvestment.
Yet, while funders agree on the need
for comprehensive redevelopment strat-
egies, they continue to hold an unfortu-
nately myopic view of the tools at our
disposal. This must be overcome. With-
out immediately broadening the scope
of our development work by making
some creative, practical changes in the
use of current funding, we will never
spark true community renewal.
Tempered Pessimism
In his recent New York Times Maga-
zine article, "The Myth of Community
Development," Nicholas Lemann articu-
lated the ambivalence many Americans
feel toward community development
efforts. Interestingly, Lemann's pessi-
mism was tempered by his praise for
housing development, which he calls
the "spiritual center" of antipoverty
work because it is tangible. Bricks and
mortar are, at least for a time, monu-
ments to substantial public investment
in otherwise neglected communities.
The question Lemann failed to ad-
dress, however, was this: how long will
the buildings survive in neighborhoods
stripped of their social infrastructure,
where schools are hopelessly over-
crowded and dilapidated, streets are
unsafe and businesses have departed?
Many nonprofit developers believe
the housing we create needs to be more
than a mythical "catalyst" for a com-
munity's economic revival. Once the
ribbon-cutting ceremonies are over, our
buildings do not really lead to better
schools or more jobs. Indeed, many low
income communities are just as vehe-
ment as their middle class counterparts
in opposing new, government-financed
housing projects. Their NIMBY senti-
ment is driven by the recognition that
after years of substantial public invest-
ment in housing, neighborhoods are still
Cityview is a forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
in pretty bad shape.
Community groups have tried to ad-
dress neighborhood needs by creating
social service programs to fill the gaps.
But services alone fall short of the mark.
To generate economic growth, commu-
nities need direct investment in the
training and employment of residents.
To this end, unique programs are
cropping up around the city. One
example is the redevelopment of the
former Morrisania Hospital in the Bronx,
a collaborative effort of the Women's
Housing and Economic Development
Corporation (WHEDCO) and the
Institute for Urban Family Health. This
project will create apartments, a pri-
mary health care facility, a health careers
by acknowledging that investing in
people ensures the longevity of the build-
ings we construct.
Here are a few suggestions, none of
which require legislative action (or even
more money):
o Government housing officials
should broaden criteria for the use of
construction capital and reserve funds,
permitting their use for building and
outfitting rooms for social services,
training programs and incubators for
resident-run businesses. All are essential
elements in protecting their capital
investment.
o Funders should not restrict the use
of program space to building tenants.
This exacerbates NIMBY problems and
thwarts the integra-
tion of new residents
into neighborhoods.
o Finally, there
needs to be agree-
ment on the use of
investor equity gen-
erated through the
Low Income Housing
Tax Credit program.
Although space for
day care, employ-
il': ment and other pro-
~ grams cannot be
i5 counted when cal-
C>
a: culating a project's
~ eligibility for tax
~ credit dollars, IRS
training program, a
kitchen business in-
cubator and a day care
center. WHEDCO's
focus is on the crea-
tion of a support sys-
tem designed to meet
the needs of women
entering the work
force as well as jobs in
growth sectors of
the Bronx economy:
health care, child care
and food preparation.
Other groups are
focusing on youth, or
on employment in
maintenance, con-
struction and comput-
ers.
Mixed Message
Nancy Biberman is president of the
Women'. Housing and Economic
Development Corporation.
regulations place no
limits on how the
money is spent so
long as it contributes
The one thing we
all have in common,
and what stymies our progress, is the
mixed message we get from our govern-
ment funders. While agreeing with our
goals, they don't believe they must fund
anything other than housing. "Do what
needs to be done to stabilize your neigh-
borhood," we are told. "Just don't do it
with our money."
The problem is, capital deSignated
specifically for community economic
development has not been available for
a long time. Even the new Empower-
ment Zone legislation targets too few
communities to be widely useful. But it
is possible, within the parameters of
existing housing programs, to incorpo-
rate more broadly these important goals
to stable low income
housing. Local gov-
ernment agencies must decide that these
programs are essential to the project's
survival, and allow the investor equity
to be spent on them.
Creative Use
Just like the Field of Dreams, when
we build housing--even in the most
distressed urban neighborhoods-
people do come, as tenants, sharehold-
ers and homeowners. We need to ad-
dress the economic and social
conditions that can ultimately destroy
the housing we are building today. At
least some of the tools are at hand; all
that is needed is the will and the vision
to use them. 0
We help finance affordable
housing so a lot can be turned
into so much more.
Thanks to developers committed to afford-
able housing, thousands of low and moderate
income families have a place to call home.
A dinner table to gather around and talk about
their day - a room to tuck the kids in with a
bedtime story.
At Citibank, we're committed to helping
build better lives for more people. That's why
we created CitiBuilders,SM a lending program that's
been dedicated to helping rebuild the community
for over 20 years. CitiBuilders offers a variety of
financing options designed to work in conjunction
with govemment financing.
Our loans can help developers purchase,
construct or renovate low and moderate
income multi-family housing units. CitiBuilders
will help an empty lot reach it's full potential.
ill:ltI. ,t:DJ"li
For more information about financing starting
at $250,000, call 1-800-328-CITI, ext. 2212.
The CitiBuilders program is only offered
through the Citibank Economic Development
Banking Center.
~ 1993 Citibank, NA MemberFDIC
C j ~
28jOCfOBER 1994jCITY UMrrs
Build Them Up
Black Baltimore: A New Theory of
Community, by Harold A. McDougall,
Temple University Press, 1993, 244
pages, $35 hardcover.
W
ritten in a modest, unpreten-
tious fashion, it is easy to
underestimate the impor-
tance of Black Baltimore,
Harold A. McDougall's study of com-
munity organizing and community
building in the impoverished neighbor-
hoods of Old West Baltimore. But there
is something very profound about this
work. It is more than just a solidly re-
searched social and political history of
Baltimore's traditional African Ameri-
can enclaves, or a carefully documented
street-level report of the activities of
Baltimoreans United in Leadership
Development (BllLD) and similar
groups working to revitalize the city's
inner core.
Rather, McDougall presents us with
an original, trenchant and much needed
statement of how people seeking pro-
gressive social change can transcend
the limits oftoday's political approaches
and popular attitudes toward race, class,
ethnicity and gender, in order to build
the sort of "New Community" all of our
cities so desperately need.
As the author explains it, the book is
"a discussion of attempts by African
Americans in Baltimore (and their
European American allies) to renovate
the community networks of Old West
Baltimore: the vernacular techniques
for insuring that children are raised and
educated properly, the food distribu-
tion systems linking black farmers to
black city dwellers, the spiritual cohe-
sion of the black church and the infor-
mal associations of business owners and
professionals-all of which have been
undermined." This has become neces-
sary, he explains, because conventional
electoral politics has failed to improve
life at the grassroots despite the election
of Kurt Schmoke, a sympathetic African
American mayor.
Building Blocks
The key, McDougall writes, is com-
munity building at the grassroots level.
The building blocks are "base commu-
nities," a term derived from Latin Ameri-
can liberation theology. (McDougall also
reveals his indebtedness to the theory
and practice of organizing devised by
Saul Alinsky.) "Base communities are
small peer groups of perhaps a dozen or
two dozen people who share a similar
philosophy, life condition and social
objective" and can include a Bible study
group (which is how it all began in Latin
America), Afrocentric cultural activists
running a cooperative food store, a small
firm of civil rights lawyers, a group of
activist ministers, parents of sixth-
graders in an elementary school-and
any number of other communal enter-
prises. Participation in such peer groups,
McDougall suggests, makes people feel
more valuable and "they begin to ques-
tion why they have to live ... where people
are shooting and killing each other,
doing drugs, can't get a job, health care,
or a decent place to live."
The next step is to expand outward to
form networks of base communities in
an effort to develop the "New Commu-
nity," an interlocking set of peer groups
and alternative institutions that can
exist alongside the formal institutions
of government, business, education and
politics-so long as they preserve their
autonomy against the dangers of co-
optation.
BUILD is one such network, a con-
sortium consisting of 45 affiliated
churches as well as public housing
tenant groups and labor unions. A bi-
racial organization with 35,000 families
as its base, it survives largely through
the $5 yearly dues charged each adult
member. For McDougall, BUILD stands
at the intersection of church, state and
neighborhood.
The black church plays a central role
in his theory. With the decline of unions ,
schools and ethnic clubs and the exodus
of the middle class, the church is the
only remaining stronghold of organ-
izationallife as well as financial, educa-
tional and spiritual resources in many
urban African American communities.
The spiritual dimension is absolutely
essential in McDougall's view, provid-
ing the basis for treating others with
respect and kindness, rebuilding
damaged self-esteem, and countering
violent and antisocial behavior. This is
especially important for those who must
stay in the struggle over the long haul,
he writes, when rewards and successes
may be few and far between. When we
look at the impressive persistence of the
Nation of Islam in contrast to the tem-
pestuous history of the Black Panther
By Bob Blauner
party, we can see that "good politics"
without the addition of a disciplined
spirituality is not sufficient.
Justly Proud
McDougall does not sugarcoat the
problems of these declining urban neigh-
borhoods, but he certainly shows us
that low income African American
communities today are far from the
media image of urban jungle war zones
beset by drugs, crime and other path-
ologies. Quoting Harry Boyte, the author
notes that Baltimore can be "justly proud
of its reputation as a city of neighbor-
hoods." He does not venture to say how
much of a communal life based on ver-
nacular black culture remains in other
cities. While Baltimore may be special,
it seems to me not unique, since in other
cities community organizing and self-
help on a local basis have largely re-
placed the more centralized emphasis
of the civil rights movement.
In addition to Black Baltimore's many
other strengths, McDougall's mode of
research and writing makes him an ex-
emplar of a much needed model, that of
the scholar-activist. Experienced in com-
munity organizing himself (though at
present a law professor and director of
the Law and Public Policy Program at
Catholic University), we see him engag-
ing in dialogue with his protagonists,
offering his own experiences and theo-
ries of community to help sharpen their
work. Concerned always with empow-
erment and grassroots democracy, he
quotes neighborhood residents speak-
ing about their ideas and experiences at
great length, without the usual academic
interpretation or analysis.
This makes Black Baltimore refresh-
ingly free of jargon and excessive theo-
rizing, a down-to-earth study replete
with wisdom, and a book that can be
read profitably by those interested in
revitalizing American cities as well as
those concerned with the larger mean-
ings of community and democracy. 0
Bob B1auner is the author of Black
Lives, White Lives: Three Decades of
Race Relations in America.
Subscribe to City Limits!
Call (212) 925-9820
~ ...
~ ,
CHASE
Community
Development
. Corporation
The Chase Community Development
Corporation Finances Housing and
Economic Development Projects,
including:
New Construction
Rehabilitation
Special Needs Housing
Homeless Shelters
Home Mortgages
Small Business Loans
Loan Consortia
For information, call the
Community-Based Development Unit
(212) 552-9737
We Look Forward to Your Call!
3OjOcrOBER 1994jCITY UMITS
Speculative Criticism
Your recent editorial, "Wall Street
and Welfare" Oune/July), betrayed an
ignorance of our economic system and a
corrupt use oflanguage. A speculator is
not an investor. Check your dictionary.
Since your magazine is in favor of
community development, you must be
aware that small business investment is
a necessary ingredient of this develop-
ment. Under your definition of specula-
tor, you would have to include the man
or woman who decides to invest hard-
won dollars in a grocery store, medical
clinic, etc., hoping no doubt for profits
and, therefore, a better life. Distinguish
these "speculators" from people who
sink hard-won dollars into shares of
IBM, hoping for earnings and capital
appreciation. There's not much differ-
ence really; both are critical to a thriv-
ing economy. Capital is necessary to
create economic benefits. Labor too, of
course. In both cases we are talking
about equity which derived from labor.
Roland M. Peracca, Jr.
Manhattan
The editor replies: Webster's reads: "Invest
vb 1: to commit (money) in order to
earn a financial return."
"Speculate vb 2: to assume a busi-
ness risk in hope of gain; esp: to buy or
sell in expectation of profiting from
market fluctuations ."
How can anyone describe what
happens on Wall Street as anything
other than speculative investment?
Speculation is not inherently a bad
word. But that has little to do with the
editorial.
Our point was simple: Ifwe are going
to maintain an economic system where
the government finds it necessary to
raise interest rates whenever the value
of speculative investments on Wall
Street is threatened by declining unem-
ployment, we should admit that full
employment can never happen. That
means we must maintain a high quality
safety net and do a reality check before
kicking people off welfare and into the
streets.
Fair Comparisons
I just read Irwin Nesoff's column,
"The Profitization Vanguard" (August!
September), and was concerned that
you were unable to cite any meaningful
data.
Your statement regarding America
Works-that there are "nonprofits
providing similar services with compa-
rable or better success rates" in placing
and retaining welfare recipients in good
jobs-was undocumented. I challenge
you to show readers your data. Particu-
larly, I would like to know what kinds of
jobs the other organizations to which
you refer were finding for welfare
recipients. Also, what were the reten-
tion rates of those placements? This
measure should include retention of up
to a year, the standard by which America
Works is measured, and it should
include the cost per placement when
retention is factored in. You should
know better than to state claims without
the facts to back them up just to make
polemic statements against privati-
zation.
Peter Cove
Founder, America Works
Irwin Nesoff replies: I must admit I was
surprised by Peter Cove's sensitivity to
my brief mention of America Works.
But to do the comparison he demands
would unfairly favor his organization:
my very point was that America Works,
a for-profit company, is recelvmg
preferential treatment not afforded to
nonprofits. America Works was awarded
a no-bid contract of almost a half-
million dollars to render services to the
city under terms far more generous
than those granted to nonprofits
providing similar services.
The average America Works client
has been a welfare recipient for less
than two years and has previous work
experience-just the type of person who
would be likely to find work on his or
her own. If a nonprofit were able to
specialize in that segment of the popu-
lation, it would be accused of
"creaming." Instead, under city guide-
lines nonprofits must assist every client
who comes to their door, providing
placement and training services to
individuals without significant work
histories and who are long-term welfare
recipients. Of course, employers will
prefer candidates who have prior work
experience and shorter welfare histories.
America Works provides a one-week
orientation program before sending
clients job referrals. The clients are not
trained, and if they are late to even one
session, they are dropped from the
Your Neighborhood Housing
Insurance Specialist
~
NEWKRK
INCORPORAT E D
We have changed our name and have become more
computerized to offer you quicker and more efficient
service than ever before.
For nearly 20 years, R&F of New York, Inc. has provided
insurance to tenants and community groups. We have
developed extremely competitive insurance programs based
on a careful evaluation of the special needs of our customers.
Due to the volume of business we handle, we can often
couple these programs with low-cost financing, if required.
We have been a leader from the start and are dedicated to
the City of New York.
For information call:
Ingrid Kaminski, Senior Vice President
R&F of New York, Inc.
1 Wall Street Court, New York, NY lO005-3302
(212) 269-8080, FAX (212) 269-8112
(800) 635-6002
program. America Works, in essence,
functions as an employment agency.
Nonprofits, on the other hand, work
primarily with clients in need of job
training, remedial skills and orienta-
tion. Additionally, America Works is
reimbursed at a higher rate than most
non profits providing job placement for
the city could ever hope to be awarded.
I would like to note that the very
reason America Works was repeatedly
refused contracts with the Department
of Employment (DOE) under the previ-
ous administration, according to a source
close to the process, was its failure to
adhere to the requirements of the RFPs.
This included an unwillingness to pro-
vide adequate financial data-some-
thing that landed Cove in serious trouble
when he worked as a nonprofit service
provider in Boston. And don't forget,
there are nonprofits able to meet the
city's RFP criteria and provide services
competitive with America Works.
My point, which Mr. Cove conve-
nientlyignores, is that if the city is going
to consider for-profit organizations to
provide social services, those organiza-
tions should at least be expected to
compete on a level playing field. To
give groups like America Works and
others an unfair advantage simply be-
cause they make profits is an insult to
the fine work provided by New York
City's nonprofit organizations.
In Cuomo's Defense
A response to just some of Robert
Fitch's misrepresentations in "The
Cuomo Follies" (August/September) is
in order.
From 1983 to mid-1989, when the
national recession hit the Northeast
hard, a million new jobs were created in
New York State. Despite the loss of half
of these from 1989 to 1993, there was a
net gain of about 500,000 jobs. So much
for his assertion that "New York State
hasn't added any" jobs over the past 10
years.
Until 1992 , when it ceased issuing its
"Development Policy Index," the non-
profit Corporation for Enterprise Devel-
opment in Washington D.C. consistently
ranked New York's economic develop-
ment program among the best in the
country. It's not hard to see why: from
1986 to 1993, New York State's
programs were responsible for helping
Specializing in
Community Development Groups,
HDFCs and Non Profits.
Low Cost Insurance and Quality Service.
NANCY HARDY
Insurance Broker
Over 20 Years of Experience.
80 Business Park Drive, Armonk, NY 10504,
914,273,6591
32/OCTOBER 1994/CITY UMM
retain more than 265,000 jobs and creat-
ing nearly 74,000.
While Fitch may choose to deride
this accomplishment, he may want to
ask the "downsized" IBMers in Hudson
Valley whether or not it's appropriate
for the state to be attracting Cirrus Logic
of California to an enterprise with IBM
that could re-employ some 700 of them.
Or talk to the 4,100 Morgan Stanley
employees whose jobs were saved as a
result of state and city programs.
The redevelopment of 42nd Street is
underway, with Disney about to restore
ilie historic New Amsterdam Theater.
There are other prestigious bids on en-
tertainment, hotel and retail develop-
ment, and there's an agreement with a
consortium called Times Square Asso-
ciates to rehab the east end of the block
for interim development until the real
estate market rebounds. All this was
accomplished under Governor Cuomo.
More mysterious is why Fitch would
object to an exciting new 21st Century
city-within-a-city, Queens West, to be
built on what is now a wasteland at
Hunters Point. Or why he thinks it will
jeopardize 50,000 manufacturing jobs.
On the contrary, Queens West will gen-
erate 14,000 construction and 10,000
permanent jobs, will revitalize the com-
munity by increasing economic oppor-
tunity and will provide almost 20 acres
of new park space.
Queens West is exactly the kind of
development that the visionaries Fitch
admires accomplished in earlier times.
The newest migrants to our shores will
play the same kind of role earlier gen-
erations undertook. Contrary to Mr.
Fitch's misguided diatribe, it's Gover-
nor Cuomo who refuses to "passively
accept economic decline" and actively
works toward a productive future for
New York.
Vincent Tese
Director of Economic Development,
New York State
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
Urban Development Corporation.
Shared Credit
The Chase Community Development
Corporation has committed more than a
half-billion dollars over the last five
years to finance the development of
affordable housing and economic de-
velopment in low and moderate income
communities located in the New York
metropolitan area.
As with other construction lenders,
- ---
our ability to finance projects like the
one in "Financing a Dream" (August/
September) depends in part on perma-
nent mortgage insurance from the State
of New York Mortgage Agency and the
purchase of permanent mortgages by
the New York Employee Retirement
System. We want to recognize their par-
ticipation. It's been an important part of
our success.
Daniel Nissenbaum
Vice President
Chase Community Development
Corporation
JOB AD
TRAlIIIS COORDIIATOR. Not for profit
agency seeks confident, energetic and
committed Training Coordinator to
develop and implement programs for
managerial and administrative levels
of senior service programs. Excellent
oral and written communication skills.
WordPerfect Windows computerskills
needed. 3-5 years experience in work-
ing with programs involving the eld-
erly. Master's degree preferred. Send
resume: CSCS 545 8th Ave., 6th floor,
NYC, 10018.
THE NEW YORK WOMEN'S FOUNOmON is pleased to announce
its 1995 grants program. Over $500,000 will be awarded in
grants of up to $30,000 to grassroots, neighborhood-based,
women-led non-profit organizations that serve low-income
women and girls in New York City. Areas of focus include
housing, employment, safety, domestic violence, education,
child care, health care and HIV/AIDS. To learn how to
apply for a grant, telephone The Foundation at (212) 226-
2220. Proposals must be received in The Foundation's
office no later than Friday, November 4, 1994,5:00 P.M.
THE NEW YORK WOMEN'S FOUNDATION
120 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
RESG provides non-profits and managing agents with
low cost consulting regarding aU DHCR matters. RESG
specializes in analyzing and filing rent registration forms
for current and missing past years.
CaD (718) 892-5996
For information and a FREE
building evaluation
SPECIALIZING IN REAL ESTATE
J-s1 Tax Abatement/Exemption 421A and 421B
Applications SOl (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
Bronx, N.Y. New York, N.Y.
(718) 585-3187 (212) 682-8981
LAWRENCE H. McGAUGHEY
Attorney at Law
Meeting the challenges of affordable housing for 20 years.
Providing legal services in the areas of General Real Estate,
Business, Trust & Estates, and Elder Law.
217 Broadway, Suite 610
New York, NY 10007
(212) 513-0981
William Jacobs
Cl'rtillnll'lIbll, .\""l1IlLlIlt
Over 215 years experience specializing In nonprofit houalng
HDFC., Neighborhood PreHrvlltlon Corporation.
Certified Annual Audit., Compilation and Review Service.,
Management Advisory Services, Tex Con.ultatlon end Preparation
t:.II Todar Per A ".. ConeuIfaflon
77 Oueker Ridge Roed, Suite 215
New Rochelle, N.Y. 10804
914-633-50915 Fex 914-4S33-t5097
CITY UMlTS/OcrOBER 1994/33
1'1.lIlllill:.! .IIHI \I"<illl"1111"<' lor lil,' '\oll - I'rolil (olllllllillil\
Specializing in
Feasibility Studies, Zoning Analysis & Design of
Housing, Health Care and Educational Projects
Magnus Magnusson, AlA
MAGNUSSON. ARCIDTECTS
10 East 40th Street, 39th Floor, New York, NY 10016
Facsimile 212 481 3768 Telephone 212 683 5977
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Cooperative conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards of directors
100 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, (718) 624-6850
a project of the l.awyers Alliance for New York, a nonprofit organization
Real Estate, Corporate and Tax Legal Representation to Organizations
Tax Syndications Mutual Housing Associations
Homeless Housing Economic Development
HDFCs Not-for-profit corporations
Community Development Credit Unions and Loan Funds
99 Hudson Street, 14th Fir., NYC, 10013 (212) 219-1800
David H. Grumer
Certified Public Accountant
271 Madison Avenue, Suite 908, New York, New York 10016
(212) 354 1770
Financial Audits Compilation and Review Services
Management Advisory Consulting
Tax Return Preparation & Advice
Over a decade of service to community and nonprofit organizations.
COMPUTER SERVICES
Hardware Sales:
mM Compatible Computers
Super VGA Monitors
Okidata Laser Printers
Okidata Dot Matrix Printers
Software Sales:
Data Base
Accounting
UtilitieslNetwork
Word Processing
Services: NetworkIHardware/Software Installation,
Training, Custom Software, Hand Holding
Clients Include: ANHD, MHANY, NHS, UHAB
Morris Kornbluth 718-857-9157
EXECUTM DIRECTOR to start up and operate a nonprofit national model program to
provide one-stop technical assistance and capital access to small businesses in
SE Queens. Minimum of 10 years' management and small business lending
experience. Salary: $SOK range. One Stop Capital Shop. 90-26161 Street, Jamaica,
NewYor1<, 11432
FUlDRIISEIlIDEVELOPIIEIT POSmOl. Fundraiser to assist senior management in
fundraising and grants management for $2 million organization. Experience not
required. Candidates must write crisply and be well-organized; comfortable with
numbers; able to wor1< collegially with diverse people; interested in welfare-to-wor1<
or community health issues. Organization financially stable; well-respected in New
Yor1< and national fundraising communities. Position designed to encourage signifi-
cant growth in responsibilities and salary. Experienced fundraisers within top
management will act as mentors. Ideal for development as key staff member within
innovative, community-based organization. Responsibilities: Research, writing,
grant management. Salary based on organizational experience; health benefits,
personal days, vacation. Send resume and writing sample to: Peggy Powell ,
Executive Director, Home Care Associates Training Institute, 349 East 149th Street,
Bronx, NY 10451. People of color encouraged to apply.
YOUT1I OR8AIIZERIASSISTAIfI' DIRECTOR. Action for Community Empowennent, a
community based social justice organization committed to women's leadership,
seeks qualified applicant with experience in community organizing. Should possess
some managerial skills and be proficient in writing. Must be willing to make 3 year
commitment, minimum. Salary $22-26K based on experience. Women of color
encouraged to apply. Send resume to: Dir. Rima McCoy, ACE, 126 West 119th St.,
NYC, 10026.
TEIIAIT AID ~ I T Y 0II8AIIZEII. Los Sures is seeking a VISTA Volunteer who will
wor1< as a tenant and community organizer in our Housing Resources Unit: His/Her
duties will be as follows: In the course of assisting tenants to improve their housing
conditions, the wor1<er will : fonn active tenant associations; attend regular tenant
association meetings; help tenants understand their rights and responsibilities;
assist in making repair lists; accompany tenants to Housing Court if appropriate;
counsel with individual problems (rent issues, public benefits, referrals) . On a
neighborhood-wide basis, the VISTA will wor1< with community associations on
issues of concem, such as crime and fire prevention. He/she will assist organizers
wor1<ing with anti-arson youth group Southside Smokebusters." The VISTA will be
required to wor1< 40 hours per week, including some evenings on a regular basis. The
tenn of service is one year. Some college as well as bi-lingual in Spanish is preferred.
He/she will receive a living allowance of $700 per month (paid bi-weekly) and a
stipend of $90 per month (payable at the end of service). Medical benefits are also
covered. Interested candidates should contact Los Sures (718) 387-3600 at 213
South 4th St. , Brooklyn, NY, 11211 for an application.
URIAI ~ SPECIALIST. Responsibilities: Counsel residents (tenants and own-
ers) regarding housing rights and responsibilities and housing stabilization re-
sources and advocate for code compliance. Provide technical assistance to tenant
and block associations in order to increase organizational development and
effectiveness. Plan, publicize and conduct wor1<shops. Research housing issues
and develop-articles for publication in BNIA's newsletter. Provide leadership training
and provide assistance in strategiC planning. Requirements: The candidate must
have a demonstrated commitment to empowennent and self-help and be available
to wor1< evenings. A bachelor's degree and a minimum of one year's experience in
housing, community organizing, social services. urban planning or related field, or
high school graduation and 5 years' experience as described above. satisfactory
equivalent combination of education and experience is also required. Central
Brooklyn resident preferred. Send resume to: Brooklyn Neighborhood Improvement
Association, 648 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NewYor1< 11238 Attention: Andrea
Britton, Exec. Assistant.
SElIOR DEVB.OPIIEIT ASSOCIAH. Prep for Prep is a highly successful and growing
educational not-for-profit organization that identifies gifted Black. Latino and Asian-
American students and prepares them for placement in academically demanding
independent schools with the long-tenn goal of developing a future generation of
leaders. The Senior Development Associate will wor1< closely with the Director of
Development to maintain contact with key donors, organize corporate breakfasts
and cocktail parties, manage end-of-year appeals and assist with annual events,
draft new proposals, and research individual prospects. To qualify, you must be an
outstanding writer with meticulous attention to detail and have 3-5 year development
or mar1<eting experience. Send resume w/salary history and 3 writing samples to V.
Alippe, Director of Operations, Prep for Prep, 163 West 91st Street, NYC 10024.
HOUSII6 DEVELOPIIEIT SPECWJST. Nonprofit housing developer seeks specialist
with a minimum of three years' related experience. This position will be responsible
for managing the development of low income and special needs housing. The ideal
candidate will have experience in feasibility analysis, pro-fonnas, fund raising, and
in wor1<ing with public and private financing sources in New Yor1< City. Strong writing,
computer literacy and quantitative skills are essential. Bilingual Spanish/English
preferred. Salary: low $30,OOO's commensurate with experience. Send cover letter
and resume to: Progress of Peoples Development Corporation, an affiliate of
Brooklyn Catholic Charities, 191 Joralemon Street, 2nd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
JOB ADS
Job Openings
The Community Food Resource Center has openings for new staff with
our Center Housing Assistance Teams (CHAT) Project, to work on site at
HRA Income Support Centers stopping evictions and preventing
homelessness. CHAT staff work with landlords, Housing Court,
govemment and social service agencies to resolve issues placing poor
families at risk of homelessness.
SITE-SUPERVISORS
Responsibilities: Site Supervision of staff, Senior case management
responsibilities, and monthly reporting. Qualifications: Knowledge of
income support and hOUSing benefits, and procedures for eviction
prevention. Minimum of two years direct experience in housing or welfare
advocacy, tenant rights, or eviction prevention services. Good verbal and
organizational skills, as well as basic knowledge of computers.
Supervisory experience a plus. Salary: 529.000
CASE MANAGERS
ResPOnslbllitlesj Client intake, evaluation of family housing crises,
assessment of Income and benefit status, implementation of plan to
prevent evictions, maintain client case records. Qual!flcationsj
Familiarity with Income support and housing benefits. Direct experience
In housing or welfare advocacy, tenant rights, or eviction prevention
services desired. Good verbal and organizational skills. Ability to leam
basic computer programs. Salaryj 526.000
SOCiAl SERVICES CASE SPECiAliST
Responsibilities: Evaluate non-hOUSing related risks of homelessness,
assist clients to access social services needed to resolve problems,
including: substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness, "CWA"
related issues, etc. Quallficetlons' At least three years direct experience
in social service case management. Strong interpersonal and counseling
skills. Familiarity with computer word processing. BSW or MSW
encouraged but not required, all candidates with relevant work experience
should apply. Salary: 532.000
SITE OFFICE ASSISTANT
Responsibilities: Assist with scheduling intake interviews and
appointments, prepare mailings, answer phone, file cases, prepare and
send faxes, follow up on check issuances, and overall office management
duties at CHAT site. Provide back up for client services as needed.
Quallflcatlonsj Good organization and communication skills. Familiarity
with computers. Interest in and/or background with public benefits.
Salaryj 520.000
PROJECT ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
ResponslbllWesj Computer data entry, assistance with reporting
requirements, filing, ordering and distribution of supplies and materials to
sites. Back up to all Site Office Assistants. Maintain central office files,
research and fax materials as needed to sites. Quallflcatlonsj Good
organization and communication skills. Familiarity with computer data
base and word processing. Preference given to applicant with an interest
in and/or background with social Issues and public benefits. ~
IZ2.QOQ
CFRC strongly encourages applications from people of color, women and bilingual people.
Anticipated Start Date: December 94 - January 95
Send Resumes and Cover Letters to: CHAT - CFRC, 90 Washington Street - 27th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10006
LET US DO A FREE EVALUATION
OF YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS
We have been providing low-cost insurance programs and
quality service for HDFCs, TENANTS, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
and other NONPROFIT organizations for over 75 years.
We Offer:
SPECIAL BUILDING PACKAGES
FIRE UABIUTY BONDS
DIRECTORS' & OFFICERS' UABIUTY
GROUP UFE & HEALTH
'7ailored Payment Plans"
PSFS,lNc.
146 West 29th Street, 12th Hoor, New York, NY 10001
(212) 279-8300 FAX 714-2161 Ask for: Bala Ramanathan
efI'Y UMRS/ocrOBER 1994/31
1994 Affordable
Housing Conference
and
Annual Meeting
of the
Neighborhood Preservation Coalition
of NewYork State, Inc.
October 16-17-18, 1994
Hudson River Inn &Conference Center
Ossining, New York
Topics Include:
Dealing With Lead-Based Paint Hazards; The Power Of Youth;
Childcare Services; Grassroots Fundraising; Homeownership; How
.DHCR Selects Projects; Confronting The Housing Management Problem;
NPCs and Rent Regulation; Coordinating Housing Programs of Various
State Agencies; Getting Low-Income Tax Credits; HUD Programs; NBAs;
Homeownership For Persons With Disabilities.
Guest Speakers
State Housing Director Donald Halperin
Assembly Housing Cmte. Chair Vito Lopez
Senate Housing Cmte. Chair Kemp Hannon
Special Events
The Music of Jane Sapp
ALMA y VIDA (Soul &Life)
Photo Display Gallery
The Affordable Housing Conference brings together community-based groups from urban
areas throughout the state. Join us as we network, attend up-to-date workshops on critical
issues and new programs and strategize on state legislative priorities.
For Information Call (518) 432-6757

City Limits Magazine, October 1994 Issue

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

City Limits Magazine, October 1994 Issue

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

--_ . --_----------_. _. _-- -. .

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi