City Limits Magazine, June/July Issue 1993

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June/July 1993 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine $2.50

C O M M U N I T Y M A N A G E M E N T R E T U R N S DM I DW I F E M I R A C L E
H O U S I N G O R I N DU S T R Y I N T H E B R O N X ?
T h e T r o u b l e w i t h D a y C a r e
Pagan's A ssault on C ooper S quare
eity Limits
Volume XVID Number 6
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2/JUNE/JULY 1993/CITY UMITS
Truth and Consequences
F
ifteen years ago this month, City Limits reported on an agreement
between the young administration of Mayor Edward Koch and a
number of tenant and community groups representing the residents
of city-owned buildings. The agreement was the genesis of the
Tenant Interim Lease (TIL) program that exists to this day, giving tenants
the resources to manage and eventually own their buildings.
The coalition of community advocates that pushed for the plan was
called the In Rem Task Force, now known as The Task Force on City-
Owned Housing. Charles Raymond, one of the city officials who helped
to create the TIL program, is today directing the city's efforts to establish
a new agency for the homeless.
All of this is relevant now because, two weeks ago, the task force
released a new report called "Housing in the Balance: Seeking a Compre-
hensive Policy for City-Owned Housing." To ignore its message about the
city's increasing shortage of affordable housing is to blithely accept that
we will forever need an agency like the one Raymond is creating.
The task force report examines how the city's policy ofre-privatizing
housing acquired by the city from tax-delinquent landlords is exacer-
bating rather than solving the housing crisis. The Dinkins administration,
by speeding up the sale of hundreds of occupied city-owned buildings,
says it is getting the properties back on the tax rolls and off the backs of
the taxpayers. Yet the report shows that a large percentage of tenants in
these buildings are the poorest of the working poor-people who earn too
much to qualify for government rent subsidies but not enough to afford
the rents that can support the buildings as private, taxpaying entities .
As a result, when the buildings are sold, these people may be forced out
to make room for tenants who have rent subsidies, or who earn more
money. It's already happening. A survey by the task force reveals this
trend in dozens of formerly city-owned buildings in the Bronx.
Where do these people go? There are few options, other than doubling
up with friends or families. And that's a common route to the homeless
shelters. To put these buildings back on the tax rolls, then, is to increase
commensurately the rolls of the homeless.
Instead, the task force recommends removing the formerly city-owned
buildings from any and all tax obligations, as well as water and sewer
charges. The task force's proposal would bring long-term savings to the
city and help guarantee a large stock of affordable housing that is
desperately needed. It would reverse the current cost spiral for the
buildings that is the direct result of increasing city charges, and would
likely relieve some of the burden on the homeless shelters and social
service agencies.
The mayor needs to look beyond his current budget problems and take
note of the consequences of his sell-off plan. This report is a good place
to start.
Fora copy of the taskforce report, call the Consumer-Farmer Foundation
at (212) 431-9700.
* * *
Correction: Last month's cover story, "Drugs and the Dream," incor-
rectly identified East New York's City Councilmember. Her name is
Priscilla A. Wooten. 0
Cover Photograph of Maribel Torres and her children by Ana Asian.
FEATURE
On the Edge of Chaos
The city's subsidized family day care program for low
income families suffered a severe blow when new
regulations went into effect last year. 16
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial
Truth and Consequences .... .. .. .. ...... .. ...... .. .... .. ...... .. . 2
Briefs
La Marqueta Revisited ......................................... .. .. 4
True Conversion .......... .. ... .. ..... ..... ......................... .. 4
Fair Share Lawsuit Dismissed ...... ........................... 5
Credit Overdue ........... ... ... .... .... ........ .. ................. ..... 5
Profile
Born Healthy .... ...... ......... ....... ....... .... ..... .. .... ....... ..... 6
Pipelines
Strange Brew in Cooper Square .... .......... .. .............. 9
On the Rebound ........ .. .......... ...... ........ .... .......... .... . 12
Repeat Performance .. .......... .. .......... .. .. ...... ..... ...... .. 21
Making the Right Move ........ .. ...................... .. .... .. . 24
City View
Confronting Family Violence ................................ 26
Review
Indecent Proposal .. ....... .... .. .... .......... .. ....... ... ........ . 28
Letters .. .............. ..... ..... .... ... ..... ..... ... ......... ..... ..... ....... 29
Job Ads .... ... .. .... .......... ... ........... ........... .... ............... .... 31
Cooper Square/Page 9
Chaos/Page 16
r - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~
Repeat/Page 24
CITY UMITS/JUNE/JUL Y 1993/3
LA MARQUETA
REVISITED
Political poker is once again
the order of the day in East
Harlem, where the saga of La
Marqueta, the 1930s-vintage
peddlers' market beneath the
Park Avenue viaduct between
111 th and 117th streets,
continues. The market has been
targeted for redevelopment for
more than a decade, but little
work has been done.
last year, the city's Economic
Development Corporation (EDC)
removed the developer,
Constellation Marketplace, that
had been leasing the property
since the mid- 1980s. Though
the firm had proven incapable
of financing the renovations it
had promiSed, it remained in
control of the site for years,
critics charge, because of
support from political figures
with ties to the Koch and Dinkins
administrations.
Since taking control of the
property, the EDC has spent
$500,000 repairing one of the
five decaying market buildings,
which houses about 1A small
vendors of meats, groceries and
dry goods. The agency is also
searching for a new develop-
ment team that will include
contractors bosed in East
Harlem, according to Angela
Hendrix Terry, an EDC vice
president.
"I'm happy to say it is
progressing," says Michele
Clarke, constituent liaison for
Council member Adam Clayton
Powell IV. "Things have stopped
it in the past but we're going to
surpass that this time."
But there's still no guarantee
of that, mainly because of a
persistent political split in the
community between groups
loyal to state Assemblyman
Angelo Del Toro, a longtime
power broker, and
reformers allied with Powell.
The reformers fear that the
Del Toros will attempt to take
control of La Marqueta through
government contracts. One Del
Toro-affiliated organization that
has already done a govern-
ment-funded study on the
project is the Hispanic Housing
and Economic Development
Task Force (HHEDTF), headed at
the time by the assemblyman's
brother, William Del Toro.
HHEDTF's reputation is less
than perfect. The organization
had state contracts totalling
$765,000 to develop low
income housing in the neighbor-
hood between 1989 and 1991,
yet failed to produce any
apartments. The organization's
current director, Anibol Solivan,
spearheaded an effort in 1992
by groups connected with the
Del Toros to win control of
nearlt half a million dollars in
state funding for a multiservice
drop-in and referral center, but
the attempt failed after protests
were raised by community
residents and leaders of other
agencies (see City Limits, March
1992).
Now, two local leaders who
attended a meeting with
Assemblyman Del Toro on April
lAth are
reporting that the legislator said
he would not make an effort to
get state funding for La Marque-
ta unless "monies came directly
through his office." Both
requested anonymity for fear of
retribution.
Assemblyman Del Toro
denies the charge. ''That's
absolutely wrong," he says.
''What I'm saying is I'd like to
see some Hispanic firm
involved. We have many LDCs
in the community. As long as
one of them is involved I will
give it my support."
In fact, that requirement is
written into the request for
qualifications issued by the city.
But Del Toro says he is still
opposed to the approach he
thinks the EDC is taking. "1
believe it's a disaster. They are
trying to recreate the old
In my opinion the old
market of peddlers and latin
vegetable merchants is not
going to work." He argues that
he wants to see "the creation of
a real shopping mall that would
create at least 300 new jobs."
Eddie Baca, chair of the
economic development commit-
tee for the local communi!y
board, and Jose Colon of the
local Development Corporation
del Barrio disagree with the
assemblyman. They are
supporting a renovation that
would preserve the small
vendors, bring in new small
businesses run by people who
can't afford expensive commer-
cial space on Third Avenue and
116th Street, and develop a
cultural and entertainment
center, possibly anchored by a
large cinema chain, that would
attract foot traffic. They say the
elimination of very small and
new businesses from the project
would undermine its main
purpose-to foster local
ownership and high quality,
management-level jobs.
Colon says that those who
envision a much more far-
reaching development project
have their own interests in mind.
"1 think it's no question that La
Marqueta is being looked at as
a profit-making venture for
some people in this community,
as opposed to a vehicle of
empowerment for all the
residents of this community," he
says. 0 Andrew White
TRUE CONVERSION
A group of neighborhood
organizations has put forward a
visionary prof?Qsal that would
convert one of the most notor-
ious venues at the center of the
homeless crisis into a giant
housing development and
community resource center.
The Fort Washington
Armory, where during the
1980s as many as 1,400
homeless men slept each night
in seemingly endless rows ot
metal cots, is the proposed site
for a project conceived by the
Committee for the Heights-
Inwood Homeless (CHIH) that
includes a 275-apartment high
rise, a day care and community
center, retail space and facilities
for a local sports foundation.
CHIH has developed and man-
aged several smaller residences
for formerly homeless men and
women in recent years.
''We' re working on it being
the centerpiece of the communi-
ty," says Ellen Baxter, director of
CHIH. According to Baxter, the
redevelopment plan is support-
ed by over AO local organiza-
tions.
the hulking
250,000 square foot armory
located at 168th Street and
Broadway in Washington
Heights is a city-run shelter that
provides beds for 200 homeless
men.
Under the CHIH plan, the
apartment building would
provide housing fOr low and
moderate income families and
individuals who are either
homeless or live in overcrowded
situations.
''Washington Heights is a
neighborhoOd where there is
severe overcrowding. There are
not too many abondoned
buildings or spaces to work
with," Baxter says, adding that
the armory represents the best
and largest resource left in the
neighbOrhood. ''We have made
it our business to band together
and make sure it is used," she
says.
Converting the armory will
be no small undertaking. Baxter
estimates it could be two years
before construction could begin.
In addition, the project will
require the coordination of a
variety of city agencies,
including a commitment from
the city Department of Housing
Preservation and Development
to provide the $38 million low
interest loan necessary to cover
construction and renovation
costs. CHIH will also need the
cooperation of the city Human
Resources Administration and
the Mayor's Office for Homeless
Services in order to relocate the
200 people currently being
sheltered there, and an
agreement from the state to
relinquish rights to the building.
Not everyone in the commu-
nity is 100 percent behind the
endeavor, however. Members of
Community Board 12, which
meets across the street at the
Psychiatric Institute affiliated
with Columbia Presbyterian
Hospital, have expressed
concerns about the height and
density of the proposed 25-story
tower that would be built atop
the existing structure.
And Edith Kamiat of the
Metropolitan Council on
Housing says her organization
generally supports fue project,
but she and other Met Council
members have reservations
about the proposed density and
the fact that the tower would be
"overwhelming to those across
the street in four-Roor walkups."
Julie Cubliette, executive
director of the Inwood Senior
Center, says that her group was
initially concerned that the
proposed facility would be
overburdened with homeless
people suffering from mental
illness. But because the plan
calls for the provision of a wide
variety of social services, her
group has come around. 'We
figure if it will be homes for
fcimilies, with all kinds of
support and services," Cubliette
says, "how bad could it be?" 0
Beth Greenfield
FAIR SHARE
LAWSUIT DISMISSED
A lawsuit seeking ta shut
down a 97-unit single room
occupancy (SRO) residence for
formerly homeless men and
women on the Upper West Side
was dismissed last month by the
New York State Court of
Appeals. The move was hailed
as a victary for social service
groups battling neighborhood
residents around the city for the
right to develop supported
housing for the mentally ill and
people with AIDS.
The SRO residence at 305
West 97th Street is run by the
Volunteers of America (VOA)
and provides a variety of on-site
social services to its residents,
half of whom suffer from mental
illness or are HIV-pasitive.
The lawsuit was filed in
1991 by the West 97th-98th
Street Block Association when
VOA announced its plans for
the building, which the organ-
ization purchased in May,
1989, and renovated with a
$5.2 million loon from the city's
Department of Housing
Preservation and Development.
The block association claimed in
the suit that VOA failed to
comply with the city charter's
fair share rules, which are
meant to ensure that no one
neighborhood becomes
overburdened with city facilities,
The suit also claimed that the
organization failed to prepare
an environmental impact
statement and violated the city's
Uniform land Use Review
Procedure by not adequately
informing local residents of
VOA' s plans at the time they
bought the facility in 1989.
But a panel of Appellate
Court judges, in a unanimous
ruling, said the fair share rules
"apply only when the City
locates a new facility, signifi-
Unuppy BiI1IIday: Twenty years after the creation of New York's housing
court, the institution has proven incapable of protecting tenants from
unsafe building conditions and unwarranted evictions, say activists
from The City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court. The organization
recently held a demonstration at Manhattan housing court.
expands, closes or
reduces the size or
capacity fOr service delivery of
existing facilities." None of
these conditions applied in this
case, the judges ruled, because
VOA is a private organization.
They added that the concerns
abOut the land use regulations
amounted to "no more than a
quibble."
Jeff Marston, New York
director of housing for VOA,
soys the decision is important
for nonprofit groups because
finding sites fOr housing home-
less men and women with AIDS
or mental illnesses is already a
difficult process. nrhis leaves
[non profits] with an easier
mission in terms of finding a
site and dealing with a commu-
nity .... If we had lost, it would
have added significant cost,
time and expense to the
process."
Besides, he argues, the
residence is a far better place
now than before the group
bought it.
"It was a disaster, a wide-
open, severely dilapidated
SRO," he recalls. "It was in such
bad shape that the city went to
court and got an order to
vacate," Now the building has a
24-hour desk attendant at the
door and six full-time staff.
Miriam Febus, president of
the block association that filed
the suit, declined to comment on
the court's decision, except to
say that she was disappointed.
o Jill Kirschenbaum
CREDIT OVERDUE
In an effort to boost home
ownership in low and moderate
income communities, a coalition
of banks has contracted with
eleven nonprofit organizations
to provide free mortgage-
related counseling to residents
of New York City, Westchester
County and Long Island.
The organizations will
provide free counseling to
potential home buyers on all
aspects of obtaining a mort-
gage, from improving a
credit history to budgeting for
monthly payments after a
mortgage is obtained and
saving for a down payment,
says Michael Ringwood of the
New York Urban Coalition,
which administers the program.
People who receive these
services will be eligible to get
mortgages after putting as lime
as five percent down-half the
standard down payment.
Families making less than
$60,500 a year will be eligible
for the program. The prolect is
targeting a wide range ot
neighborhoods, incluCling
Harlem, Chinatown, South
Brooklyn and the North Central
Bronx.
The partnership of 11 banks
and 1 2 nonprofit organizations
is known as the New York
Mortgage Coalition. The
nonprofit groups are each
receiving $50,000 or more to
run the program, according to
Phyllis Rosenblum of RepUblic
Bank of New York, who chairs
the coalition. The total cost to
the banks for a year is approxi-
mately $1 million, she says.
'We purposely made the grants
large sa that these organiza-
tions could hire at least one full-
time person and support staff to
work on this project," she says.
The nonprofit groups have
been given one-year contracts,
with a possibility of a two-year
renewal after a year. The goal
in the first year is to provide
counseling to 1 ,000 people.
"People will feel more
comfortable dealing with us
than a bank," says Christopher
Kui, executive director of Asian
Americans for Equality, one of
the non profits in the coalition.
"Our role will be of an advocate
for the home buyer."
Kenneth E. Cooke, who
heads the program for North-
east Brooklyn Housing Develop-
ment in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
says he intends to do extensive
outreach through churches,
tenant associations, and other
community groups.
"This program is definitely
needed," he says. "It will
encourage more home owner-
ship and therefore give people
a sense of value in their
community."
For more information about
the coalition, call Michael
Ringwood at (212) 219-4640.
o Steve Mitra
CITY UMITS/JUNE/JULY 1993/5
By Alexia Lewnes
Born Healthy
Nurse-midwives are providing quality care
for a community in crisis.
O
ne week after delivering a
healthy eight-pound baby girl,
20-year-old Cathy Hubbard has
nothing but praise for her mid-
wife. "I was in great hands," she says.
"I wasn't scared at all because she told
me what to expect through every step
of the labor .... She held my hand,
stayed in the room with me the whole
time and made me feel relaxed."
Hubbard says she is going to tell all of
her friends to use mid-
wives when they give
birth.
The practice of mid-
wifery is undergoing a
renaissance in the United
States. But midwives are
doing more than just
delivering babies. In the
Bronx, they are dramati-
cally improving health
care for a community in
crisis.
Nearly 30 certified
nurse-midwives provide
obstetrical care at North
Central Bronx Hospital
(NCBH), managing nor-
mal deliveries indepen-
dently and collaborating
cent of the labors were induced and
12.8 percent of the women received
cesarean sections, about half the
national average. "North Central
Bronx is proof that midwives are pro-
viding excellent obstetrical care," says
Doris Haire, president of the Ameri-
can Foundation for Maternal and Child
Health. .
Such a remark would seem disin-
genuous, coming as it does on the
Striking Contrast
In an era in which the medical
profession as a whole has come under
fire for its diagnoses and treatment of
female patients-a recent study by
the Rand Corporation revealed that
41 percent of the hysterectomies per-
formed by health maintenance orga-
nizations are unneeded or question-
able-NCBH's program stands in
striking contrast.
Midwife Maria Corsaro met Janice
R. for the first time in the obstetrical
triage area. Janice was pregnant, re-
cei ving no prenatal care and had been
smoking crack. Confiding in Corsaro,
the young woman made it clear that
she felt very bad about her drug use
but said that it helped her to deal with
her problems, including
her mother's recent
death. "You have to have
compassion and look at
the whole story," says
Corsaro, who listened to
Janice's pain and ex-
plained how important
it was for her to come in
for prenatal care.
One week later, Janice
walked through Maria's
door during clinic hours.
"Do you remember me?"
she asked, smiling. "I
stopped doing drugs."
with physicians for com-
plicated pregnancies. In
Gentle Touch: The rate of cesarean sections atNorth Central Bronx Hospital last
year was half the national average, thanks to the nurse-midwives program.
"It sounds unbeliev-
able, but I think it hap-
pened because I wasn't
judgmental and angry,"
says Corsaro. "She felt
some kind of connection
that night that made her 1992 alone, certified
nurse-midwives conducted or at-
tended 85 percent of the nearly 3,500
deliveries at NCBH.
Almost all of the women who
deliver at NCBH are considered "at
risk" for potential complications
during childbirth due to adverse med-
ical or socio-economic conditions.
Most were raised in poverty-stricken
neighborhoods such as Morrisania,
Mott Haven and East Tremont, where
decrepit housing, unemployment,
drug addiction, child abuse and
neglect are common. A number of
health problems also plague their
communities. including high rates of
asthma, diabetes and hypertension.
And an increasing percentage of Bronx
women are infected with tuberculosis,
hepatitis, syphilis and HIV.
Even so, last year just 9.1 percent of
NCBH infants were admitted to the
intensive care nursery, only 6.4 per-
heels of a scathing report on NCBH
released last month by the New York
State Department of Health (DOH),
which revealed stunning instances of
mismanagement, poor care and an
institution generally in chaos. The
midwifery program at NCBH,
however, was not mentioned in the
report.
According to Nancy Cuddihy,
director of the DOH Perinatal Health
Unit, NCBH is considered such a good
perinatal care provider that the
hospital gets a higher rate of reimburse-
ment through Medicaid. The midwife
program also passed its last peer
review by the American College of
Nurse-Midwives in 1991, according
to Patricia Burkhardt, New York
chairperson of the organization's
downstate chapter. "It's an inter-
nationally renowned and respected
program." Burkhardt states.
want to come back."
In the Bronx in 1991,13 babies out
of 1,000 did not live longer than a
year, and in some districts, as many as
16 babies in a thousand died, nearly
double the national rate. The United
States' infant mortality rate is higher
than 21 other developed countries.
Much of the damage that claims so
many lives begins in the womb, since
mothers without access to prenatal
care or who are unaware of its impor-
tance often smoke, drink, use drugs
and let intrauterine infections go
untreated during pregnancy. Conse-
quently some infants weigh as little as
one or two pounds at birth. A woman
without any prenatal care is 150 times
more likely to give birth to a child
who will die during infancy than a
woman who makes regular office visits
throughout her pregnancy. Accord-
ing to the DOH Perinatal Health Unit,
only 21.9 percent of women on Medi-
caid in New York City in 1990 received
prenatal care in their first trimester of
pregnancy. A majority waited four to
six months before getting prenatal care,
while 31.6 percent waited until they
were in their third trimester. The
importance of prenatal visits should
not be underestimated: studies show
that only three prenatal care visits
will decrease the chances of infant
mortality by two-thirds.
Trusting Environment
While most of the patients at NCBH
come for their first prenatal care visit
during their second trimester, the mid-
wives' highly personalized approach
creates a trusting environment that
encourages women to come for regular
appointments. Each new p a ~ i e n t is
assigned a midwife who cares for her
throughout her pregnancy, during
labor and delivery and afterward for
postpartum care and family planning.
If a medical condition requires a
physician, the physician manages the
complications and the midwife
manages the pregnancy and the
mother's primary care. "In all cases
the midwives provide continuity of
care and follow the mother through-
out her pregnancy," says Charlotte
Elsberry, director of NCBH's Mid-
wifery Service.
Assuming their customary roles as
medical practitioner, psychologist,
social worker and friend, many of the
midwives use their first names with
their patients, don't wear lab coats
and strongly encourage the women to
call them at the clinic if there are any
problems. Besides monitoring changes
in the fetus's growth and listening to
concerns the patient may have, much
of the prenatal visits with the midwife
is spent educating the expectant
mother and preparing her for the dif-
ferent stages of pregnancy and deliv-
ery. "The most important thing we do
is empower women," says Luisette
Cuebas, a NCBH midwife. "We don't
want them to become emotionally
dependent on us. We want them to
know that we're not in control, they
are. We're there for guidance, and to
help these women feel that they are
responsible for themselves."
Cathy Hubbard, a nurse's aide, was
skeptical when she first heard she
would be seeing a midwife at NCBH.
She now says she learned a great deal
about her pregnancy from her mid-
wife that she wouldn't have been told
by a doctor. "Doctors are too profes-
sional and busy. They don't take time
to talk to you and explain things like
the midwives do," she observes.
Around the nation, several studies
have shown that women served by
nurse-midwives are more likely to
keep appointments for prenatal care,
dramatically increasing their chances
of delivering a healthy baby. "Certi-
fied nurse-midwives can playa big
role in reducing infant mortality and
morbidity," says Mary Carpenter,
deputy director of the National Com-
mission to Prevent Infant Mortality,
"We want them to
know that we're
not in control,
they are."
which has recommended that states
encourage the use of certified nurse-
midwives to deliver maternity and
primary care. "They are more tuned
into women's emotional and social
concerns and have traditionally done
a better job in reaching these women
than physicians."
Gentle, Safe Delivery
If the midwifery philosophy plays
a critical role during prenatal care, it
is just as pervasive in labor and deliv-
ery. The goal is a gentle, safe delivery.
Physicians often look at pregnancy as
a pathology that needs to be treated,
and statistics reveal the consequences:
the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention reported in April that
doctors performed 349,000 unneces-
sary cesareans in this country in 1991.
But at NCBH intervention is not
standard; there are no routine IV's, no
shaves and the fetal heart monitor is
not kept strapped on for the duration
of labor. Women are encouraged to
walk around and visit with their
families and most normal deliveries
are performed in the patient's bed to
simulate home birth.
During labor, midwives provide
support, enabling the patient to control
her birth. A woman may squat, kneel,
stand, sit, pace, curl up, scream, sigh-
the midwife stands guard and acti vely
encourages her to do what feels best.
Although Consuelo D.'s last baby
was delivered by cesarean section,
this time she was hoping to push it out
herself. But she developed "fetal reten-
tion syndrome"-her body clenched,
and fear took over, preventing her
from delivering. For nine hours,
Consuelo pushed. Even after she was
given the chemical Pitocin, which is
used to induce and augment labor, the
baby would not leave her body.
Finally, she decided that she wanted
to pray. "She found the power within
herself and delivered," says Cuebas.
"Here, she was given the time and
space to do it herself. Somewhere
else, she might have been given a c-
section."
Shorter Stays, Lower Costs
Midwife programs generally result
in more cost-effective health care. A
certified nurse-midwife's salary in a
public health clinic or hospital aver-
ages from $50,000 to $70,000 per year,
significantly lower than a starting
physician's salary of $110,000. And
the long-term savings are profound.
Since midwives believe that labor is a
natural process that needs to be nur-
tured not manipulated, drugs and
high-tech equipment are used judi-
ciously. The result is shorter hospital
stays and lower childbirth costs, says
Cuddihy of DOH.
The Midwifery Service at NCBH
began in 1977 and is now the largest
in the city. But the Health and
Hospitals Corporation (HHC), the
agency that operates New York City's
municipal hospitals, has employed
nurse-midwives since the late 1950's,
according to Josie Morales, director of
the Office of Women's Health at HHC.
"Certified nurse-midwives have a
proven record," explains Morales.
Certified nurse-midwives are
employed in nearly all HHC facilities.
In 1990, midwives delivered 25
percent of all births in HHC hospitals
and plans are underway to expand
their use throughout the system.
Still, city hospitals face an acute
shortage of physicians and nurse-
midwives who can provide care for
women at risk of having problem
births. In New York, a recent internal
review by the HHC found waits as
long as two months for prenatal care
and six months for routine exams.
Obstetrician/gynecologists are drop-
ping out of their practices because of
malpractice insurance costs, explains
Morales. One out of every six obstetri-
cians in New York State (up from one
in 10 in 1990) has stopped delivering
babies, according to the New York
State Chapter of the American College
of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
And more than half of the obstetrics
residents who train in New York are
leaving to set up practice elsewhere.
The numbers are no better for nurse-
midwives. Only about 300 work in
New York City, yet they delivered
roughly nine percent of the city's
babies in 1991, more than double the
national rate. And there are only three
midwifery programs in New York
State: Columbia University, State
University of New York at the Health
Sciences Center in Brooklyn, and a
refresher program for foreign-trained
midwives at North Central Bronx
Hospital. All three programs will
graduate a total of 38 nurse-midwives
in 1993. and not all of those grad-
uating will stay to practice in New
York.
"We want more midwives, but there
aren't enough of them graduating,"
says Morales.
A new state law passed last year,
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718636-3709 Fax
the Professional Midwifery Practice
Act, is expected to lure more can-
didates to the practice. The new law
establishes midwifery as a distinct
profession from nursing and creates a
State Board of Midwifery. It also
permits midwives to prescribe drugs
related to their practice. Many
midwives say the new law will give
them more autonomy and will clarify
their roles. "The new bill will not only
take care of the shortage, but it will
also recognize midwifery for what it
is, a separate profession," says
Elsberry.
The law also mandates a study to
examine whether non-nurses could
get training to become midwives. The
United States is the only country that
requires midwives to become nurses
first. "We need to develop alternative
routes to get more midwives," Elsberry
asserts, adding that the process of
accreditation and examination won't
change. "We're only altering how you
enter the door, not how you exit."
While the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists
supported the law, the New Yark State
Nurses Association opposed it, saying
that it is a waste of money and will not
solve the obstetrical crisis. "Estab-
lishing a new profession will not
remove the barriers facing certified
nurse-midwives, including the short-
age of educational programs," says
Anne Schott, a spokesperson for the
New York State Nurses Association.
Patience and Perseverance
Midwives say that, above all, pre-
natal care is about women taking care
of themselves. Eighteen-year-old
Dinette S. came to NCBH headed for
trouble, says her midwife, Mandy
Charles. Already into her second
trimester, Dinette's fetus was under-
weight or" small for date." But Charles'
patience and perseverance convinced
Dinette to take care of herself-to stop
using drugs, take her vitamins and eat
healthier-and paid off in the end
when Dinette delivered a healthy six-
pound baby girl. "They have to believe
in you," says Charles, who maintains
it is important not to be condescen-
ding and to speak to women in a
language they can understand.
Notes Charlotte Elsberry, "We give
them the information so they make
their own choices and change their
lives." 0
Alexia Lewnes is a freelance writer
based in Manhattan.
By Steve Mitra
Mutual housing association under fire:
Strange Brew in Cooper Square
A
n eclectic alliance of people with links to City Council-
member Antonio Pagan, including conservative opponents
of nonprofit housing groups, small property owners,
tenants of city-owned buildings and members of the New
Alliance Party, is attempting to dismantle a project that promises
to preserve affordable housing for hundreds of low income
residents of the East Village.
The project is the Cooper Square
Mutual Housing Association (MHA),
an independent organization created
in 1991 by the Cooper Square
Committee, a neighborhood group that
has fought gentrification of the East
Village for more than 30 years. Cooper
Square won approval and millions of
dollars in financing from the city's
Department of Housing Preservation
and Development (HPD)
in 1990 to rehabilitate
hundreds of apartments
in city-owned buildings
on East Third and Fourth
streets between the Bow-
ery and Second Avenue.
When work is completed
the buildings are slated
to leave city ownership
and become part of the
MHA.
no reason that they shouldn't be
allowed to do so," explains Soler.
Later, he adds, "There's nothing to say
that the plan can't be changed."
Deteriorating Tenements
In the early 1970s, dozens of
tenements between Stanton Street and
East Fifth Street were bought by the
city for inclusion in the Cooper Square
the committee and tenants' groups
considered various city-funded op-
tions for rehabilitating the properties,
including a program that would have
turned each of the tenements into a
low income cooperative. But, says
Valerio Orselli, executive director of
the Cooper Square Committee, the
groups decided that none of the city
programs provided enough money to
do all the rehabilitation that was
needed. Nor did they cover operating
costs once construction work was
finished.
Soin 1987, the Cooper Square Com-
mittee began pushing the concept of
mutual housing, proposing to combine
a number of the buildings into one
large cooperative run by tenants and
community leaders. Under the plan, a
board of directors, two-
thirds of them tenants
elected by their peers
and the other one-third
selected to represent
the community, would
make management de-
cisions. The income
from all the buildings
would be pooled to share
the costs of expensive
repair work and to
ensure that all the build-
ings could pay their
taxes and other debts.
Community Board 3
But for several
months the MHA's op-
ponents have been lev-
eling virulent criticism
against that organization
and the Cooper Square
Committee in leaflets
and at neighborhood
meetings. Some of the
buildings' tenants, in an
attempt to avoid paying
the rent increases that
Subtle Machinations? City Councilmember Antonio Pagan has been openly
critical of the Cooper Square Committee. Now, his appointees to the
community board are investigating the organization.
threw its support behind
z the proposal in 1988,
~ and negotiations with
m the city culminated in a
memorandum of under-
standing signed in 1990,
committing as much as
$45,000 per apartment
are part of the MHA plan, have filed
legal challenges in housing court
against the group's right to manage
the buildings. And now, the MHA is
caught up in the factional turmoil that
has gripped Manhattan's Community
Board 3 in recent years.
In fact, board chairman Luis Soler
has gone so far as to allow board
members to create a task force to look
into the project, in violation of the
community board's rules.
"If residents feel like they don't
want to be a part of the MHA ... there's
Urban Renewal Area. The plan at the
time was to develop new and rehabili-
tated housing for the neighborhood's
residents, but as years went by and
federal support for housing develop-
ment dwindled, only a few projects
were actually built. In the meantime,
many of the buildings deteriorated.
The Cooper Square Committee
worked with tenants in the district for
many years, acting as their advocate
in disputes with the city while trying
to map out the future of the urban
renewal buildings. In the mid-1980s,
in city funds. The project is part of a
$32.8 million effort by HPD and the
Cooper Square Committee to develop
1,000 units of new and rehabilitated
affordable housing in the area, along
with a community center.
Finally, in August, 1991, the Cooper
Square MHA was incorporated. So
far, two buildings, 83 Second Avenue
and 71 East Fourth Street, have been
rehabilitated under the group's
direction. Two others will be com-
pleted in the next few months and
work on five more will start later this
CITY UMns/JUNE/JULY 1993/9
year. Eventually the MHA will in-
clude 18 buildings with 350 apart-
ments, and work will be completed
within three years, says Orselli.
According to Orselli, many of the
tenants in the tenements that haven't
yet entered the rehabilitation stage
pay astonishingly low rents-for ex-
ample, $70 for a one-bedroom apart-
ment-that haven't increased in more
than a decade. But because of higher
maintenance and operating costs, rents
increase to about $175 for a one bed-
room when work begins, and about
$315 when construction is completed.
Eligible tenants receive rent assistance
from the city while the rehabilitation
is underway, and afterward from the
federal government.
The Real Deal?
About one year after work started,
however, leaflets began to appear
under apartment doors and on walls
along East Third and Fourth streets
blasting the Cooper Square Commit-
tee and casting doubts on the MHA
program. One of them read: "Cooper
Square & Mutual Housing Associa-
tion are out of control. It's time for
them to leave the block." Another
proclaimed: "When Cooper Square
Mutual Housing Association is
finished with us, we will have no
lease and be out on the street. That is
the real deal!" At the top of each
leaflet was a logo of a handshake under
the words "Lower East Side United
Tenants Association" (LESUTA).
Led by Carlos Perez, who chaired
the Cooper Square Committee for 13
years until he was defeated in an
election in 1985, the MHA opposition
group has 50 members so far, Perez
says. About 10 of them stand out as
the most vocal and active leaders,
shouting down opponents and staging
loud protests at community meet-
irigs-not unusual tactics in the East
Village. "We are trying to protect the
tenants," says Perez.
Members of LESUT A say the MHA
plans to raise rents to the point that
current tenants won't be able to afford
their homes. They also charge that the
organization fraudulently obtained the
approval of building residents for the
program. Says Michael Hardy, another
tenant: "There never was a vote. They
would have an informational meeting
and have tenants sign in and claim
that they had 60 percent [support] ....
There's a real fraud going on here."
Finally, LESUTA charges Cooper
Square MHA with favoritism in plac-
ing tenants in rehabilitated buildings.
They point to the fact that Cooper
Square Committee Deputy Director
Sharon Goldstein and Chairwoman
Maria Torres Bird moved into the first
building that was renovated, 71 East
Fourth Street. "It's like a clique over
there," says Carmen Barreto, another
member of LESUTA.
Orselli and MHA executive director
Deanne D' Aloia insist that everything
the organization has done has been
above board. "If you believe Cooper
Rationality hasn't
always been the
by-word of
politics in the
East Village.
Square has done anything illegal, all
you have to do is make one call to the
HPD Inspector General's office-
everyone knows that," Orselli insists.
"I think it is really unfortunate that
some people are trying to stop a
program that's in the best interests of
the tenants," adds D'Aloia. "If these
buildings aren't repaired they will
have to be vacated."
They say that tenants have been
involved in the MHA plan since the
late 1980s and that in 1991, meetings
were held in each building and
brochures were widely distributed in
three languages explaining the pros
and cons of the proposal. Later, tenants
in favor of the plan were asked to sign
a petition supporting it, and HPD
confirms that the plan gained a 60
percent majority in each of the build-
ings currently participating, as city
rules require.
As far as rents are concerned,
D' Aloia says the increases are the
minimum needed to cover costs. The
rents will be extraordinarily low by
Manhattan standards, she notes, and
government subsidies will cover
tenants who can't afford them.
Orselli says that Goldstein and Bird
got apartments in the first renovated
building through the normal qualifi-
cation and application process. He
concedes their presence doesn't look
all that good: "It may be bad p.r. , but
just because you work for us doesn't
mean you give up your right to de-
cent, affordable housing."
He is angry -about the tactics
LESUT A has been using in its
opposition, and objects to the insinu-
ations of criminal conduct they have
made in some of their leaflets. "We
have put out leaflets and fact sheets
ourselves," he says. "They are not as
sexy because we have to stick to the
facts."
Orselli argues that people with long
grudges and ideological differences
with the Cooper Square Committee
are all coming out in support of
LESUTA. "It's beyond rationality," he
says.
Political Tumult
But rationality hasn't always been
the by-word of politics in the East
Village and the Lower East Side. And
the battle over the MHA has landed
right in the midst of that area's current
political tumult.
From 1986 until recently, Commu-
nity Board 3 had a strong progressive
streak, due in large part to members
appointed by former Manhattan Bor-
ough President David Dinkins and
former City Councilmember Miriam
Friedlander. But the politics of the
community board shifted with the
narrow defeat of Friedlander by Pa-
gan in the 1991 City Council race by a
margin of 125 votes. At the time, Pa-
gan was director of Lower East Side
Coalition Housing, a nonprofit group
that has developed buildings for se-
nior citizens and the disabled. Much
of Pagan's following came from his
opposition to the encampment of
homeless people in Tompkins Square
Park and various projects for home-
less men and women in the neighbor-
hood. "There's no question in my mind
that he decidedly changed the com-
munity board," says Lisa Kaplan, one
of the board's long-time members.
"The vast majority of his appoint-
ments have been conservative."
Pagan is openly critical when asked
to comment on the Cooper Square
MHA. Himself a tenant in a city-owned
tenement in the Cooper Square Urban
Renewal Area, Pagan's building was
the only one among 19 eligible for the
MHA plan to opt out of the program.
"We know who they are," Pagan says.
"We don't want them running our
building. Cooper Square misinforms
I
\
\
tenants .... I think residents are correct
to point out illegalities in the organi-
zation," he adds. "A community-based
organization should be run by the
community, not by vitriolic, ideologi-
cal people."
As part of the changes in the Pagan
era, Rick Carman was ousted as chair
of the community board inJune, 1992,
and replaced by Luis Soler. Soler,
who worked in tenant advocacy for
Pueblo Nuevo, another low income
housing management group in the
Lower East Side, admits he bears a
grudge against the Cooper Square
Committee. "Cooper Square and I go
back a long way," he says. "I've al-
ways had problems with them."
Violating Rules
InJanuary,aftermeetingwithPagan
and appealing to the community
board, LESUT A pulled off a major
coup by convincing the board to
appoint a taskforce to investigate their
allegations. It wasn't difficult to do.
Krystyna Piorkowska, a Pagan appoin-
tee to the community board as well as
a contributor to Pagan's City Council
campaign fund-she gave him a total
of$285in 1991-ischairoftheboard's
housing committee. She is a member
of Small Property Owners of New
York (SPONY), a group that was a
backer of Pagan in his City Council
campaign. When he defeated
Councilmember Miriam Friedlander
in 1991, SPONY's newsletter called it
"the most important political win our
side has ever had." Piorkowska has
been seeking to create an oversight
committee to look over the Cooper
Square Committee's shoulder as far
back as 1988, meeting minutes show.
At the January 14 housing commit-
tee meeting, she created a task force to
investigate the MHA, with herself at
its head. But the task force was created
in apparent violation of the commu-
nity board's rules. The bylaws of the
board state that the "chairperson of
the Board shall create and dissolve all
standing, task force and ad hoc
committees subject to the approval of
the full board." Yet minutes of the
meeting show that no such vote ever
took place.
Piorkowska also appointed Steven
Vincent to the task force. Vincent, a
self-described investigative journalist,
contributed $315 to Pagan's 1991
campaign. He is also a Pagan appoin-
tee to the community board. While he
professes to hold a neutral position on
the MHA, he expressed his opinion of
the Cooper Square Committee and its
allies in a polemic written in The
Lower East Side News in November,
1990. The article attacks the Lower
East Side Joint Planning Council (JPC) ,
a progressi ve coalition of community-
based organizations that includes the
Cooper Square Committee, describing
them as "befogged apparatchiks."
Other members of the task force
included Elaine Chan of the JPC and
Sandi Anderson, formerly of the Green
Guerillas. But after a tumultuous
meeting on May 18, which broke into
chaos several times with members of
"These folks are
trying to put up
roadblocks by
spreading
panic and fear."
the Cooper Square Committee and the
board engaging in a heated shouting
match, Soler removed Chan and
Anderson, who had sided with Cooper
Square.
Until then, the group had met every
month since January, meeting with
LESUT A and drafting a set of questions
reflecting the tenants' concerns.
Cooper Square has filed 15 pages of
detailed responses, but Piorkowska
says their answers are "not adequate."
A New Alliance
A number of other renowned Lower
East Side characters are involved with
the LESUTA campaign. For instance,
there is Carmen Barreto, a neighbor-
hood activist with ties to Roberto
Napoleon, a Lower East Side power
broker who has run several social
programs and lost city funding after
being charged with corrupt practices.
Barreto was, for a short time, chair-
woman of the Cooper Square
Committee after Perez left in 1985,
but she was removed from office the
same year by a vote of the board. She
and Perez have been fighting the
Cooper Square Committee in court for
years, attempting to gain access to the
organization's mailing list, and she is
one of the most vehement LESUT A
members at community meetings.
LESUT A is also linked to the New
Alliance Party (NAP), an organization
that has created a multimillion dollar
fundraising and business network to
support the perennial campaigns of
its leader, Lenora Fulani.
One is Michael Hardy, an NAP
member who also belongs to LESUT A.
The other is NAP attorney Harry
Kresky, who is representing Hardy,
Perez and 10 other tenants in housing
court in an attempt to sever the life-
line of the Cooper Square MHA. The
tenants are under threat of eviction
for refusing to pay the increased rents.
"At this point we're asking the court
to reject Cooper Square's right to col-
lect rent," Kresky says. "You have to
have legal authority to own or manage
a building. We're contesting that."
Perez has also filed a counterclaim
against Cooper Square MHA for
$20,000 for unsafe conditions in his
building and for harassment, on the
grounds that he has paid the correct
rent. Perez rents two one-bedroom
apartments at 63 East Fourth Street,
paying a total of $115 a month for both
of them. His rent went up to $400
under the MHA plan-but he says he
won't pay the new sum: "First let me
see the rehab, then let's talk about an
increase," he says.
Sabotage?
In the end, the community board
cannot by itself force the city to
rescind its contract for the MHA
project. Yet because Pagan has influ-
ence with city officials and threatens
that "anything can change," Orselli is
nervous.
"I think it's a deliberate campaign
to sabotage the [rehabilitation]
program," says Orselli. "These folks
are trying to put up roadblocks by
spreading panic and fear."
Elaine Chan sees it as a broader
attack. "I think that individuals who
have a conservative agenda feel
threatened by groups that have power
in the community," she says. "That's
why they are going after Cooper
Square. They want to break the
organizations that are progressive ....
That's what's really going on." J
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CITY UMITS/JUNE/JUL Y 1993111
By Jill Kirschenbaum
On the Rebound
The city's Neighborhood Ownership Works housing
program looked like fool's gold to community groups.
But its second phase may be the real thing.
A
ftermonths of agonizing specu-
lation about what the future
would hold for them, dozens
of community-based housing
groups are now speaking with enthu-
siasm about a new city program that
appears likely to keep their organiza-
tions at the center of
efforts to rehabilitate
deteriorating city-owned
apartment buildings.
Many feared they had
lost that role last winter
when the city Depart-
ment of Housing Preser-
vation and Development
(HPD) announced its
plan to phase out the
Community Manage-
ment Program, the
vehicle around which the
concept of neighbor-
hood-based nonprofit
development was born
20 years ago. They were
even more worried when
the first new program to
take community manage-
ment's place, called
DAMP/NOW (for the
Division of Alternative
Management Programs/
Neighborhood Owner-
ship Works), turned out
to rely on for-profit
developers to manage
and rehabilitate decrepit,
occupied buildings prior
to sale by the city to
private landlords and
nonprofits.
But following a long series of dis-
cussions between city officials and
the housing groups, the second phase
of NOW, alternately called Develop-
ment/NOW or the Neighborhood
Revitalization Program, turns out to
be taking an entirely different
approach: according to regulations and
other documents from HPD, non-
profits will rehabilitate, manage and
eventually own about 1,400 apart-
ments via the initiative by 1996. The
program is slated to begin this summer,
a year ahead of schedule.
The schizophrenic split within
NOW apparently reflects two differ-
ent philosophies among Dinkins
administration officials about the
privatization of city-owned buildings,
properties that fell into city hands
during the lasttwo decades after land-
lords abandoned them or failed to pay
property taxes. Some believe that for-
profit developers can do the rehabil-
itation work more quickly and cheaply
than nonprofits. Others support the
community groups, favoring their
ability to foster tenant participation
and their long-term commitment to
the preservation of low income
housing.
With the new plans emerging, the
neighborhood groups say they hope
that the Development/NOW program
becomes the favorite son of the Dinkins
administration and the housing
department.
"The best case scenario?" says Jay
Small, director of the Association for
Neighborhood Housing and Develop-
ment. "That 600 units will be done by
DAMP/NOW badly, writtenoffas bad
debt, and the rest will be shifted to
Development/NOW. "
Rooseveltian Optimism
When news that HPD was fixing to
discontinue the Community Manage-
ment Program began to circulate in
1992, housing advocates were dis-
mayed. After 20 years of organizing
tenants, renovating more than 5,300
apartments in city-
owned buildings and
defining and refining
their infrastructure for
developing low income
community-owned
housing, advocates
were now learning that
the mechanism by
which they had come of
age was obsolete (see
City Limits, October
1992).
At the same time,
HPD was introducing its
latest model for unload-
ing 9,300 apartments
and getting them back
on the tax rolls. With
Rooseveltian optimism,
the plan, unveiled in
Mayor David Dinkins'
State of the City speech
in January 1992, was
called Neighborhood
Ownership Works, and
was touted by the
department's Division
of Alternative Manage-
ment Programs as the
reform of an old system
that was too costly and
too slow.
It was also a bow to
the Kempian winds of privatization
emanating from Washington. Spun
out as the perfect blend of the public
and the private, DAMP/NOW would
use private construction companies
to manage and renovate occupied city-
owned buildings and the city would
then sell them to community-based
housing groups upon completion of
construction-if such groups were
available. If not, the private firms
would have the option to buy, though
restrictions would be in place to insure
that the apartments would be pre-
served for low income tenants for
many years.
Most advocates were considerably
less sanguine about the venture. As
far as they were concerned, they had
seen the future of such a plan and its
name was POMP, the Private Owner-
ship and Management Program phased
out two years before in which the city
had contracted with private for-profit
firms to manage, renovate and subse-
quently purchase occupied city-
owned buildings. Some POMP land-
lords had been cited for harassment
and evictions of tenants and substan-
dard construction and maintenance
work, and many POMP buildings had
ended up back in the city's hands.
Others charged that DAMP/NOW
bore a dangerously close resemblance
to HPD's Special Initiatives Program
(SIP), in which vacant buildings
renovated by the city were turned
over to community groups only after
construction was completed. Such an
arrangement, said nonprofit manage-
mentgroups, gave them authority only
after tenants moved in, the construc-
tion contractors were gone, and the
problems had begun. Groups argued
that DAMP/NOW ignored what they
had learned from SIP and the Com-
munity Management Program: most
notably, the need for rigorous tenant
organizing and tenant involvement in
renovation, and the equally critical
need for careful construction over-
sight if buildings were to remain
livable.
"This remind[edl me too much of
SIP," says Marie Runyon, executive
director of the Harlem Restoration
Project. "We had two SIP buildings
done by independent contractors
under city supervision. And when we
went in, we inherited a lot of problems
that we are seriously struggling with.
Two years later, the bulkhead is leak-
ing, the parapet is in danger of falling
off, the elevator has constant problems
and the roof leaks.
"DAMP/NOW excludes the com-
munity group and asks them to deal
with the contractor's sense of omission
and commission," Runyon explains.
"And it also excludes the tenants,
who have no say-so until it's too late."
Undermining Strengths
HPD officials claimed otherwise,
noting that DAMP /NOW would build
into its regulations the very sort of
protections advocates were clamoring
for by assigning a nonprofit group at
the outset to keep an eye on construc-
tion and work with tenants in each
building.
But leaders of the housing groups
had argued for months that elimi-
nating the Community Management
Program and excluding nonprofits
from managing renovation work
would undermine the strengths and
skills their organizations have devel-
oped over the years. As a direct result
of their participation in community
management, they note, their organi-
zations developed the ability to select
and supervise architects and contrac-
tors, develop work scopes, oversee
Neighborhood
groups hope
Development
NOW becomes
the Dinkins
administration's
favorite son.
construction and coordinate those ef-
forts successfully with the needs of
the tenants.
Advocates also point out that the
announcement of DAMP/NOW last
year emphasized community owner-
ship once the projects were complete.
Some find that ironic.
"HPD wants community groups to
be the saviours of low income
housing in this town and sustain it,
and then they decide to cut off one of
the most important programs ever
developed," says Mark Alexander of
HOPE Community, a nonprofit
manager and developer in East
Harlem. "It's one thing to say cut off
community management. It's another
to say don't replace it with anything
that allows us to continue to provide
critical services."
Led by Brian Champeau, director
of the Community Housing Associ-
ation of Managers and Producers
(CHAMP), a citywide trade organiza-
tion, non profits solicited the support
of sympathetic City Council members,
who called an oversight hearing last
October before the Housing and
Buildings Committee. But following
the hearings and the release of the
final DAMP/NOW regulations, it was
clear that the program was going ahead
with few changes, with the exception
of one major adjustment-the alloca-
tion of $500 per apartment for
non profits to do tenant organizing-a
distinct victory for the tenant groups,
but not what they had hoped for,
according Champeau.
So, earlier this year, after the city
had produced a list of buildings in the
Bronx to be included in DAMP/NOW
and announced the names of the for-
profit companies slated to manage
and rehabilitate them, only three non-
profit groups signed on to work with
tenants and, eventually, purchase
some of the buildings.
Federal Tax Credits
The majority of the 60 community
organizations represented by CHAMP
remained unified in their intention to
resist DAMP/NOW. Takinganewtack,
the CHAMP groups turned their sights
instead to other programs under
consideration at the housing depart-
ment-most notably, the Develop-
ment/NOW initiative.
In a series of meetings with the
head of the development division of
HPD, Deputy Commissioner Kathleen
Dunn, housing group representatives
began to discuss their priorities and
ideas for making Development/NOW
a successful program, one that would
answer the needs of both HPD and the
low income housing community. Over
the last few months, a picture of the
program has begun to take shape.
Although Dunn and other HPD
officials declined to be interviewed
for this article, information provided
by group representatives who attended
the meetings indicates one of the more
significant elements of the initiative
is the possible inclusion of federal
low income housing tax credits in the
funding plan through the participation
of the Enterprise Foundation and the
Local Initiatives Support Corforation
(LISC). These two nationa organ-
izations channel corporate investment
in housing tax credits to rehabilitation
efforts run by nonprofit community
groups.
In addition, the original fiscal year
1995 startup date will be pushed up to
fiscal year 1994 (July 1, 1993 to June
30, 1994), a priority of the housing
groups: "Waiting for the program to
CITY UMn&/JUNE/JULY 1993/13
kick in [in 1995]meantournonprofits'
infrastructures would rot in the mean-
time," notes Small.
He and others say the entry of LISC
and Enterprise into the equation, with
their proven track records and reputa-
tions for tough oversight of the com-
munity groups with whom they work,
was just the wedge the advocates
needed.
"HPD looks at LISC and Enterprise
involvement as being another layer of
accountability that will add stability
to the program, as well as a layer of
organization to provide technical
assistance to the groups so they can
accomplish their projects in an
efficient and timely manner," Small
explains.
Once LISC and Enterprise became
involved in the discussions, what had
started out as a contentious squabble
between advocates and housing
bureaucrats evolved into something
of an informal symposium on the
future of city housing development
and the role of the nonprofits-that is,
the future of the NOW initiative. As
one participant put it, "An interesting
program was put on the table and
everyone started talking about it."
Linking Programs
"HPD indicated they wanted to do
the Development/NOW program and
were looking at the possibility of
working on developing a process simi-
lar to the tax credit program, " recalls
Bill Frey, director of Enterprise's New
York program. "They were very inter-
ested in looking at a model whereby
groups would function as developers,
and at the possibility of tax credits
attached to the projects-similar to
our program."
The plan is to link the Develop-
ment/NOW project with Round Six of
the LISC/Enterprise Production
Program, and a joint request for quali-
fications was released on May 4th to
that effect. So far, according to the
documents, tax credits are being
considered for social services as well
"An interesting
program was put
on the table and
everyone started
talking about it."
as for long-term operating revenues.
But the LISC/Enterprise connection
could go far beyond the realm of
funding resources.
"[HPD is] seeing if they can work
with the same groups as those in the
Production Program, developing
NOW buildings alongside ours-more
of a community development plan, "
says Frey. In fact, the request for quali-
fications invites nonprofits to apply
to participate in one or both of the
programs. Though it states in its intro-
duction that a nonprofit need not
qualify for the LISC/Enterprise Pro-
duction Program in order to partici-
An Organizing Perspective on Issues
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pate in NOW, such a prequalification
is likely to apply for the initial round
of NOW, insiders say. The request for
qualifications also states that HPD may
ask LISC and Enterprise to assist them
in the evaluation process by which
non profits are qualified to participate
in Development/NOW.
The nonprofit leaders also
discussed city financing with Dunn.
They say she set the hard construc-
tion costs in the range of $35,000 per
unit , a figure confirmed by HPD
spokesperson Valerie Jo Bradley. What
is not clear at this point is whether or
not organizing costs are to corne out of
that figure as well.
"Depending on the building and
the situation, I hope we don't end up
having to get organizing dollars out of
that [$35,000] figure," observes Abdur
Rahman Farrahkan, executive direc-
tor of the Oceanhill Brownsville
Tenants Association. "Then we'd end
up picking buildings that [don't need
as much work]-that need 20 percent
beam replacement, say, instead of 1 00
percent beam replacement."
Long-Term Survival
In any case, the nonprofit groups
are pleased to be involved in this level
of discussion about the Development/
NOW program. And so far, they are
adamant about not participating in
DAMP/NOW. In a letter to Housing
Commissioner Felice Michetti on
March 24th, 11 groups comprising the
upper Manhattan contingent of
CHAMP wrote:
"The Development/NOW initia-
tive, by drawing on our proven abili-
ties to turn out quality buildings in
which tenants feel real ownership,
will strengthen our communities and
truly earn the NOW program its name
by proving that neighborhood owner-
ship does, indeed, work .... We would
like to state unequivocally our prefer-
ence for the Development/NOW
model as opposed to the DAMP model
currently underway in the Bronx." A
similar letter is planned by the Brook-
1yn delegation, according to CHAMP
director Champeau.
"We see Development/NOW as a
great improvement over DAMP/
NOW," adds Marie Runyon of the
Harlem Restoration Project. "We are a
nonprofit group. We will not align
ourselves with someone whose sole
intention is making money. We are
interested in affordable housing,
not doing a quick job and disappear-
ing." D
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CITY UMITS/JUNE/]UL Y 1993/15
nthe
Edge
of hao
Child care is difficult enough to find for low income families;
last year, a state law made it even tougher.
BY ANDREW WHITE AND STEVEN WISHNIA
O
ne year after the city adopted state-mandated
changes in the system for regulating family day
care, most of the intended goals remain elusive
and the changes have undermined government-
funded day care programs run by neighborhood
organizations for children of low income families. Some
of the programs have already closed and others are in
danger of closing because of drastic staff and funding
reductions.
In addition, family day care providers-that is, women
caring for five or fewer children in their own homes who
form the backbone of the subsidized programs-are in
most cases receiving less outside monitoring and educa-
tional support now than in the past, according to a survey
by City Limits. And bureaucratic delays have left hun-
dreds of children without day care, despite adequate
funding in the city budget.
The cause of the troubles, experts say, is twofold: the
city Agency for Child Development's ineffectual imple-
mentation of the state legislature's deregulation offamily
day care on the one hand, and on the other, fundamental
flaws with that very deregulation plan.
"Before, wehadareasonable, decent system," says City
Councilmember Una Clarke, who worked for the Agency
for Child Development (ACD) before her election to the
council. "I don't think the new system was a legitimate
one to begin with."
"All it was was a theory on paper. They had nothing set
up," says Nora Newby, director of the Salvation Army
Family Day Care program that serves hundreds of children
in the Brownsville and Red Hook neighborhoods of Brook-
lyn. Newby says the changes in the system are already
eroding the quality of child care. "They did no piloting,
nothing .... How many children will we have damaged
before they see what's wrong?"
Edwina Meyers, the deputy commissioner in charge of
ACD, disagrees. She says her agency has performed well
under extreme pressure at a time of staff cuts and major
program changes. "Any change in a large system, no
matter how simple, takes time before it finds its level." she
says. "We're dealing with several complicated issues all at
one time."
The crisis for the nonprofit programs comes at a time
when the federal government is pumping tens of millions
of dollars of new money into subsidized day care for New
York's working poor, with the stipulation that the city
increase the number of children in its programs. A new of self-certification. According to the law passed in 1990,
report by Child Care, Inc., a resource and referral agency, would-be providers no longer to t?eir
says that despite the new funding the total number of inspected by the government pnor to taking m chIldren.
children enrolled in subsidized day care has hardly Instead, the new system required them to fill out an
increased, indicating that the city isn't using the federal application form certifying that their homes were safe,
money for its designated purpose-expanding and and to take a short orientation course. The law eliminated
improving day care services. . annual inspections as well, stating simply that a random
"With this new federal money, it shouldn't mean cutting sample of 20 percent of the providers would be monitored
back anywhere, including family day care," says Antony by the government each year. The law's backers believed
Ward, director of Child _________ -----,,....., that if inspectors
Care, Inc. "It should weren't breathing down
mean expanding and their necks, under-
opening up the system." ground providers would
be more likely to come
out in the open.
"Unfortunately
we've seen the reverse,"
says Carmen Sepulveda,
director of Children's
Health Service, which
runs a family day care
program on the Upper
West Side. "A lot of
people who were certi-
fied have gone under-
l3 ground." Indeed, hun-
dreds of formerly
* licensed providers have
But in the last two
years, the city's $42.8
million subsidized
system of family day
care programs has not
expanded at all-in fact
it has contracted from a
high of 7,804 children
in 1991 to alow of about
6,800 last year. Despite
the crisis of the last
several months, the
system has begun to
grow again, though
enrollment remains at
least 500 children below
Cha .... for the Worse: Nora Newby, director of the Salvation Army Family Day
Care Program, believes the new system is eroding the quality of child care.
dropped out of the
ACD-funded programs
because of a decline in
the city budget's target of 7,842, according to the most
recent figures available from ACD. Meanwhile, the city
reports that at least 12,600 children from low income
families eligible for subsidized day care are on waiting
lists.
The evolution of the state's family day care plan is a
story of good intentions gone awry. It is also a story of
miscalculations, bureaucratic foul-ups and repeated mis-
understandings.
Three years ago, state legislators-led by Assemblyman
Al Vann of Brooklyn and Senator Mary Goodhue of
Peekskill-set out to eliminate the vast underground
economy of women who cared for other people's children
in their homes. The goal was to make legal day care more
widely available, especially to parents who either couldn't
find space in or made too much money to qualify for the
well-monitored, government-subsidized program that is
very small relative to the number of children who need
care.
At the time, virtually the only family day care providers
who bothered to get licenses were in those government-
funded programs, and there was little enforcement of
licensing laws intended to keep track of those who cared
for children privately.
"There are even middle income people ... who found it
difficult to get safe, reliable [and legal] day care" for their
children, says Ward, who supported the redesign of the
system. His organization agreed with legislators that if
family day care became more entrepreneurial and was
brought out of the underground, finding a decent provider
would be much less of a problem.
Legislators planned to encourage providers to register
with the state by replacing the licensing system with one
support services and
increased tax burdens under the new law, and the non-
profit staffers who used to work with them say many are
now taking children into their homes illegally.
At the same time, according to City Council investiga-
tors, more than 10,000 people eager to become legal day
care providers asked for registration forms in the first 10
months of last year-but after they discovered how com-
plicated the application was, fewer than 600 turned them
in. What's more, hundreds of completed applications
have been sitting in boxes in city offices since they were
filed many months ago. ACD sent 20 boxes of unprocessed
forms to the Department of Health in January, two months
after the latter agency took over the registration system.
Only in recent weeks have things begun to run more
smoothly; by mid-May the department's Bureau of Day
Care was processing about 100 applications a week, though
there was still a backlog of several hundred more, accord-
ing to Deputy Director James McCormack.
The combination of providers dropping out and the
snail's pace of registration has thrown the system into
turmoil. In a survey of 15 randomly chosen subsidized
family day care programs run by neighborhood organiza-
tions in the Bronx, City Limits found that more than half
do not have enough registered providers to care for all the
children they are contracted to serve. On average, these
groups are underenrolled by 23 percent. Even those that
currently have enough providers say they are expecting a
shortfall in the near future unless the city speeds up the
registration process.
Across the city, the neighborhood organizations that
administer the ACD-subsidized programs have been forced
to drastically scale back the amount of support services
they offer providers. They are no longer funded to supply
their day care homes with safety equipment and learning
materials. And in most cases they have cut the number of
visits they make to providers' homes to monitor their care
and give them training in child development and educa-
tion. About one-fourth of the agencies surveyed say they
are unable to make the eight visits each
year required under a local law passed
by the City Council last year. Others
believed they should be able to charge higher rates and
they understood that as businesspeople, they could take
deductions on expenses, cutting their tax debt. But it
didn't sit well with others. The smaller amount of money
they had received in the past was in a grey area legally, but
was generally not considered taxable,
whereas the $80 or more they got un-
der the new system was unequivo-
say that they do, but achieve little be-
yond necessary safety and nutrition
checks before hurrying on to the next
provider's home.
Indeed, several programs have shut
their doors altogether. Ten programs
serving more than 1,000 children closed
down during the last 12 months, the
most recent in January, because of cuts
in funding and staffing.
Ten programs
serving more than
1,000 children
closed because of
cally taxable, a problem particularly
for those who lived in public housing,
who faced rent increases if the Hous-
ing Authority found out about their
extra income.
Acevedo soon discovered that by
reporting the income, she and her
husband were pushed into a higher
tax bracket and had to payout almost
as much as she brought in. Six months
ago, she quit the day care program.
Now, out of fear that she may owe
taxes on her earnings from past years,
she doesn't want her real name pub-
"We wanted to feel comfortable
about the safety of the homes. We
couldn't offer that kind of oversight,
given the dollars," says Sharon Fox of
Builders for Family and Youth, which
cuts in funding
and staffing.
closed two programs serving a total of
75 children in Flatlands and
Bensonhurst/Coney Island, rather than
run them with one staffer instead of their original four.
Four program coordinators out of the 15 surveyed in the
Bronx said they were also considering closing if changes
weren't made in the system very soon. "It's definitely not
worth running this program the way it is now," says
Cheryl Suggs, coordinator of the Concerned Parents Family
Day Care program in Morrisania.
A 11 o'clock on a workday morning, Maria Acevedo's
(not her real name) Manhattan apartment is quieter than it
has been in any April for the last 12 years. The large fragile
plant atop her mirrored coffee table sits undisturbed and
toys are piled neatly in a corner as she and her husband
watch over their three-year-old granddaughter, the only
child in the house.
A year ago, the room was full of children. Acevedo was
taking care of two of her grandchildren and three other
children referred through a neighborhood organization
administering the local subsidized family day-care pro-
gram. The city paid a set fee per child to the neighborhood
nonprofit, which in turn paid Acevedo and other provid-
ers. The nonprofit's staff screened parents for eligibility
and collected fees from those who had to pay a portion of
the cost for their children's day care because of their
income level. They also bought insurance for the provid-
ers, supplied them with toys, books, cots and playpens
and gave them training in child development.
But after the new law was implemented, the city de-
cided to give a much larger portion of the money to the
providers themselves and cut payments to the nonprofits
from an average of $32 a week for each child to $17. Under
the new system, Acevedo and other providers got an extra
$30 a week or more for each child, but they had to start
paying taxes, buying their own insurance and supplies,
doing paperwork-in other words, they had to run their
home day care operations like small businesses.
Some providers supported the change because they
18/JUNE/JULY 1993/CITY UMfT.
lished.
Such fears about taxes and reported
income have led hundreds like
Acevedo to drop out of the ACD-
subsidized system. One program in Manhattan, run by
Sheltering Arms, has lost about 30 ofits 75 providers since
the law went into effect a year ago. Children's Health
Service, with more than 100 children on its waiting list,
has seen 16 ofits 37 providers quit. And of the 15 programs
surveyed in the Bronx, eight lost at least two providers,
and in one case more than 16 have dropped out.
Staffing cuts at many programs have also had a serious
impact on the way they are run, significantly curtailing the
amount of monitoring, oversight and education ofprovid-
ers that the neighborhood groups can do.
"We have 40 homes in Brownsville and two staff
people. No, we do not have enough staff to do eight visits
a year" as required by law, says Newby. For others,
monitoring has become a catch-as-catch-can affair. Suggs
of Concerned Parents in the Bronx says she visits her 27
providers whenever one has a vacant space for a child, but
that's about it. She used to have four people to do the home
visits. Now she is the only one. "We need help," she says,
plaintively.
They're not the only ones. Legalization has been an
extraordinarily slow and tortuous process for most of the
women who took the state at its word by deciding to
transform their home day care services into businesses.
The original application package, released last year by
the state Department of Social Services, was 53 pages long
and was available only in English. "I've never filled out a
53-page application for anything," says McCormack of the
city health department, which promptly cut the applica-
tion to 27 pages after taking over responsibility for regis-
tration from ACD last January. The department is also
working with the state to translate the application into
Spanish, Russian, Chinese and French Creole.
Dolores Ortiz of the Catholic Home Bureau Family Day
Care program in Fordham says that she has helped 39
potential providers file applications with the city since
June of last year. Many
still have not been pro-
cessed. "I'd be very sur-
prised if they are still
waiting," says Ortiz.
"These people need to
work. If the system
doesn't provide for
them, they will find a
way to get by on their
own. They will have
started taking care of
children again illegally. "
Because of the
underenrollment prob-
lem at so many non-
profits, the city is now
scrambling to find a way
to bypass the registra-
tion process and get
more children into the
programs. ACD is seek-
enrolled in job training
and education programs
or employed by October,
1993. That percentage
will increase to 15 per-
cent next year. But with-
out readily available
government-funded day
care, many women ea-
ger to join training pro-
grams or get jobs can't.
"Unless you have se-
cure, safe and reliable
day care arrangements,
you can't do any pro-
grams and you certainly
can't go get a job," says
Liz Krueger of the Com-
z munity Food Resource
~ Center and the Welfare
~ Reform Network, a
~ groupofadvocatestrack-
ing approval from the Nowhere to Play: In a survey of 15 randomly chosen subsidized day care
state to pay for day care programs in the Bronx, City Limits found that more than half do not have
in homes that are await-enough providers to care for the children they are contracted to serve.
ing changes in the wel-
fare system. "It's like
pulling the rug out from
underneath you at the ing registration, as long
as the provider has filed an application with the state, all
adult members of the household have been fingerprinted
and papers filed have been filed requesting a background
check with criminal justice and child welfare agencies. In
addition, a staffmember from one of the nonprofit pro-
grams will have to inspect the home before children can be
placed there.
If the plan is accepted, those who qualify would be able
to care for one or two children in their homes until their
applications are approved and the background checks are
completed.
But even that plan has several of the nonprofits worried,
because program coordinators won't know at the outset
whether the providers have a history of child abuse. "It
will put children at risk," says Pat Eberle of Cardinal
McCloskey Family Day Care in the Bronx. "We'll be
assuming the liability if something goes wrong." Given the
inability of the programs to keep close tabs on every
provider as they had been able to do in the past, that
presents a frightening prospect to many program directors.
Maribel Torres was working part time when she tried
to get her infant daughter, Monique, into a Manhattan
family day care program in 1991. Monique's father had
been taking care of the child while Torres worked, but
when that arrangement fell apart, Torres had to quit her
job and forget about her plans for going back to school in
order to take care of Monique.
"I got depressed," she says now. "I was going batty. I
couldn't work. I needed extra money. If I'd had day care
two years ago, I would have my GED. I would have a better
job. It really backed me up in terms of my career." Instead,
she was on welfare.
The inability of many women to find subsidized day
care has major implications for government efforts to
reform the welfare system. By federal law, the city must
have 11 percent of single mothers on public assistance
same time they're ordering you to get on the rug."
The problems in the subsidized day care system form a
tremendous stumbling block often ignored by proponents
of welfare-to-work programs. In theory, there is unlimited
federal funding for public or private day care for women
on public assistance involved in training and jobs pro-
grams. But private day care is often not an option for poor
mothers who can't find a place for their children in the
city-subsidized system.
"Private providers don't want welfare reform children
because it takes months to get paid," says Ilene Marcus,
director of public affairs for the UJA/Federation and a
child care expert.
Many women are left in the cold, with no choice but to
leave their children with family or friends. "The public
system is almost totally inaccessible right now," says
Barbara Zerzan, director of the Comprehensive Employ-
ment Opportunities Support Center at FEGS, a Manhattan
nonprofit that provides job training and education for
women trying to get off of welfare. "People literally cannot
get day care, yet they are eligible for so many different
training and education programs. The fact that they're not
at capacity, if the reason is registration, I find it so incred-
ibly typical and horrible."
I nitiall y, the state legislature's new family day care law
had the support of many of the people most directly
affected-the home providers themselves. Some of their
advocates lobbied assemblymembers and senators for as
much control over their own businesses and finances as
possible, partly in the belief that subsidized day care was
on the verge of unprecedented growth because of the
millions of dollars in federal money expected from
legislation approved in 1990.
"This was what we fought for, to be our own boss" says
Maria Otto, a former provider and founder of the City-
Wide Family Day Care Association, which has 427 mem-
em UMITS/JUNE/JULY 1993/19
bers, most of them women who care for children in their
homes. "It's dependency that we're trying to get rid of."
Indeed, many family day care providers in the subsi-
dized programs have been unclear about their tax status as
subcontractors for the nonprofits. In any case, most ACD-
subsidized providers made between $175 and $250 a
week under the old system, advocates say, and many had
no health insurance or Social Security. Now, at least, they
are paying into Social Security, and many are making as
much as $425 a week before taxes.
Otto and a number of the nonprofit program directors
agree that many providers are mistaken in believing that
income taxes are something to fear. "If they only under-
stood, there are so many things they can take as deduc-
tions," Otto says, so that their tax debt is not high-
particularly when they consider the federal earned income
tax credit for the working poor.
But a number of other day care advocates-mostly from
the nonprofit programs and their supporters-opposed
the changes because they could see that funding cuts were
an inevitable result (see City Limits, November 1991).
Richard OppeJ1heimer, director of the Nuestros Niiios
Family Day Care program in Brooklyn, was one of them.
Today, he rejects the idea that providers are better off as
independent entrepreneurs. "They have to care for the
children from eight to six. Now, in addition, they have to
find time to purchase equipment and manage their
finances," he argues. "It doesn't make any sense."
Even those advocates who fought for the new law are
now seeking increased government funding for the pro-
grams, in hopes of preserving a system that is clearly in
decline. And some of the program directors are devising
ways to tide themselves over until something is done. For
instance, Cardinal McCloskey has taken what some
consider the bold step of charging the providers a fee of
$10 a week per child to cover the cost of support services
that every program used to provide-mainly training in
child development, the provision of equipment and
frequent visits. If they don't want to pay the fee, they can't
join the program. It's made it possible for the program to
retain its entire staff of 12 full-time employees working
with 197 providers and about 600 children.
Supporters and critics alike say that the real proof of
whether or not the new system can work won't come until
city agencies deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that
has undermined registration so far, and until the city and
state governments recognize their responsibility under
federal law to expand day care services for working
mothers. On that last point nearly all of the advocates,
providers and non profits are in agreement, and are striving
to convince the City Council to address the issue again.
II there is any question about the value 01 having a
reliable and safe public day care system, Maribel Torres is
living proof. She finally found a place in the subsidized
program run by Children's Health Service on the Upper
West Side a few months ago. She's taking classes and is
about to get her high school equivalency diploma. Then
she expects to studyto become a licensed practical nurse.
"I'm really happy I can get it together," she beams. "My
son really looks up to me now. He says maybe we can get
out of Harlem. It means a lot to me." 0
Steven Wishnia is a former editor of the Guardian weekly.

BANKERS TRUST VENTURE CAPITAL PROGRAM
Flexible Financing for Community, Based Economic Development Initiatives
A. Low interest rate and three year term
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A. Exclusively designed for borrowers
Projects Currently Financed by the Venture Capital Program Include:
A. A program
... A Central Brooklyn construction company
... A Jamaica, Queens business fund
2O/JUNE/JULY 1993/CrrY UMITS
Applications Available by Calling:
Bankers Trust Company
Community Development Group
212 /
n Bankers'Irust
La Company
By Marcia Gelbart
Repeat Performance
A Bronx community has watched one industrial park
flop and another fail to create jobs for local residents.
Why, they ask, is the city trying again?
Y
ears ago, the billboard at 174th
Street and Bryant Avenue
proclaimed the birth of the
Mid-Bronx Industrial Park, but
now all that's left of the sign is the
wooden beam that held it up, one end
leaning against a metal fence and the
other hidden in knee-deep weeds. The
surrounding 10 acres are an overgrown
dumping ground dotted with heaps of
black trash bags, miscellaneous auto
parts, couch cushions and other junk.
City officials had proudly an-
nounced the coming of Mid-Bronx in
1983, following what was touted as
the overwhelming success of the
nearby Bathgate Industrial Park. More
than ten years and $7.8 million later,
residents and local business owners
are still awaiting its arrival.
Both parks are located in Commu-
nity District 3, an area that encom-
passes Claremont, Morrisania and
Crotona Park East and is one of the
three poorest community districts in
the city. Since the devastation of arson
and abandonment in the 1970s, much
of this area has been slowly rebuilt
with the help of the city's housing
department and nonprofit groups,
which together have rehabilitated
thousands of apartments here in recent
years.
Local leaders have high hopes for
the future and are seeking to foster
sufficient new housing development
so that the area's population will
nearly double by the end of the
century. In a show of unity, residents
joined together with the local
community board to draft a neighbor-
hood-based plan for the district under
the 197a clause of the revised city
charter. Their's was the first such plan
submitted to the City Planning
Commission, and it was approved last
year by that body and by the City
Council with only a few amendments.
But underlying those amendments
is a critical disagreement between the
neighborhood and city planning
officials over a plan for yet another
industrial park.
After years of failing to attract a
single tenant to Mid-Bronx or to lease
a large swath of vacant land at
Bathgate, the New York City Economic
Development Corporation (ED C) is
trying to develop a new industrial
park in Morrisania, and it's slated for
land that the community wants for
housing.
Local residents are not alone in
thinking the EDC is taking the wrong
tack. "What makes EDC think they
"Is the Morrisania
park in the
best interest of
the people
in the area?"
can get industry there?" asks William
Shore, a senior fellow at the Regional
Planning Association (RP A), an
independent group that analyzes
development in the metropolitan area.
Shore was the project director of "New
Directions for the Bronx," a 1990
planning report issued jointly by RP A
and the Bronx Borough President's
office. "EDC ought to ask if [the
Morrisania park] is in the best interest
of the people in that area," says Shore.
"I don't see any sign that that's likely."
Community Board 3 District Man-
ager John Dudley is more vehement in
his opposition to the EDC: "The city
must be truly made to understand
how something that they thought is
working is not, and cannot," he says.
Shoulder Pads and Candy
North of Morrisania and just south
of the Cross Bronx Expressway along
Fulton, Third and Washington
avenues is the 21.5-acre Bathgate
Industrial Park. Its construction in
1982 was a joint effort by the Port
Authority and the EDC to help rejuve-
nate empty and abandoned blocks.
Planners estimated the park would
employ more than 1,500 neighbor-
hood residents and attract new
businesses and housing construction
to the area. Prospective tenants-
mostly small to mid-sized manufac-
turers-were offered a variety of
incentive programs including dis-
count utility rates, real estate tax breaks
and subsidized relocation costs.
By 1990, the park's tenants em-
ployed 1,450 workers producing
shoulder pads, creams and ointments,
aircraft parts and candy, among other
things. The following year Bathgate
generated about $80 million in sales
and a payroll of more than $25 million,
according to the Port Authority. But
by December 1992, the number of jobs
had dropped to 1,170 after one tenant
went bankrupt and another moved
out, reflecting the overall decline in
the city's economy.
Bathgate has clearly been successful
in bringing jobs into the area, but
there's no way of knowing how many
of the park's employees come from
the neighborhood. While the Port
Authority and EDC say 70 percent
live "locally," their definition oflocal
means anywhere in the Bronx and
upper Manhattan. In any case, many
of the companies that moved to the
park were fully staffed when they
arrived. For instance, this past
December, Continental Bakers signed
a lease for 30,000 square feet. The
company's new distribution center
will employ 45 people, but none will
be new hires, according to Saul Leff,
director of sales for Continental.
Instead, employees are being relocated
from a plant in another part of the
borough.
The city created Mid-Bronx and
Bathgate at a time when planners and
economists believed the city's manu-
facturing base could be preserved,
despite falling numbers. To induce
companies to stay in New York, special
financing packages were designed,
along with the incentives offered at
the industrial parks. But companies
continued to leave the city. Accord-
ing to the New York State Department
of Economic Development, in 1980,
the Bronx had 959 manufacturing
firms that employed 27,946 people;
by 1991, those numbers had dwindled
to 663 firms and 16,339 employees.
Indeed, about 30 percent of Bathgate
is still vacant and the city has relaxed
People'. Pa1tl1: The city had big plans for attracting new jobs to the neighborhood when it cleared land for the Mid-Bronx Industrial Park in
1983. Today, residents believe new housing development would better serve the community.
its formerly stringent rules about who
can rent space there; for example, the
EDC has begun marketing two sites on
Third A venue for small commercial
and retail development rather than
manufacturing. The goal, says the EDC,
is to expand the existing commercial
strip along the avenue by creating
more neighborhood retail services.
"Even the city has come to recog-
nize that it has excess manufacturing
land," says Scott Wise from the Bronx
office of the Department of City
Planning. In January, the department
released an 18-month study, "New
Opportunities for a Changing Econ-
omy," in which the city outlined
industry'S declining role in the city's
economy. The study calls for more
productive use of vacant land by
changing city land-use regulations to
encourage the growth of small busi-
nesses and modern retail services.
Two months after the study'S
release, the EDC also announced plans
to convert the fallow Mid-Bronx site a
half mile to the east of Bathgate. The
influx of new residents nearby since
the mid-1980s has created a strong
demand for places to shop. As a result,
the city is courting large, suburban-
style stores such as Pathmark, which
22/JUNE/JULY 1993/CITY UMns
has already expressed interest in build-
ing a massive 60,OOO-square-foot
supermarket with a large parking lot
there, according to Mitch Gipson, vice
president for development at the EDC.
On the Ropes
That leaves one industrial park
down for the count, another on the
ropes-and a new one in its formative
stages. The EDC is currently prepar-
ing an environmental impact state-
ment for the proposed 17 -acre
Morrisania park in the heart of the
South Bronx, bordered by East 163rd
and East 167th Streets and Brook,
Park and Third avenues and a stone's
throw from five public housing
projects. The park would target small
and mid-sized companies requiring
20,000 to 80,000 square foot plots of
land.
Dudley of Community Board 3 says
he's doubtful that the EDC has
adequately assessed the proposed
industrial park's benefit to the comm-
unity. After all, the 1990 New Direc-
tions study found that given the
current number and size of house-
holds in the Bronx, there will soon be
a housing shortage in the district. The
report stated emphatically that the
proposed Morrisania park area should
be developed residentially.
"Household projections showed
that all vacant land will be needed for
housing and services related to it,like
parks, schools and day care centers,"
says Shore of the RP A. Besides, he
adds, if vast portions of the land are
used only as distribution centers and
warehouses, the creation of the
Morrisania park will lead to few jobs.
"Trucks pulling in and out would just
be burdening the area, making it
corridor county," he says, arguing that
in the past the EDC has often taken a
narrow view of its projects instead of
looking at what's good for an entire
community.
The Columbia University Depart-
ment of Urban Planning also com-
pleted a study of the area in 1990. It
concluded that the placement of the
Morrisania park "seems premature
given that the Bathgate Industrial Park
has not been conclusively determined
to be successful." According to the
study, jobs at Bathgate don't necessar-
ily benefit area residents, and the
park's vacant land hasn't been opti-
mized for either housing or further
industrial development. It suggests
that the Morrisania land should be
used for new housing and the rehabili-
tation of existing housing, and that
industry from Morrisania should be
relocated to fill Bathgate's vacant land.
City officials see it differently. "For
us it's not that black and white," says
Catie Marshall, spokesperson for the
EDC. "There's no such thing as housing
versus jobs. Without jobs, the people
don't have housing."
Besides, adds Gipson, "Interest is
out there." He says that the EDC has
already made contacts for at least half
a dozen potential deals at Morrisania.
He would not comment on the total
expenditures for the park so far, saying
only that an outside consulting firm
was hired to prepare the environ-
mental impact statement. Marshall
says that five full-time EDC staff
members are working to market
Morrisania as well as other sites in the
Bronx and Staten Island.
Gipson says each industrial park
offers different things to different
companies, explaining that each park
has its own set of prices, carrying
costs and benefits of location. At
Bathgate, tenants pay rent to the Port
Authority, which constructs the
buildings before tenants move in. But
at Morris ania , as well as at Mid-Bronx,
tenants would have to pay for the land
and build on it themselves. Also, he
says, the Morrisania park will appeal
to smaller companies, since Bathgate
generally won't rent to those that
need less than 40,000 square feet of
space. "You can't just say that Bathgate
meets everybody's needs," Gipson
says.
In addition, he explains, the
Morrisania park is part of a larger
scheme for redevelopment in the
South Bronx that includes Melrose
Commons, a $200 million, 3,750-unit
housing development for mostly
middle income families (see City
Limits, March 1993). He says the Mid-
Bronx and Morrisania parks will be
viable sites for relocating many of the
80 businesses that will have to move
off the Melrose Commons site to make
way for construction.
Many of those businesses are not
happy about the idea of moving into
an antiseptic industrial area or moving
out of their current location.
"They want to put us into a dead-
end zone," says Yolanda Garcia of
Garcia Carpet at 3065 Third Avenue,
within the Melrose Commons site.
The store has been there for 50 years,
she adds. "If you move a block away,
you lose the business. [Customers]
come here blindly from Connecticut,
New Jersey, allover the Bronx. You
don't have to give them an address,"
Garcia says. They just know where to
go. Garcia is vice president of Nos
Quedamos, the "We Stay" committee,
an alliance of area businesses that
opposes the construction of Melrose
Commons and has succeeded in
delaying the preparation of the
environmental impact statement for
the project.
No Justification
At community board meetings and
other neighborhood forums, it's clear
that residents and activists don't want
to see a repeat of Mid-Bronx or
Bathgate in Morrisania. "The Bronx
was always a bedroom community.
Building an industrial park there will
never really work, "says Judy Turnock,
vice president of New Directions in
Community Revitalization, a non-
profit group that works with Bronx
Lebanon Hospital to create more
housing. "There's no justification for
[another industrial park] except that
they want it," she says.
"Partnership for the Future," the
197a plan that the community board
submitted to the city last fall, did not
discount the necessity of economic
development. But it did approach it
differently from the EDC and the city
planners. Overall, the board's
economic strategy is geared toward
creating a mixed-use district with job
training facilities, more housing and
the revitalization of several depressed
commercial strips-development knit
into the fabric of the community, rather
than ghettoized into manufacturing
parks and vast commercial plazas.

Nevertheless, in September, the
City Planning Commission agreed
with city officials and modified
Community District 3's plan. The
commission turned down the board's
recommendations for rezoning four
of the nine blocks at the Morrisania
site for housing, writing, "The elimi-
nation of the sites will jeopardize the
viability of the proposed industrial
park."
"We felt industrial parks needed to
be preserved for future industrial
development," explains Eugenia L.
Birch, a member of the planning
commission. She adds that the com-
mission believes there is enough land
in the community for residential use
and that the demand for housing
would be partially satisfied by Melrose
Commons.
Dudley of Community Board 3 says
the fight isn't over yet, however. The
EDC's plans can still be challenged by
the community board and in other
forums, he says. "I want to see more
commercial retail development in the
district, and I want to see people
coming to live here in the community
because of that development," he adds.
"I want to see to it that plans for
residential development in this
community will be continued."
One thing is clear, says local state
Assemblywoman Gloria Davis, who
is also critical of the Bathgate project
and believes it has failed to fulfill its
promise to the neighborhood. "These
people need jobs .... If you're going to
take our land, give us something
back." 0
Marcia Gelbart is a freelance writer
based in Queens.
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Call or write Sue Fox
710 WEST END AVENUE
NEW YORK, N.Y. 10025
(212) 222-9946
By James Bradley
Making the Right Move
New York City may soon have a reliable public
transportation system for the disabled.
O
fficials of the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority say
the agency is planning to take
over the city's special mass
transit services for the disabled on
July 1, following years of disagree-
ment, negotiation and prepa-
ration. The move would end a
long impasse between the
city's Department of Trans-
portation (DOT) and the MT A
over who should provide
paratransit services, as they
are called, and is a long-
awaited victory for disabled-
rights activists.
The activists have argued
for years that only the MT A
has the resources sufficient to
fund and operate a paratransi t
system as complex as the one
required to serve New York
City. The transfer from DOT,
which currently provides
paratransit services at a cost
of $10 million annually, will
also include an increase in
the operating budget to $35.7
million a year by 1997.
to a wheelchair but able to use city
buses doesn't.
In its current form, Access-A-Ride
suffers from a number of problems.
Although overseen by DOT, it is a
decentralized operation, with private
The problems have severely hin-
dered Access-A-Ride's ability to meet
the needs of the constituency it serves:
though some 300,000 trips were pro-
vided in 1992, half-again as many
requests for rides were turned down.
According to the federal Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed
in 1990, that's not good enough.
Restrictions on hours, services and
availability like those endemic to
Access-A-Ride have to be eliminated
by 1997. Instead, every city is required
to create a para transit program that
provides services comparable
to those supplied by the regu-
lar mass transit system.
Part of the System
The ADA also requires that
the agency that runs a city's
mass transit services must also
provide paratransit. Sylvia
Bassoff, a leader of the fight to
transfer Access-A-Ride to the
MT A, says that's significant
because the disabled don't
want paratransit viewed as
some unique service for a
special interest group, but
simply as another part of New
York's mass transit system.
"We don't want paratransit
to be a stepchild," she says.
"Paratransit and mass transit
are synonymous. Without [it]
seniors remain isolated and
lonely."
Advocates also want the
service in the MTA's hands
for purely practical reasons:
paratransit has to be coordi-
~ nated with mass transit in
~ order to be truly effective, they
:.: say, capable of transporting
~ disabled people to bus stops
"The major hurdles have
been overcome," says Tommy
Loeb, spokesman for state
Senator Manfred Ohrenstein
of Manhattan, who has spon-
sored several legislative efforts
for disabled rights. "There is
now an acceptance that we
have the responsibility to
provide services and ensure
accessibility to all disabled
people."
Poor RelatIons: Disabled-rights activists like Sylvia Bassoff say
that public transit services for disabled people should be fully
integrated with the rest of the system, not just its stepchild.
and accessible subway
stations. "Unless you use
paratransit as a feeder to mass
transit, it won't work," argues
Door-to-Door Service
New York's current paratransit
system, Access-A-Ride, began oper-
ating in January, 1990. Similar to a
taxi service, it provides disabled New
Yorkers with door-to-door transpor-
tation, mostly in vans, and is available
for $1.20 per round trip in all five
boroughs during the daytime.
Only people who are physically
unable to access mass transit are
eligible for paratransit. For instance,
an elderly person who doesn't have
the stamina to walk to the nearest bus
stop qualifies, while a person confined
contractors providing services in each
borough, an arrangement that limits
the coordination of interborough
services. Another problem is the insta-
bility of its funding. Until recently,
Access-A-Ride's operating costs were
covered by fees garnered from the
city's mortgage recording tax, which
yielded $12 million in 1990. But by
last year, that figure had shrunk to $3
million because of the slump in the
real estate market, forcing Mayor
David Dinkins to cobble together
Access-A-Ride's budget with other
types of tax revenues.
Jim Weisman, an attorney for the East-
ern Paralyzed Veterans Association
who helped draft the ADA. "It's too
expensive to provide everyone with
door-to-door trips."
Despite the federal law's lack of
ambiguity on this matter, there has
been an ongoing feud between DOT
and the MT A over who bears ultimate
responsibility for providing
paratransit services in New York.
The roots of the conflict can be
traced to the city's early efforts to
develop a system for the disabled. In
1984, the state passed the Handi-
capped Transportation Act, authoriz-
ing the creation of a citywide
paratransit system operated by the
DOT. One of the provisions of the bill,
however, was that the MT A wouldn't
run the new system and would instead
concentrate on improving subways
and buses, which were in poor shape
at the time, according to Mary
McCorry, special counsel to the MT A.
So when the ADA became law in
1991, the MTA asserted that until the
Handicapped Transportation Act was
amended, it was legally prevented
from taking over the city's paratransit
operations. That angered a number of
advocates, and there have been bitter
words thrown back and forth during
the last year because of the delays.
The MTA claims, however, that it
is now ready to take control of
paratransit, and a tentative agreement
between the agency and the city ham-
mered out last month will provide
$132.6 million for the system over the
next five years. McCorry says the
delays were just the result of ironing
out complications within the agency.
In addition, officials point out, the
federal government provided no extra
money to the states and cities to carry
out the mandates of the ADA, so new
funding plans had to be devised.
"We're developing a complex
system," she says. "We've specialized
in fixed-route service for one hundred
years, [and) we've never handled
demand-responsive service. We're
new at this. It takes a lot of planning."
Lack of Sympathy
Many activists believe ther is more
to it, however. They cite other propos-
als by the agency, including a 14-page
application for potential paratransit
riders, as evidence of the MTA's bad
faith. Bassoff says she was also an-
gered when MT A officials suggested
that riders would have to pay a regis-
tration fee and a $2.50 one-way fare.
"The truth is that there is a complete
lack of understanding and sympathy
on their part," says Bassoff. "They
really don't care-the MTA's whole
approach is mean-spirited." After a
public outcry, the proposed fare has
been cut to $1.25-the costofa subway
token. The registration fee is still
pending.
The problem, says Weisman, is that
the MT A has been wasting time
negotiating with advocates and the
city over matters that should have
been resolved a long time ago; in the
meantime, he points out, other cities
have done far more to accommodate
their disabled residents. Los Angeles'
paratransit budget for the current fiscal
year is $74 million, for example.
to vote on the plan in a matter of days.
The change couldn't come soon
enough for many city residents.
"What we want," explains Frieda
Zames, a member of the group
Disabled in Action and a longtime
acti vist, "is for the MT A to coordinate
paratransit and mass transit so we can
function in the city, so we can go to
work, to meetings and museums. We
want to participate in everyday life.
That's the big issue." 0
Everyday Life
If all goes according to the plan city
officials have worked out with the
MT A, then disabled New Yorkers
should soon have as little trouble
getting from, say, their home in
Flatbush to the grandstand in Yankee
Stadium as anyone who rides the D
train. As City Limits goes to press, the
MT A's board of directors is scheduled
lames Bradley is a freelance writer
based in Brooklyn.
Pratt Institute Center forCommunity and
EnvironmentalDevelopment (PICCED)
PRATT COMMUNITY ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT INTERNSHIP
October 3, 1993 - June 24, 1994
A certificate program for the staff of nonprofit
community-hased organizations and puhlic
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Concentrations in housing or commercial and
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Core curriculum includes accounting, husiness
development, real estate development and
organizational effectiveness
Successful completion earns advanced standing
in Pratt Institute's Graduate Program in City
and Regional Planning
CONTAO:
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Manager of Training Services
Pratt Institute Center for Community and
Environmental Development(PICCED)
379 DeKalb Avenue, 2nd Floor
Brooklyn, New York 11205
718636-3486
718636-3709 Fax

Confronting Family Violence
I
have worked with abused women
and their children since 1978, and
in 1983 I founded the Sanctuary
for Families, at the time one of the
only organizations in New York City
dedicated to helping battered women.
Over the years I have become increas-
ingly aware of
how frequently
domestic abuse
of children ac-
companies that
of women, and
in 1987, when
Lisa Steinberg
was killed, I
committed my-
self to looking
more closely at
this connec-
tion.
What Ilearn-
ed was startling
and disturbing.
............
FIJII ..... at
.. ...
.... 111.11 .....
One study found that 41 percent of
men who beat their partners were also
child abusers. Even more stunning, a
New York City study found that in 71
percent of all child homicides inves-
tigated by the Child Welfare Adminis-
tration (CWA), the mother was also a
victim of domestic abuse.
It quickly became clear to me that
the existing social service agencies
were not considering the implications
of this, and they certainly weren't
running programs in a way that recog-
nized or dealt with dual abuse. In fact,
they were doing the opposite-and
they still are.
The women coming to my agency
told me stories that bore out my worst
suspicions. As they tried to cope with
their own abuse while keeping their
families together, battered women
found that their children suffered from
violence as well. Yet when they sought
assistance, they found that the very
systems designed to help them often
punished them in the most cruel
manner: by taking their children away.
It's not surprising, then, that
battered women are reluctant to report
their situations to social service agen-
cies. As a result, women and children
City View is a forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
28/JUNE/JULY 1993jCITY UMITS
are being seriously injured, exposed
to escalating levels of violence, and in
many cases, dying.
Stark Choices
Take, for example, the case of a
battered woman named Rita. She
obtained an order of protection against
her severely abusive husband in
criminal court, but soon thereafter a
child abuse and neglect investigation
was initiated to determine whether
Rita had failed to protect her children
from her husband's violence. When
the court granted Rita an order evicting
her violent husband from the apart-
ment, the judge added a clause saying
that if he returned, the children
would be taken away by the city.
But after her husband was evicted,
he went to family court himself and
obtained an order of protection against
Rita. Taking this order to housing
court, he convinced a judge there to
overrule the eviction order-allow-
ing him to return to the apartment.
The child welfare
system is
riddled with
inconsistencies
and injustices.
Rita faced a stark choice: either lose
her children to the government, or
flee her home and become homeless
in order to avoid having her children
taken from her.
In another case, a battered woman
discovered that her husband was
sexually abusing her 12-year-old
daughter. After CW A investigated and
found that the charge of sexual abuse
was merited, the agency placed the
child in foster care and charged the
mother with failing to protect her
daughter. At the same time, the city
dropped the charges against the father
because, officials said, it was both too
costly and too difficult to conduct a
criminal investigation and trial.
The child welfare system in New
York City is riddled with such incon-
sistencies and injustices in its deal-
ings with these families. Women learn
quickly that if they are open about
their situations at home, they risk
punishment even if they too are the
victims, not the perpetrators, of abuse.
Given the way CWA is presently
structured, battered women are forced
to seek help from case workers who
neither acknowledge nor understand
the complexity and danger they face.
And what options are women left
with? Avoiding "help" outoffearthat
their children will be removed, staying
at home and trying to "manage" the
violence, choosing to place their
children in foster care in order to
protect them, or running away to a
shelter or the streets.
These options are both cruel and
fiscally irresponsible. The city annu-
ally spends more that $1 billion on
foster care and an additional $275
million on direct shelter costs for
homeless families, 40 percent of whom
are fleeing violent homes. It is obvious
that we are doing something seriously
wrong and that present policies and
programs may be making matters
worse, not better.
ReformCWA
A new report called Behind Closed
Doors: The City's Response to Family
Violence makes recommendations for
better methods of confronting family
violence. Though it deals with eight
city systems, the report, issued by the
1993 Task Force on Family Violence,
chaired by Manhattan Borough
President Ruth Messinger and City
Councilmember Ronnie Eldridge and
convened by myself and Elba
Montalvo, found that many ofCWA's
policies in particular are hurting
families, not helping them.
Some of the report's recommen-
dations are:
Train CWA workers about the
connection between the abuse of
children and the abuse of women.
Without adequate training, they can
not be expected to either identify or
assist families in which these two
problems exist.
Change the investigatory process
so that when an investigation is per-
formed regarding child abuse, abuse
of the mother is also investigated.
Change the fact that all CW A
cases are opened in the mother's name,
thereby implying that mothers are
responsible for anything that happens
to their children. This attitude is
reflected in the pervasive use of
"failure to protect" charges filed
against battered women. These
charges blame the mother for the
violence perpetrated against her
children and allow the batterer to
avoid responsibility.
Adult male members of families
should be included in any risk assess-
ment done by CW A. Removing an
abusive man from a household would
preclude the need to remove the
children or relocate the family.
Such policy changes, however, will
require significant changes in attitude
within government. This new attitude
must be one in which family violence
is not tolerated. All members of
families deserve to be safe; there must
be effective and consistent laws and
government policies that ensure
useful , accessible assistance when
they are not. 0
Subscribe to City Limits
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CITIBANKSAlUTES
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non-profit developers, the Low Income Housing
Fund is working to reverse the trends of
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York Program Manager, at (212) 533-6710.
By Eric Weinstock
Indecent Proposal
"Scarcity By Design: The Legacy of
New York City's Housing Policies,"
By Peter D. Salins & Gerard C.S.
Mildner, Harvard University Press,
1992,168 pages, $29.95, hardcover
B
y default, free-market theory has
become the most popular
economic model of our times.
Yet despite the inevitable limits
on converting theory into reality-
recognized even by the original free-
market visionary, Adam Smith-pur-
ists still refuse to let facts stand in the
way of a good argument.
Using free-market assumptions to
bludgeon New York City's housing
policies is about as easy as clubbing
baby seals. If you start out believing
that government intervention in the
economy is wrong, then New York
City's efforts to control the size, shape
and cost of its housing stock cannot
possibly be right. Free marketeers have
used type of to oppose
everythmg from mmimum wage laws
to environmental protection. The flaw
in their argument is that individual
actions have consequences for all of
society, consequences that society can
ignore only at its own peril.
Nevertheless, Peter Salins and
Gerard Mildner dismiss years of
housing policy in a tidy 168 pages,
undertaking their task with great vigor
and alacrity.
Restrict the Housing Supply
For years, New Yorkers have
complained about the lack of afford-
able housing and the slow pace of new
housing construction. The problem,
according to Salins and Mildner, is
that the long arm of government-in
the form of rent regulations, zoning
rules, property taxes and landmarking
restrictions-acts to restrict the suppl y
of housing by increasing costs and
reducing the profitability of housing
ownership and construction.
On this point Salins and Mildner
are absolutely correct. Rent regulation
and other restrictions can all be
disincentives to development. But
how much additional housing
development would result if these
restrictions were removed? And would
the social benefits outweigh the social
costs?
In fact, the major disincentives to
development right now are the costs
of finance, construction, maintenance
and operation and not rent regulation.
Developers can barely afford to build
luxury housing, much less affordable,
properly maintained apartments for
low income tenants. Eliminating rent
regulation would unleash not a wave
of new construction, but a wave of
rent increases for existing housing.
New York City's zoning and
landmarking laws also reduce the
housing supply by reducing the size
of new buildings, limiting the number
that can be torn down and preventing
new construction in certain areas, the
Free-market
purists refuse to
let facts stand in
the way of a good
argument.
authors say. However, they ignore the
fact that zoning is an important tool
for controlling the problems that can
result when new housing is built, such
as overloaded transportation and
sewage systems, crowded schools and
dwindling water supplies. Free
marketeers faced with an invasion of
night clubs and strip joints in their
neighborhoods will find themselves
embracing zoning restrictions pretty
quickly.
The authors point out correctly that
New York City's property tax structure
favors single family home owners and
hurts tenants and cooperatives. This
inequitable situation is hard to re-
dress because of the failings of de-
mocracy: single family home owners
vote, and they will undoubtedly pun-
ish any elected official who raises
their taxes. Tenants also vote-and in
greater aggregate numbers than home
owners-but it's not easy to educate
tenants to understand that lower
property taxes for landlords might
mean lower rents for themselves, at
least. in the long run. Because of this,
making property taxes fair is not a
high priority of elected officials.
Crazy Quilt of Laws
Admittedly, the current rent
regulation makes little sense and New
York State's poorly funded and at
times mismanaged Office of Rent
Administration has the task of admin-
istering two completely different
regulatory systems, rent control and
rent stabilization. But efforts to im-
prove and rationalize the crazy quilt
oflaws hammered out during years of
political compromise have been
stymied by free-market propagandists
and property owners who seek
complete elimination of rent regu-
lation. They would rather suffer with
a poor regulatory system in the hope
that one day it will collapse under its
own weight, rather than try to improve
it.
The pattern of rents that exists
today, with tenants of many of the
best apartments paying the lowest
rents and tenants of terrible apart-
ments paying some of the highest, is,
of course, irrational. The problem is
that regulators have allowed larger
rent increases, and sometimes even
deregulation, when apartments
become vacant and new tenants move
in. Therefore, rents are set not by size
or neighborhood but by how
frequently tenants move in and out.
But that is not the fault of regulation.
It is the fault of political compromise.
In any case, the current system is
better than one in which low income
tenants are always in danger of being
displaced by the market. The median
income of a rent-controlled house-
hold is about $12,000. Few such
tenants could remain in the safe
middle-class neighborhoods they have
always lived in if not for rent
regulation.
Free marketeers like Salins and
Mildner need to realize that New York
City is unique, with 70 percent of its
denizens being renters, as compared
to 30 percent for other U.S. cities.
With so much of its porulation
dependent upon the renta market,
New York will always have some form
of rent regulation and market inter-
vention. The sooner property owners
accept that reality, the sooner we can
move toward a more rational set of
regulations. 0
Eric Weinstock is an economist and
former city housing official.
It's Regulation, Stupid
To the Editor:
The brief news item, "Tenants
Tentative Victory," in your May 1993
issue was not completely accurate.
I recollect that I said to your reporter
that the state Assembly was serious
about "rent regulation" and not merely
"rent stabilization," as I am quoted as
saying. The Assembly legislation and
its Senate companion (which has yet
to be voted upon) eliminate the state
legislature's need to review rent regu-
lations every two years. This includes
rent stabilization, rent control, and
the co-op and condo protection laws.
To exclude rent control from this
is precisely what most land-
lords would love to do: it is there
abominable snowman, their bugaboo.
However, there are more than 100,000
tenants in New York City protected by
rent control who thankfully were in-
cluded in these sound, pro-tenant
legislative efforts.
Derek Denckla
Metropolitan Council on Housing
Distant Friends
To the Editor:
Please extend my congratulations
to all those at City Limits for produc-
ing such a fine and extremely timely
magazine. I only wish Minneapolis
had something that came close!
Arthur T. Himmelman
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Distant, Period
To the Editor:
I recently received a solicitation
from you in which you state that my
name was given to you as someone
deeply committed to urban commu-
nity affairs. As you can see from my
letterhead, that could not be further
from the truth.
I am deeply committed to rural
affairs and feel that far too much of the
government's money and time is spent
on urban affairs. Perhaps you are not
aware that the rural population in this
country is growing while that of urban
areas is shrinking. Along with this
growth is a significant rise in teenage
pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse,
and many so-called "urban" problems.
I am a neighborhood activist and
community organizer-one dedicated
to getting the services out of the city
where they are wasted and into the
country where they are needed.
Advertise in City Limits
Call Faith Wiggins
(212) 253-3887
Margaret O'Casey
Executive Director
Rural Rensselaer County Council
for Health & Human Service Inc.
Hoosick Falls, NY
The Hunter College Department of Urban Affairs & Planning
and its Alumni Association are pleased to announce the presentation of
The Donald G. SuHivan Memorial Awards for Urban Leadership
to Mayor David N. Dinkins and Deputy Mayor Barbara J. Fife
on Friday, June 11th at 6:00 p.m.
in the Hunter College Playhouse located at 68th St. and Lexington Ave.
Join us for a cocktail reception, awards ceremony and address,
"Urban Visions," by Mayor Dinkins.
The program is free and open to all.
For more information, please call Gertie Glatt at (212) 772-5519.
Your Neighborhood Housing
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PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
ASHOKMENON
Attorney at Law
Representation of HDFC Coop Boards.
Commercial Leases Coop, Condo & House Closings.
Purchase & Sale of Business Non-Profit Corporations.
Wills, Trusts and Estate Planning
875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 800
New York, NY 10001
Tel: (212) 695-2929 Fax: (212) 695-1489
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings [ 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
LAW FIRM OF BARRY K. MALLIN
Specializing in HDFC Co-Ops and Not-far-Profits
HPDIDHCR/HUD Closings n Tax Credit Projects
Assistance in Preparing New Co-Op Re-Sale, Subletting,
Primary Residency, Inheritance Policies
Dedicated Service-Se Habla Espanol
72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012, (212) 334-9393
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
CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT
Over 20 years experience. Specializing in nonprofit housing &
community development organizations.
Certified Annual Audits Compilation &. Review Services
Management Advisory Services. Tax Consultation &. Preparation
eal/today for free consultation
77 QUAKER RIDGE ROAD, SUITE 215
NEW ROCHELLE, NY 10804
914-633-5095 FAX-914-633-5097
3O/JUNE/JULY 1993/CITY UMRS
TURF COMPANIES
Building Management/Consultants
Specializing in management & development
services to low income housing cooperatives,
community organizations and co-op
boards of directors
230 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217
John Touhey
718/857 -0468
Community Development Legal ASlstCince Centel
a project 01 the lawyers 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
COMPUTER SERVICES
Hardware Sales:
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Software Sales:
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Services: Network/Hardware/Software Installation,
Training, Custom Software, Hand Holding
Clients Include: Acorn, ANHD, MHANY, NHS, UHAB
Morris Kornbluth 718-857-9157
David H. Grumer
Certified Public Accountant
25 West 45th Street, Suite 1401, New York, New York 10036
(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.
Planning and Archill'Chlrr for Ih(' :\onProfil
Specializing in
Feasibility Studies, Zoning Analysis & Design of
Housing, Health Care and Educational Projects
Magnus Magnusson, AlA
MAGNUSSON. ARCHITECTS
10 East 40th Street, 39th Floor, New York, NY 10016
Facsimile 212 4813768 Telephone 212 6835977
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
TIfANHAUSER & ESTERSON
ARC HIT E C T S P. C.
Specializing in Pre-lease, Space Planning and Architectural Services
to the Non-Profit community with significant experience in HIV
Day Treatment Centers and Certificate of Need submissions.
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(212) 929-3699 Fax (212) 929-9718
Pl ' BLICITY PLl 'S
CONTRACTS TRAINING FINANCING PROMOTION
SELF HELP MATERIALS
Valerie White
PO Box 265 Huntington Station, NY 11746
718 262 2576
JOB ADS
TEIIAJIT ORGAIIIZER to work with tenants in city-owned buildings in
Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Form tenant
associations, develop tenants' leadership skills, etc. Must be
community-oriented, self-starter, have good communication skills.
Experience and bilingual a plus. Salary depends on experience.
Excellent benefits. Resume and letter to Executive Director, Pratt
Area Community Council , 201 Dekalb Ave. , Brooklyn 11205. Fax
718-522-2604.
Bilingual TEIIAJIT ORGAIIIZER in Chinatown. Committed. Housing law
experience preferred. Flexible hours. $22k1year. Generous fringe.
Approx 2 yrs. Lower East Side Local Enforcement Unit, Attn: Oda
Friedheim, 31 Ave. A, NYC 10009
Brooklyn-based housing/community development group seeks:
PROJECT COORDIIATOR (f/t) to develop community economic devel-
opment programs; implement low income and supportive housing
projects; write grants. Reqs: Community development/housing
experience; writing and organizational skills. Bilingual (Spanish) a
plus. Salary: High 20s, DOE, excellent benefits. COMMUlITY HOUSING
ATTORNEY (p/t) to represent low income tenants in neglected
buildings; bring 7A and HP proceedings; assist in landlord nego-
tiations; help tenants buy their own buildings through a Mutual
Housing Association. Reqs: Licensed attorney; commitment to
tenants' rights. Experience in housing law a plus. Compensation
depends on experience. 8-10 hours/week. Write to: Brad Lander,
Fifth Avenue Committee, 199 14th St., Brooklyn 11215. Women
and minority candidates encouraged to apply.
COMMUNITY ORGAlIZERS. Multi-ethnic, community-based grassroots
organization seeks individuals to help empower tenant and neigh-
borhood groups to win affordable housing and safe streets. Long
hours including evenings, exciting work. Salary $18k to $20k,
benefits. Spanish and organizing experience helpful. Women and
minorities encouraged to apply. Resume to Brien R. O'Toole,
Executive Director, NWBCCC, 103 East 196th St. , Bronx 10463.
DOWISTATE COORDIIATOR. Provide technical assistance to non-
profit housing groups in organizational development and housing
preservation and production. Provide feedback to statewide coalition
on housing policies and legislation. Build membership base.
Experience in nonprofit housing development, management and
preservation a must. Bilingual a plus. Salary: low $30s. Resume
and letter to Executive Director, Neighborhood Preservation
Coal ition, 303 Hamilton St. , Albany NY 12210. EOE.
TEIIAJIT RELATIONS SPECIALIST. Highly motivated individual to work
with low income co-op conversion project. Community organizing
and housing management exp., bilingual Span/Eng preferred.
Excellent interpersonal skills, sol id writing skills required. Salary
from $20k to $25k. Resume to Personnel Department, Banana
Kelly CIA, 863 Prospect Ave., Bronx 10459. Fax 718-328-0749.
Equal Opportunity Employer.
GET WITH IT!
GET ORGANIZED!
rrs A SPECIAL ISSUE
OF CITY LIMITS!
In the August/September issue of City Limits,
you' ll find an in-depth look at community
organizing in the 1990s!
City Limits will examine the broad diversity of
organizers, from neighborhood environmental
activists to anti-crime organizations, from groups
with a handful of members to those with
thousands. We will explain where they came
from, what they've achieved and how they've
done it.
City Limits will also provide a comprehensive
directory of training programs and major
organizations around the country, and a detailed
listing of resources for anyone interested in
learning more about community organizing.
Don't miss this special issue. Subscribe now!
Call (212) 925-9820.
To advertise, call Faith Wiggins at 253-3887
CITY UMITS/JUNE/JULY 1993/ 31
Chemical Bank is Pleased to Congratulate the 1993
Housing Opportunities Program (HOP) Awardees
ORGANIZATION
Abyssinian Development Corporation
Access Development Fund
Affordable Housing Partnership of Albany County
Albany Community Land Trust
Albany County Rural Housing Alliance
Allen A.M.E. Neighborhood Preservation and Development Corporation
Aquinas Housing Corporation
Arbor Hill Development Corporation
Asian Americans for Equality
Association of Brooklyn Clergy for Community Development
Astella Development Corporation
BEC New Communities
Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association
Barn Raisers
Bellport, Hagerman, East Patchogue Alliance
Belmont Arthur Avenue Local Development Corporation
Better Neighborhoods
The Bridge
Bronx United in Leveraging Dollars
Brooklyn Neighborhood Improvement Association
Broome-Tioga Arc
Buffalo Neighborhood Housing Services
Bushwick Information, Coordinating & Action Committee
Capital District Community Loan Fund
Carroll Gardens Association
Catholic Charities Housing Office of the Diocese of Albany
Chemung County Habitat for Humanity
Clinton Housing Development Company
Community Access
Consumer-Farmer Foundation
Cooper Square Committee
Corporation for Supportive Housing
Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation
East New York Urban Youth Corps
Ecumenical Community Development Organization
Enterprise Foundation
Fifth Avenue Committee
First Ward Action Council
Flatbush Development Corporation
Flower City Habitat for Humanity
Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation
HUB II Housing Development Fund Company
Habitat for Humanity of New York City
Habitat for Humanity of Westchester
Harlem Churches for Community Improvement
Harlem Restoration Project
Hope Community
Housing Action Council
Housing And Services, Inc.
Housing Conservation Coordinators
Housing Opportunities, Inc.
Huntington Coalition for the Homeless
Interfaith Council for Action
Interfaith Council for Affordable Residence
Interfaith Nutrition Network
Kingsbridge-Riverdale-Van Cortlandt Development Corporation
Lawyers Alliance for New York
Leviticus 25:23Alternative Fund
~CHEMICAL
Community Development Group
ORGANIZATION
Local Initiatives Support Corporation
Long Island Housing Partnership
Low Income Housing Fund
Lower East Side Catholic Area Conference
Lower East Side Coalition Housing Development
Lower East Side Mutual Housing Association
MBD Community Housing Corporation
Manhattan Valley Development Corporation
Mercy Haven
Metro Interfaith Housing Management Corporation
Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council
Mount Hope Housing Company
Mutual Housing Association of New York
Near Westside Neighborhood Association
Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City
Neighborhood Housing Services of Rochester
Neighbors Helping Neighbors
Neighbors United for Justice in Housing
New Directions in Community Revitalization
New York Landmarks Conservancy
Niagara Falls Neighborhood Housing Services
North Brooklyn Development Corporation
Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Corporation
Northfield Community LDC of Staten Island
Orange County Rural Development Advisory Corporation
Partnership for the Homeless
People's Firehouse
Pratt Area Community Council
Pratt Institute Center for Community & Environmental Development
Preservation Company of the Peekskill Area Health Center
Progress of Peoples Development Corporation
Project Hospitality
Pueblo Nuevo Housing and Development Association
REAPS,A Community Land Trust in Yonkers
Resurrection House
Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council
SFdS Development Corporation
Senior Housing Resource Corporation
Settlement Housing Fund
Sheltering The Homeless Is Our Responsibility
Southside United Housing Development Fund Corporation
Southtowns Rural Preservation Company
St. Joseph's Housing Corporation
St. Nicholas Neighborhood Preservation Corporation
Star of the Sea
Suffolk Community Development Corporation
Syracuse Model Neighborhood Corporation
Troy Rehabilitation and Improvement Program
University Neighborhood Housing Program
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board
Utica Community Action
Victim Services
Washingtonville Housing Alliance
West Harlem Group Assistance
West Side Federation for Senior Housing
Westchester Housing Fund
Westhab
Wyandanch Homes and Property Development Corporation
Youth Action Homes

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