December 1991 New York's Community Affairs News Magazine

C L O S I N G C O M M U N I T Y C L I N I C S 0 L O W I N C O M E C A R E E R L A D D E R S
H O M E L E S S O R G A N I Z A T I O N S W O R K I N G
D amaged D reams
The Failure of Community Control
at Taino Towers
$2.50
CitJl Limits
Volume XVI Number 10
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2/DECEMBER 1991jCnv UMITS
A New Era
W
ith little fanfare, President George Bush recently approved a
$23.9 billion spending package for the National Affordable
Housing Act. His penstroke reverses the federal government's
withdrawal from the housing field-and signifies a historic
step forward for community-based housing groups.
The overall spending figure is only a slight increase from last year, but
the creation of new housing programs is what makes the difference. The
largest new part ofthe package is HOME, which provides $1.5 billion for
a patchwork quilt of housing efforts. A significant portion of the HOME
money-$225 million-is set aside for local, nonprofit housing provid-
ers.
Like the city of New York, the federal government is finally starting to
recognize the worth and abilities of these groups. It's a welcome shift,
and long overdue. But as this month's cover story shows, it's vital for
these groups to stay true to their community roots and their responsibili-
ties.
At Taino Towers, the community-based ownership group has betrayed
its activist past and slipped into complacency, allowing the development
to deteriorate so much that a federal housing inspector noted, "These
conditions are unacceptable and must change if Taino Towers is ever
going to become a decent place to live."
Any time an effort at community control falters, it provides ammuni-
tion for people in power who resent supporting projects run by local
folks. It's important that Taino Towers be seen as the exception rather
than the rule, and that community-based groups work doubly hard to
ensure long-term accountability within their organizations. 0
Cover photograph by Franklin Kearney.

FEATURE
Damaged Dreams
Taino Towers was meant to be a showcase for commu-
nity control-but it's fallen under the sway of a single
man. 10
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial
ANew Era ... .... .. ................... .... ........ ...... .................. 2
Briefs
Screening Lawsuit .................. .............. ..... ............. 4
Divided SRO ........ ... ..... .............. ......... .............. ...... 4
Bronx Reinvestment ............ ...... ........... ..... ............. 5
Profile
Voices From the Streets .................. ............ ........ .... 6
Pipeline
Closing Down the Clinics .... .... .............. ...... ...... .. .. . 8
Climbing the Job Ladder ........................................ 16
Vital Statistics
Toil and Trouble:
Low income employment during the recession ... 18
Cityview
Why Doesn't She Just Leave? ...... .......... ........ ........ 20
Letters ........................................................................ 22
Review
The NIMBY Manual .......................................... ..... 24
Clinics/Page 8
Dreams/Page 10
Job Ladder/Page 16
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/3
11:
1
;'1"11
SCREENING
LAWSUIT
A recent court decision sheds
a ray of sunlight on the screen-
ing committees that tenant
associations and community-
based management groups use
to pick and choose tenants for
their city-owned buildings.
In the ruling, Justice Phyllis
Gangel-Jacob of the state
Supreme Court states that the
city's guidelines for screening
committees are too informal.
The decision, in Johnson vs. City
of New York, requires the city's
Department of Housing Preser-
vation and Development (HPD)
to issue written criteria outlining
exactly who is eligible for an
apartment in Tenant Interim
Lease (TIL) buildings - city-
owned buildings managed by
their own tenants' associations.
Gangel-Jacob also rules that
prospective tenants be informed
in writing of the tenant selection
criteria, and that anyone
refused an apartment receive a
written explanation for the
denial.
Advocates for the homeless
and Legal Aid attorneys say the
judge's decision sets a prece-
dent and should be followed in
all city housing programs where
community groups rent out
apartments.
Kristin Morse of the Coalition
for the Homeless says that the
city's lack of strict government
guidelines for the screening
committees encourages all kinds
of abuse, from delays in rental
to blatant discrimination.
placement workers in the
shelters speak of men rejected
because screening committees
suspect HIV infection, women
rejected because they have a
live-in lover, or others rejected
because their relatives or former
spauses are suspected of
involvement with drugs.
But Deputy Commissioner
William Spiller of HPD denies
that discrimination is an issue.
"If people have complaints, they
should bring them to us," he
says. liTo my knowledge, it
hasn't happened." In mid-
November the city appealed
Justice Gangel-Jacob's decision.
While the case is being
appealed, the city does not have
to issue the tenant selection
guidelines. Still, the Legal Aid
4/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
Society lawyer that argued the
Johnson case, Beatrice Dohrn,
says the city is morally bound to
fix the system. "If the city does
not propase standardized
guidelines there's going to be
arbitrary enforcement," she
says. The committees "have to
be told the bosic rules: you have
to treat each applicant exactly
the same way."
In the Johnson case, the
judge did not rule that discrimi-
nation had taken place. Alvis
Johnson, the plaintiff, applied
for an apartment in 41 Convent
Avenue, a TIL building where
she already lived with her
mother. She was rejected
several times. A member of the
tenants' screening committee,
G. Drummond Samuels, admits
that Johnson was never given a
written explanation for her
rejection. But she denies that
Johnson was rejected simply
because she was a single
woman on welfare, as the
plaintiff charged.
In her decision, the judge
says that because she is unable
to discern whether or not
discrimination took place, the
tenant selection system does not
meet the requirements of civil
rights law.
While advocates for the
homeless are eager to see the
city issue guidelines, members
of many tenants associations
and community-based housing
managers take the opposite
view. Samuels argues that the
city should have no involvement
in screening. "You ought to be
able to keep control of who you
live with," she says. "I don't go
along with them making you
take someane who you know is
no damn good."
Susan Cole of the Settlement
Housing Fund, which provides
housing for homeless families,
agrees. "I don't want HPD's
guidelines," she says. "Some
families can't be housed. What
do I do when one family in-
fringes on the rights of all the
others?" D Andrew White
DIVIDED SRO
In a move that may pit a
public television station against
low-income tenants, Channel
13-WNET is pressing the city to
allow the conversion of a Roor
in a Manhattan single-room
occupancy hotel from residential
to commercial use.
Channel 13, which already
occupies the first nine Roors in
the 23-Roor Henry Hudson
Hotel at 353 West 57th Street,
was nearly through its tenth-
floor renovation last month
when it was slapped with a
stop-work order. At issue is
whether the station, which is
expanding its production space,
harassed any tenants in the
building. The Roor has been
vacant for almost two years.
Work on the $600,000
project cannot resume until the
city's Department of Housing
Preservation and Development
(HPD) approves the station's
request for a certificate of non-
harassment. As City Limits goes
to press, the agency says it will
rule soon on whether to order
an administrative hearing on the
matter.
The television station, which
has a long-term lease and
option to buy the 10th Roor, is
not the only non-profit in the
Hudson. St. Luke's-Roosevelt
Medical Center leases space-
for employee housing and
offices-on floors 1 1 through
23 from owner Irving Schatz.
The non-f)rofits' activities
have raised fears of displace-
ment among many of the hotel' s
200 residents, who live in rent-
controlled and some rent-
stabilized apartment on the
upper Roors. With help from the
West Side SRO Law Project,
about 70 residents met recently
to form a tenants' union. Ten-
ants, who include many elderly,
are "genuinely scared now,"
says Owen Lamb, the union's
president.
Larry Wood from the SRO
Law Project says the situation
highlighted a potential conflict
between a non-profit's objec-
tives and the interests of low-
income tenants. "Their
programs are unrelated to the
interests of the peaple in the
building," he says. "You're
Families in the NYC Shelter System
and Where They Stay
Number of families in
each type of shelter, 10191:
Private Rooms 3,166
D Donnitories 464
Hotels 943
lliill Other 223
Total Families: 4,796
10/89 4/90 10/90 4/91 10/91
Source: NYC Human Resources Administration.
really pitting one set of ten-
ants-the non-profits-against
another set of poor tenants."
An HPD spokesperson
declined to discuss details of
Channel 13' s request. Bert
Knaus, Assistant Director of the
Mayor's Office on Homelessness
and SRO's, would not comment
direcrly on the case.
H. Melvin Ming, the station's
Chief Financial and Administra-
tive Officer, denies that the
station harassed tenants or had
designs on other Roors. "Our
concern is that we don't dis-
place anyone," he says. 'We
would not like to see ourselves
portrayed as promoting good
citizenship and then not doing
what we're preaching."
Still, the tenants are fearful.
Lamb says he and other tenants
are worried that St. Luke's-
Roosevelt, which he says had
removed washing machines and
dryers and created lounges that
are off limits to tenants, would
expand their presence in the
building. But PhXllis Goodman,
a spokesperson for Roosevelt,
denies that the medical center
plans to expand or that it has
offered to relocate residents off
the 11 th floor, as several tenants
claim.
Whether or not the hospital
expands its presence in the
building, Wood thinks the
precedent of non-profits taking
over SRO space is a dangerous
one. St. Luke's-Roosevelt re-
ceives large amounts of funding
for its outpatient programs from
the city, he says. Yet, at the
same time, the government has
expressed its intent to preserve
as much SRO housing as
possible. He poses the question
that lies beneath the surface of
the conRict: "Do we want our
tax money to take away SRO
units?" 0 Peter Howell
BRONX
REINVESTMENT
While the rest of the nation's
economy foltered in 1991, the
Federal Home Loan Mortgage
Corporation, or Freddie Mac,
managed to Rourish. The
corporation and its sister in the
housing business, Fannie Mae,
are quasi-public corporations
Foul Stench: Orundun Johnson, a resident of 626 Riverside Drive, joins a November 13th protest calling for
the closure of the city's North River Sewage Treatment Plant at a public meeting in Harlem. Neighbors of
the plant call it a health threat and say the smell is unbearable.
chartered by Congress to
finance mortages, and the pair
expect to show combined
earnings nearing $2 billion for
the year.
But the profitable Freddie
Mac has long been the target of
vehement calls for reform. And
now, more than a year after the
corporation stopped financing
mortgages for multi-family
buildings, one group in the
Bronx is demanding that
Freddie Mac make amends for
past errors by reinvesting its
vast resources in the borough's
foreclosed apartment buildings.
"Freddie Mac continues to
abuse our neighborhoods," says
Phyllis Longworth of the North-
west Bronx Community and
Clergy Coalition (NWBCCq.
"And it's i m ~ r t a n t to hold them
accountable for it."
The 17-year-old NWBCCC,
which has helped rehabilitate
more than 5,400 housing units
in Bronx neighborhoods, has for
years issued warnings of
problems with Freddie Mac (see
City Limits, June/July, 1990
and March, 1989). Three years
ago the coalition accurately
predicted that, if left unchecked,
Freddie Mac's over-valuation of
property would lead to rampant
speculation, overfinanced
buildings, and, eventually, a
spate of foreclosures. Afier the
corporation had invested more
than $740 million in secondary
mortgages for hundreds of
apartment buildings in the
Bronx, the coalition's predictions
came true.
About half of Freddie Mac's
losses in recent years resulted
from defaults on apartment
buildings-known bx
mortgagers as multi-family
properties-although sud;
properties make up only about
three percent of the
corporation's portfolio. So last
year Freddie Mac officials
decided ta stop investing in
multifamily properties, leaving
most of the Bronx without access
to the federal loans.
This October, Congress'
General Accovnting Office
issued a report condemning
Freddie Mac for its "weak
controls" and overfinancing of
multifamily properties. Now, the
NWBCCC is calling for Con-
gressional hearings and some
sort of oversight that would
force Freddie Mac to return to
the borough and act responsi-
bit. Essentially, the coalition's
Affordable Neighborhoods
Committee is calling on the
corporation to invest in build-
in,gs in receivership and support
efforts toward tenant and
community ownership of prop-
erties. Following the October
sale of a building to a landlord
who seffied a fraud lawsuit out
of court with the city's housing
department five years ago, the
coalition also called for a freeze
on sales of all Freddie Mac
properties, so that tenants can
screen potential buyers.
So far, Freddie Mac is
unmoved. According to a
Freddie Mac spokesperson, the
corporation "will only get back
into the [multifamily mortgage)
business when they're ready,
and not one minute before."
There are currenrly two
Freddie Mac buildings in the
Bronx (out of a dozen proposed
by NWBCCq moving toward
tenant ownership. According to
Freddie Mac, financing has not
been arranged for either pro-
perf)', and Phyllis Longsworth,
NWBCCC chairwoman, says
that Freddie Mac is "dragging
its feet on this matter."
What can be done to repair
the system? According to Allen
Fishbein of the Center lor Com-
munity Change in Washington,
"the federal government could
pretty well decide how much
money Freddie Mac has to
invest in a given housing area,"
dictating the portfolio mix of
Freddie Mac's investments. A
representative of the NWBCCC
points out that "gov-ernment
can call on FredClie Mac to be
more responsible, while it can
also regulate the industry."
For the moment the situation
remains confrontational. 'We
have nothing to gain but decent
and affordable places to live,"
says Longworth. 'We don't
want FreCldie Mac to leave, and
leave dirty work behind for us to
clean up. We want them to
rectify the problems." 0
Steven Seltz .... n
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/5
By Samme Chittum
Voices From the Streets
A group of homeless activists are setting their sights
on the upcoming political conventions.
I
t was a blustery fall evening, and
James Gibbs had taken the subway
from a downtown Manhattan park
where he lives to stand behind a
small podium in the modern audito-
rium at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx.
"Right now I'm
a homeless per-
son," said Gibbs, a
middle-aged man
dressed in dark
pants and wearing
a quilted vest over
a plain dark shirt.
Young concedes that the ambitious
plan, fraught with numerous obstacles
to success, may seem "abstract" to
men like Gibbs, who worried out loud
about the shabby appearanc.e of the
clothes he was wearing, the only ones
powerment. Unable to command the
resources of service-oriented groups
that dispense everything from sand-
wiches to psychiatric help, HOW
wants to build a political agenda that
enables homeless people to speak for
themselves. Put simply, HOW wants
to offer direction and ideas instead of
a doughnut, and an opportunity to be
heard instead of being told.
"It [HOW] gives homeless people a
chance to really be involved in the
process," says Steve Riley, a HOW
member and president of the United
Homeless Organization, a self-help
group run by
homeless men and
women. "It's very
important that
people who live in
the streets and
shelters have a
voice," says Riley,
a veteran of vari-
ous shelters who
now lives in the
Bronx.
To do that,
HOW must combat
perceptions of the
homeless as help-
"The homeless
people in the
streets should be
organizing and get
together," said
Gibbs in a strong
voice easily heard
by some 60 people,
including shelter
residents, advo-
cates for the home-
less and a few
others who came to
the conference
from the city's
streets, parks and
shantytowns.
z less, says Young,
~ who also directs
15 Parents on the
Move, a group that
:J was formed to rep-
~ resent residents of
15 the Brooklyn Arms
.......... ' - - - - - - - - - ~ : : ; : Hotel, where
"The only thing
I'd like to say is,
Wortdng Together. Alberta Hines and Jean Chappell of Parents on the Move speak at the Young lived with
November 8th HOW organizing meeting. her children after
'Give us a chance and don't look down
on us. You'd be surprised at how
many talented people there are out
there.'"
Among those listening was Ruth
Young, a veteran of the city shelter
system and chairwoman of a new or-
ganizing group that wants men like
Gibbs to be heard loud and clear by a
larger audience. The group is called
Homeless Organizations Working, or
HOW. And one of its first goals is to
send homeless people like Gibbs to
the upcoming national political con-
ventions as delegates.
The conference that Gibbs attended
was organized by HOW as a starting
point on a long and difficult journey
to the Democratic National Conven-
tion to be held in Madison Square
Garden here in July, and possibly the
Republican National Convention in
Houston in August.
a/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
he owns. But she and a group of other
advocates and formerly homeless
people say the plan is feasible and
important.
Young explains that she hopes to
get funding to provide a stipend for
homeless people to collect signatures
to become delegates. "I see this as a
self worth kind of thing .. .! see it as
creating jobs and uplifting them to
another state where they can say, 'I am
somebody. I am part of this,'" she
says.
Direction Instead of a Doughnut
The decision to try to send their
own to the conventions is a clear state-
ment about what HOW hopes to
achieve. A grassroots ensemble of
homeless people, veterans of home-
lessness and advocates for the home-
less, HOW's leaders see the new
organization as a vehicle for self-em-
they were evicted
from their home. "People think of us
as poor misfortunates who they have
to guide, that we can't think for our-
selves. That's not the way it is."
Swept Off the Streets
It is not surprising that HOW's
members, including an active core of
12 who attend weekly meetings at the
Independent Support Center in St.
Agnes Church on 44th Street, chose
the convention as their first organiz-
ing target.
In the past, the arrival of a conven-
tion has been a signal for cities to push
the homeless out of sight. That's what
happened in New York in 1980 when
the last Democratic National Conven-
tion came to town. "Homeless people
were literally swept off the street and
into the river," says Julie Kempner, a
member of HOW and until recently
staff attorney for the Coalition for the
Homeless. "We don't want that to
happen again."
Faced with immediate practical
needs-such as the lack of a computer
and office space-HOW is nonethe-
less moving forward. Progress has
been made with a maximum of effort
and a minimum of practical support.
For instance, HOW would have liked
to have hired a bus to carry people
from the shelters to its conference, but
the organizers had to settle for putting
up flyers instead.
Young, who works out of her city-
owned apartment in the Tremont
section of the Bronx, has flung all of
her formidable energies into getting
HOW off the ground. She has been
attending meetings at a frantic pace,
slowing down only when family
members remind her to safeguard her
health by taking a day off-insurance
against a relapse of illnesses related to
Lupus, a disease affecting the immune
system, which almost cost Young her
life, and which she must contend with
daily.
HOW' s next order of business,
Young says, is applying for grants for
the project and organizing a two-day
workshop during which committees
will begin the task of selecting
potential delegates and putting them
to work for a candidate. Even Young,
who seems to propel the organization
forward with her strength and vision,
seems overwhelmed at times. "It's
hard when you don' t have sophisti-
cated equipment or salaries or a place
to do your organizing," she says.
"People don't take you seriously."
Byzantine System
The people HOW needs to reach
are political players, elected officials,
party officers and candidates. HOW
must also wend its way through the
delegate selection process itself, a
Byzantine system accessible mainly
to party officers and elected officials.
The delegate selection process
differs from party to party and state to
state. In New York, registered
Democrats who want to be one ofthe
state's allotted 268 delegates from its
34 congressional districts can choose
one of two paths to Madison Square
Garden. Those who are not competing
for the 109 seats reserved during the
state's party convention in May must
work hard to get to the national
convention by gathering 1 , 000
signatures door-to-door during a 30-
day marathon from January 15 to
February 13.
Can HOW succeed? At least one
presidential campaign organization
has declared it needs people on the
campaign trail in New York, particu-
larly in the boroughs. "If someone in
a situation like that can gather 1,000
signatures, they have more stick-to-
HOW wants to
build a political
agenda that
enables homeless
people to speak
for themselves.
itness than I do," says Jeff Myhre, a
lead organizer for the Jerry Brown
campaign. "They are welcome. My
only requirement is that they promise
that when it comes time to vote, they
vote for Brown."
Myhre suggests that HOW could
save some wear and tear by going
through the State Democratic
Committee and asking the party to
look at approving HOW -sponsored
homeless people as alternative del-
egates at the convention in May. That
method, says Myhre, does 'not deny
any party regulars a seat and vote at
the convention, but would get the
HOW delegates on the floor with cre-
dentials. "They can talk to Dan Rather
or anyone else," he says. "If they make
it to the convention, the reporters will
find them. "
Negotiations with Democratic party
officials are underway, says HOW
member John Mensing. "They haven't
said yes and they haven't said no. "
To achieve its goals, HOW must
prove it can live up to its name by
mustering support from other
grassroots groups. HOW has so far
assembled a diverse membership,
including representatives from Par-
ents on the Move, Homegrown, Inc.,
which helps homeless people with
welfare entitlements, and the Union
of City Tenants, which fights for better
housing in city-owned buildings. All
were represented at the recent HOW
conference as was the Homeless Civil
Rights Project, a Boston organization
that is run by homeless people who
have been successfully organizing
against police brutality and for access
to public places.
HOW's aims are less immediate
than those set by the Boston group.
Butthey'reequallyvital,saysMensing,
emphasizing that the organizing
process before the convention is as
essential as the end result. "We're
taking a lot of people who are shut out
of the process and putting them into
the middle of it," he says. "We're
taking them from zero to 60 and putting
them into the biggest politicall?rocess
in the country .. . there's everything to
gain and nothing to lose." 0
Formerlya reporter at the Daily News,
Samme Chittum now works as a
freelance writer.
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CITY UMrTSIDECEMBER 1991/7
l I a ' a j " ~ ' II
By Paula Kalakowski and Andrew White
Closing Down the Clinics
City government pulls the plug on free community-
based family planning for uninsured women.
K
athleen Maldonado doesn't
have much cash to spare. The
26-year-old divorced mother of
two from Staten Island is a full-
time computer-science student with
no medical insurance, and she
struggles to provide for her family
with her former husband's child sup-
port payments.
Maldonado and thousands of other
young Staten Island women used to
go to a clinic on the north shore of
Staten Island for free gynecological
exams and family planning services,
including no-cost birth control pills,
condoms, diaphragms, and preven-
tive diagnostic tests like pap smears
and breast exams. But the clinic on
Stuyvesant Place in St. George, run by
the Community Family Planning
Council (CFPC), closed last June be-
cause of city budget cuts. Now, with
no extra money and little extra time,
Maldonado has to turn to expensive
pri vate doctors or the local hospital-
with hours-long waiting times and
substantial fees.
and uninsured women, she says.
The near-elimination of the CFPC
contract has left only eight of the
group's clinics operating. Until this
summer, CFPC's clinics were the only
detected much later. More women
will die."
Advocates point out that the long-
term consequences of the closings will
be costly for the city. "If they take
away access to preventive care, to the
treatment of minor health problems,
then we just wait until they become
major health problems," says Judy
Gallagher, executive director of the
Bronx Perinatal Consortium. "Then
we're looking at a $5,000 or $10,000
hospital bill that Medicaid will have
to pay."
The clinic was one of four commu-
nity-based CFPC centers in the city
that shut their doors for good this
summer after the Dinkins
administration's Human Resources
Administration (HRA) chopped more
than two-thirds of the money, or $2.5
million, from the organization'S city
contract. The cuts left a gigantic gap in
the health care services available to
the city's working poor and undocu-
mented immigrant women, critics say,
and killed a unique service that used
primarily federal money to provide
free preventive and primary medical
care.
No Access: Kathleen Maldonado stands outside the shuttered CFPC clinic in Staten Island.
Cutting Preventive Care
"Even before the budget cuts, the
access to gynecological care was dras-
tically below what it needs to be, "
says Stephanie Stevens, executive
director of the Women's Health Edu-
cation Project. "In general, gyneco-
logical care has bottomed out." The
clinics' closings sent a shudder
through the small network of health
care organizations that provide neigh-
borhood -based services to low-income
a/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
places in the city, outside the hospital
emergency room, where women who
don't qualify for Medicaid could
receive free gynecological care. Now,
only teenagers can get free care and
birth control services at CFPC clinics.
Everyone else has to pay a fee based
on their income. The cheapest fee for
a basic examination is $30. And the
fees for birth control materials begin
at $5 and go up from there.
That means uninsured, low-income
working women and undocumented
aliens living and working illegally in
New York cannot get basic gyne-
cological care unless they can afford
to pay for it. "The working poor are
totally screwed," says Lisa Napoli of
the Lower East Side Women's Center.
Elsa A. Rios of the Committee for
Hispanic Children and Families
agrees. "It's a great loss," she says.
"More women who need pap smears
won't get them. More women with
cervical and breast cancer will be
City officials argue that the clinics
will not collapse if the city withdraws
funding. Pat Maloney of the Mayor's
Office for Children and Families says
CFPC can make up its budget gap in
part by treating more women who are
eligible for Medicaid. Gallagher
charges that that's beside the point.
"We have people who are not eligible
for Medicaid who will not have access
to health care," she says. "That's the
problem that has to be addressed, not
the financial tap-dancing of anyone
organization trying to cover a gap in
their funding."
And Ana Dumois, executive
director of CFPC, agrees. "These
decisions were made under tremen-
dous pressure," she says. "We'll have
to see less working poor."
Sorry to See It End
Until the budget cuts, New York
City's free gynecological care for
uninsured women was a progressive
and unique achievement. For the past
ten years, the city's social services
agency has channeled federal grant
money to CFPC. Other cities and towns
across the state that receive the same
type of grant money use it to distrib-
ute information about birth control or
to refer women to clinics and physi-
cians, says Bob Walsh of the state's
Bureau of Reproductive Services. But
New York City went much further,
actually funding the free clinics. "It
was very forward looking of the city,"
he says. "We're sorry to see that end."
A dozen or more government-
subsidized free family planning clinics
sprouted in New York City during the
heyday of the War on Poverty in the
1960s and early 1970s. But by the end
of the 1970s , the clinics were
floundering because of government
cutbacks, says Maloney of the Mayor's
Office for Children and Families.
Planned Parenthood attempted to keep
them afloat but couldn't, she says,
and the Koch administration, along
with family planning advocates,
decided the city should channel its
money to a single organization instead
of the numerous individual clinics.
The umbrella organization that
emerged from the negotiations was
the CFPC.
The city looks to CFPC for more
than family planning and basic health
care. Four years ago, the organization
created a city-funded mobile clinic to
provide prenatal care for pregnant
homeless women at two shelters in
Brooklyn. The mobile clinic will not
be affected by the budget cuts. In
addition, CFPC recently won a $1.2
million grant from the Ryan White
Foundation to run a two-year compre-
hensive care and monitoring program
in East New York for carriers of the
AIDS-causing HIV virus.
The CFPC's contract for Fiscal Year
1991, which ended last June, was for
$3,544,000. Almost $3.2 million of
that was federal grant money that was
funnelled to CFPC via HRA. The rest
was evenly divided between the state
and city funds. For every five dollars
the city kicked into the program, the
federal government matched it with
$90, says Lois Baron, a staff associate
at CFPC.
But last winter the city withdrew
about one-third of the $3.5 million
dollar contract, Baron says. Then, after
intense lobbying by advocacy groups
like the National Organization for
Women and the National Abortion
Rights Action League, and vocal sup-
port from members of the City Council
and Manhattan Borough President
Ruth Messinger, the Dinkins admin-
istration stopped short of cutting the
contract altogether. The final decision:
the city agreed to a $1 million contract
for the current fiscal year, now almost
half over. Funding for the next fiscal
year remains unclear.
City officials were not happy about
making the cut. "CFPCisinvaluable,"
Maloney says. "They should be
expanded, not cut." But the budget
crisis left no other option, she says.
"The so-called optional services
have to go in tough times like these,"
says Nancy Martinez, director of
policy and planning at the New York
State Department of Social Services.
Her agency is responsible for sending
federal money to the city's HRA, which
then channels it, in some cases, to
groups like CFPC. She says the same
federal grants that used to be allocated
to CFPC are also used for programs the
city is required by law to provide,
mainly protective and preventive
services for children in child abuse
cases, and for other programs like day
care. When government budgets had
to be pared down, the city reduced its
share of funding for those programs
and used CFPC's federal money to fill
the hole.
They Don't Have the Money
At the CFPC clinic on Ludlow
Street on the Lower East Side, three
middle aged Chinese women sit in the
waiting room and watch George Bush
give a speech about the new civil
rights bill on television. They are not
enthusiastic about Bush, and they are
not happy about their new clinic. They
used to be patients at the CFPC clinic
in Chinatown, but it closed this
summer. "It's not comfortable here,"
says Miss Tse, a 35-year-old who works
in a sewing factory and has no insur-
ance. "In Chinatown, the staff was all
Chinese. There was a sense of
community." And, she says, it will be
hard to pay the fee.
Carmen Rodriguez sits behind a
desk in the next room. She is the
clinic's intake worker, processing
paperwork and keeping track of
patient's files. "Sometimes I feel so
sorry to tell patients they have to pay,"
she says. "Sometimes they cry, some-
times they get mad at me. They don't
have the money."
The women in the waiting room
say they don't think this clinic can be
considered "optional." Nor do the
women in Central Harlem, Crown
Heights, and Jamaica who have to put
together the cash to afford an appoint-
ment at CFPC. "More and more of
these women are single heads of house-
holds," says Elsa Rios. "The deterio-
ration of their health leads to the dete-
rioration of their function as mothers.
That means we're talking about the
deterioration of the community." 0
Paula Kolakowski is a student at the
New School and an intern at City
Limits.
Community Care
The Community Family
Planning Council's eight clinics
provide basic gynecological care
and birth control services for a
fee based on income. Anyone
under age 20 or on Medicaid
doesn't have to pay. The clinics
are:
Community League Clinic
1984 Amsterdam Avenue
(at 159th Street)
Harlem
CFPC Health Center
92-94 Ludlow Street
Lower East Side
Women's Clinic
910 East 172nd Street
The Bronx
CFPC Health Center
97-04 Sutphin Boulevard
Jamaica, Queens
CABS Clinic
94 Manhattan Avenue
Williamsburg
Caribbean House Clinic
1167 Nostrand Avenue
Crown Heights
United Parents Center
999 Blake Avenue
East New York
South Brooklyn Clinic
141 Nevins Street
Boerum Hill
For further information call the
CFPC at (212) 924-1400.
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/9
Damaged Dreams
The glass-and-concrete towers were meant to be a showcase
for community control. Today they're a scary place to live.
BY LISA GLAZER
O
n a clear day, the 35-story peaks of the Taino
Towers can be seen from almost any point in East
Harlem. Rising above weedy, junk-strewn lots
and squalid tenements, the glass and concrete
towers were constructed as an island of dignity
amid the decay of the barrio.
The towers are home to more than 600 tenants and are
the end result of a grand experiment from the War on
Poverty era. The premise: the ghetto could be overcome if
government supported high-quality housing and social
services for the poor. The original plans for the develop-
ment included roomy apartments with terraces, a health
clinic, on-site day care, a school, a greenhouse, a commu-
nity theater, a gymnasium and an Olympic-sized pool.
After a well-publicized construction process that
lurched forward from 1972 to 1984, all this was built. But
the real achievement went beyond bricks and mortar.
Taino Towers received one of the largest subsidies in the
10/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
history of the Department of Housing and Urban Devel-
opment (HUD}-and the owners were community
residents.
The ownership group is known as the East Harlem Pilot
Block Housing Development Fund and the original board
of directors included community activists and
construction workers. They aimed to transform not only
their block-Second and Third Avenues between 122nd
and 123rd Street-but the surrounding neighborhood as
well.
Nearly 20 years after the project broke ground, Taino
Towers has transformed the East Harlem skyline-but
that's about it. At ground level, conditions are bleak. There
were 208 drug arrests this year on the single block where
the towers stand, and the development has more than 200
current housing code violations. Inside Taino Towers, the
elevators break down incessantly, stranding wheelchair-
bound seniors in their high -rise apartments. Glass windows
are shattered, stairways smell of urine, walls are covered
with graffiti. And the four-story day care center, the
gymnasium and the
swimming pool sit
empty, almost entirely
destroyed by vandal-
ism and neglect.
"They were such
beautiful buildings.
But now ... it's unbeliev-
able," says Juanita
Reyes, a community
aide for Councilmem-
ber Carolyn Maloney,
who called for im-
provements at the
development in the
1980s. "It was sup-
posed to be a model for
East Harlem but it
turned out to be a night-
mare."
l
B
etty Screen
moved into her
duplex apart-
ment in Tower
Three of the Taino
Towers in 1984. After
life in a cramped West
Side tenement, the spa-
cious, three-bedroom
li ving space was every-
thing the Board ofEdu-
cation employee had
hoped for. And the
view-it was amazing.
But it wasn't long be-
fore problems started
to emerge. Despite
plentiful warmth in
most of the apartment,
Screen's bedroom
didn't receive heat so
she had to sleep in the
living room. There
Taino Towers is many flights of stairs. room and one year the
T
he demise of Hal of Shame: Elevators break down constantly so tenants have to walk down were leaks in the bath-
no one individ- plumbing system
ual's fault. It's easy to point the finger at glitches in erupted, destroying an expensive carpet and sofa.
construction and design, and there's little doubt that "It makes you want to leave," says Screen, adding that
waning support and limited oversight from the federal the only way she can receive timely repairs is by withhold-
government has had a negative impact. But ultimately, ingherrentandtakingtheownerstocourt.Andeventhen
responsibility lies with the community owners and the repairs are poorly done. "I have to fuss after them all the
management company they hired in 1986, Marvin Gold time."
Management Incorporated. The ownership group no longer Screen's experience is not unusual among residential
meets regularly and has fallen under the sway of a single and commercial tenants at Taino Towers. In random
man. And the managers admit they have failed until interviews in the laundry room, hallways and apartments,
recently to pursue one of the most standard procedures disenchantment is an oft-repeated theme. Stephen
required at HUD-subsidized projects, undermining the Adolphus, the dean of Touro College, which is located in
project's income and its upkeep. Taino Towers, has sent more than 100 letters of complaint
The story of Taino Towers could be dismissed as just to the management office about problems with heating, air
one more sad saga from the Great Society era--except that conditioning and security, to little avail. And a young
New York City's 10-year, $4.8 billion housing plan commits woman waiting impatiently for the single working eleva-
enormous subsidies to community-based,nonprofitgroups tor in Tower One says, "I remember going into labor. The
for the development and management of city-owned elevators weren't working so I was stranded. My brothers
housing. And the federal government's National Affordable had to carry me down 22 flights of stairs!"
Housing Act sets aside funds specifically for local, The conditions described by these tenants are the result
nonprofit developers. While the government's growing of serious problems in the management and maintenance
reliance on these community groups is a testament to their of Taino Towers that are spelled out in documents and
increasing sophistication and ability, Taino Towers serves information compiled by City Limits.
as a harsh reminder of what needs to be done to assure that HUD reviews of Marvin Gold Management in 1990
community-based owners live up to their name and their and 1991 led to a "below average" rating for both years.
responsibilities. According to the 1991 review, the maintenance log book
"We've grown very fixated on development," says at Taino Towers shows "a consistent pattern of delay or
Larry Yates, a staff member at the National Low Income non-response."
Housing Coalition, based in Washington, D.C. "It's pretty A physical inspection report from HUD noted that
clear that setting up a structure-no matter how good it there were 25 areas in need of urgent maintenance, includ-
is-and leaving it alone just doesn't work. There has to be ing the roofs, the security systems and the elevators. The
continuing involvement in the community. It's tough. inspector noted: "These conditions are unacceptable and
You fight hard to build abuilding, but in alot of ways that's must change if Taino is ever going to become a decent
when the fight is just beginning." place to live."
"Community control has to be an ongoing process," Taino Towers is $625,000 behind in water tax
adds Emily Achtenberg, a national expert on subsidized payments, according to Joe Dunn, a spokesperson from the
housing and non-profit ownership groups. "The lesson city's Department of Finance. Because of unpaid taxes, the
here is that you can't take anything for granted. You have city started to take control of Taino Towers in 1989, but a
to be vigilant to ensure that there is accountability at payment schedule was eventually reached. That agree-
community-controlled organizations." ment is now in default, according to Dunn.
CITY UMITSIDECEMBER 1991/11
B
enjamin Flores is the man at the helm of the East
Harlem Pilot Block group, which owns Taino Tow-
ers and is responsible for the maintenance and
operation of the complex. He blames most of the
problems at the development on an insufficient rental
subsidy from the federal government, which failed to
cover operating costs.
Five years ago, Flores and his board hired Marvin Gold
Management to oversee day-to-day operations at Taino
Towers for a fee of about half a million dollars per year.
Based in Brooklyn, the company runs 260,000 units of
housing across the city-a mixture of luxury housing,
middle-income apartments and subsidized developments.
Marvin Gold repeats Flores' charge, explaining that the
problems at Taino Towers are the result of rent levels too
low to keep up with operating costs.
HUD provides all the tenants in the building with a
federal Section 8 housing subsidy. Under this program,
tenants pay a portion of the rent and HUD covers the rest.
The rents set in 1981 were $540 for a studio, $673 for a one-
bedroom apartment, and $999
for a three-bedroom apart-
ment. The problem at Taino
Towers, Gold says, is that the
rents remained at the 1981
level until earlier this year.
Housing analysts say that
Section 8 is usually consid-
ered a very generous subsidy,
but agree that 1981 rents may
well have been inadequate to
meet operating costs in later
years. But it was up to the
owner and the manager to
request that HUD grant an
increase in the rent level. Once
a request was eventually
made, HUD granted the
increase and boosted the
annual subsidy. As of January ,
1991, rental rates were set at
$723 for a studio, $901 for a
one-bedroom apartment and
$1,338 for a three bedroom
apartment.
"Giving more money is not going to solve the issue," says
Evette Zayas, a tenant activist. "Maybe it will solve main-
tenance problems. But the big issue is mismanagement,
and who is on the board and what their function is. I've
spent years just trying to find a copy of their by-laws!"
T
he failure to request a rent increase from HUD is just
one part of a larger problem at Taino Towers. Al-
though the building was meant to provide a national
example of the merits of tenant management, the
current ownership group only includes two tenants and
doesn't meet regularly. One member is even a paid em-
ployee of the management company, the organization the
board is meant to oversee.
Benjamin Flores, the board's chairman, is easily reached
any day of the week in the management suite of the
complex. In a lengthy and cordial interview in his office,
Flores readily concedes that his board meets sporadically.
"We're meant to meet
monthly, but lately we
haven't been doing that," he
says, noting that the last meet-
ing was about a year ago.
After repeated requests,
Flores proffers a list of eight
board members, carefully
crossing out the name of
Joseph Maya, who is no longer
living. The other board mem-
bers are: Lucy Carter, Emilio
Ho, Juana Gilbert, Elsie Isaac,
Sarah Wall and Thelma
Cockerham.
Here's what some of the
board members have to say
about board meetings. Lucy
Carter, vice-chairman: "I'm
not an active board member
right now." Emilio Ho, sec-
ond vice-chairman: "We have
failed in that area of meeting
actively." Juana Gilbert: "We
don't meet regularly." Sarah
Wall: "For the past five years
we haven't had regular board
meetings."
Despite his expertise as a
manager, Marvin Gold says
he can't explain why his com-
pany didn't move faster to re-
quest the increase. "I really
don't have an answer to that,"
he says. "We felt the Section 8
money was enough to operate
the building. The rent increase
should have been asked for
sooner."
The new increase includes
money that is meant to be set
Sloppy Wortc Betty Screen says she has to fight to get basic repairs.
All of these individuals
have served on the board
since the early 1970s, and
some since 1969. They say
that active participation
waned after the development
was constructed, and agree
that most decision-making is
now left to Benjamin Flores.
aside for major repairs-$9 million over the next six years.
"We are now in the process of reconstruction," says
Flores. "If you come back in a year you'll see big, big
improvements."
Many tenants, who have been signing petitions for
better conditions and struggling to negotiate with the
owners and the management company, remain skeptical.
12/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
"Since the towers were
completed, it didn't seem necessary to meet so often, "
explains Carter.
Two of the board members, Juana Gilbert and Sarah
Wall, live in the development and express dissatisfaction
with conditions-and an inability to prompt any change.
"We spent so much time seeing this place built but it's just
going downhill," says Wall. "It seems like there is nothing
you can do."
As for the other
board members, Elsie
Isaac has moved to
Florida, according to
Gilbert and Wall, and
Thelma Cockerham
works in the manage-
ment office of Taino
Towers, receiving a
paycheck from Marvin
Gold Management.
Flores sees no conflict
of interest. "She's just
one board member, and
she's a very indepen-
dent person," he says.
Development, the fed-
eral agency that keeps
Taino Towers alive
with ongoing subsi-
dies.
David Buchwalter,
the chiefofHUD's loan
management branch,
explains that the
agency holds the mort-
gage for Taino Towers,
offering the commu-
nity owners a very low
one percent interest
rate. The federal gov-
ernment also funnels
$4.5 million annually
to the building through
Section 8 housing sub-
sidies to tenants.
Like Cockerham,
Flores spends a good
part of his days in the
management office at
Taino Towers, but he
says he doesn't receive
a penny for his services.
He explains that he
At the Helm: Benjamin Flores, the chairman of the community ownership group,
says, "We may not be perfect but we've got nothing to hide. "
In another long and
friendly interview,
Buchwalter repeatedly
expresses concern
about conditions at
earns his living working as a housing consultant, but
wavers when asked to give examples of groups he has
worked for. He asks: Is this article about Taino Towers or
Benjamin Flores?
Flores also keeps busy with local political work-
including the failed City Council campaign of William Del
Toro, an East Harlem politician who was recently slammed
by the Daily News, Newsday and the state for financial
indiscretions in the organization he runs, the Hispanic
Housing Task Force.
Flores maintains that there are no similar indiscretions
at Taino Towers. Leaning back in his chair, he says
amiably,"We may not be perfect but we've got nothing to
hide."
The board chairman is only slightly less comfortable
when pressed about the continuing empty space in the day
care center, the gymnasium and the swimming pool. It's
been at least 10 years that these facilities have been
vacant, but Flores promises that they may soon be occu-
pied. "We're working with local groups to utilize the
space. There isn't money out there ... but we as a board are
looking for funding to get something started."
Flores started his organizing career with the East Har-
lem Tenants Council, which organized rent strikes in
freezing tenements, but today his attitude towards tenants
has changed. Asked to explain recurrent breakdowns in
the elevators, leaks in the building and lapses in security,
he cites faulty construction and insufficient operating
funds. Then he blames the tenants, saying, "What tenants
say to you and what the facts are is not always the
same ... you fix up an apartment, then you go back a year or
two later and the apartment is destroyed. Those are the
ones who complain the most."
L
ike Taino Towers, the federal office building in
Lower Manhattan dominates its immediate landscape.
This bureaucratic skyscraper is home to the local
office of the Department of Housing and Urban
Taino Towers."Taino gets relatively intensive scrutiny
from us," he says. "We're concerned about tenant com-
plaints, concerned about the community space, concerned
about such issues as the elevators. It's a subsidized project
and we want to look at it as carefully as we can."
He acknowledges that reviews of Marvin Gold Manage-
ment have led to less-than-stellar findings. "Clearly we'd
like to see things get better," he says. "But we think
management has made some significant strides." As an
example, he says there used to be about 70 empty apart-
ments in the building, and now the vacancy number is
down to about 20.
But what about the community owners? Buchwalter
expresses ignorance when told of the intermittent board
meetings and the board member who works for the man-
agement company. He says this could possibly be a con-
ll.ict of interest, but stresses, "The internal workings of the
board of directors is not something we concern ourselves
with."
This answer flies in the face of a new HUD policy,
issued this March, which reinforces the agency's obliga-
tion to provide strict oversight of managers as well as
owners in subsidized developments. In a follow-up inter-
view, Buchwalter clarifies, "We do have oversight of the
owners in so far as it impacts on the running of a project.
Do we hold an owner accountable for conditions in a
building-yes. Do we look over the minutes of board
meetings-no. "
Buchwalter acknowledges that an owner can be re-
moved if conditions are so bad in a building that it is being
"wasted," but says, "We feel the owner and the managing
agent at Taino Towers have implemented some significant
improvements, that they're pointed in the right direc-
tion."
HUD's reluctance to look deeper at Taino Towers is part
of a larger pattern, according to Sherece West, the coordi-
nator ofthe New York City HUD Tenants Coalition, which
is run by the Community Service Society, a research and
advocacy group. "In general when I go to HUD I feel as
though I'm coming up against a brick wall," she says. "I see
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/13
a lot of deterioration in buildings. I go to HUD and they let
me know they have management reviews and inspections
that lead to poor or unsatisfactory ratings. But absolutely
nothing is done."
Yates from the National Low Income Housing Coalition
agrees. "HUD generally has done some pretty lousy over-
sight of these properties. It's not unusual for properties to
have significant deterioration, pretty poor management
and for HUD to come by every year and not do anything.
There are a lot of reasons for this. One is that HUD is
incredibly understaffed. And until recently, they had no
encouragement from the top to do anything about the
problems."
He says that this was meant to change with the new
rules reinforcing oversight, issued in March. But appar-
ently there's a gap between Washington policy rhetoric
and East Harlem reali ty. Miriam Falcon-Lopez, the district
aide for Congressman Charles Rangel, has been hearing
complaints about Taino Towers and prodding HUD to
become more active since 1989. She says getting coopera-
tion "was like pulling teeth without Novocaine."
T
he "hands off" attitude at HUD makes sense within
the broader historical context. "There were only
three brief periods in American history when the
government was pressured into building housing
that met with the standards of quality that we consider
appropriate," says Peter Marcuse, an urban planning pro-
fessor at Columbia University. "Taino Towers was built at
the high point of one of those periods, but it outlived its
support.
"What this demonstrates is the conservatism ofHUD,"
Struggtes and Unanswered Questions
The idea for the Taino Towers project was born in the
late 1960s, the brainchild of a tenants' rent strike in
freezing, dilapidated, rat-infested East Harlem tene-
ments.
The East Harlem Tenants Council organized the
strikes, and attracted attention from the city's media. A
journalist from the New York Post, James Wechsler,
travelled uptown and was profoundly impressed by
what he saw. His newspaper column about the frigid
living conditions in East Harlem inspired two socially
conscious architects, Gerald Silverman and Robert Cika,
to go to the neighborhood and offer their assistance.
Silverman and Cika met with the leaders of the East
Harlem Tenants Council and they started to dream of a
model project, a development that would combine
well-designed housing with on-site education, health
care, commercial stores and plentiful space for recre-
ation. The project would be an alternative to oppres-
sive, box-like public housing, and it would be cheaper
to build because the commercial spaces would subsi-,
dize the apartments.
They put their ideas down on paper and started to
pound on the doors of local politicians: the senators
Robert Kennedy and Jacob Javits, and Rep. Herman
Badillo. In 1967, HUD awarded $19 million for Taino
Towers under the National Housing Act, but the city
and state governments opposed the plan, considering it
too costly and ambitious. Years passed and nothing
happened. In 1970, the federal government asked for
their money back and Taino Towers seemed doomed.
But after intense lobbying from the Puerto Rican
community and some design modifications, HUD re-
vived the plan. The federal government promised $39
million in loan guarantees, enabling the community
organizers to raise construction funds from New York
banks. HUD agreed to pay most of the interest, plus
provide generous Section 8 rental subsidies.
The tenements on the site were razed and the project
broke ground in 1972, but that was just the beginning of
a new series of headaches. Construction costs bal-
looned and the general contractor, S.S. Silverblatt,
alleged that he didn't recei ve enough money for the job.
14/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMns
Silverblatt tried to cut corners while the community
group and the architects struggled to maintain the
original plan. Work stopped in 1976; the project was
broke, and HUD assumed control of the mortgage.
"HUD sabotaged the project by identifying with the
general contractor instead of the architects and the
community," says Robert Nichol, who was project
director for the East Harlem Redevelopment Project, a
precursor of the pilot block group. "By their inter-
ference, they allowed self-serving elements of the
community to gain control of the board." Nichol quit
the project in frustration, and today he lives in Bozeman,
Montana.
Bickering ensued, and the project was dealt a triple-
blow: while the nearly-completed development sat
idle, vandals came in and wreaked havoc. Presidential-
hopeful Ronald Reagan excoriated Taino Towers in his
campaign, describing it as an outrageous example of
luxury housing for the poor. And New York City's
recession meant that human service agencies lost inter-
est in renting the commercial space that was supposed
to keep the development afloat.
Finally, the owners of the towers managed to win a
promise for an extra $10 million from Washington to get
the project completed. Tenants started to move in by
1979-but the final tower wasn't opened until 1984.
Questions of ownership responsibility crept into the
picture early on. According to Benjamin Flores, some of
the final construction work was done by Junque Devel-
opment Corporation, a for-profit entity created by the
ownership group. And an early management contract
went to another for-profit spin-off with close ties to the
owners, Junque Management Corporation, run by a
former chairman of the East Harlem Pilot Block board,
Julio Vazquez. The company was dismissed by HUD,
apparently because of conflicts of interests.
By the time the towers were up and running, officials
at HUD had distanced themselves from the project. In
a New York Times article, HUD's deputy housing direc-
tor, Edward Springer, said, "There are going to be many
unanswered questions about this project for a very long
time." 0 Lisa Glazer
he continues.
"Spitefulness isn't
exactly the right
word. I'm thinking
of a word in German,
Schedenjreude. It
means taking plea-
sure in other
people's pain. I sus-
pect that under-
neath, there's a
philosophical point
of view at HUD that
this project should
never have been
done, that it was
never expected to
succeed."
Marcuse's inter-
pretation still
doesn't fully explain
Lost Hoops: The Taino Towers gym is damaged and unused. So is the swimming pool.
housing who have
the greatest stake
and care the most
about their hous-
ing," Achtenberg
says firmly. "They
are the ones who
can en-sure the
public interest con-
tinues to be met. It
makes sense to put
housing in the
hands of commu-
nity people-as
long has they have
the financial re-
sources, the organi-
zational structure
and the technical
help they need to
the failure of the community owners. "The message ofthis
is not a politically happy one for our side," says Achtenberg,
who has worked with nonprofit housing groups across the
country. "It's been such a fight to give an equal playing
field to nonprofit owners. Both HUD and the community
have a responsibility to do what needs to be done to correct
the situation."
Despite the example of Taino Towers, Achtenberg
remains a firm believer in community control, although
some advocates say that other models, such as Com-
munity Land Trusts or Mutual Housing Associations, may
be more effective. "Ultimately it's the people who live in
make it work."
Tenants who want to improve the way things work of
Taino Towers may find some ammunition for their battles
in the recollections of Yolanda Sanchez, an early East
Harlem Pilot Block member who left the board many years
ago but is still active in the local community. "In the
1960s, all of us believed in community control," she
remembers. "The idea was that tenants would be orga-
nized and eventually they would take over the board. We
believed tenants had the ability and the right to govern
their own home." Right now, she says, the last thing the
owners want is active tenants-but that doesn't mean it
can't be done. 0
BankersliustCompany
Community Development Group
A resource for the non--profit
development community
Gary Hattem, Vice President
280 Park Avenue, 19 West New York, New York 10017
Tel: 212A54,3487 FAX 454,2380
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/15
By Mary Keefe
Climbing the Job Ladder
Thousands of women in the health care industry are
stuck in the lowest-paying jobs-and it's tough to
move up.
I
n spite of the odds against her,
Jeanette Mitchell is determined to
be a nurse. At 33, she's been sup-
porting her two children with her
income as a home health aide for six
years. She only makes $6.50 an hour,
and until recently she hasn't had the
time or money to gain the skills she
needs to move up the career ladder
into a better-paying position.
That's changed since she joined a
foundation-funded pro-
gram at a small, worker-
owned home health care
business in the Bronx,
the Cooperative Home
Care Agency. She's fin-
ished two years of pre-
nursing school, and in
September she started
the clinical training
phase of a nursing pro-
gram atlona College. She
works weekdays from 9
a.m. to 1 p.m. and every
other weekend, and trav-
els to Yonkers four nights
a week for classes and
training.
The agency provides
her with a stipend that
helps her pay the bills
while she works part-
time and provides con-
stant support with
tutoring and counseling.
Her sister takes care of
the kids every evening.
Still, it's not easy.
"Sometimes I fall asleep
trying to read," she says.
ing: "It's going to be very, very tough."
Men and women-mostly
women-are stuck in entry level jobs
like Mitchell's throughout the health
care field. Many of them live in the
city's poorest neighborhoods, and they
can barely support their families. They
are hospital and nursing home
orderlies, nurse's aides, home health
care workers and others. Yet, despite
the fact that New York City has a
move up the pay scale and fill the
empty positions. A few assistance
programs do exist for entry-level
health workers, but they are very small
and very new.
"Unfortunately, from what I can
see, there are very few real successes"
in the training programs, says Marg-
aret McNally, director of Ladders in
Nursing Careers (UNC) , a small but
respected pilot assistance effort. The
hospitals and schools "are opening
their eyes but they are only half open,"
she says. "They have ideas, but they
have to put it all together to make the
patchwork quilt."
Jobs That Have Real Meaning
Health care is one of the few indus-
tries with explosive growth in these
recessionary times. There are about
75,000 home health care
workers in New York
City. Almost all of the
people that have these
jobs are black and His-
panic women, most of
them have no high
school diploma, and the
majority are single-par-
ents. But the pay is only
slightly more than wel-
fare. The average wage
is about $10,000 per
year, says Rick Surpin,
president ofCooperati ve
Home Care.
"Home health care is
seen as a dead-end that
people will not go be-
yond," says Surpin.
"There is not a notion
that we want to train
people for jobs that have
real meaning. Just as
long as you get someone
working it is [consid-
ered] okay," he adds,
but, as he sees it, there's
little incentive to work
if the wages won't pull
you out of poverty.
Entry-level workers
:I: in hospitals and nurs-
~ inghomesaresomewhat
~ better off. Starting sala-
Mitchell is an ex-
tremely unusual case
among home health
aides. Many of her fel-
low workers can see no
way out of their dead-
end jobs. "Once you're a
home health aide that's
it," they tell her. More
than half of the 25
' - - - - ~ ' - - - - - - - - - - __________ __'____ltn ries can go as high as
Moving Up: Jeanette Mitchell trains to be a nurse at St. Joseph 's
Medical Center in Yonkers. She says its a struggle.
women that started the program with
Mitchell two years ago have dropped
out. She has some advice for others
who want to attempt what she is do-
iI/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
severe shortage of trained nurses and
hospital technicians, most of these
men and women can't find the finan-
cial and technical help they need to
$20,000, with benefits.
But about a third of all
medical-related jobs in
hospitals and nursing
homes, where more than 250,000New
Yorkers are employed, are filled by
people with high school degrees or
less. For such workers, there's little
room for advancement, regardless of
how much they learn on the job-the
average maximum salary is only
slightly higher than the average start-
ing salary.
It's not lack of interest that's hold-
ing people back, insists Edward
Salsberg, head of the Bureau of Health
Resources Development at the state's
Department of Health. In 1989 Salsberg
was staff director of the New York
Labor - Health Industry Task Force,
whose report concluded that "a sub-
stantial part of the health care labor
force is hindered from reaching its
optimal potential."
System Has Failed
Education is the key to climbing
the career ladder in health care. But
the system is not designed to educate
working men and women with fami-
lies and very low incomes. Tuition
costs are daunting, and adult students
have little free time to study or attend
classes. "For the most part, our educa-
tion system has failed the non-tradi-
tional students," says Salsberg. Buthe
is hopeful that this will change. "When
you make education available and
convenient for workers, there are lit-
erally thousands of existing workers
who will jump at the opportunity," he
says.
But when they jump, they don't
always land on their feet. Dolores Perin
of the Center for Advanced Studies in
Education at the City University of
New York graduate school, cites a
CUNY community college nursing
program with an 85 percent drop-out
rate. Students were "expecting too
much of themselves," she says, and
often were swamped by the conflict-
ing pressures of work, home and
school.
The government has begun to
respond to the needs of the health
system for trained employees. In
January, 1990, the state created an
incentive program that funnels extra
Medicaid funds to hospitals and other
institutions who provide career
training, education or day care to their
staff. In 1991, the incentive channeled
a hefty amount-$45.8 million-to the
hospitals. Two-thirds of the money
went to New York City, and two-thirds
of that went into training programs for
employees. At this early stage, there's
no way of knowing how much of that
money reached low-level employees.
Salsberg says his office is currently
evaluating the program.
Unions are taking advantage of the
incentive. Local 1199 of the Hospital
and Health Care Employees, a union
that represents 100,000 workers in
the city, runs high school equi valency
and other remedial programs for its
members. By tying into the Medicaid
money, Local 1199 has given about
300 union members paid time off to
go to school to study nursing or other
technical subjects. The union provides
counseling and tutoring support. Dis-
trict Council 37 of the American Fed-
eration of State, City and Municipal
A few assistance
programs do exist,
but they are very
small and very
new.
Employees (AFSCME) has similar
programs for workers in city-run
institutions.
The Greater New York Hospital
Association runs the LINC project with
Medicaid money and some private
funds. Participants get individualized
tutoring and counseling. While they
are in nursing school they work part-
time, are paid full-time and are eligible
for a tuition grant. In exchange they
agree to work at the sponsoring
institution for a certain amount of
time after they graduate.
Still, relatively few people have
been able to participate in these
programs. Almost 5,000 people
applied to participate in the L1NC
program, but only 324 were accepted
and enrolled. By the end of December ,
only about 100 of them will have
graduated.
The Money Runs Out
"There is a terrible shortage" of
pre-college programs focused specifi-
cally on nursing, says Salsberg. Crit-
ics of the existing efforts say that they
are not permanent. Two health pro-
grams coordinated by the Consortium
for Worker Education, a coalition of
22 unions, have only 12 to 18 months
of funding. Once the money runs out,
the programs scramble for money and
fewer workers can participate.
"The problems call for more than
sporadic, although successful, initia-
tives," says Peggy Powell, the execu-
ti ve director of the Health Care
Association Training Institute. She
says the existing pilot programs have
to find a steady, continuous source of
funding that will last many years, so
they can become permanent. Right
now, McNally says, "you have enough
money to start people on the path ...
and then the money to move people
further along runs out."
Some advocates say that entry-level
health care workers who don't want
or can't manage a formal university
education should still have access to
training programs that can hel p them
move upward in the industry. Some
hospitals offer that now, but it's in-
consistent and provides little reward,
says Eric Shtob, director of the Local
1199 Education Fund. For home
health workers, the most anyone
achieves through non-university train-
ing is a small raise-there's rarely any
change in a worker's responsibilities,
regardless of her non-degree training
or experience.
Still, a few women like Jeanette
Mitchell have been able to success-
fully start the move beyond their un-
derpaid home health care jobs. The
uneven path to a better wage requires
a remarkable amount of stamina and
fortitude. Judith K. (not her real name),
whose boss doesn't know about her
long term plans, is a home health aide
who is just starting a program run by
the consortium. She works a 2 p.m. to
10 p.m. shift, five days a week in
Brooklyn. Two mornings a week she's
in Manhattan working on her high
school equivalency degree. Nursing
school would mean working nights,
going to school during the day, and
sending the two youngest of her three
children to live with her sister in
Trinidad. But she has no doubts about
where she's headed. She sets her jaw
and says, "I will do it for myself." 0
TAKEOVER
A documentary about the
homeless helping themselves is
available on video from Skylight
Pictures. The cost is $20 for
individuals, $50 forinstitutions.
Call (212) 947-5333
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/17
Toil and Trouble
Low-income employment during the recession.
N
ew York City's economic
infirmity is hitting low-income
neighborhoods doubly hard.
Not only are government-
funded social services, health care
centers and youth programs disap-
pearing, but the low-paying jobs that
keep families and local businesses
just barely afloat are beginning to van-
ish as well.
The city's official unemployment
rate has gone way up in the past year
and a half-two full percentage points
above what it was during the summer
of 1990. The actual body count of the
unemployed: 279,000 as of October.
But the so-called "official" rate
misses the true picture of unemploy-
ment and under-employment. The
federal survey that establishes the
unemployment rate counts part-time
workers, even those who work just
one hour a week, as fully employed.
And the government doesn't even
count men and women who haven't
taken concrete steps toward finding a
job during the month prior to the
survey-they are called" discouraged
workers" rather than unemployed. If
part-timers and discouraged workers
were taken into consideration, says
]osephineNieves, the city's labor com-
missioner, New York City'S true
unemployment rate could be as high
as 28 percent.
Paradoxically, in the first year or
two of the recession the number of
low-wage jobs commonly filled by
minority workers continued to in-
crease. They were in industries like
health care and social work, where
minorities tend to hold the jobs on the
lowest rungs and whites stand at the
top. Many of these new jobs paid
between $10,000 and $19,000, not the
kind of paycheck that can sustain a
single-parent family.
During the last decade, the city's
economy underwent a sea-change.
Manufacturing businesses continued
to leave town or close up shop, and
one-third of the manufacturing jobs
disappeared. Meanwhile the service
industries moved in, adding hundreds
of thousands of jobs in business
services and health, education and
social work. And employment oppor-
tunities within the local government
soared. But the business services com-
panies cut back drastically during
1990 and 1991. And the growth in
health, education and social services,
which was subsidized by the govern-
ment, is now slowing down.
That means the period of growth
that added low-wage jobs to the New
York economy is ending. Claims for
unemployment insurance from
workers that lost their jobs this
summer in service industries, retail
sales and government are all soaring.
These are some of the sectors where
minorities have found the most jobs
in recent years.
As the city's economy shifts to-
ward providing very-low-wage jobs
for black and Hispanic workers, and
tumbles deeper into a recession where
even those low-paying jobs begin to
disappear, the outlook for the city's
battered neighborhoods becomes ever
more bleak. 0 Andrew White
Unemployed Workers in New York City
350
300
';250
=
=
=
o
=200
.5
50
o
J FMAMJ J ASO NO J FMAMJ J ASO NOJ FMAMJ J ASO NOJ FMAMJ J ASO NO J FMAMJ J ASO
1987
1988 1989 1990 1991
Source: u.s. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
18/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
Where the Jobs Are ...
220
Employment in New York City's
HeaHh Care Industry
~ 200 ~ - - - - - - + - - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - ~
=
m
=
.i 180 1-------+------:::
-
.S
120
1977 .1980
Source: NYS Dept. of Labor
1983 1986
Data for private sector only, in four NYC boroughs (Bronx not available)
1989
Unemployment in the Low-Income Economy
Number of people receiving unemployment benefits
after losing jobs in selected industries, NYC
Retail Trade
Sept 1991
Sept 1989
Services
Government
o 10,000
20,000
30,000
Source: NYS Dept. of Labor
. .. and Who Has Them:
Employment in HeaHh Care Industry
by Ethnicity and Race
All Employees:
Hispanic
14%
Managers:
Hispanic
8%
Service Workers:
Asian
4%
Black
36%
Source: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Data for private sector only, 1989, in NYC
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/19
II' I n
i
, I l\ill
By Barbara Fedders
Why Doesn't
She Just Leave?
A
s an advocate for women who
are being battered and who are
survivors of domestic violence,
I encounter a good deal of
ignorance-both from people outside
the field and from other social service
providers-of the psychological
processes women typically go through
before they can
decide to leave
a violent rela-
tionship. Why
doesn't she just
leave , they
wonder, with-
out under-
standing that a
woman may
blame herself;
or believe her
mate's prom-
ises that this
time is the last
time she'll be
hit; or have so
little self-esteem that she believes she
cannot live without the abuser.
Along with working through these
difficult emotions, poor women in
New York City also face the reality
that leaving a mate who physically
batters them means confronting a
welfare and housing bureaucracy that
will emotionally batter them. Their
reasons for not leaving are clearly
related to the city's Human Resources
Administration's failure to develop a
humane set of policies for addressing
the needs of poor women who are
battered. Why doesn 't she leave?
Because leaving may be as bad as
staying.
A 1990 Ford Foundation report
notes that 50 percent of all homeless
women and children in this country
are homeless because they are fleeing
domestic violence. New York City
funds a pitiful 467 beds in domestic
violence shelters. The handful of
private shelters are quite small and
are difficult for a woman in crisis to
City View is a forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
20/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
find out about, as the city's Domestic
Violence Hotline does not refer them
there.
It is not surprising that, according
to a 1988 study cited by Joan Zorza,
senior attorney at the National Bat-
tered Women's Law Project, 59 percent
of those women seeking emergency
housing at a domestic violence shel-
ter in New York City are turned away.
Those few lucky enough to get in are
then eligible for permanent, city-
owned housing for the homeless.
However, the 90-day maximum stay
policy in the domestic violence shel-
ters is unrealistic, as the wait for
priority housing is six to 18 months.
No Place to Go
The city's 1991 budget included
funding for an additional 150 beds.
The Dinkins administration an-
nounced the funding in May, 1990; to
date, most of the money has not been
released. Adria Hillman of the New
York Women's Foundation, which,
along with the Coalition of Battered
Women's Advocates and several
domestic-violence shelters, initially
lobbied for the funding, believes the
city is stonewalling and wonders
whether the money will ever be spent.
"It is difficult to understand where
the money is coming from to build all
the new large [regular homeless]
shelters the city wants to build when
we can' t get the money we were
promised for the domestic violence
shelters," she says.
Why doesn 't she leave? Because no
shelter will have her. With so little
space in the City's domestic violence
shelter system, more and more women
with children are turning to the regular
homeless shelter system for families.
In fact , studies on the percentage of
women who move to the homeless
shelter system because of domestic
violence give the number as anywhere
from 21 to 50 percent. The steady and
much-reported increase in the number
of all families seeking emergency
shelter has led the city to propose
screening procedures that would
"weed out" those who aren't truly
needy. Crowded shelters and tighter
admission requirements do not bode
well for battered women. Harried and
overworked front-line staffin the city's
four Emergency Assistance Units
(EAUs)-the first stop in "the
system" - might discourage a battered
woman from leaving her apartment or
overlook her need for safety and con-
fidentiality.
One woman I worked with recently
told an intake worker at an EAU unit
that she was seeking shelter because
her husband was severely beating her;
she was advised by the worker to go
home and work it out with him.
Another woman went for help to the
Bronx EAU office. She was told there
was no space in any of the city's
shelters that day and that she and her
two daughters-one of whom is
disabled-would have to spend the
night in the office. At 1 p.m. the next
day, she was referred to a shelter in
the South Bronx. She told the EAU
worker that her batterer lived only
one block away. The EAU worker
insisted that she go there anyway, and
told her that the shelter staff would
"take care of it." Why doesn't she
leave? Because the system won' t
believe her.
Overzealous Tenants' Associations
Those women who do wait it out in
the system are eligible for various city
housing programs after a period of six
months to a year. However, when they
go for an apartment interview, domes-
tic violence survivors often face a
barrage of intrusive and insensitive
questions from overzealous tenants'
associations, community groups, and
landlords eager to avoid trouble:
"Are you presently or have you
ever been a victim of domestic
violence?"
"Do you have an order of protec-
tion?"
"Where did you get those bruises?"
"Have you ever been the victim of
an assault by a spouse or lover?"
"Will that person be living with
you?"
All of these questions violate New
York State Human Rights Law.
Nonetheless, they are commonplace
in the interviews conducted by those
groups and individuals that contract
with the city to provide housing to
homeless families. Why doesn 't she
leave? Because landlords will
discriminate against her.
Women who make it through the
shelter maze into permanent housing,
away from their batterers, may still
not see an end to the violence.
Accustomed to giving out informa-
tion to social services agencies,
landlords and managers of low-
income developments frequently
reveal addresses to callers without
asking for identification. Also, some-
one determined to track down a
Battered women
face abuse at
home-and more
battering in the
city's shelter
system.
woman who has been through the
system can call any number of places
for information-her Income Support
worker, the EAU office, various
shelters. If a woman trying to keep her
address confidential is somehow
found in her apartment and assaulted
or threatened with violence, she has
little recourse.
Although the New York City
Housing Authority has a domestic
violence transfer policy on the books,
the eligibility requirements are
cumbersome and so-called "emer-
gency" transfers can take up to six
months. No other city or state housing
program for homeless families
implemented emergency domestIc
violence transfer policies.
The Victim Services Agency does
offer one option to women who have
been found by their batterers: they
employ locksmiths who will
crime victims' locks for free. One thud
of their clients are battered women.
However, this program is not
publicized in all the in
which formerly homeless farrulIes lIve.
Why doesn't she leave? Because he
will track her down.
Safe Homes in Safe Neighborhoods
Obviously, an array of policy
changes are needed to begin to
comprehensively the
of domestic violence surVivors. SUJata
Warrier of the Coalition of Battered
Women's Advocates, a grassroots
group that organizes for legal and
policy reform for battered women,
notes that "a primary goal is to get the
city to develop more units of perma-
nent housing explicitly for battered
women. Not just more units-safer
units in decent neighborhoods." More
permanent housing also means more
space in the shelters and shorter stays
for those who enter them.
A progressive battered women's
agenda would also include:
Enacting transfer policies in all
city and state housing develop-
ments
Requiring stricter supervision of
those community groups, tenants'
associations, and landlords
contracting with the city to
prevent illegal questions about
domestic violence from being
asked in interviews
Training all city staff to recog-
nize and address the needs of
battered women
Increasing the funding for
domestic violence shelters and
the maximum stay for those who
enter them.
Without these changes, the question
Why doesn't she leave? is easy to
answer. Until we can provide genuine
alternatives to the domestic-and
systemic-violence that battered
women face, they will continue to
stay-and suffer-at home. 0
The Coalition of Battered Women's
Advocates can be reached at (212)
673-7754.
Advertise
.
In
City Limits
Call
Jane Latour
(212) 304-8324
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CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/21
More Empty Apartments
To the Editor:
Your "Shelter Gridlock" article
(November 1991) was right on the
money, and well-timed to counter the
recent "blame the homeless"
campaign of the Dinkins Admini-
stration. Our group can confirm that
here in the Bronx, despite the number
of housing units supposedly com-
pleted by the Special Initiative
Program (SIP), the housing crisis felt
by low income and doubled up
families is only worsening.
We'd like to bring two other contra-
dictions of the SIP program to the
attention of your readers. First, some
SIP buildings are completed and yet
remain unoccupied not only due to
mismanagement but also by conscious
policy: they are being warehoused to
be used later to house relocated people
from sites on which the Department
of Housing Preservation and Devel-
opment (HPD) seeks to build middle
income housing.
For example, three SIP buildings
have sat, finished but empty, on 163rd
Street and Third Avenue for more
than a year now. We have learned that
they are being held to be used to
relocate tenants currently living in
the Melrose neighborhood, if and
when the city comes up with the $100
million to build the boondoggle 3,000-
condominium-unit Melrose Com-
mons project. The HPD commissioner
herself, Felice Michetti, has said that
SIP units can be used to relocate people
from the Melrose Commons site.
I wonder if HPD, when they asked
for money for "homeless housing,"
told the City Council that many units
would be used to house not people
already homeless, but people HPD
would choose to make homeless in
order to build middle income housing?
Another problem with SIP is exem-
plified by a large rehabbed building
on Trinity A venue. HPD turned it
over to the "non-profit sponsor," South
Bronx Community Management
Corporation (SBCMC), which is run
by Ramon Velez Jr., early this year.
Three SIP
buildings have sat,
finished but
empty, for more
than a year.
The building is still two-thirds empty,
and SBCMC is currently charging the
few previously homeless families
they've housed a whopping $585 a
month.
Seems the federal Section 8 subsidy
that was meant to bring costs down to
an affordable level for tenants hasn't
come through.
At a community board meeting,
Milly Velez from SIP told us Ramon
Velez Jr. cannot charge $585 but only
the tenant's share under Section 8-
more like $200. But apparently
nothing's been said to SBCMC in the
Office Space Available for Non-Profits
72 Reade Street
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Entire third and fourth floors: 8,900 feet each.
Building features: Fully restored in 1985, new
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For further information please contact
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22/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
past months-$585 is still being
demanded.
How many homeless people can
pay $585?
One final Bronx note: in your recent
report about Bronx Lebanon's incin-
erator, you chose to quote aides to
Borough President Fernando Ferrer
as key opponents of the incinerator.
In fact, as reported in our community
newspaper here, Inner City Press, but
also subsequently in Newsday, Ferrer
received substantial campaign
contributions from Bronx Lebanon's
vice president, Robert Sancho, and
Ferrer officially supported the
incinerator during the time it was
being built and up until there was a
public outcry.
Ferrer's recent change of heart,
absent concrete and effective use of
his power to stop the incinerator,
seems to us disingenuous. The fact
that Ferrer (and other politicians)
didn't "do their homework" is not an
isolated instance of forgetfulness
(especially when seen in light of the
$5,000 of contributions)-rather it is
of a piece with the pattern of money,
limited public scrutiny and sell-out
and sell-off that characterizes the way
in which the South Bronx is being
redeveloped.
Your magazine should also look
into the way in which the local
community board, Community Board
One, sleazed on this one-they gave a
letter of support without a vote, and
without informing the neighborhood.
The community boards are, of course,
appointed by the borough presidents ...
Still and all, your magazine is
excellent. Keep up the good work.
Matthew Lee
Coordinator ,
Inner City Community on the Move
Get a Job!
To the Editor:
Andrew White's well-researched
article on the homeless shelter system
("Shelter Gridlock," November 1991)
attempts to show that bureaucratic
incompetence has caused the dis-
maying situation in the shelters and
among the homeless, but succeeds
instead in shOWing that the entire
concept of government trying to
provide housing at below-market rates
is doomed, and always has been.
Individuals and families will always
respond to economic incentives and
try to work the system to their own
advantage.
Consider the Pena family, who
White reports has been in the system
for six months. He does not tell us
why the parents don't get jobs, or have
their i5-year-old get a job after school.
It is not the role of government to
provide housing for people, and a
good thing too, for government does it
so badly, always has, and always will.
Government's role instead should be
limited to creating a climate in which
private housing can be built and oper-
ated profitably with as little
interference as possible.
Gary Popkin
Brooklyn
Hard Work, Low Pay
To the Editor:
In response to Bill Price's opinion
piece ("Gentrification Mutual Housing
Style," November i99i)-Yes, it's all
true! We admit it. Over the last five
years we have accepted the munificent
sum of $6,000 for our work on creat-
ing the United Tenant Association's
Mutual Housing Association. Of
course, this "sizable fee," as Bill calls
it, falls far short of the true cost or
value of the inordinate amount of the
professional staff time that we have
invested in this project thus far. We
will continue to assist the UT A/MHA,
however, because we are committed
to see through to its conclusion an
exceptionally open and highly par-
ticipatory local planning process in
which Bill was a vocal (if sporadic)
participant. Frankly, moreover, we
hope at least to avoid losing any more
money on this project before it's com-
pleted. But, nothing in life is
guaranteed.
To respond to the less frivolous
points raised in the article, our goal
was and is to assist the Stryckers Bay
Neighborhood Council and the UTA
to achieve community control of
decent, permanently affordable
housing (not necessarily via public
housing, per se) . Despite the dis-
missive comment on our efforts, we
have explored, with UTA and other
client groups , a wide variety of
programmatic options for achieving
this goal. (Other clients of ours,
equally dedicated to their tenants l o n ~
term interests, have chosen as then
ownership vehicle a two-tiered
Community Land Trust with a 99-
year lease to a resident-controlled
MHA.) The UTA membership decided
that the best model for them was a
Achieving
consensus
among any group
of tenants
.
IS never easy.
simpler, self-contained MHA
approach. We're sorry that Bill's
neighbors don't agree with him on
everyone of the complex issues
involved. But, we hope that he is not
so ideologically intractable as to deny
the possibility that other intelligent
housing activists wrestling with these
same problems have chosen different
solutions than he might advocate
based on his particular views regard-
ing public ownership.
The process of trying to achieve
some level of consensus among any
group of tenants is never easy and,
invariably, someone is not happy with
the outcome. In this case, however,
Bill's objections seem to have more to
do with his personal ideology than
with an open-minded assessment of
the MHA model that has been widely
and thoroughly debated, and demo-
cratically selected by his fellow
tenants.
Nevertheless, we hope that Bill
Price will soon have the opportunity
to share with his neighbors the tangible
fruits of the labors of everyone
involved in this process.
Brian Sullivan
Senior Planner
Pratt Planning and Architectural
Collaborative
Joseph Weisbord
Project Planner
Pratt Planning and Architectural
Collaborative
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CITY UMnSIDECEMBER 1991/23
By Eric Weinstock
The NIMBY Manual
"Saving the Neighborhood: You Can
Fight Developmen t and Win!" byPeggy
Robin, Woodbine House, 1990, 428
pages, $16.95, paperback.
T
he methods of confrontation are
neither inherently good nor
evil. Gandhi's and King's
methods of civil disobedience
are now used by so-called "pro-life"
groups. Throughout the world, one
man's terrorist is another man's
freedom fighter. The Catholic Church
fights against abortion in the United
States and for economic re-
distribution in Latin America.
Opposing development is opposing
change. When it is a change for the
worse, opposition is just; when it is a
change for the better it is obstruction-
ism. Examine any battle between a
neighborhood and new development
and contradictions will surely emerge.
Are the residents of Yonkers any
different morally from the residents
of New York's West Side who oppose
Trump City? If low income neigh-
borhoods deserve protection against
gentrification, do upper income
neighborhoods deserve protection
from the placement of homeless
shelters?
Moral Issues
These moral issues must be faced
when considering the merits of any
development plan. In "Saving The
Neighborhood: You Can Fight
Developers and Win!", Peggy Robin, a
longtime Washington, D.C. neigh-
borhood activist, gives a well-
structured and clearly thought out
blueprint for opposing new develop-
ment. Along the way she skirts the
moral issues described above in order
to focus on providing advice to any-
body fighting any development.
In order to oppose a new develop-
ment, strong public relations skills
are required. Therefore "Saving The
Neighborhood" suffers from the
glibness of that field of employment.
For instance, the author writes, "In
my 10 years of working the slow-
growth movement (and that's what
we call it; we dislike the negative-
sounding term 'anti-development')'
I've met dozens, maybe even hun-
dreds of successful neighborhood
campaigners. They've all been fairly
24/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
ordinary people, middle-class people
with ordinary jobs." I'd say calling a
movement slow-growth when it never
calls for growth is Orwellian in na-
ture. And the middle-class founda-
tion of most anti-development
campaigns should not serve as a source
of pride.
The book includes a chapter on
how not to fall prey to the claim that
your opposition is NIMBY-based.
"One thing you should not do-no
matter how much the subject is in
your thoughts-is complain about
what will happen to your property
values once the new facility is built.. ..
The property-value defense is the clas-
sic NIMBY stance, and once you use
it, people will forget all the other
arguments you've raised and just
dismiss your complaints as the typical
homeowner selfishness at work."
The author recognizes the moral
dilemma raised by this advice by
pointing out that there are cases that
"you should lose." When the opposi-
tion to the developmeht is not to the
project, but to the people inside of it
(the handicapped, elderly, retarded,
poor or those with a different race or
cultural background) then the devel-
opment should go forward. The au-
thor says that we shouldn't "try to
make our neighborhoods into islands
reserved for the healthy, the wealthy
or the representatives of a single cul-
tural type. To me, that would not be a
neighborhood, anyway-it would be
a fortress." Nevertheless, the author
notes, "It's not my intention for this
book to be used to further exclusivist
purposes, though I recognize that it
could be."
Middle Class Orientation
The chapter on community
organizing belies the middle class
orientation of the author's experi-
ences. Among the volunteers that
should be recruited are full-time
parents who have quit well-paying
jobs, home businesspeople and re-
tired people. She writes: "Think of
the people in your neighborhood who
are no longer working. You might find
former heads of corporations, former
scientists and engineers, and other
leaders in their fields." I guess female
heads of households receiving public
assistance, the unemployed and eld-
erly residents barely making ends meet
on social security need not apply.
New York City community organizers
wouldn't have much to do if they
needed to recruit retired heads of cor-
porations and yuppie moms, and they
won't learn much, if anything, from
this section of the book.
The author does provide a com pre-
hensi ve overview of the types of de-
velopments and developers and the
methods to oppose them. Strategies
and tactics are described for fighting
commercial, residential, government
and university developments. Case
studies, although mostly drawn from
the D.C. area, are presented which
will be of interest to any advocate.
"Saving The Neighborhood" affirms,
with several examples, that even de-
velopments that can be built as-of-
right can be opposed successfully.
The chapters on what to do after you
lose (appeal or disobey) or win (show
gratitude and make sure measures are
passed so you don't have to fight the
same battles again) are also useful and
well written.
Schizophrenic Nature
However, the entire book is some-
what schizophrenic in nature. For
instance, the back cover of the book
states, "Ominous headlines warning
of nearby development have sent
many homeowners scrambling to pro-
tect their neighborhoods." However,
the promotional material announcing
the book's publication says it is, "an
invaluable and timely guide for citi-
zens wanting to take action to pre-
serve their communities" (emphases
added).
This fault is understandable since
zoning and development create a
schizophrenic split in the usual
ideological ranks. Both the far right
and the far left oppose zoning restric-
tions. The far right because it is
contrary to the free market. The far left
opposes restrictive zoning because it
is used to keep minorities and the
poor out of suburban enclaves. These
complexities are unlikely to be re-
solved in any individual book, but
they are being battled out case by case
across the country. 0
Eric Weinstock is the director of the
housing research project for the Com-
munity Training and Resource Center
and an adjunct instructor in econom-
ics at Brooklyn College.
Case in Point:
Fulton Landing
Incubator Project
The NY/NJ Minority Purchasing Council
has a dream: create an incubator for
small business minority entrepreneurs.
The incubator itself is a four-story water-
front building in the Fulton Landing
area of downtown Brooklyn. When
completed, it will offer shared office
services, managerial and technical
assistance, and below market rents.
Citibank, through its Citibuilders Pro-
gram, is financing $220,000 of the nearly
$310,000 needed for the first phase
of this project. The Minority Purchasing
Council is providing the rest. They asked
if Brooklyn Union's Area Development
Fund could help with a one-year work-
ing capital loan of $50,000.
We could and we did. We've found
that our Area Development Fund is a
working blueprint for change in the
economic and social life of New York. If
your company would like to help as has
Citibank, Pfizer, Bankers Trust Company
and so many others, talk to Jan Childress
at (718) 403-2583. You'll find him
working for a stronger New York at
Brooklyn Union Gas ... naturally.
Union Gas,
Naturally

For Change
-
CITY UMITS/DECEMBER 1991/25
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY
Barry K. Mallin
Attorney At Law
A decade of service representing
community development organizations
and low income cooperatives.
72 Spring Street, Suite 1201
New York, N.Y. 10013
Telephone 212/334-9393
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-Profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Coopertive conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards of directors
100 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, (718) 624-6850
architllctural/Ilnginllllring slIrlliclIs for nonprofit dlllllllopllrs
o Building Evaluation and Inspection
o Feasibility Studies 0 Construction Supervision
o Preliminary Design/Scope of Work Studies
o Complete Construction Drawings & Specifications
Call John Harris RA. for an evaluation of your project's needs
458 BERGEN STREET, BROOKLYN, NY 11217 (718) 398-1440
BERNARD CARR ASSOCIATES
J-S1 TAX BENEFIT EXPEDITING
Specialists In:
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CALL TODAY FOR A FREE CDNSULTATION
1740 Victor Street, Bronx, NY 10462 Tel. (212)824-5044
WILLIAM JACOBS
CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT
Oller 20 years experience. Specializing in nonprofit housing &
community development organizations.
Certified Annual Audits. Compilation & Review Services
Management Advisory Services. Tax Consultation & Preparation
Call today for free consultation
77 QUAKER RIDGE ROAD, SUITE 215
NEW ROCHELLE, NY 10804
914-633-5095 FAX-914-633-5097
28/DECEMBER 1991/CITY UMITS
TURF COMPANIES
Building Management/Consultants
Specializing in management & development
services to low income housing cooperatives,
community organizations and co-op
boards of directors
329 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217
Rebecca Reich
718/857 -0468

COUNSELLORS AT LAW
Specializing in representing tenants only in
landlord/tenant proceedings, cooperative
conversions, loft proceedings. We represent
sellers/buyers in house, condo and co-op closings.
15 Maiden Lane, Suite 1800
New York, NY 10038
212/406-3320
Community Development legal Assistance Center
o project of the Council of New York Low Associates, 0 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
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Clients Include:Acorn, ANHD, MHANY, NHS of NYC
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STAFF ATTORNEYS. Three staff attorneys to aggressively represent
individual tenants and tenant associations out of Williamsburg
office. Great commitment to the work essential; experience,
SpanishIYiddish/Polish language skills, and bar admission helpful.
Send resume to Martin S. Needelman, Brooklyn Legal Services
Corporation A, 260 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211.
PIT BOOKKEEPER for the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Computer
knowledge and experience with non-profit accounts necessary.
Please send resume to 225 Lafayette St. , Suite 807, New York
10012.
HOUSING COUNSELOR/ORGANIZER to work in Bronx County. Inform,
advise and advocate for enforcement of fair housing laws; part-time
mediator in Housing Court. Related degree or comparable
experience required. Strong verbal and written communication
skills necessary. Bilingual preferred. Resumes to KHNIA, 2805
University Ave., Bronx, NY 10468.
HOUSING MANAGEMENT COORDINATOR. Non-profit seeks energetic
person to assist low-income co-ops in East NY with building
management. Fluent in Spanish, experienced in housing manage-
ment, HDFC' s, or community/tenant organizing. Salary based on
experience. MHANY, 845 Flatbush Ave. , Brooklyn 11226. Or call
718-693-9100.
TRAINING TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE SPECIALIST. Low 30's. Major non-
profit social advocacy org. seeks exp'd loan officer to analyze,
evaluate & process loan packages for its low-income housing devel
prog. Bachelor's degree & 2 yrs exp req'd. Familiarity w/ HPD
programs, low-income housing devel. & loan documentation. Exp
working w/ community-based orgs. Exc. benefits. Send cover letter
& resume to: Personnel, PLF, Community Service Society, 105 E.
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AIDE for Community Board No. 9 in Queens. 30 hrs/week,
Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Responsibilities include:
Typing, filing, answering phones and processing citizen com-
plaints. Qualifications: Good command of the English language,
clear speaking voice, good typing skills. Starting salary $9.58 per
hour, plus City benefits. Send resume to Mary Ann Carey, District
Manager, Comm. Bd. No.9, 120-55 Queens Blvd., Rm 312, Kew
Gardens, NY 11424.
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CITY UMITSIDECEMBER 1991/27
CELEBRATE
The Beginning of our 10th Year
Education Center
for Community Organizing
(ECCO)
Thursday, December 12
Topic:
Grassroots Organizing and Politics
The Challenge Ahead in the 1990s
Speakers Include:
Jan Peterson: Founder, National Congress of Neighborhood Women;
Founder, GROOTS International, a Network of Grassroots Women's
Organizations
Hulbert James: Director, Mayor's Office of African American and
Caribbean Affairs, NYC; (Former) Center for Third World Organizing;
National Welfare Rights Organization; HumanServe Fund
Time: 6:30~9:00 p.m
Place: Hunter School of Social Work
129 East 79th Street
Directions by Train: #6 IRT to 77th Street (Corner of Lexington Avenue.)
Holiday refreshments; Music and songs by Hu Peck
Contribution: $5.00 ECCO Members: $3.00
Call (212) 452~7112 for more information or to reserve a place.
ECCO was formed in 1982 to answer the need for networking, training and organizing among
would-be and experienced organizers in agencies, communities and the workplace.