APRIL 1999 $1.

00
N ( W Y O R K ' S U R B A N A F F A I R S N ( W S M A 6 A Z I N (
roodpaatries
are dishing oat
social services
to welfare' s refagees.
_ore tllaD tbe,. caa baadle.
Warning Shots
I
n the December 1997 issue, our cover story was "The Brutal Truth," which outlined
why incidents like the Abner Louimo beating would continue to moke headlines without
some changes at the NYPD. Author Chris Mitchell made a case against the depart-
ment's inadequate screening of new recruits, lack of attention to red-flag behavior in
officers and the prevalent police culture.
This February, the shooting death of Amadou Diallo by four
.. -........ --" ........ ...
white police officers created an all-toolamiliar outcry in the city's
neighborhoods and around the world. Outraged with the seemingly
never-ending cycle of violent incidents involving white cops and
black victims, thousands of protesters have filled the streets.
EDITORIAL
Mitchell's story covered a hot-button issue with candor and bal-
ance, going beyond quick judgments to see what can be done to
moke a difference. The tools we wrote about-such as smorter meth-
ods to chose who can join the force-have been tested around the
country and are still available. It's past time for the police to take them to heart.
* * *
When we ran Theresa Funiciello's review of Sweet Charity? by Janet Poppendieck,
we never suspected that our letters page would fill as it has. Long before the accusations
started flying, we'd assigned Alyssa Katz to cover the changing world of food pantries and
soup kitchens, the end of the line for the devolution of government's responsibility to help
the poor. The feds passed the buck to the states with welfare reform, New York State
allowed the Giuliani administration to operate its welfare program virtually unchecked,
and the city has built a system based on pushing people off the rolls, including a new
provision that will take away food stamps from another slice of the welfare population.
As our cover story "Second Helping" shows, the largely volunteer network of emer-
gency food providers is trying to catch those falling through government's frayed safety
net. Conservatives might nod in approval, arguing that charity begins at home. That looks
good cross-stitched on a decorative pillow, but true long-term solutions can't be run out
of church basements. The fact that shoestring operations feel compelled to provide social
services only confirms that welfare reform's consequences are out of control.
* * *
Observant readers will recognize Alyssa's byline from past issues, but she's more than
an author around here now. This is her first issue as our new Senior Editor. An alum of
The Village Voice and The Nation, Alyssa has already proven to be an invaluable asset.
And we officially say good-bye to Glenn Thrush, who had a profound affect on this
mogazine's bite and tone. He's leaving usfor the Sunday features desk at the Daily News.
I know I speakfor the entire staff when I say that we're going to miss Glenn's skills,
dedication and humor, although I moy be alone in mourning the loss of his encyclopedic
knowledge of 1970s heavy metal lyrics. If you detect a slackening in the barrage of clever
headlines in these pages, stop for a moment and remember Glenn's immeasurable contri-
butions to City Limits. We know we will.
Cover photo by Seth Dinnerman
City Limits relies on the generous support of its readers and advertisers, as well as the following funders: The BT
Foundation, The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, The Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, The Edna
McConnell Clark Foundation, The Joyce MertzGilmore Foundation, The Scherman Foundation, The North Star Fund, J.P.
Morgan & Co. Incorporated, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The New York Community Trust, The New York Foundation, The
Taconic Foundation, M& T Bank, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan Bank.
-
(ity Limits
Volume XXIV Number 4
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CITVLlMITS
APRIL 1999
FEATURES
Code Blues
Slum landlords can rest easy. The corps of city lawyers that defends
tenants against code violations has been slashed from 45 attorneys
to 18 in the last four years. By Wendy Davis
On the Block ~
Yuppies and buppies are bringing new faces and higher
incomes to Harlem's neighborhoods-it's all part of the
evolution of l20th Street. By Michelle Solomon
Second Helping
Food pantries and soup kitchens have been struggling to serve the
growing number of welfare reform casualties. Now this largely
volunteer system is picking up social services where government
left off-and considering a strategic retreat.
PROFILES
By Alyssa Katz
Green and Lean ~
An ambitious architect is using innovations in energy-efficient
construction to transform low-income housing. By Patrick Barnhart
Independence Day ~
After six years of nurturing and financial support from a
constellation of foundations, a Bronx community coalition
strikes out on its own. By Myra Alperson
PIPELINE
Split Decision ~
Immigrant groups that have used school boards as a portal into
politics were relieved when the feds shot down a plan to
dismantle the current election system. But confusion about what to
do next could throw the May vote into chaos. By Ezequiel Minaya
COMMENTARY
Review
132
Planet Worth By Gordon Mayer
Spare Change
13s
Fun City!
DEPARTMENTS
Editorial 2 Ammo 31
Letters 4
Job Ads 34
Briefs 5
Professional
Directory 35
Vital Stats 30

Un."Ht Revl" that would unite all Americans (or at least
the great majority who are not rich) in
"an inclusive vision of fairness and
economic security."
It is inexplicable that City Limits
invited Theresa Funiciello to caricature
sociologist Janet Poppendieck's Sweet
, Charity? Emergency Food and the
End of Entitlement ("Nuts to Soup,"
LETTERS i January 1999).
........... ..l' Sweet Charity? explores the shortcom-
ings of emergency feeding as a way of
delivering food assistance, describing how
its rise both coincided with and contributed
to the shredding of the government safety
net programs that were designed to protect
Americans from hunger and destitution.
None of this shows up in Funiciello's
"review." Instead, she uses her page in City
Limits to push the wild-eyed theories which
marred her 1993 book, Tyranny of
Kindness: Dismantling the Welfare System
to End Poverty in America. For Funiciello,
the political conservatism of the past 20
years pales beside the hypocrisy and self-
interest of the "poverty industry" when it
comes to assigning responsibility for
hunger and poverty. Funiciello advocates
shutting down social service agencies
wholesale and replacing them with an
income-transfer system, such as a guaran-
teed income, to eliminate poverty.
Poppendieck interviews hundreds of
the people involved in emergency feeding
in order to understand how and why our
society has come to prefer charity's Band-
Aid response to hunger over the social
insurance programs that prevented hunger
from happening in the first place. In the
context of the religious right's emergence
as a major force in American politics,
Poppendieck offers a valuable analysis of
the very different values involved in the
emergency feeding movement, which is
essentially church- (and synagogue- and
mosque-) based.
Finally, she analyzes the politics of
hunger versus the politics of poverty and
proposes an alternative to both: a politics
Unfortunately, Funiciello's proposal is
politically naYve, and dangerously so. Her
savage attacks against the left-in this
review she accuses the anti-hunger move-
ment of advocating ''table scraps" for the
poor-only aid the right.
Poppendieck raises all the big questions
about the proliferation of soup kitchens in
the world's richest society. Because of her
unique credentials as a scholar, advocate
and soup kitchen volunteer, and because
she took the trouble to try to understand
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how Americans think, she has sparked a
dialogue with tremendous potential. City
Limits, instead of encouraging this dia-
logue, dismissed it with a sneer.
Judith Walker
Executive Director
New York City Coalition
Against Hunger
Appalled Author
I was really appalled by Theresa
Funiciello's review of my book, Sweet
Charity? She portrays the book as a defense
of emergency food, when in fact Sweet
Charity? is an analysis of the inherent
shortcomings of this approach to poverty. I
can't imagine she could conclude that the
book advocates "food pantries, casework-
ers, or trucks" instead of income for the
poor; perhaps she was in a hurry.
More than her distortion of my work,
however, I was distressed by her portrayal
of anti-hunger advocates and the hard-
working volunteers and underpaid staff
who run food programs. Ms. Funiciello
seems to perceive them as part of a great
greed-induced cabal to exploit the poor.
She reserves a special venom for anyone
who advocates any form of food assistance.
I suspect that Ms. Funiciello and I agree
that cash is preferable to food assistance
for poor people. If the recent history of
public policy has taught us anyt.hing, how-
ever, it is that the political support for the
ideal agenda is minimal. Why, then, heap
scorn upon and impugn the motives of
people who have worked long, hard and
valiantly to secure food assistance to sup-
plement shrinking cash assistance and
unrealistic wages?
Sweet Charity? is about the ways in
which the proliferation of private, charita-
ble food assistance has contributed to the
erosion of the public-sector safety net.
Here, again, I agree with much of what
Ms. Funiciello has written. But I disagree,
profoundly, with her understanding of
the people involved, their intentions
and motivations.
A little sociology is useful; in my view,
the contribution of emergency food to the
long, dreary process that culminated in
welfare repeal is a classic instance of a
latent function-an outcome unintended
by and largely hidden from those that
make it happen. I wrote Sweet Charity? in
part to help emergency food providers see
that the more they expand, improve and
publicize their system, the more govern-
ments at all levels will be able to avoid
responsibility for developing humane
(continued on page 33)
CITY LIMITS
j
c
..
m
:t:
TRANSITION
RecoDStruction Debris
,
'4.
t first I thought living in 322
was the worst place," says
Diane Riddick. "There were
all kinds of different people,
with different backgrounds,
doing their own thing."
She's talking about the apartment building
that used to stand at 322 Irvine Turner
Boulevard, the way it used to be before the
fues, the evacuation and the demolition. "The
people took care of each other's kids and was-
n't gonna let anything happen to them," she
says. "I got to know the people, and it began to
feel like home."
For 15 years, I took photos and listened and
learned in this Newark building, afraid
of strangers when I was alone in the halls,
but always feeling safe when I was welcomed
into the apartments of Diane Riddick and
her neighbors.
Two flre.s around Christmas 1996 drove the
people out-City Limits ran my photos of the
APRIL 1999
evacuation in the April 1997 issue.
I've tried to keep up with the tenants of 322
since then, checking in to see how they've man-
aged and how their lives have changed. For a
while, I visited the old building every few weeks
and took a few more pictures. For a year, it stood
empty and barren.
Then last February, I made the turn onto
Irvine Turner Boulevard, and my heart sank. I
saw what used to be a four-story building scat-
tered across empty lots.
I stumbled in frustration up and down the
piles of rubble, trying to document the essence of
this building with my camera before it was all
over. The site supervisor approached me, and I
told him what I was doing-the years I'd spent
with this building. "Go ahead and take pictures if
you want," he said. "The building was built to
last forever. A shame to destroy it."
I spent the next two months in the mud and
rain, poking my camera into every pile of debris.
Every day, the workers waved and greeted me,
...

Sherell Riddick
shows off
for her mom
in their
old home.
and the bulldozer driver gave me a little toot.
Now the building's tenants are scattered
across the city. Riddick, who lived at 322 for 12
years, has moved twice since it burned down.
But she hasn't forgotten her neighbors. "I still
miss Mildred-she was old and so funny," she
recalls. "She be walking around with one leg,
and jokin' and drinkin' that vodka. She gave me
some com liquor one day, and man, I was going
all kinds of ways. She drank that stuff straight
and that lady was eighty-some years old .... I
guess it's the way it's supposed to be-a story
begins and a story ends."
Her kids-IO-year-old Sherell and 13-year-
old Rashawn-miss their friends and their tree
fort. "I didn't know what to say when the house
got burned down," remembers Sherell. "By the
time we got horne, my mother already moved to
another place and we didn't have a chance to see
our friends or anything."
A block of pre-fab housing now fills the lot
where 322 once stood. Most of the former tenants
have lost track of each other. "We tried to stay in
touch, but we just can't," Riddick explains.
''There was something about that building and
the people that made you different once you
moved out. It's like you're not home no more.
You're out."
-Helen Stummer
Briem ............ __ ----.......... ------------=
Housing Management
Taxed
Shelter
4.
t its peak, the Oceanhill-Brownsville
Tenants Association (OHBTA) was a
redevelopment powerhouse, rehab-
bing and managing hundreds of
city-owned buildings in eastern
Brooklyn. Now, says Executive Director Abdur
Rahman Farrakhan, the group is getting out of
the housing business.
While OHBTA still holds title to the buildings-
mostly former vacant and dilapidated properties
rehabbed through city grants-it has passed off
day-to-day management for all but about 300 apart-
ments to outside for-profit managers.
'Civil Disobedience
Parking Not
Most recently, the group handed over about 860
units in 30 buildings to the Bronx firm RMA, a pri-
vate management company. The rest of the out-
sourced buildings have gone to AReO Management
and Grenadier Realty. Farrakhan says that OHBTA's
future is simply no longer in housing.
It's a sea change for an organization that once
was the darling of the city Department of Housing
Preservation and Development (HPD), receiving
millions of dollars in community management and
rehab grants and loans. It would eventually take
title to more than 2,000 housing units.
Farrakhan explains that OHBTA is fed up with
the landlord business and looking for greener
fields in economic development. "We've done
well with HPD, but I don't see this as being the
future for us," he says. "We want to do things to
help people become self-sufficient, and we don't
want to become dependent on government grants.
We don't want to bother with that foolishness."
OHBTA, formed out of the racially charged
Brownsville school-choice fight of the late 1960s,
was founded on the principles of self-help and home
rule. But even as the group developed worker
cooperatives like a security guard training pro-
gram and a construction company, it became
increasingly dependent on HPD rehab grants.
The organization's properties are widely known
to have management problems. Most of the prop-
erties OHBTA still manages are tenant-owned or
rental cooperatives. Buildings like these common-
ly owe back taxes and water and emergency repair
bills. But Oceanhill-Brownsville's buildings are
especially debt-laden: All but two of its 16
co-ops are nearly drowning in unpaid bills. One, a
35-unit building at 2170 Atlantic Avenue, currently
owes a total of $427,860, according to Department
of Finance data.
''We need to fix these buildings up, we need to get
these tax situations fixed up, we need to work with
them," admits Farrakhan. ''But there was a toss-up
between me paying for fuel and repairs versus pay-
ing taxes. I figured the city put a burden on me-why
should I pay them?". -Kathleen McGowan
..... rwd for the IimouIInes .... c.- ....... that ferry
InYestnIllll bInken home lit nIaht.
D
........ in lUlls ........ top hats .... canyIna
a ditquietInc ....... puppet depIdInc ..,..
GiuIiani's ..... 011 a stick, about 30 protesters
spent the aftemoon of February 11 camped out
in a Wall Street-area PIItdna spot...-tis one
The demonstrators, orpnIzed by the pubIIc-tpIIC8
IIIvocacy IfOUP Reclaim the StrMts, were respontInc to
the recent news that .....,... 5urI Kauirer .... of the
mayor's political action committee chief, 8nIce TeIteIbIuIn
~ to secure exclulive richIs for the an to park
outside the Broad StrMt _.baa of the $20 ...... lnvest-

ment ftnn Goldman Sachs.
1heIr mn .... was cIer.
... is a racist corporlle
stoop," read one 1Ian.
But Wall Street w.
unmoved ....., don't ,. ..
back to IChoaI .... aet .....
jobs?" shouted one ....
dressed ........ y, Dav.
Mattera
... ... these people have
a lot of nene," continued
Mattera, who WOIb lit ..
downtown Icon CoIIIputer
Group. He felt the .......
priviIeps are a '* .......
off, COIIIideriac the ....
meat finIn IIInIIItic ......
., ... GaIIIn8I SedilJIvea
their .....,... one ......
day off a ,... to do ~
...... "
-& .... ......,
Making headway: Protesters park in
a privatized spot .
CITY LIMITS
...... ----------------------------Briem
BETTERLMNG THROUGH STATISTICS! &I:

e-I-
MAYOR GIULlANl'SMINl>EXPANDING LFADERSHlP CAN ACTUAJ.lY IMPROVE YOUR QUALITY OF LIFE

I:S
&-nUl.tY, THE SANITATION
i>fPARi'MNT PICKS UP MORE
TRASH PER CAPITA 'mAN THE
ENTIRE srA'Tt OF VIRGINIA!
/ikruAuy, WHEN ADJUSTtD
FOR TlMEJNFLATlON, MIDTOWN
TRAfTIC DtLAYS ARE GT11NG
EACH YEAR!
TIiE ODDS OF YOU
BEING SHOT BY A COP ARE
MUCH LOWER THAN 'IltE ODDS
OF YOUBlNG BORN BLACK!
Environmental Justice
Pennission
Slip
A
fier years of watching the state envi-
ronmental agency say yes to industri-
al polluters looking to put plants in
neigh?orhoods, New York's
mmonty resIdents are finally getting
a forum where they can say no.
Under pressure from state environmentalists
and the federal Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), the state Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC) will begin taking civil rights
concerns into account in its permitting process for
neighborhood afflictions like water-treatment
plants and garbage depots.
In February, DEC announced that the agency
will give minority communities earlier notice of
permit applications, set up a dispute-mediation
process between communities and businesses
before permits are approved, and identify projects
that may trigger environmental justice concerns.
The plan came out of months of informal dis-
cussions between the state agency and environ-
mental groups, including the League of
Conservation Voters and the New York City
APRIL 1999
Environmental Justice Alliance.
Environmental groups hope DEC's plan will
give officials pause before placing noxious pro-
jects in minority communities. "You need to build
a link in special circumstances, in communities of
color that have been overburdened," says Mathy
Stanislaus, co-chair of the Minority Environ-
mental Lawyers Association. ''No agency has
[taken] that step. That's what led to the environ-
mental justice movement." - Kemba Johnson
Affordable Housing
Now You
See It ...
A
s the mayor and governor battle over
the proposed Holocaust museum
expansion in Battery Park City, hous-
ing activists might want to take the
opportunity to remind the politicians
of another deal, made a decade ago, that is now
being routinely ignored by the city and state.
When the Battery Park City Authority was cre-
ated in 1968 to oversee development of the West
Side waterfront south of Chambers Street, the
plan included housing for both rich and poor res-
idents. The city budget crisis in the late 197Qs
forced officials to scale back these ambitions.
Instead, the authority committed to giving the
city $600 million from future budget surplus
revenues to finance affordable housing else-
where in the five boroughs.
The deal, penned in a series of 1980s agree-
ments, was to be fmanced with Battery Park prof-
its. If the contract had been honored, the Depart-
ment of Housing Preservation and Development
would have had an additional $79.2 million to
spend this year. Instead, it's getting nothing.
There are several reasons for this. First, the
authority hasn't been nearly as profitable as expect-
ed. Last year, it handed the city only $40 million;
this year that figure is projected to be $44 million.
The real problem, however, is i!l how the city
is choosing to spend the Battery Park surplus. The
contract requires what is known as a "mainte-
nance of effort," mearJing that the city is required
to maintain its existing housing budget and
increase it with the additional Battery Park City
revenues. But the language is loose and the pro-
vision hasn't been enforced. "It's not very tough
in terms of a maintenance of effort agreement,"
observes Alexandra Altman, counsel for the
Battery Park City Authority.
And even if this provision could be enforced,
a one-sentence loophole gives the city the right to
move this surplus into the general operating bud-
get in any year "the City budget provides for gen-
eral reductions in basic city services." Under the
Giuliani administration, pretty much every year
fits that bill. -Carl Vogel


PROFILE
Architect Chris
Benedict builds
green homes
for not a lot of
greenbacks.
-
Creen and Lean
Convinced that fuel-efficient housing doesn't have to cost
more, a Manhattan architect builds homes that can keep
themselves warm. By Patrick Barnhart
A
rchitect Chris Benedict got
her first energy-efficient
affordable homes built-
the first in New York City,
actually-by being sneaky.
The bank that was going to help finance
the deal wanted contractors to bid on
two sets of renderings for the rehab job:
traditional plans and ones with the green
details in place. "They called them
the plain vanilla and the pistachio,"
Benedict recalls.
She suspected that the construction
companies would jack up the price on
the extra work, and that would be the
end of the story on including energy
efficiency. So she convinced the bank to
pull a bait-and-switch: They would bid
out just the plain plans. Only after they
had a lowest contractor estimate would
they unveil the green blueprints.
It worked. The additional costs
ended up adding just a bit more than 1
percent to the $4.3 million deal for 18
multifamily homes-very little by ener-
gy-efficiency standards. But Benedict is
certain she can do better. "People have a
fear of change, and they hang their hat
on cost," she says. "I wanted to bring
that $54,000 down to zero. 1 didn' t want
this project stigmatized."
When Benedict starts talking about
energy, her eyes glow with an evange-
list's fervor behind her stylish glasses,
and she reels off nuts-and-bolts details to
prove that buildings can be built smarter.
If it takes some subterfuge to get past
preconcieved notions, so be it.
Every winter, New Yorkers are
reminded of the chinks in their homes'
armor. A crack in a window seal that is
imperceptible in October makes a nearby
favorite chair too cold to sit in by
January. Or the place is burning up
because the super's apartment is on the
first floor, and he's freezing. These con-
struction defects are more than annoy-
ing; they're expensive and wasteful. For
poor families, the extra cost of turning
the heat up or a space heater on can mean
a choice between heat or rent or food.
Homes that use energy more wisely
have been around for a while, but they
have a rep for being expensive. That's
fine for a market-rate home, where the
buyer is making a decision to invest in
infrastructure now for lower utility bills
in the future. But there's only so much
money to go around for subsidized hous-
ing these days, and spending more up
front means fewer affordable homes. The
fact that lower energy costs can help res-
idents save enough to pay the monthly
mortgage bill never gets factored in.
Benedict and her partner Henry
Gifford say they've hit on the energy-
efficiency grail: green housing that does-
n' t cost any more to build than compa-
rable units. They've invested a lot of
time and thought into the set of
rehabbed row houses and tenement
buildings that have been built around
Brooklyn in the last year. Now they just
have to convince the city to give them
another chance.
A
fter getting her architecture
degree at Cooper Union, Benedict
apprenticed at four different firms,
fmally striking out on her own in 1995.
For years she had been interested in mix-
ing architecture with her environmental
sensibilities-in sixth grade she wrote a
poem about pollution-but wasn't sure
where to start.
Her break came from her first client,
the NYlEnterprise CityHome Housing
Development Fund Corporation. City-
Home hired Benedict as one of a handful
or architects overseeing their middle-
income home-ownership program, which
had already rehabbed more than 100
buildings in Brooklyn and the South
Bronx. "Chris came highly recommend-
ed," says Rylona Watson, director of
the program.
For Benedict's first project-plans to
gut-rehab 13 buildings in Crown
Heights-she wasn't able to make any
headway on green architecture. But she
asked Watson if she could add in energy
efficiency for her next contract, a hodge-
podge of 18 two-, tbree- and four-family
houses in Bushwick and Ocean Hill. When
Watson agreed, all Benedict had to do was
CITVLlMITS
Environmental Housing
Benedict's housing uses "green
construction" and aims to rehab
low-income housing for first time
homeowners.
A
B
D Thennostats and heaters in
apartment keep the building at
a constant 72 degrees
E Doors are made of recycled wood
F Highest efficiency refrigerators
G Airtight apartments allow for 40%
smaller boilers and prevent heat from
rising to upper apartments
H Walls are insulated with recycled
materials that fill the entire cavity
'drawing is schematic
figure out how.
She began attending energy efficiency
conferences, "to talk with anyone
who would talk with me," she says,
"anyone who knew anything about
environmentally sound construction." At
one such confab, in Boston, she met
Henry Gifford.
"In the middle of class Henry raised
his hand to ask the instructor a ques-
tion, and the teacher deflected the
question and didn' t answer. Then
Henry raises his hand and asks the
same question again," Benedict recalls
with a laugh. "I looked at him and
thought, 'This guy must be a psycho."
Gifford isn't a psycho; he's just enthu-
siastic. He has self-published a gujde to
sizing pipes and pumps for homes and is
working on a coffee-table book of boiler
rooms. "He is the finest boiler mechanic in
the world," says Andy Padian at the Center
for Energy Affordablity. "But he has prob-
ably already told you that himself."
Gifford is the rare individual who not
only understands the theory of heating a
building but also knows how to put boil-
ers together and take them apart. With
Gifford's unique comprehension of how a
APRIL 1999
building's heating system works, Benedict
was ready to create her dream house-{)ne
that conserved construction funds by
using scaled-down heating equipment,
then spent those savings on extra weather-
ization to keep the house warm.
"Choose a boiler size large enough to
heat the house," reads the typical archi-
tect's specification for home heating.
American builders usually overestimate
to avoid angry calls from cold owners.
But by taking the time to plan very care-
fully how the heating systems would
work, Benedict and Gifford were able to
use small, sealed-combustion boilers,
eliminating the need for a boiler room
and chimney-and saving more than
$3,500 per building.
Benedict also re-envisioned the
ventilation systems. Any New York City
building without a window in the bath-
room or kitchen is required to bring in
fresh air, which is typically accomplished
by drawing the air upward through a ceil-
ing vent. Whlle effective, thls method con-
nects each unit to the one above it and
punches a hole in the roof, both of which
allow heat to escape.
Benedict's design seals each unit as
through
the windows
through vents in
bathroom and k ~ c h e n ,
keeping a constant and
controlled air flow
tightly as possible, keeping heated air in
the apartment. A constantly TUnlling fan
connecting the bathroom and kitchen pulls
in air through "trickle vents" above each
bedroom window and pushes it out of side
vents. It costs about $40 a year to run the
fan, but the savings from controlling the
~
amount of heat that leaves the apartments ..,
are much greater. Plus, each urut is quieter, ~
since sounds don't travel from apartment
to apartment via the ducts, and the sealant
helps deter insects and rodents.
The money that Benedict saved by
nixing chlmneys and roof fans was
plowed into materials like thermal win-
dows and cellulose insulation. But the
biggest expense was the cost of com-
pletely sealing each unit. Labor is where
greenbacks threaten to do in Benedict's
green vision.
T
o guarantee the units would be
adequately sealed, Benedict decid-
ed to change the typical working
arrangement for low-income projects.
Home construction leaves a lot of lee-
way for contractors, such as the specs
for boilers. "Designs are typically done
first by architects, then [go 1 to the

-

mecharucal engineer for heating, then to constrution," says
John Spears, president of the Sustainable Design Group in
Gaithersburg, Maryland. "There is hardly any feedback
between them."
With Gifford, Benedict was already working much more
closely with a mecharucal engineer than most architects do,
and she thought it only made sense that the two of them would
work closely with the construction crew as well. "During the
job I was out at the job site three or four times a week,"
Benedict says. "I'd go in with our drawings and if there is a
four-foot piece of ductwork, I look for it and then check it off."
"Chris was the most thorough architect we have ever
worked with," says John Frezza, whose Strategic Construction
in Brooklyn was the general contractor on this project. "She
was on top of the job from start to finish, and that raised our
costs a lot."
The city Department of Housing Preservation and
Development agreed to pay $28,000 of the $54,000 Frezza's
company required for the extra work, and CityHome obtained
a grant from the Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation for the
remaining cost. But Frezza maintains he will raise his bid in
the future. "From an engineering perspective, it is the ideal
way to build a home, but the additional work raises my labor
costs further," he says. "These are 'lost cost' projects and the
savings need to come from somewhere."
There are ways around the labor-cost problem. In North
Carolina, more than a hundred energy-efficient affordable
homes have gone up in the last four years, built by Habitat for
Humanity-but of course, that manpower was donated.
Another route is tapping into federal Department of Energy
funds earmarked for weatherizing eXlstmg housing.
Spears secured waivers that allowed the money to be used
for new construction, buying him $1,500 per unit for a
Maryland project.
Benedict argues that with the work that has already gone
into her plans, the cost for future projects will go down, not
up. "Once we get a couple contractors bidding against each
other, I'm sure we can keep the price down," she says.
She may not get the chance soon. Although she is cur-
rently working on a 19-building project for CityHome,
Benedict is back to "the dumb way of doing things," as she
puts it. The city is waiting to see some fuel bills before it
gives the green light to funding another round of energy-
efficient CityHomes.
"If these homes really do save residents as much as Chris
has predicted that they do, and I fully expect that they will,
then I really think that we have a model for the future,"
Watson says. "We need to document the cost savings that
these homes provide and then see about building more."
So for now, Benedict settles for helping the families that
have recently moved into her green homes learn how to make
them work to peak capacity. To ensure the residents get
the hundreds of dollars a year in fuel bill savings, she's even
given them her home phone number, in case they have a ques-
tion at an odd hour.
"More and more people need to see the demonstrations,"
says Spears, who's been working in the field for 25 years. "It's
just that old habits are hard to kick."
Patrick Barnhart is a Manhattan-based freelance writer.
planners Network 1999
planners Network Conference
June 17-20, 1999
University of Massachusetts at Lowell
It is a critical time for work and workers in the United States.
Most workers are putting in longer hours, at lower wages, in
less stable jobs. Inequalities by race and education are
widening, and gender inequality persists as well. At the
same time, the U.S. labor movement is newly revitalized,
and community-based campaigns have scored many suc-
cesses. The June Conference will explore the connections and
intersections between community and work and be held in
Lowell, Massachusetts, cradle of the U.S. industrial revolu-
tion. For information regarding conference registration:
joanJenlon @uml.edu, #(978)934-3895; submitting work-
shop ideas or papers, being a co-sponsor, or joining the
local planning committee: <chrisJilly@UML.EDU>,
#(617)983-3202 Also check the website at www.planner-
snetwork.org/ pn99 .htm
Planners Network is an association of practitioners,
activists, educators and students involved in physicat
sociat economic and environmental planning in urban
and rural areas who work to promote fundamental
change in our political and economical systems.
Planners Network 1 999
--
CITY LIMITS
Split Decision
Under new voting rules, this spring s school board ballots are
turning into wild cards. By Ezequiel Minaya
I
t'S business as usual at the
weekly meeting of Community
School Board 26. Assembled at
Intermediate School 74 in Bayside,
Queens, the nine-member group
listens to the director of the district's drug-
prevention program describe his effort.
At lecture's end, board member Sachi
Dastidar offers a unique perspective. In the
one-fifth of district households that are
South Asian, Dastidar says, talking about
drugs is taboo, so educators must tread
carefully. He stops momentarily to rub his
tired eyes with the heels of his hands,
searching for a way to illustrate his point.
"In my culture, even a grown man would
not dream of smoking or drinking in front
of his parents," he says.
Dastidar, who was born in Calcutta,
India, and elected to the board in 1996,
often pursues issues that aren't on the
meetings' agendas. The difference
between his merely being a concerned par-
ent and becoming one of the first two
South Asian elected officials in New York
City was four votes out of 5,024. But had
that election been held under a new and
controversial set of voting rules approved
last summer, Dastidar's fellow board
members wouldn't hear his insights-
because he wouldn't have been elected.
On the recommendation of the Task
Force on the New York City Community
School Board Elections, the state legisla-
ture eliminated a long-standing system
that distributes votes proportionally
among school board candidates. The hope
was that a standard winner-takes-all ballot
format would increase declining turnout.
But minority and immigrant groups, who
have long used school boards as political
forums and springboards to higher office,
said the switch would hurt their election
chances in districts where their numbers
are diluted.
The Justice Department agreed and in
early February struck down the law, saying
that the shift would diminish the influence
of minority voters without guaranteeing a
higher turnout. The agency's jurisdiction,
however, was limited to the Bronx,
Brooklyn and Manhattan; in Queens and
Staten Island, the law is still in effect.
APRIL 1999
With a May 4 vote fast approaching, city
election officials, potential candidates and
the groups who help them are wondering
what happens next. "Everyone's so
stressed out about this," says Judith Baum,
who works with candidates at the non-
profit Public Education Association.
"Everything's still up in the air."
T
he election system used to
select New York City's 32 school
boards, known as "proportional
representation," is uncommon in the United
States, employed only in the city and in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school
board elections are further distinguished by
allowing non-citizens to vote. 'This voting
system is good for minority people. It's eas-
ier to get a candidate elected," says
Morshed Alam, a Bangladeshi school
board member in south-
east Queens."Representation
is important, and this gives
us a chance."
Under the system, vot-
ers list their top nine pref-
erences for a' district's
candidates-who usually
run on slates-on a paper
ballot. The threshold for
victory is 10 percent of the
ballots cast. Extra votes a
candidate receives beyond
that go to the person
ranked second on a voter's
ballot until that candidate
reaches the 10 percent
threshold, and so on. This
vote cascade continues
down the line until the
nine-person board is cho-
sen. With the vote transfer
from one candidate to another, contenders
from smaller voter blocs receive more
votes than they otherwise would have.
After some widely publicized incidents
of corruption, in 1996 the school boards
were stripped of their most important
duties, including the power to hire princi-
pals and directly appoint superintendents.
Still, members of underrepresented groups
see school boards as important political
posts. For example, the only Asian
Americans who hold elected office in
New York State, 11 in total, are all city
school board members. Board slots can
also be trampolines: Alam parlayed his
board position into 40 percent of the
general vote last year in an unsuccessful
bid for state senator.
"It's an important opportunity for
parents to have a say in educational policy,"
says Margaret Fung, executive director of
the Asian-American Legal Defense and
Education Fund. "It's a first step for
politicians entering the arena, and for
immigrant parents it's an entry in both"
education and politics.
For blacks and Latinos, who often live
in neighborhoods where they make up a
sizable part of the community, proportional
representation doesn't always matter as
much. All the same, it can also provide
a turning point for a neighborhood's ~
political growth. City Councilmember ~
Guillermo Linares started his public f
career in 1983 as a school board mem-
ber, at a time when Inwood's now-estab-
lished Dominican community was still
growing. "Blacks, Latinos and Asians
are diluted in [some] districts," says
Linares, who is Dominican. "Minorities
stand to lose a lot if they lose propor-
tional representation."

PIPELINE ~
Sclwol board
member Sachi
Dastidar credits
the current voting
system for making
him one of the
city's first South
Asian elected
officials.
,

fW
I
f city education officials had their way,
proportional representation would go
the way of the dollar subway token.
The task force assembled to make the vote
more popular recommended using voting
machines, limiting voters to four candi-
date choices and eliminating the transfer
of extra votes. ''The current system of pro-
portional voting, with its paper ballots, is
not understandable," says Alan Garter,
executive director of the task force and a
CUNY professor of educational psycholo-
gy. "It is very different from the elections
people are accustomed to."
The prevailing view in Garter's group is
that voter confusion has led to steadily
declining participation in school board elec-
tions, from 14 percent of eligible
voters in 1970 to 5 percent in 1996, when
the task force was formed. After holding
meetings throughout the city and interview-
ing parents, school board members and dis-
trict superintendents, the task force con-
cluded that all ethnic groups disliked pro-
portional voting-but particularly, the task
force took pains to observe, recent immi-
grants who were unfamiliar with voting.
Many education advocates disagree.
They cite a jump in voters in 1993-the
year of the Rainbow Curriculum and
Heather Has Two Mommies-as proof that
more publicity and voter education can
bring people to the polls. And they contend
that the Board of Elections is anxious to
get rid of a complex system that requires
tallying by hand; in the last election three
years ago, it took nearly a month to get the
final count.
''The implication that minority voters
can't do this is racist," says Kathleen
Berger, president of School Boards for
Equity, Accountability and Community, a
coalition of school board members that
recruits and trains candidates. ''The confu-
sion is not in the vote but the tally. The
Board of Elections just doesn't seem to
know how to count them."
The Justice Department was also
unconvinced. As part of its mandate to
enforce civil rights in designated prob-
lem zones nationwide, the agency has to
approve any election-law changes in
Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. It
saw no evidence that the new system
would increase voter turnout. But one
result was clear to investigators: Under-
represented groups would have a harder
time getting elected. The feds calculated
that the threshold for winning would
jump from 10 percent of ballots cast to
31 percent.
T
he Justice Department decision had
plunged the upcoming school board
elections into a state of confusion.
Technically, election officials can use the
new system in Queens and Staten Island.
And meanwhile, city lawyers are asking
the agency to reconsider its decision. "I am
alarmed at the thought that this ruling
might preclude an improved electoral
process for the Community School Board
elections scheduled for this May," Schools
Chancellor Rudy Crew wrote in a prepared
statement.
In late February, the city's Commissioners
of Elections crowded into a small confer-
ence room, trying to choose between using
the old system citywide or in only the three
boroughs where they had to. Taking a cue
from Cambridge, which uses scannable bal-
lots, the city started talking to scanner ven-
dors. Board president Doug Kellner had
hoped to plow through the city's convolut-
ed contracts process by May. "If we move
quickly, it can be done, but we have to have
the will to do it and get all the little details
out of the way," he said. "We could do it."
But his fellow commissioners were
not so motivated. One suggested postpon-
ing the May elections, while another want-
ed to use both systems. Another was sleep-
ing. The fmal , accepted suggestion was to
table the discussion for a week.
When they did make a decision it was
for a unified election using proportional
representation. Ultimately, the commission-
ers believed that the feds had more legal
pull than the state. ''That the people who felt
most strongly on this issue wanted a single
system maybe had an influence," Kellner
admits. "But the commissioners understand
that we don't get to make the law on this."
Kellner's hope to use scanned ballots,
however, evaporated. It became clear that
the board wouldn't be able to navigate the
contracts process in time, especially after
Councilwoman Margarita Lopez and
Deputy Mayor Ninfa Segarra asked for
time to educate voters about the change.
So the Board of Elections finds itself
right back where it started: counting bal-
lots by hand. Kellner doesn't feel sorry for
agency officials. "Since 1996 everyone
assumed the system was going to change,
so no one worked on using the technology
available," he says. "The Board of Elect-
ions never invested the manpower to do
school board elections as effectively as
primary and general elections."
Ezequiel Minaya is a Brooklyn-basedfree-
lance writer.
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CITY LIMITS


Independence Day
A cadre of foundations gave a Bronx community service
coalition lije--<lnd $53 million. How is it going to
survive on its own? By Myra Alperson
I
t's almost lunchtime and the kitchen
at the Andrew Freedman Family
Building Center, a crumbling lime-
stone mansion on the South Bronx's
Grand Concourse, is bustling.
Employees talk and laugh over rap music
as they prepare the day's fare.
Five years ago, this kitchen served
only 90 elderly residents. Now some two
dozen employees work here, staffmg
Healthy Living Systems, a catering busi-
ness that prepares 4,000 meals per day for
local food service organizations like
Meals on Wheels.
Healthy Living Systems was opened
by Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council, a
nearby community development corpora-
tion, to help create jobs in the neighbor-
hood and pay for popular agency services
like Head Start, after-school programs and
computer-training classes.
For Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council,
it's a big change from a decade ago, when
the organization simply provided housing to
seniors and homeless families.
But in 1992, the council joined three
other local nonprofits in a six-year, $53
million foundation program designed to
move the housing developers into social
services. The program, a foundation-led
initiative dubbed the Comprehensive
Community Revitalization Program
(CCRP), has transformed the council and
its three mid-Bronx sister organizations.
Today, the council, the Mid-Bronx
Desperadoes Community Housing,
Mount Hope Housing and Phipps
Community Development Corporation!
West Farms work together to assist the
250,000 people who live in the low- and
middle-income area.
Sharing planning and fundraising-and
heavy amounts of financial support and tech-
nical assistance from CCRP-the groups
now provide family health care services,
adult education, job training, youth services,
even new parks.
The project is an initiative of the
Surdna Foundation, which led a funding
consortium of 21 foundations, corpora-
tions and government agencies to see if
APRIL 1999
better coordinated community develop-
ment work would improve neighborhood
conditions in the mid-Bronx. Surdna orig-
inally launched CCRP as a three-year
demonstration project, then gave it anoth-
er three-year extension. "Around the sec-
ond year," recalls Surdna Executive
Director Edward Skloot, "we kind of nod-
ded our heads and knew that you couldn't
do this in three years."
But last July, the reprieve was up, the
demonstration officially over. "By the
sixth year the funders were saying, 'Well,
isn't this swell. We're moving on to some-
thing else, '" admits Anita Miller, who set
up CCRP as its program director at the
foundation and then joined the organiza-
tion as its executive director when it
became an independent nonprofit in 1996.
Miller and the others were left to face life
after Surdna."We didn't want to see this
great strength evaporate. We wanted to
sustain the relationship we built."
Now CCRP, the foundation project, is
"CCRP, Inc.," just one among hundreds
of nonprofits com-
peting for funding.
While the five-
organization part-
nership remains
tight, there are
questions about the
future. Miller, the
program's chief
rainmaker, has
left, serving now
as consultant and
board member.
The four Bronx
CDCs now have
multi-million-dol-
lar social pro-
grams to support
and manage. They
have all been left
to wonder, can the
coalition maintain
the program's suc-
cess without the
guaranteed stream
of donated cash?
I
t all began in 1991, when the Surdna 1
Foundation was looking to fund a signa- .
ture program with its modest $7 million .
annual grant budget. Its board members set-
tled on a plan to bring social services to
housing development efforts already under-
way in four contiguous mid-Bronx neigh-
borhoods stretching from West Farms to
University Heights.
The foundation hired Miller, a woman
with a reputation of fabled intensity whose
resume includes stints at well-connected
organizations like the Ford Foundation
and Local Initiatives Support Corporation
(USC). She invited six local community
development corporations to form CCRP.
Two of the groups, Promesa Housing
Development Fund and Banana Kelly
Community Improvement Association, "
have since parted ways. ''The way CCRP ~
was conceived did not match our ~
structure," explains Kim Swan, vice
president of economic development
at Promesa.
Miller designed CCRP to be a social
services intermediary-a small-staffed,
well-funded gofer ferreting out funding,
technical assistance and other services to
make it easier for member organizations to
develop new programs.
PROFILE
A fouruiation
project helped
four mid-Bronx
housing groups
offer new services
including popular
after-school
programs.

Much of Miller's time at CCRP's
Surdna Foundation office was spent
beating the bushes for money. Over the
last six years, she raised some $9 mil-
lion from 20 banks and private founda-
tions for CCRP operations and another
$44 million from federal, state and
private sources for the CDC's social
service programs.
Her pitch to the trend-conscious foun-
dation world worked because it was
simple: They would be funding intelligent
programs that were growing quickly. "If
we didn't prove ourselves and prove our
ability to produce what the neighborhood
needed and wanted, [the fundersJ would
not stick with us," she says. CCRP's war
chest underwrote program start-up costs,
computers and consultants who helped
the CDCs win grants and manage their
new projects.
Some programs, like a job resource and
training center that has helped 700 mid-
Bronx residents fmd work, were joint ven-
tures. But most were individual programs
done with CCRP's help. When Phipps,
Mid Bronx Desperadoes and Mount Hope
developed four new community family
health practices in collaboration with local
hospitals, for example, CCRPprovided
$300,000 for renovations. CCRP put up
another $150,000 in pre-development
money for a Mid Bronx Desperadoes
shopping center anchored by a Pathmark
supermarket. CCRP-funded consultants
helped Mount Hope open a credit union,
and another grant helped PhippslWest
Farms plan six new neighborhood parks.
Miller acknowledges that this explo-
sive growth wasn't always easy to handle.
Staff at the CDCs ballooned-Mid-Bronx
Senior Citizens Council went from about
160 staff members to 230 and PhippslWest
Farms increased from less than 20 to 150.
And even with the new staff, the groups
were overwhelmed at times.
The project's evaluator, Gerri Spilka
from the OMG Center for Collaborative
Learning, wrote that inexperience in
some program areas and the lack of
management caused certain programs to
be "hit and miss, trial and error." She
says, "They were taking on new pro-
grams and needing more senior manage-
ment [skills J. The directors are visionar-
ies and leaders, but not necessarily adept
in management."
"A lot of [training] was done, but no
one would disagree that more could have
been done," responds Miller. "We knew if
we didn't move, we wouldn't be able to
raise the money for the programs."
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L
ate last year, Miller left the long
hours and frenetic pace that CCRP
was demanding. She now works as
a consultant for CCRP and other groups
looking to set up CCRP-like organizations
nationwide. Her successor, Joe Turner,
co-founded Harlem Directors Group, a
collection of AIDS services organizations,
and worked at ARRIVE, which teaches
ex-cons community organizing. Now at
CCRP he has his work cut out for him,
making do with a sharply reduced budget.
Surdna and several other original
funders-including the Edna McConnell
Clark Foundation, Booth Ferris and the
Open Society Institute-have stuck by the
new nonprofit. They're providing a total
of $1.2 million for administration and
overhead for the next two years.
The funding reductions have already
been passed along to the four CDCs which,
among other things, will no longer receive
$130,000 per year in operational support
from CCRP. The groups have also been
forced to undergo a considerable amount of
reorganization, although to date all of the
programs remain in place.
"Most CDCs have a history with solo
flights ... not sharing staff, sharing informa-
tion, never giving up their grants," he says.
But in this case, he insists, the four groups
remain committed to each other. "It's not
like one person showing up with a bag of
money [anymore]. It's an adjustment, but
the groundwork was really laid well."
Turner and his board of directors-for
now, it consists of representatives of the
four organizations and Miller, but local
residents will soon be added-are now
looking for ways to pump the funding
back up. They are considering cash-
generating ventures, akin to the
Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council's
catering business, such as opening thrift
shops or a building maintenance
company. Turner is also hoping that the
CCRP coalition's next round of plans,
which may include neighborhood safety
programs and small business development
projects, will attract new funders.
Miller, who pioneered CCRP's
aggressive fundraising strategy, stresses
that the coalition must not lose its
momentum. "They have enough money
to see them through the next couple
of years," Miller says. "Whether it
survives depends on what programs
CCRP, Inc., produces."
Myra Alperson is a Manhattan-based free-
lance writer. Additional reporting
by Kemba Johnson.
CITYLIHITS
ARRESTED DEVELOPMEIIT: THIRD IN A SERIES ON CITY HOUSING POLICY IN RETREAT
APRIL 1999
The city's housing law
department has lost more
than half its attorneys in
the last four years, leaving
tenants to try to prosecute
bad landlords on their OWD.
By 1VelJdy Davis
argarita Ortiz lives in a 7-by-1O-foot,
$375-a-month studio in a single-
room occupancy brownstone in
Washington Heights. Since she
moved into 560 West 184th Street
last May, she has gone for months
without heat or hot water. Mice
crawl across her stove. Her sink
leaks nonstop, and the narrow communal hallway is strewn with
garbage bags.
There's no tenant organization in the building. The other resi-
dents are too scared, Ortiz says. Mostly immigrants from the
Dominican Republic, they're frightened of being deported and
worried about angering the building's drug dealers with a united
front. But without a tenant association to back her up, Ortiz hasn't
brought her landlord to court for the 250 building code violations
against the SRO.
Her landlord's attorney says that the owners are working to
correct the violations, but Ortiz says the problems have gone
unchanged for the nine months she's lived there. "It's not fair,"
she says. "He's suppose to fix all the problems that are inside
the apartment."
Ortiz is in Housing Court, though-as a defendant, facing
eviction for not paying her rent for her dirty and dangerous apart-
ment. It's the only way she can see to get her landlord in front of
a judge.
In past years, Ortiz could have turned to the Department of
Housing Preservation and Development's legal office. There, one
of a squad of lawyers with the sole job of enforcing the housing
code could have put the weight of New York City behind her fight
to get her leaks fixed and her heat turned back on. i
But today, that's no option. Severe cutbacks have crippled the l!!
Housing Litigation Bureau (HLB). Just four years ago, the I
bureau had 46 attorneys; now, according to their union, only 18
are taking cases.
-
Though cutbacks are a familiar theme in the Giuliani era, the
city's housing department has suffered some of the harshest. And
the stakes here are particularly high. The city's entire mechanism
for enforcing building laws runs through Housing Court. It's up to
these city lawyers to go after the city's repeat scofflaws-the
incorrigible slumlords who repeatedly run buildings into the
ground and fleece the most vulnerable tenants. Quietly, the
Giuliani administration has devastated this safety system.
The cutbacks among building inspectors-from 332 at the
beginning of the decade to 224 today-are well documented. But
few outside Housing Court have noticed the demise of the litiga-
tion bureau, which acts as the legal muscle behind the inspectors.
It's as if the police had no prosecutors to back them up.
"We've seen fewer and fewer cases litigated by [the Housing
Litigation Bureau]," says Angelita Anderson of the nonprofit
City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court. Judge Jerald Klein, who
has served in Manhattan's Housing Court since 1987, agrees.
"There is absolutely an appreciable and noticeable decrease in
staff, and there is a substantial reduction in the amount of activity
the HLB does," he says.
The numbers back them up. In 1990, 12,786 code-related
cases were heard in Housing Court, according to the Mayor's
Management Report. In 1993, the mayor's office broadened its
calculations to include in that number every case opened. Even
Bven Mayor Rudolph Giuliani admits
something is seriously wrong with
the c i t y ~ s housing code enforcement.
--
with that more generous measure, the number of code violation
cases dropped to 9,925 by 1998-a 22 percent decline.
And that doesn't tell the full story. Of those cases, more than
80 percent were fIled by tenants. In practice, it's now up to tenants
to try to enforce the city's laws-to bring offending landlords to
court and try to ensure that judges' orders get carried out. It's no
surprise that they don't have much success. Many withhold rent
instead, putting themselves on the verge of eviction.
In an extraordinary moment, even Mayor Giuliani has admitted
that something is seriously wrong with the city's housing code
enforcement system, hinting that it might be up for reform. 'The
enforcement mechanisms are not taking place," he said in
February. 'That's the place where changes have to be made."
B
ousing Court was created in 1973 with the idea
that tenants living in a dangerously run-down
building could go to court and leave with an order
directing their landlord to make repairs. If the
landlord was truly incompetent or unresponsive,
the tenant could get an order appointing an independent admin-
istrator to run the building.
Under this plan, a section of the city's housing department is
there to back tenants up. HPD's inspectors document the
violations, ranging from cracked plaster to dangerously rotting
foundations. These violations are checked in the department's
computer system against the landlord's record, like a parking
violation against a car's license plate. But housing inspectors have
no power to impose fmes or order repairs.
Some landlords deal with the violation right away, since old
ones can come back to haunt an owner trying to refinance a
mortgage or increase rents in a rent-regulated building. For thou-
sands of others, however, the inspector's black mark is nothing
but a blip in the HPD computer banks, easily ignored or dis-
missed. The 1996 Housing and Vacancy Survey-the most recent
available-found that 94,110 rental units in the city had five or
more problems, from broken plaster and peeling paint to backed-
up toilets and water leakage.
So although Housing Court was designed to enforce the hous-
ing code, very few cases actually involve landlords being sued for
infractions: just 5.7 percent, according to the Fund for Modem
Courts. In reality, what most motivated tenants do is stop paying
rent; eventually their landlords will bring them to court for an
eviction, and there's a chance the whole mess can get sorted out.
HPD Commissioner Richard Roberts has emphasized that the
unit's core mission is to help tenants with support and technical
aid, to assist them in taking their landlords to court for violations.
But most boroughs have only one HLB attorney to handle all
tenant-initiated cases, and these lawyers are usually too busy to do
much good. "[The attorney] is a decent person," one neighbor-
hood organizer says, "but his caseload is so overwhelming that we-
don't even make him part of our calculations."
Although they take up a lot of attorney time, lawyers say these
enforcement cases aren't very effective. Even winning isn't much
of a guarantee, since a landlord can easily ignore a judge's order
to make repairs, leaving a tenant with only one option:
fIling another case. Any money collected in fmes goes to the city,
not the tenant-and according to a 1996 city comptroller's report,
the housing department collected only 7 percent of all the fines
assessed in court.
"[Enforcement cases] are a waste of time, totally useless," says
Ken Rosenfeld, a former Rent Guidelines Board lawyer who is
now legal director of the Northern Manhattan Improvement
Corporation.
What often ends up happening, lawyers say, is that the same
landlords get hauled into court repeatedly, and problems persist.
There are only two ways to break the cycle: though contempt of
court fmdings or comprehensive cases. These are the heavy
artillery in the housing law, the kind of cases that can send land-
lords to jail. ''For landlords with a lot of money, [only] the
threat of jail becomes the convincer," explains Walter Strauss,
a Brooklyn Housing Court judge since 1994.
But both procedures are virtually impossible burdens for ten-
ants acting alone. Without a lawyer, a tenant doesn't have much
of a chance to fIle the legally complex paperwork necessary to
hold a landlord in contempt for failing to follow a judge's orders.
And although anyone can fIle a comprehensive case-sort of
like a class-action suit against a landlord on behalf of all of the
tenants--{)nly the city has the authority to move ahead based
on HPD records alone, without taking the time and trouble to
organize tenant-plaintiffs.
It's the one chance that the housing department has to proac-
tively prosecute known slumlords. In a few cases, longtime litiga-
tion unit staffers can take personal credit for taking down a few of
the most notorious landlords in the city. For example, Leonard
Spodek, infamous in Brooklyn during the late 1980s as the
Dracula Landlord, was forced out of the real estate business
thanks to a combination of criminal prosecutions and Housing
Court maneuvers led by the HLB.
But with departmental downsizing, attorneys say they don't
have time to start these time-consuming cases. According to one
longtime litigator, a typical housing department attorney used to
carry about 50 comprehensives per year. But during the last two
CITY LIMITS
.-
"
years, the Housing Litigation Bureau has opened only about 200
comprehensive actions annually, working out to about 10 per
lawyer each year. The result: more slumlords escaping justice.
"I see bad actors staying in the game a lot longer," complains one
senior HLB attorney, who, like nearly every lawyer interviewed
for this article, spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Attorneys also can't take on cases to get an outside admin-
istrator appointed to run a bad building; they just don't have
enough time. In fact, lawyers lament, all they can do is try to
keep up with the avalanche of heat and hot water complaints-
even though they keep seeing the same flagrant lawbreakers
again and again in court.
"
inter is busy season for the Housing Litigation
Bureau: Last year, it logged 143,000 heat and hot
water complaints. So in September, anticipating
another understaffed winter, the housing attor-
neys asked HPD management to address the
shortage. 'The bureau can't do its job," says Abbott Gorin, shop
steward for litigation bureau attorneys. "We are extremely
concerned that people will suffer."
HPD brought on four part-time temp-agency attorneys at the
end of January, and Commissioner Roberts promised that some of
the slack would be taken up by clerical workers and paralegals. The
union protested, but nothing yet has corne of the grievance. Roberts
recently pledged to hire three new lawyers next year. He also said
that HPD would reorganize the department's legal structure "to
increase attorney productivity."
In the meantime, morale is low. There have been four new top
lawyers for the bureau since I 994--the latest, Elizabeth Bolden, is
an ex-Family Court lawyer with no previous Housing Court expe-
rience. Most of the rank-and-file lawyers are at the low end of the
pay scale, earning approximately $38,000 a year, so there is an
ongoing exodus leaving for other city agencies where the salaries
and opportunities are better. "People who would have really liked
to stay left in despair," says one senior attorney. "In general, we
have not been treated with much respect."
It's not just staffing; some attorneys feel like they aren't given
APRIL 1999
the leeway to do their jobs properly. Tenant advocates and
outside lawyers report that the cases are not being prosecuted as
aggressively since Giuliani took office. "I don't think historically
we were championed by the agency, but we were allowed to do
our own thing," remarks one embittered HLB staffer.
One lawyer, in the midst of complicated litigation to put a
building into receivership, says that he has been asked to back off
the case. Others say they must get permission from the bureau
head before bringing contempt charges against a landlord, where
in the past they relied on their own judgment. ''Every time a land-
lord makes a phone call, you have to jump through hoops to
respond to them," charges one staffer.
r
or years, the tenants of 392 Clinton Avenue in
Brooklyn lived with leaky ceilings, broken buzzers,
dangling electrical wiring and broken windows in
their four-story Clinton Hill walk-up. At their wits'
end, they decided in 1997 to organize and seek legal
help to force their landlord to fix the more than 700 violations
against the building, according to Hamilton Steele, the leader of
the tenants' association. It didn't occur to them to tum to the city
for assistance. After all, they had been in and out of Housing
Court for years without learning that HPD even had a staff of
lawyers to enforce the housing code.
Local tenant activists at the Pratt Area Community Council
referred 392 Clinton's residents to Brooklyn Legal Services,
which brought the landlord to court. "The reason why we got Pratt
Area Community Council and Brooklyn Legal Services is
because the city wasn't doing anything," Steele says. The case is
still in Housing Court, but Pratt has taken over administering the
building and is arranging for repairs.
It's a roundabout way to handle the work that the city has abdi-
cated, and the extra load is starting to tax some of the nonprofit
legal groups that have taken up the slack. They're hoping that
Mayor Giuliani meant it when he said that changes needed to be
made .
Wendy Davis is the editor of The Manhattan Spirit
Housing lawyer
Ken Rosenfeld
says that tenants
bringing land-
lords to court is
"a total waste
of time. "
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The view down
J20th Street.
APRIL 1999
The day I interviewed to become a tenant organizer was the first time I
stepped foot in Harlem. It looked like a slum to me, with boarded-up
storefronts and front yards full of trash. But the part that really made me
think twice about working late hours was the wooden boards and cement
blocks where so many windows should be. The number of abandoned
buildings was astonishing.
Then I noticed that underneath the peeling paint, rows of townhouses
boasted graceful architectural detailing, recalling a time when Manhattan
above 96th Street was a fashionable address. Very quickly, I began to see
Harlem as many strangers do, with a vision of history and potential:
a faded landmark district, fit for tour buses on the way downtown after
gospel music at Abyssinian and lunch at Sylvia's. All it needed was money.
But after spending months walking the blocks of central Harlem,
talking to tenants and digging up building records, I started to see the real
story-that residents were worried, tenant organizers and advocates over-
whelmed, and rents skyrocketing. Everyone who knew the neighborhood
was aware of impending change, but nobody knew how to control it or
even exactly what "it" was.
by Michelle Solomon
One
Harlem street
tells
a story
of change
-
-
art of my job as an organizer and researcher was to
prepare reports that tenants and block associations could use to
understand what was happening. For each building on a given
block, I found out who lived there, who owned it, how much it
owed in back taxes and what shape the building was in.
The specifics I dug up showed a neighborhood in the middle of
something more complex than a one-way trip from decrepitude to
renewal, and they question some conventional wisdom about urban
revitalization. In Harlem, tenants have always been able to hang
onto their homes, despite living in the midst of abandonment,
drugs and decay. In the late 199Os, a powerful real estate market,
on top of city policies that encourage middle-class home owner-
ship, may defeat the tenants even as it renews the neighborhood.
For now, crack houses rub shoulders with half-million-dollar
landmark brownstones, and longtime residents welcome the rede-
velopment that may eventually push them out of their neighbor-
hood. One of the blocks I examined, much like all the others, is
120th Street between Adam Clayton Powell and Malcolm X
boulevards. It's a typical south Harlem block, with a long,
uniform row of three-story townhouses-a shady street with wide
stoops and an old-fashioned feel.
So far, the residents of 120th Street don't feel like gentrifica-
tion has been a bad deal-in fact, nearly all of them are pleased
with the way things are shaping up. But it's New York City's
politicians and its real estate market that are creating the future of
this block, not these tenants. In 10 or 20 years, this neighborhood
may well be transformed. And the forces of change are visible
right now, in the townhouses and on the stoops of West 120th
Street.
R
Obert Taylor was baptized on the comer of 120th and
Lenox, at Mount Olivet Baptist Church and he's spent 46 of
his 47 years living on 120th Street. He says that at one time
or another he's been a super in
nearly every building on the block.
He knows the history of this block
like his own, reeling off a list of
landlords and bad mortgages and
repossessions for each townhouse: That owner won't rent out
apartments or sell her house because she can' t afford to fLX it
up. In that one, the 105-year-old tenant on the ground floor is
being harassed by the owners, who are struggling over the title
to the building.
He points to the yellow bow-front facade of 121 West 120th
Street, where he lived for four years until he decided this winter to
quit doing drugs and move to Orlando to clean up. "God took me
out of that building," he says. Taylor says that you can't buy drugs
on the block anymore, but his neighbors say that as recently as six
months ago, 148 was an active crackhouse. Taylor just got back
from Florida, and being back home is a mixed bag. Many of the
people walking by hug him. Others, who call his name from
across the street, he ignores.
It's not just Taylor-people on 120th Street know each other,
sharing gossip that most downtown Manhattanites think only gets
passed around in small towns. That came across vividly on one
afternoon I spent on a brownstone stoop with Elka Sihdab,
a slender, businesslike woman who runs a small hotel on the
block. Each person strolling by got a farniliar hello, and many
stopped to chat.
Sihdab's patience has paid off. Five years ago, with a loan
through the Historic Properties Fund, she renovated her 1891
townhouse, fixing up its rising-sun stained glass windows and
brass detailing. She paid $40,000 for it in 1982-about a tenth of
what it would go for today-spent $75,000 converting its 10
single-room efficiencies into three family-size apartments in
1994, and today rents out much of it to tourists at $40 a night.
Sihdab's savvy entrepreneurship and concern for the neighbor-
hood are both clear from the way she talks about the many oppor-
tunities for restoration and the impressive credentials of her
favorite contractors.
It's buildings like hers that have led to the popular belief that
a once-forsaken neighborhood is being reborn. The New York
Times ran three articles on this theme last year, praising the
"hearty group of urban pioneers who fought to restore" Harlem.
It would be satisfying to leave the story there: neighborhood
saved. Score one for the pioneers.
FOR SALE SIGNS
$ 2 5 0 K ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
$200K
$150K
$100K
$50K
110
.1987
115
.1992
.1992
118 129
Addresses on
CITVLlMITS
But it's not so simple. New York City owns 35 percent of the
property in Harlem, according to Deborah Wright, chairwoman of
the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and its housing
programs have been at least as influential as individual investors
in central Harlem's revitalization. Instead of providing the afford-
able housing that the private owners aren' t, the city has helped
steer the neighborhood away from low-income rentals and toward
home-ownership.
On 120th Street, the city owns nine of the 60 buildings on the
block. Its chief influence has been to duplicate what the private
market already does-produce housing for middle-class people
who want to buy homes. There's one tenant cooperative at the end
of the block; there are also three city-owned buildings slated to be
converted into three-family townhouses.
Two of those, 102 and 106, are now under construction.
They' re being rehabbed through the Homeworks program,
through which the city helps secure developers and below-
market-rate mortgages for people to buy and fIx up city-owned
buildings. According to a development insider, one of these two
has been bought by a West Indian woman and the other by an
interracial family, white and Chinese, from the Upper West Side.
The two brownstones sold at market price, for $348,450 each.
In order to qualify for the program, you have to earn over $54,000
a year, be able to put 10 percent down and have thousands of
dollars on hand to cover closing costs. To clear the mortgage, the
new owners will probably have to charge tenants at least $700
each month per floor. The going rent on a floor-through on this
block is now $1,000.
But the average 1997 household income in Harlem was just
over $24,000 a year. On 120th Street, 26 of the 41 occupied resi-
dential buildings are SROs, and more than half the block's renters
live in "kitchenettes," studios that rent for $200 to $350 a month.
That gap between what renters now pay and what new owners
must be able to afford is serious, but it doesn' t seem to worry
some Harlem leaders. At a public forum, I asked Wright-
a former commissioner of the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development-about the gap. "At the end of the
day, you can't really stop gentrifIcation unless people own," she
In a fast-changing real estate market, sales prices are
allover the map, even on a single block. The data
below is from the city's property transfer records .
1988
I
138
.1980
I
144
.1991
I
151
120th Street
APRIL 1999
.1978
I
155
said. "People will have to take seriously the opportunities to work
to increase their income so they can own." Wright's opinion is
powerful; she stands to control some $300 million in government
money in Harlem.
Right now, 16 of the block's buildings appear to be owner-
occupied. Buying a townhouse was much easier 10 years ago,
when many of the buildings sold for $25,000. City property
records report that the two most recent private sales on the block
were for $265,000 and $345,000, and a local realtor says that the
next will be for $375,000; these new owners certainly aren't poor.
The renovation of 152, a spiffy brownstone with polished brass
lamps and new cast-iron illigree gratings, is typical of the return
of the black middle class. The owners are lawyers from upstate
who rent out huge one-bedrooms for around $1 ,000 a month.
Their father lives on the fIrst floor, the third is rented to a
Columbia graduate student and the fourth is occupied by a
Time Warner marketing specialist. The previous owners tried to
get loans and a mortgage to fIx up the property in 1993, but it
wasn't until 1997 that lenders thought the Harlem housing market
was strong enough to provide the funds.
Though the middle class is moving in, most people here live
more like Robert Card, who tries to keep 139 in decent shape. The
townhouse, its peach-yellow wash of paint now flaking, was
bought in 1952 by the "Orange Benevolent Society," still honored
in gold-painted letters on the glass above the door. The city still
lists the society as the owner, but tenants say the real landlord
abandoned the building two years ago, piling her belongings into
a van in the middle of the night and vanishing.
Since then, Card, his daughter and two other remaining ten-
ants pay the oil bills and maintain the building. Though their
rooms are well-kept, the paint in the hallways is peeling and there
are leaks in the roof and from the fIxtures in the common bath-
room. It's a lot of work but a cheap deal-they haven' t paid rent
in two years.
Card has been trying to turn the
building into a low-income
co-op, but since the landlord has
vanished there's little he can do.
.1980
I
162
.1994
I
166
-
REAL ESTATE LISTING
City property records report 139 residential sales during the
last two years in 45 blocks of the Central Harlem/Mount
Morris area, bordered by Central Park, 125th Street,
5th Avenue and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Fifty-three were
sold through city programs--the New York City Partnership,
the Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program or tenant coop
sales-and 86 were sold through the private market.
Highest recorded price paid for a townhouse during this
NUMBER OF APPLICATIONS
FOR SRO COVERSIONS
140r--------------------------------------,
120
100
80
60
40
20
Citywide applications -.-
Harlem applications -0-
o ~ ______________________________________ ~
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998
While applications to turn single-room occupancy buildings into apart
ments and hotels have spiked citywide, Harlem has been hit hard: Ha"
of all bids now come from Harlem, up from a quarter three years ago.
SOURCE: SRO Law Project, from HPD data.
--
Here, too, city policies make a huge difference in a building's fate.
Five years ago, before the city stopped seizing tax-delinquent proper-
ties, Card's building would have been a likely candidate for a tenant-
ownership program. Instead, the city created a system in which pri-
vate investors take over and auction off buildings that carry lots of tax
debt. This is where Card's building is going, and it means he and his
neighbors have little chance of staying once it gets sold off.
Just across the street at 118, the new middle-class owners of an
SRO-a young African-American husband and wife-aren't any
more settled. They decided to buy their first home in the neighbor-
hood because it's "a very residential section of Manhattan, accessible
to many enjoyments. Broadway's a hop, skip and a jump; all the
trains come uptown," the wife explains. "Mount Morris Park is a
gold mine. Commercialism's gonna boom as soon as major corpora-
tions establish themselves here. It's gonna be beautiful."
They bought the SRO in 1992 for $105,000, planning to convert
it into apartments. Instead, the owners have found themselves in the
middle of an ugly legal battle (which is why they didn't want their
names used in the story). The two remaining tenants don' t want to
lose their homes, and the owners know that they are accused of "try-
ing to force out a local artist"--one of the occupants is a sculptor who
has lived and worked in the neighborhood for decades.
The fight has drained energy and goodwill from both parties, and
the new home-owners feel guilty. "I admire the woman's work,"
avers the husband. "I love her being in the neighborhood." But, he
says, the family can't pay the bills on the money from these tenants'
rent alone.
There are "valid reasons why people can't afford the rent, but
owners have that too," he explains. "I am accepting the risk. If it goes
down, I'm out. All they have to do is move."
B
efore I was done with my research, I got another tour of the
block. My new guide, 26-year-old Edward Poteat, probably
understands the future of 120th Street better than anyone. He
ought to, since he stands to profit from it quite well. Poteat grew up
on 110th Street and Fifth Avenue and came home, after attending
Yale, to work in real estate.
Poteat started in the business in 1994, with friends who were
taking over their grandfather's failing management company.
Original owner Victor Horsford had pieced together his enterprise
out of properties he' d acquired one by one after arriving in Harlem
from Antigua in the 1930s. His heirs have expanded into a full-
service real estate operation, Horsford & Poteat, working out of one
of their grandfather's old brownstones.
Poteat walked me down l20th Street, showing me the block
through a realtor's eyes. He says prices have jumped dramatically in
just the two years he's been around. Rent for studios has jumped from
$550 a month to $650 in the past year alone; shells that his company
had been able to buy for $50,000 are now selling for $120,000.
The new residents, he says, are "definitely middle class and upper
working class, not the typical Section 8 subsidized housing crowd.
They' re middle-class blacks from Queens, downtown Brooklyn and
the northern Bronx who want to move horne. They grew up here, or
their mom lived here."
Poteat's perspective is bigger than this one street: he's chairman
of Community Board lO's Housing Committee and a developer for
one of the city's Neighborhood Entrepreneur Program sites on 149th
Street. And his vision for 120th Street has a lot in common with city
government's. He pictures Harlem full of working families and good
opportunities for middle-income black home-ownership. Gentri-
fication, for him, is another word for a future. "Harlem was going
nowhere before 'gentrification' hit it," Poteat says. "If I have to lose
a squatter to get a family, so be it."
Michelle Solomon is a student at NYU Law School.
CITY LIMITS
.... ........... ......... .. .. ......... ..........
,
t
Francisca Salce, a.k.a. Joe,
taking care of making her
business rise at her store on
1121 St. Nicholas Avenue at
166th St. in Washington Heights.
CALL: CHASE COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT COMMERCIAL
LENDING 212-622-4248
Moving in the right direction
Joe's Pizza's got the dough.
Joe's Pizza was a first. Not only did Francisca Salce
make a neighborhood name for her store with great
tasting pizza, she was the first recipient of a loan under
The Chase Community Development Group's Small
Retailers Lending Program.
The Small Retailers Lending Program is a unique
Chase initiative whose purpose is to expand access to
bank loans for hard to finance small businesses, par-
ticularly those located in low- and moderate-income
communities.
This program made it possible for Ms. Salce to obtain
a loan to relocate her restaurant, renovate the new
space and still remain in the neighborhood in which
she has built a successful business.
Which is just fine by Joe's Pizza's customers, who
swear by the dough.
L ............. ......... ... ~ Community Development Group
CHASE. The right relationship is everything.
sM
1997 The Chase Manhattan Bank. Member FDIC.
--
tomers, volunteers are wondering how
just food-and even if they should. ~ ~ ' I " ~ ' . ~ ' ~
CITY LIMITS
n the tiny basement of Morrisania's Holy
Tabernacle Church, a group of Bronx residents
clusters around a row of six computers. They're
here to learn the skills that will prepare them for a
decent job, but few have ever used a computer
before. New arrivals start by learning how to tum the machines off
and on, and how to use a mouse.
"What do you see on the lower left?" asks church volunteer
Frances Brown. "Start!" comes the response. "So what do you do?
Click! Click on the left!" she exhorts with passion usually reserved
here for Sundays.
Most of the 15 adults enrolled in this six-week class originally
came to the church for its Monday soup kitchen or its Tuesday food
pantry. Unlike most city food pantries, which allow each family
only one or two visits a month, Holy Tabernacle hands out food
every week.
With determination, Brown raises her voice above the drone of
an industrial freezer in the adjoining kitchen. Meticulously tooth-
picked rolls of muenster cheese and ham, along with pound cake
and cans of apple juice, await the students when they're done.
Brown makes silk flowers for a living, but she appears to spend all
her free time running the church's food and arts programs, round-
ing up about $20,000 in public money each year to buy govern-
ment surplus, food that corporations couldn't sell, and meat and
cereal from a discount wholesaler.
B, AI,lla Katz
APRIL 1999
-
-
At today's class, one woman reports that she comes to the food
pantry to help herself and her son stretch her disability checks and
$10 a month in food stamps into a workable budget. Another has
a job, and is a regular volunteer at the pantry-and an occasional
customer when making ends meet for her family becomes impos-
sible. A third came to this class because, she says, her workfare
assignment isn't giving her any skills that'll help her find a job.
Job training is a new venture for Brown, thanks to a $15,000
grant from the New York Community Trust's Beyond Hunger ini-
tiative. Next week, the class will start working with a professional
trainer. ''The food and the computers work together," Brown
says, "because when you see people out there, it's not just
because they're hungry but because they feel worthless. They
don't have people to turn to, and they don't have skills. We help
them pick themselves up and learn how to do things to get jobs."
Her program is one of 15 Beyond Hunger projects underwritten
this year by New York Community Trust, which is channeling its
anti-hunger funding into counseling, client monitoring and job
training at food pantries and soup kitchens.
The Trust is the only foundation interested in branching out.
City Harvest, the nonprofit that collects restaurant leftovers for
soup kitchens, got a Philip Morris grant to look into opening a
kitchen to train the unemployed for jobs in food service-
a model that the tobacco giant has been pushing nationwide.
Mazon, a Jewish Response to Hunger funds programs that shep-
herd clients towards self-sufficiency and away from emergency
food. And in the last decade, a few New York "souper kitchens,"
with paid staff and extensive foundation and government
support, have grown far beyond their initial food function,
providing everything from case management to HIV prevention,
English as a Second Language classes to job counseling.
These programs rise from a growing recognition that emer-
gency food providers are perfectly situated to branch out from
food delivery to social services. Funders see that the most needy
people show up in soup kitchens and food pantries, often bond-
ing with volunteers who work there. Volunteers like it because
they recognize it's a good way to help people become self-suffi-
cient and reduce the need for food assistance in the first place.
The question for the providers is how much more can they
possibly take on, when simply keeping up with the demand for
food is stretching the charity food system's capacity to the limit.
Welfare reform, low wages, chronic unemployment and inade-
quate public benefits conspired to bring an estimated 600,000
city residents to soup kitchens and food banks last year. Food for
Survival, the city's central "food bank," reported a 38 percent
increase in the amount of food it handed out between the sum-
mers of 1997 and 1998. Even so, the New York City Coalition
Against Hunger estimates that 2,000 people a day were turned
away in the first part of 1998.
Much of the increased demand has fallen on smaller groups
that are not necessarily equipped to deal with the added burden
of writing grants, hiring staff and running a social service
organization. Half have budgets of $10,000 or less a year, and
the majority are church-based groups relying on volunteer help.
"We're not equipped, nor should we handle it," declares Sister
Elizabeth Judge, who runs the Little Sisters of the Assumption
food pantry in East Harlem. ''The government has really
dumped responsibility."
Yet while her head says one thing, her heart does another.
Sister Elizabeth is continually making phone calls on behalf of
the people who come in for groceries, trying to get their benefits
restored or utilities turned back on.
The loose network of emergency-food providers has recently
found itself at a crossroads. Foundations, the government and
their own instincts compel providers to add to their list of respon-
sibilities, even as they strain to make an inherently inefficient
system meet the increasing demand for food. At the same time,
anti-hunger advocates have to constantly remind themselves that
this apparatus was never meant to be permanent. Food providers
are acutely aware that by picking up the slack, they help cover for
government as it dismantles the social safety net.
It turns out that feeding people has been the easy part.
&
s recently as two decades ago, only a few dozen food
providers were open for business in New York City, many
of them taking the missionary position that one must
repent to repast. A changing economy and rising cost of living in
the 1980s and 1990s changed all that. There are now roughly
1,100 food pantries and soup kitchens citywide; the number of
outlets has grown by 17 percent in the past three years alone.
Emergency food still carries the stigma of Skid Row soup
joints filled with drunks and the mentally ill, or the heavy
baggage of accepting charity from one's own church. Some parts
of this legacy remain: Soup kitchens tend to serve single adults,
many of them homeless, while food pantries are generally used
by mothers and their children.
The entire system has the fascinating distinction of being
redundant, insufficient and inefficient at the same time. ''Nobody
planned it this way," says Judith Walker, executive director of the
New York City Coalition Against Hunger. ''But who would want
to stop it when the need is growing?"
The focal point of New York hunger relief is the 82,000-
square-foot warehouse at Hunts Point Cooperative Market run by
Food for Survival. For 10 cents a pound the providers get goods
corporate America couldn't sell-failed test-marketed products,
mislabeled packages, funny-colored batches of fruit juice-and
USDA surplus, which has moved on from Reagan-era cheese to
a surprisingly healthy variety of basics. But surplus is surplus: 15
truckloads of Iowa pork were February's windfall.
Food for Survival is on the heavy end of a precarious balance
between a highly professionalized distribution core and a string
of volunteer outlets. If one of Food for Survival's seven trucks
finds a locked church gate when it arrives for a delivery it has to
go back to Hunts Point to remove the unclaimed boxes so the
next delivery is accessible. Drop-offs come once a month, or
providers can pick up food once every two weeks. It's not
unknown for a pantry to rent a U-Haul in order to guarantee the
goods, particularly now that Food for Survival requires new
programs to provide their own transportation.
A single neighborhood is often served by multiple providers,
each open on a different schedule. Patrons become experts on
where to go, when. "You have to remember, this one's on
Wednesday, this one's on Friday," complains Gina Jackson,
eating lunch at St. John's Bread and Life soup kitchen in
CITY LIMITS
Bedford-Stuyvesant. "I would rate this the best. The other places,
half the time they don't have anything to eat. "
The rule of thumb is that clients can take home enough food
for three days-fine in a short-term emergency, but meaningless
for the ongoing support most patrons need. If a food pantry does
otherwise, it has to contend with the consequences.
Reverend Maryella Rogers of Brownsville's Jerena Lee
Community AME Church
spent her entire annual feder-
al allocation-$8,800-in
five months, giving each
client two weeks of food.
"Right now, we don't have
any food for the pantry," she
explains. I don't just give for
three days, three meals,
because of the situation in the
neighborhood. A lot of people
are on SSI and food stamps,
people are doubled up in
housing." Now she's organiz-
ing a raffle, hoping to raise
$700 to reopen the kitchen
this spring.
It doesn't take an econo-
mist to figure out that replac-
ing the government safety net
with a grassroots network of
volunteers who bake ziti in
church basements and pack
surplus rolled oats into gro-
cery bags is asking the impos-
sible. Congress, as part of
welfare reform, covered its
political butt by trying to tack
on an extra $100 million for
the federal commodities sur-
plus distribution program-
which supplies about half of
the goods in New York's
emergency food outlets. Only
$80 million ended up in the
1997 budget, slight compensation for $5 billion in food stamp cuts
in the 1996 welfare overhaul.
Today, about 250,000 fewer New Yorkers receive food
stamps than two years ago, a dip of 21 percent (see "Stamps of
Disapproval.") As documented in a federal lawsuit earlier this
year, people seeking emergency food stamps and other public
assistance at the city's new "job centers" were routinely turned
away-and often sent to pantries for food instead. Immigrants
cut off from food stamps and other assistance by welfare reform
have also become regulars in church basements.
Even getting food stamps is no guarantee that you won't need to
use a pantry: 53 percent of clients at emergency food outlets, reports
the national food bank Second Harvest, also receive the federal
coupons. The program is notorious for inadequate benefits, and
overwhelming rents and high grocery prices make it especially inef-
fective in New York. Citywide, food stamps average $80.47 per
APRIL 1999
person each month, or just 88 cents a day. Food pantries typically
see a surge of visitors in the second half of each month, when the
stamps start to run out.
But the lines at soup kitchens and food pantries can't be
explained solely by cutbacks in public assistance. Nearly a
quarter of the people standing in those lines are employed,
according to a 1997 Second Harvest survey, and more than
one-third live with someone who works. These are not people
dealing with an emergency-unless you consider chronic poverty
an emergency. Without a change in their lives, they'll keep
coming back for more food. They have no choice.
B
mergency food providers have always offered support
beyond nutrition-it's a natural extension of the will
to help, the underlying foundation of the entire system.
The assistance is effective because typically it comes from
neighbors-volunteers who look and talk like the people in line
and who are trusted, unlike caseworkers, to keep their clients'
interests first.
Church basements are also the one place where people seeking
a hand don't have to pay by sacrificing privacy. ''We don't ask
Morrisania s
Holy Tabernacle
church runs a
computer class
for soup kitchen
and food pantry
guests, many of
whom have never
held a mouse.
-
-
questions," says Juana Oleaga, a 26-year-old from the
Dominican Republic who works manufacturing photo albums
when she's not running the pantry and kitchen at Spanish SDA
Church of Fort Washington. Though some visitors to the cozy
basement pantry stop to chat with familiar volunteers, many
speak only when spoken to, accepting their donations with a nod
and mumbled thanks before heading back out into the cold.
Pat White, the New York Community Trust program officer
in charge of the Beyond Hunger grants, acknowledges that
there's a risk of culture shock in the work she's funding. "It's
important to recognize the organizational culture that already
exists and build capacity gradually among volunteers, so that
you are not overnight dramatically changing the wayan agency
works," she suggests.
In addition to Holy Tabernacle's computer classes, Beyond
Hunger is funding a job bank, employment training and social
service referrals-all run by food providers. "The driving force
behind this is welfare reform," White says. "It suggests that more
people must be moved toward greater self-sufficiency, and as
long as strategies fail to address that reality, significant numbers
of folks will be worse off than they are now. This is a way of
using the avenues that already exist to serve this population and
change the ways that they service them."
White is working in partnership with charity powerhouse
United Way, which has an exclusive deal to broker $7.4
rpillion in federal food dollars each year to individual organi-
zations in the city. Like New York Community Trust, United
Way has decided that emergency food suppliers need to
expand their horizons.
"We held focus groups last year to try to determine what would
help food providers maximize their capacity, as well as help with
their capacity to move beyond food," says Ronda Zawel, the direc-
tor of United Way's government food program. Starting this year,
the organization is looking carefully at two factors in its funding:
whether or not there is unmet need in the provider's neighborhood,
and whether or not the provider can handle both food and
double-sized.
At Bed-Stuy's St. John's
Bread and Life-one of the
city's high-volume "souper
kitchens" -counseling and
other social services are
served on the side.
non-food work. Inevitably, she says, it involves
shaking up the existing system.
''There are lots of churches where the aver-
age volunteer's age is 75," Zawel says.
"People get sick, and they can't come in.
That's one reason we're trying to be more
strategic in our funding. Does it make sense to
fund every pantry?" Though United Way's
board is still debating the issue, it's possible
that providers that don't make the cut will lose
their funding entirely.
Perhaps unavoidably, both the supply and
demand for emergency food privilege big
groups over small ones, professional over ama-
teur. Regularly cited as a model of what emer-
gency food providers could become, the West
Side Campaign Against Hunger runs on
$256,000 in cash and $191,000 in donations.
It's one of five pantries in the city that gets
deliveries twice a month, and here they are
Glenny Suero, who lost her food stamps because of welfare
law reform-she came to the U.S. at the age of two months-
comes all the way from the Bronx to the Campaign's pantry on
West 86th Street, as do a quarter of its customers. ''They give you
more stuff here. Other places, you have to wait in line outside,"
she says, sitting in a large waiting area. The place is friendly and
accommodating; around Suero, women share stories about pub-
lic-aid misadventures while children play hide-and-seek in the
rows of chairs.
Customers select food from shelves instead of picking up
pre-packed bags, and two paid caseworkers screen visitors for
eligibility while respectfully gathering information on their
incomes, housing situations, health, education, public assistance
status and long-term goals. They use the personal information to
make informed referrals to outside services.
The Coalition Against Hunger's Judith Walker isn't sure that
anyone strategy for emergency food reform holds all the
answers, but she thinks the West Side Campaign provides some
of them. ''The long-term goal is to shrink the network: improve,
streamline and shrink," she says. Each month, at least a dozen
groups call Walker's office asking how to start a new food
outlet. They're in for a surprise: she urges them to reconsider, no
matter how much need they see in their community. "And 1
always fail," says Walker. "I try to explain to them that it's not in
anyone's long-term interest." Small newcomers, open a day or
two a week and lacking equipment to store perishables,
put additional demand on the network without appreciably
improving access to food.
Walker has been shopping around a proposal-cum-mani-
festo titled "Beyond the Soup Kitchen," which outlines a plan
to rethink food support in New York. It includes ambitious pro-
posals for a media campaign and a think tank that would focus
on building income security. At its core would be an
Emergency Food Action Center, which would collaborate with
government and private agencies to clean up the system. She
CITY LIMITS
also calls for grants, training and technical assistance to help
food providers launch job counseling or classes like ESL, say-
ing the system can' t work unless providers collaborate, pooling
knowledge and resources.
In a largely fragmented food-provider community, her plan
would entail some radical changes, and she's not taking support
for granted. "Since almost no one is providing money for this, we
have to chip away at both ends of the problem," says Walker.
"When churches have people knocking on their doors for food,
we can' t just tell them, 'Sorry, we're doing it this other way
now.' We have to move in two directions at once."
If
he kind of high-profile soup kitchen that ends up in a
New York TImes photo the day after Thanksgiving,
St. John's Bread and Life in Bedford-Stuyvesant offers
its 900 daily guests job counseling, medical treatment, counsel-
ing on substance abuse and AIDS and HIV/AIDS and parenting
support groups, all on-site. Clients can also enroll in Bridge to
Respect, a city anti-HIV project that offers help with housing,
education and employment.
"This is what we' re known for," says Executive Director
Hossein Sadat. "And now other agencies want to follow us. Part
of that has to do with how funding sources have changed-they
go after accountability and impact on a population more than just
hand-outs. That culture has developed over the past five or six
years, and it forces providers to enhance their services."
It took Sadat II years to get all this going. His tireless
fundraising has brought in support from high-profile donors like
Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump. At the West Side
Campaign, location and
media savvy help drum up
donations of money and
time. For other groups to
pick up these innovations,
they' lllikewise have to find
extra support.
Sadat believes big pro-
viders like St. John's need to
provide technical assistance
to smaller ones, helping
them navigate the founda-
tion world. But he insists
that no matter how success-
ful his agency has been, the
multi-services route is not
the answer for everyone.
Different neighborhoods and
populations have different
needs, he points out-lots of
people really don' t want
more than a meal and to be
left alone. And many church
volunteers will walk away at
the first whiff of money;
An 82,OOO-squarejoot Hunts
Point warehouse is New York
City's only "food bank, "
where unsaleable corporate
products and government
surplus await distribution to
about 600,000 city residents.
APRIL 1999
they provide food as part of a deep spiritual mandate and use their
programs to build a community.
Mazon, one of St. John's funders, cites it as a model for
long-term approaches to alleviating hunger. The program's
influence- as well as Sadat's conviction that food programs can
successfully promote self-sufficiency--can also be seen in the
United Way and Community Trust plans.
Though she, too, looks to St. John's for inspiration, Judith
Walker insists that there must be a "third way" between
continuing to shovel out eats and trying to create a private-
sector social service network that just happens to provide food.
"It's ridiculous to think of these efforts as a should," she says. "If
you put it that way, you' re taking the welfare-reformers line-
you're saying that we should accept these cuts. There's a deep
irony that this stressed-out, overly volunteer network is being
asked to do more now."
When asked what would make the system work, virtually
every executive director gives the same answers: a higher mini-
mum wage, a guaranteed minimum income, at the very least a
public benefits system that covers basic needs. Walker and other
advocates-even a funder, Mazon-want to see some of the 4.3
million volunteer hours that go into distributing emergency food
citywide each year channeled into advocacy work, to get
governrnent to hold up its end of the deal .
In the eternal meantime, providers find themselves turning
into exactly what they don't want to be: entrenched institutions,
serving rising numbers of meals and expanding services simply
because the need is so pressing they see no choice. Like Walker,
they may be ambivalent about engineering a more efficient food-
delivery machine. But who's prepared to tell the people waiting
outside that the door's not going to open?
-

VITAL
STATS
Stamps of
Disapproval
A
lOOk at the city Human
Resources Administration's
own data shows that many
New Yorkers who qualify for
food stamps have not been
getting them-whether they receive feder-
al Supplemental Security Income (SS1) or
whether they're on their own.
The most obvious change in the food
stamp population over the last two years
has been the 23 percent fall-off in those
receiving both welfare and food stamps.
That's explained by the drop in people
who get welfare at all in New York:
Between January 1997 and December
1998, the welfare rolls shrank by more
than 98,000 households, or 23 percent.
But people on SSI, which covers poor
senior citizens and people with disabilities,
are now less likely to receive food stamps
than they had been, despite the fact that
almost every SSI recipient is by definition
eligible for food stamps.
By last December, 114,042 SSI recipi-
ents in New York City were receiving food
stamps, down 6 percent from two years
earlier, even though there were 2 percent
more SSI households. Nationwide, the
USDA expects roughly three-fourths of
enrollees to use food stamps, but in New
York City only about 43 percent now do.
And the very slight rise in the number
of people who received food stamps and no
other assistance-from 97,113 in January
1997 to 98,817 in December 1998, a 2 per-
cent gain-suggests that many people leav-
ing welfare are not getting food stamps
even though they're eligible.
It's hard to quantify the number of
potential recipients for food stamps who
aren't enrolled in another governrnent
assistance program. But for starters,
there's the 98,000 households that left
welfare in the last two years. You might
say those people don't need food stamps
thanks to the magic of welfare-to-work.
But HRA's own small-scale survey of
recipients who left welfare for jobs found
that fully 63 percent of them were still
living below the federal poverty line.
Every one of them qualifies for food
stamps, since the cutoff for eligibility is an
income of 130 percent of the poverty line.
Applying HRA's figure to the entire popu-
lation of welfare departees, this group adds
up to a minimum of 62,720 new families
that ought to be receiving food stamps-
a far cry from the 1,704 additional partici-
pants who actually signed up for the
coupons during those two years.
So how to account for the gap? Well,
virtually every family that had been
receiving food stamps up until then could
have left the program en masse. But a
more likely explanation is that this is the
statistical trail of what U.S. Department of
Agriculture officials documented earlier
this year: City workers at the new job
centers were not allowing people to file
food stamp applications promptly, refusing
to explain their right to apply separately
from welfare and holding them to more
stringent standards for approval than
federal law allows. That's no mere bureau-
cratic glitch: For a family of three surviving
on the minimum wage, food stamps could
represent about one-fifth of its income.
Since the city doesn't have to pay a
dime of these benefits, HRA's hostility to
food stamps is particularly glaring. But it
makes perfect sense to HRA commissioner
Jason Turner. ''I count food stamps as
being part of welfare," he told the federal
judge who would ultimately put a hold on
new job centers. "You're better off with-
out either one."
-Kemba Johnson
FO OD S T A M P HO US EH OLDS
Public Assistance
T
. - - - - - - - . - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - .
Jan. March May July Sept. Nov. Jan. March May July Sept. Nov.
CITVLlMITS
Children of a Lesser Cain:
T
he Wall Street boom and national economic resurgence
have left many New Yorkers still waiting for some
triclde-down. According to the latest biennial report from
the Citizens' Committee for Children, that gap between prosper-
ity and poverty has been especially hard on the city's children.
Despite recent increases in citywide income and a declining
unemployment rate, more than half of New York City's children
were born poor in 1996.
School-age children face more hurdles. While New York
City's neighboring suburban counties increased their per-stu-
dent spending between 1995 and 1996, the city's budgets
decreased. Nearly 100 of the city's public schools are now
under state review because of poor performance, up from 72 in
1995. Only three of the schools under state review are outside
New York City.
Not all the news is bleak. Instead of dropping out, more high
school kids just take longer to graduate. In 1993, a third dropped
out, while about one-fifth took five to seven years to graduate,
but four years later those numbers had essentially reversed.
And more women receive prenatal care citywide, contribut-
ing to fewer babies born with low birthweights and lower infant
mortality rates.
"Keeping Track of New York City's Children," $30.
Citizens' Committee for Children of New York, 212-673-1800,
wwwkfnyorg.
Labor's Pains
I
n recent years, states have tried to make sure that the chil-
dren of working-poor families get medical coverage. Their
parents, though, have been less lucky-in spite of a federal
provision designed to help them.
A Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of Census
Bureau numbers chronicles why working-poor parents are
twice as likely as unemployed parents to be uninsured. Often,
these parents earn just a little bit too much to qualify for
Medicaid, and increasingly they don't receive insurance
from their employers. As a result, 46 percent of the
country's employed poor parents are uninsured.
A provision in the federal welfare reform law gave states the
option to separate Medicaid eligibility from welfare eligibility,
and the feds also promised to foot 50 to 77 percent of the
increased cost But in the two years after the bill passed, only
Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., Missouri and Wisconsin took
them up on it.
"Employed But Not Insured: A State-by-State Analysis of
the Number of Low-Income Working Parents Who Lack Health
Insurance," free, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
202-408-1080, www.cbpp.org.
Firms Offer
A
new book by the middle-of-the-road Manpower
Demonstration Research Corporation adds to the small
body of literature that talks about helping welfare recip-
ients off welfare in a real way, via real employment. "Business
Partnerships" neither hides nor embellishes facts, and it isn't
afraid to suggest strategies that don't fit an ideology. The pin-
stripe crowd will grimace to hear that giving tax breaks to busi-
nesses is a waste of time: Less than one-half a percent of the
companies that hire welfare recipients used available credits.
Likewise, libs will roll their eyes reading frank discussions of
techniques to make sure firms are kept happy when they hire
welfare recipients.
But the book's greatest asset is its step-by-step outline that
recognizes the real difficulties in forging a workable program
using government, private companies and nonprofit groups to
move people off welfare and into jobs---everything from the
real demographics of the welfare population to why people
often leave their first job off welfare.
"Business Partnerships: How to Involve Employers in
Welfare Reform, " $10, MDRC, 212-532-3200.
Payback Time
TIle ..... _. nlClllIIJ lit CI.e In.. Will S1nIt IIat lilt ................. -servlCe ........ TIle CItJ .... 15
..... IIst,.. ....... n""'I._.
15%
ro%
5%
Debt service as a percentage 01 tax revenues
Municipal Assistance
General 06igation &
Transitional Finance Authority
-
________ _ __ .. ______ Corporation
I -- -----.-- - --- .. ----, -----.--- --. -------.----------; ---------- - - ----- --- -- - ------.
0%
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002
SOURCE: Independent Budget Office. NOTE: Excludes prepayments.
APAILI999

AMMO
-
Planet Worth
well-received book by journalist
William Greider. What may be
most remarkable about Global
REVIEW
~ By Gordon Mayer
___ iii..._.-l'
-
"Global Squeeze: The Coming
Crisis for First-World Nations, "
by Richard C. Longworth,
Contemporary Books, 1998,
293 pages, $24.95
N
othing could seem further away from the con-
cerns of people who work at the grassroots
than the global economy. But the power strug-
gle between investors and everyone else that
Richard Longworth analyzes in Global Squeeze
already affects everything from where the next grant comes
from and how policy gets made to what kind of jobs we and our
children will hold.
There's $400 trillion moving around the world in interna-
tional capital markets every year. Two weeks' worth of these
dollar transfers fund the movement of all goods and services.
The other 50 weeks consist of speculation, pure and simple.
That's a lot of money floating around, and Longworth isn't sure
it's up to any good.
The MacArthur Foundation gave Longworth, a senior
reporter at The Chicago Tribune, a year-long fellowship to
expand on a front-page series he wrote during the past couple
of years that chronicled how the world is becoming a global
market instead of a global village. Longworth defines global-
ization as the explosive increase of money flowing around the
world coupled with a market-driven quest for efficiency,
regardless of whether that efficiency helps or hurts most indi-
viduals. One direct result is the anguish of disappearing jobs in
the United States, particularly in manufacturing.
Longworth's take, which depending on one's point of view
is either common sense or fJarningly radical, is that the world's
wealthiest citizens-the Japanese, the Germans, the French and
us-can choose which side will win this power struggle. He
observes that industrial nations like these four always have had
the biggest social safety nets, such as good unemployment ben-
efits and welfare systems.
Well naturally, he writes. The countries that create the most
wealth have always believed in setting aside more money for
the citizens who have the least, in order to give everyone a stake
in seeing the system prosper. That is, until now. These days,
mutual responsibility is fa1ling apart, in part because those with
the most wealth don't want to share anymore-profits have
come to seem more important than participation in society.
That's not news for anyone who works with communities on
the losing end of that equation. Nor is Longworth breaking new
ground in policy analysis- his core ideas have been fodder for
Nation magazine articles for years, as well as the subject of a
Squeeze is not what Longworth
writes, but who he is. The Tribune
is one of the most Republican
papers in the country and a
standard-bearer of corporate
culture. In that light, this
reporter's critical evaluation seems
positively revolutionary.
Longworth offers a telling
story about market-driven effi-
ciency. He visits a farm town in
Iowa just like the place where he
grew up, only to find that the
school is closed, the remaining
couple of hundred residents are
mostly seniors and the only
restaurant in town is run as a
nonprofit to give locals some-
where to go. In Iowa, efficiency rewards larger and larger
farms, at the expense of entire towns where a broad population
that ran family spreads has been displaced.
He compares this to the farm town of Aurillac, in France.
There, he finds a flourishing village market and plenty of life.
Why? In France, whenever the govemment tries to remove
price supports on agricultural products, farmers block highways
with their tractors and shut the country down. It drives propo-
nents of efficiency crazy-but it doesn't hurt the farmers ' liveli-
hoods, not to mention the quality of French food.
Unemployment and other results of the drive for efficiency
pose a bottom-line question for Longworth: Who is an economy
for? The investors and owners, or the rest of us? In his view, the
global squeeze is the power struggle between capitalism and
democracy. Contrary to what they taught us in high school civics
class, capitalism and democracy are not friends. 'The driving
force behind capitalism is inequality-the dream of making more
money than other people," Longworth writes. 'The driving force
behind democracy is equality-one person, one vote."
Once he puts it this way-as a fundamental choice for soci-
eties to make-globalization starts to sound relevant to many
issues that affect neighborhoods. While Longworth doesn't
specifically discuss megamergers, HMOs, the "financial
modernization" of banking or other prospects on the national
agenda right now, what they all have in common is that they are
big issues that demand a resolution to the question: Which is
more important, profits or people?
Sound familiar? Even if strategic plans for community-
based work don't include consciousness-raising forums on
globalization or organizing campaigns that take on the World
Bank, those working in the grassroots should be pleasantly
surprised to see the mainstream finally talking about issues that
we' ve been concerned with all along. Call it trickle-up policy.
Yet globalization is a force bigger than any of us, and it isn't
one that most of us are likely to start working on anytime soon.
How would you do it?
Gordon Mayer works at the National Training and Information
Center; a Chicago community-organizing resource group.
CITY LIMITS
(continued from page 4) and just social policies that
would prevent poverty in the first place.
Funiciello's review doesn't really give readers of
City Limits much information about Sweet Charity?
at all. Perhaps it was never intended to. Maybe it
was really intended as sort of an
op-ed, a platform for Ms. Funiciello to once again
blame advocates for welfare reform. I hope the
readers of City Limits will decide to read Sweet
Charity? and judge for themselves.
Janet Poppendieck
Professor of Sociology
Hunter College, City University of New York
Theresa Funiciello replies:
Both the right and "left" seem to revel in call-
ing me the other; so I must be striking some deep
chord. Notwithstanding, "left-wing" McCarthyism
displayed in these letters also lacks integrity, cred-
ibility, fails the smell test, and hopefully, is self-
defeating.
Anyone looking for the real soup-kitchen
industry scoop won't find it in Poppendieck's
book. Poverty industry "charities" usually reject
responsibility for the negative consequences of
their work, but regularly re-spin it for credit when
raising money. The secondary food(less) market
is now a billion-dollar boondoggle. Poor people
are worse off. Anyone interested in knowing what
poor mothers in particular; think about the soup
kitchen elite should give Tyranny of Kindness a
read.
Anytime Poppendieck is ready for a fair public
debate, I'm there. Better latent than never.
I didn't say most of what Walker claims, and
she oversimplified the rest. The soup kitchen deba-
cle came about when poverty industry advocates
decided to humiliate a nasty right-wing
president. Mothers on welfare from many parts of
the country tried to block the obviously harmful
road y'all were heading down. But you weren't
going to let us pawns needing income, not soup,
stand in your way. The pitiful "right" along with
your version of the "left " won, not poor people.
As for the political viability of guaranteed income,
think Social Security.
Wrong th. Wat.rtront
In her piece, "Sunset Park: The Waterfront"
(January 1999), Kathleen McGowan fails to
explain two EDC-sponsored studies, which
analyze how to improve cross-harbor goods
movement into the city and redevelop the
Brooklyn port. Instead of laying out the facts,
McGowan misleads your readers into believing
that the development will destroy existing busi-
nesses in Sunset Park. If she bothered to call EDC
for information on these studies, McGowan
would have found the facts tell a very different
story.
EDC's port plan calls for an appropriately
sized terminal on approximately 400 acres
(not 1,100 as the article states) between
APRIL 1999
1st Avenue and the waterfront. It would be phased
in so that development would initially occur at the
current South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. The
plan would not result in the demolition of the
EDC-run Brooklyn Army Terminal. It is not
meant to be the "shipping nexus for the entire
Eastern Seaboard," as the article claims, but
a modem container terminal employing
6,000 workers and generating $130 million in
taxes annually.
Port redevelopment would not "engulf' the
waterfront but would be built in a logical progres-
sion with public access developed early on.
Contrary to McGowan's claims, EDC's plan
would result in minimal disruption to existing
businesses in Sunset Park and would not disrupt
the Lutheran Medical Center or any industriall
distribution use east of 1st Avenue. Port develop-
ment would also create a net increase of over 6,000
new jobs, of which approximately 60 percent
would go to local residents. In fact, over
80 percent of the longshoremen employed at the
Red Hook Container Terminal live within walking
distance. There is no truth to Dominick Massa's
statement that ''99 percent" of local residents
couldn't work at the port.
EDC has also worked closely with the com-
munity in developing an open-space access plan.
We sponsored two workshops to identify an
appropriate location for a lOO-acre park located
where the community asked for it: between
43rd Street and 52nd Street. The park plan as cur-
rently envisioned combines a ferry pier with retail
and cultural opportunites.
We are very proud that the port study process
has entailed a vigorous public outreach effort
that included dozens of local organizations and
all local elected officials. Our goal, developed
with the public, is to provide a net increase in
jobs for the Brooklyn community. Our plans will
do just that.
We appreciate the City Limits article for raising
appreciation for public assets at the Brooklyn
waterfront. We need to emphasize, however, that
any constructive dialogue on the future of the
Brooklyn waterfront needs to be grounded in the
facts.
Charles Millard
President, New York City Economic
Development Corporation
Kathleen McGowan replies:
All the technical information included in the
article came directly from EDC's own reports.
According to their "Summary of New York Hub
Port Study Conclusions, " the new New YorklNew
Jersey hub would ideally "reassert itself as the
clear leader among the North Atlantic ports"
among "four Eastern ports all vying for 'Hub'
port status. " The report considers three alterna-
tive sites to build a new port, one being "a new
1,129 acre terminal between 65th Street and Pier
6 in Brooklyn." As my article clearly indicates,
this development would not be limited to Sunset
Park, but spread throughout South Brooklyn. EDC
may since have developed further plans. Their
office prohibited me from attending the communi-
ty forums where they explained those modifica-
tions.
Further; the article never claimed Lutheran
Medical Center would be disrupted, nor that
Brooklyn Army Terminal would be demolished.
The three shipping experts I spoke to who did not
have a direct stake in this project all doubted that
a modem container port could be built on 400
acres, or that high-skill, unionized longshoremen's
jobs would be open to most Sunset Park residents.
Ruling R.n."al
In response to the February article "Less Than
Co-operative: Sutton Gardens Co-Op Apartment,"
I fmd some inaccuracies that need to be corrected.
The most important fact of this situation-
which the interviewer left out-is that the landlord,
Sutton Associates, had to renew our lease because
of a new court ruling by Judge Marc Finkelstein on
August 31, 1998, in Paikoffv. Harris. The ruling
says that a tenant who rented an apartment from a
landlord after a co-op conversion is entitled to the
same protection against eviction as tenants who
were living there at the time of the conversion. The
landlord cannot refuse to renew the lease because
he wants to sell the apartment. The ruling is upheld
by judges in court.
So Sutton Associates' statement that they can
refuse renewal of the lease and charge any rent
they want, since the apartment is not rent -stabi-
lized, is completely wrong. Our attorney advised
us that we could stay in our apartment, even
though the landlord refused to give us a new lease.
Unfortunately, we found out too late. Before we
retained our attorney and became aware of our
rights, we thought we had to leave the apart-
ment-so we moved.
We also told the landlord in August that we
were staying in our apartment and wanted to
renew our lease. The managing agent Mike
Noble's statement-"when the landlord hadn't
heard from her at the end of August, the decision
was made to put the apartment on the market"-is
completely untrue.
He told me in September they were not renew-
ing our lease because of the great real estate mar-
ket. Sutton Associates wanted to sell the apart-
ment and they were not renewing other similar
leases in the building so they could sell those
apartments too.
These tenants need to know they don't have to
move. They have the right to stay for as long
as they like.
Gail Bianco
Letters to the editor can be sent to City Limits,
120 Wall Street, 20th floor, New York, NY 10005
or to cl@citylimits.org. City Limits reserves the
right to edit all letters for clarity and space.
Green Guerillas is seeking an ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR to manage the day-to-day
operations of the agency. GGs is a 25-year-<>ld nonprofit organization dedicated
to serving NYC's network of 700+ grassroots community gardening groups and
preserving the gardens they created. Qualifications: experience managing people
a must. Good proposal writing and speaking skills. Community organizing and/ or
advocacy skills crucial. BA necessary, MA a plus. 5+ years experience in non-
profit environmental/public interest nonprofit preferred. Competitive salary and
excellent benefits. Send resume and cover letter to: Steve Frillmann, Executive
Director, Green Guerillas, Attn: AD, 625 Broadway, 9th Floor, NY, NY 10012. No
phone calls please.
PROJECT ASSISTANT, Community Development Corporation. Bridge Street
Development Corporation seeks organized self-starter to assist Project Manager
and housing development staff organize homeowners and tenants, process
homebuyer applications, secure Low Income Tax Credits apartments and facili -
tate tenant meetings. Qualifications include: BA/ BS community development-
related field, experience with Microsoft Office including Access, Corel
WordPerfect and Microsoft Publisher. Excellent written and oral communication
skills, creativity a plus. Salary $22K-$25K, including benefits. No experience
necessary. Fax cover letter and writing sample w/resume or mail to BSDC,
277 Stuyvesant Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Attention Melanie Graves,
Program Assistant.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR. National nonprofit CDC intermediary seeks creative and
experienced Program Director to manage its New Jersey program. The
position requires a strong background in leadership development, fundraising, real
estate finance and community revitalization. Ability to work with grassroots groups,
foundations, corporate executives and government is essential. Competitive salary
and excellent benefits. NJ residency will be required. Send cover letter and resume
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LAWRENCE H. McGAUGHEY
Attorney at Law
Meeting the challenges of affordable housing for 20 years.
Providing legal services in the areas of General Real Estate,
Business, Trust & Estates, and Elder Law.
217 Broadway, Suite 610
New York, NY 10007
(212) 513-0981
COMPUTER
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Morris Kornbluth 718-857-9157
to Richard Manson, Vice President, LlSC, 733 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017.
Make the Road by Walking, Inc., a community-based organization in Bushwick,
Brooklyn, is seeking lWO VISTA VOLUNTEERS to work with high school-age youth
on community action learning projects. Contact Ooana, 301 Grove Street, Brooklyn,
NY 11237. Fax: 718418-9635.
New York Harm Reduction Educators is seeking an ADMINIS1RA11VE ASSISTANT
to manage operations of administrative office, supervision of administrative office
staff, human resources management (payroll, accruals, benefits), purchasing, control
of petty cash, organizational record keeping, generation of computer-based
statistical reports. Report writing. Qualifications: work experience in office manage-
ment, computer literacy (Word, Excel, and Access); experience supervising
others. Ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously. Organized. Detail oriented.
Preferred: Bilingual (Spanish-English). Competitive salary. Full benefits. Send resume
and cover letter ASAP to Terry Ruefli, Ph.D., Executive Director, NYHRE, 903
Dawson Street, Bronx, NY 10459.
A growing and progressive economic development group along the Brooklyn
waterfront is looking to fill the following positions to help implement a new job
readiness initiative. JOB COUNSD.OR. Conduct outreach, counseling, placement
and follow-up services. BS/ BA and 3 years of experience. Spanish/English pre-
ferred. Competitive salary plus health. PROGRAM ASSISTANT. Support employ-
ment and business outreach activities. Maintain database and help organize
special events. Spanish/ English preferred. Salary $18K plus health. Fax resume
to 718-965-4906.
PARALEGAL Publ ic interest law firm seeks paralegal to work in disability law.
Minimum 4 years experience, strong writing, analytiC, communication skills
required. Send resume by 3/ 15 to NY Lawyers for the Public Interest, 30 W. 21 St.,
9th Roor, NYC 10010.
DEBRA BECHTEL - Attorney
Concentrating in Real Estate & Non-profit Law
Title and loan closings 0 All city housing programs
Mutual housing associations 0 Cooperative conversions
Advice to low income co-op boards of directors
313 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201,
(718) 780-7994 (718) 624-6850
F & D Cons-u.lt:ing
Specializing in Organizing Tenant Associations
-Does your apartment or building need repairs?
-Are you being overcharged rent?
- Are you paying unlawful fees?
For $4 per person, per meeting, we conduct informative monthly meetings,
produce newsletters, write correspondence, complete complaint forms and help
you improve the quality of your tenancy.
(Also, ask about our Eldercare Planning homevisits)
For Information: 212.591.1167
NesoH Associates
management solutions for non-profits
Providing a full range of management support services for
non-profit organiZlltions
management development & strategic planning
board and staff development & training
program design, implementation & evaluation
proposal and report writing
Box 130 75A Lake Road Congers, NY 1092()o tel/fax (914) 268-6315
CITY LIMITS
SPECIALIZING IN REAL ESTATE
J-51 Tax Abatement/Exemption. 421A and 421B
Applications. 501 (c) (3) Federal Tax Exemptions. All forms
of government-assisted housing, including LISC/Enterprise,
Section 202, State Turnkey and NYC Partnership Homes
KOURAKOS & KOURAKOS
Attorneys at Law
Bronx, N.Y.
(718) 585-3187
New York, N.Y.
(212) 551-7809
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212765-7123
212-397-6238
IftIbuccIOaol.com
451 WEST 48th STREET, SUITE 2E
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10036-1298
Does your nonprofit need corporate, real estate,
tax or other business legal services?
Lawyers Alliance for New York has a staff of skilled lawyers
and a roster of 400 volunteer attorneys from leading NY firms.
We specialize in providing free or low-cost legal services to
nonprofit corporations. We also offer helpful publications and
workshops on many nonprofit legal issues.
To find out if we can help your nonprofit, call 212 2191800
Lawyers Alliance
99 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013 for New York
Committed to the development of affordable housing
GEORGE C. DELLAPA, ATTORNEY AT LAW
15 Malden lane, Suite 1800
New York, NY 10038
212-732-2700 FAX: 212-732-2m
Low-income housing tax credit syndication. Public and private
financing. HDFCs and not-for-profit corporations. Condos and co-ops.
1-51 Tax abatement/exemptions. Lending for Historic Properties.
APRILIHe
Bushwick LDC is seeking twO PROJECT MANAGERS - responsible for
programmatic activities as well as grant administration, outreach, planning and
fund raising. The program offers comprehensive economic development services,
including entrepreneurial assistance, small business assistance and the general
promotion of local commerce. The creation of a Community Development Credit
Union is also a LDC project. Knowledge of Spanish is helpful. Salary to low $30s
DOE. Health benefits included. Fax resumes to Donald Manning 718-366-3800.
JOB DEVD.0PERIt0UNSEl.OR. Dynamic individual to work in computer skills traill-
ing program with dislocated workers and displaced homemakers returning to the
job market. Responsibilities include: developing effective job placement strategies,
building relationships with the business community, leading employment prepara-
tion workshops and individual career counseling seSSions. BA required/MA a plus,
minimum 3 years experience with proven track record, computer literacy and
excellent writing skills necessary. Full time, excellent benefits. Resume and cover
letter to: D. McVey, WISH Skills, 503 Rfth Avenue, 4th Roer, Brooklyn, NY 11215.
TENANT ORGANIZERS needed. The National Alliance of HUD Tenants (NAHT)
seeks 2 full-time Americorps VISTAs (Volunteers in Service to America) to act as
national and local organizers. The NATIONAL ORGANIZER will support tenant
coalitions and regional networks, help produce a national newsletter, and assist
in organizing and staffing the annual conference. The LOCAL ORGANIZER will
form and strengthen tenant councils in "at-risk" HUD developments and educate
tenants about HUD programs and solutions to preserve/improve their homes.
Candidates should have community organizing experience and/or strong adminis-
trative skills. Some eveningjweekend hours required. Send resume and cover
letter to: NAHT, 353 Columbus Ave., Boston, MA 02116. Or fax to 617-2674769.
Or e-mail : naht@erols.com.
COLLEGE GRADlADMINIS1RA11VE ASSISTANT. Communications program of
progressive international women's health organization seeks mature, organized,
pressure-tolerant professional with high level of productivity. Duties include: clerical
and administrative functions for the program, database maintenance, higtKluality
document production, scheduling and dissemination of press materials and publica-
tions, and website data entry. Requirements: Minimum :3-years secretarial/adminis-
trative experience, excellent writingjverbal skills, proficient in Word/Excel/
Intemet/databases, and detail/multi-task oriented. Excellent salary and benefits.
Qualified candidates forward resume and cover letter to: Cheryl Blackwell,
International Women's Health Coalition, 24 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010.
Fax: 212-979-9009. Equal Opportunity Employer. No calls, please.
PROGRAM DlRECTOR-5RO MANAGER. Manage SRO Supportive Housing Facility
& Social Service program in the South Bronx. You will prepare budgets and reports
remaining in compliance with government contracts. Maintaining community COil-
tacts necessary. Salary mid to high $50s. BA necessary in Human Services or
related fields. 5 years related experience with at least 2 years supervisory or mall-
agement level experience or a master's in related field with 4 years of general
experience and 2 years supervisory or management experience. We offer compre-
hensive benefits package. Send resume to: Cindy Colter, Volunteers of America,
Greater NY, Inc., Housing Division Administrative Office, 2720 Broadway,
NY, NY 10025. We are an EOE M/F/V/D/ ADA.
SOCIAl. WORKER, RENTAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM. Premier homeless service
organization seeks MSW or degree in related field, 3 years experience w/ homeless
population, strong interpersonal skills, experience w/ former substance abusers,
domestic violence and other issues affecting poor people for social work/ case
management position serving single adults & families. Extensive knowledge of
city programs and resources. Salary: $27-$32k. Send or fax resume to: D. James,
Coalition for the Homeless, 89 Chambers St. NY, NY 10007. Fax: 212-964-1206.
PROJECT MANAGER. The Bathgate LDC is seeking a Project Manager to fulfill the
contract obligations for its NYC Economic Development Corporation Contract.
Qualifications: organizational , writing and communication skills; market city land
parcels, fundraising and development skills. Requirements: 2 years experience,
undergraduate degree in urban planning and computer literacy. Fax writing
sample and resume to Edith Funk at 718-901-0212.
Asian Americans for Equality, a 25-year CBO, seeks individuals for positions:
COORDINATOR, ncHNICAl. ASSISTANCE PROGRAM. Execute training and
TA program to CBOs in housing & community revitalization. Implement workshops
and organizational TA consulting. Extensive travel. Experience: 2+ years in training,
community revitalization, housing counseling. PROJECT MANAGER. Coordinate
housing and community development initiatives, planning through construction.
Experience: 2+ years in RE finance & development, public policy; prefer Spanish or
Asian language skills. Resume & cover letter: AAFE, P&D-Search, 111 Division
Street, NY, NY 10002. Fax 212-979-8811. (continued on page 36)
--
JUAABA

(continued from page 35)
JOB DEVnOPR. This is a new position in CUCS' Job Training & Employment
Program and is responsible for developing competitive jobs for program partici-
pants. Activities will primarily focus on meeting the employment needs of mentally
ill tenants of supportive housing. Responsibilities: developing outreach and mar-
keting materials for prospective employers, establishing and maintaining relation-
ships with employers willing to train and hire participants, developing clustered and
individual job placement opportunities, developing training curricula to match poten-
tial job placements, supporting development and expansion of microenterprises
sponsored by CUCS. Requirements: BA, 3 years experience in a business or entre-
preneurial setting, related experience with low-income people or people with spe-
cial needs, understanding of NYC employment market, excellent written and ver-
bal communication skills, ability to take initiative and exercise independent judg-
ment. Preferences: MA, experience in marketing or public relations, understand-
ing of mental health issues and their impact on employment, familiarity with
Upper Manhattan employment market, training or public presentation experi-
ence. Salary: mid-high $30s. Resume to: Hilary Botein, CUCS/The Times Square,
255 W. 43rd Street, NY, NY 10036. EEO. CUCS is committed to workforce diver-
sity.
PUI.JC AFFAIlS AM) POI.ICY ASSOCIIOE. The Center for an Urban Future, a
New 'Ibrk think tank and the sister organization of City Umits, has a position open to assist in
policy areas of child welfare, juvenile justice, and other issues pertainirg to children and
lies in New 'Ibrk. Emphasis on public affairs and policy writirg. Other duties include event plan-
nirg. City Umits and CUF have a ooIlegial WCl!1I environment and an energetic staff addicted
to New 'Ibrk politics; we seek like-minded candidates. Salary: $2832,000 (dependirg on
experience) plus full benefits. People of color are strongly encouraged to apply. Please
review our web site at www.citylimits.org,Icuf for more background. Fax resume and two
short writing samples to N. Kleiman, 212-3446457.
A community development corporation located in the Bronx is seeking highly
vated individuals to fill the following vacancies: An experienced, sales-oriented
vidual needed as a PII' JOB DEVnOPER to work with economically disadvantaged
adults to create employment opportunities and place client in jobs. BA and 3 years
experience required. COMMUNITY ORGANIZER to advocate on behalf of quality of
life issues. The organizer activities will include: recruiting and motivating volun-
teers, developing tenant associations, speaking to community groups, developing
a coalition of community residents and coordinating and overseeing community
projects. At least 3 years related experience with a bachelor's degree. Candidate
must have good writing and presentation skills. Bilingual Spanish/English strongly
preferred. Full time position available HOME-BASED CHILD CARE COORDINATOR.
The coordinator will oversee the development of AHC's Home Based Day Care
Resource and Training Center. Responsibilities include: developing and overseeing
the resource center, developing the resource center lending library, outreaching and
recruitment of participants, developing an informal and a registered child care
network, conducting training and workshops for caregivers. Translation of related
information as needed. Collect data information on participants and the various
activities in which they are engaged. Schedule home visits and follow up on visit.
At least a BA and 3 years experience in early childhood required. Proficiency in
English and Spanish preferred. Full time position available. Please fax resume and
a cover letter to D. Colon, 718-842-6627.
PROJECT DIRECTOR. The Father Factor Program, Partnership for Fragile Families.
Brooklyn CDC seeks project director to be responsible for the effective administra-
t ion of the project in all of its operations and components and be trained in the
Fatherhood Development Curriculum. High level of responsibility. Eight years expe-
rience in educational administration, program development and staff supervision.
SpeCific experience in Fatherhood Development programming. Master's level
education. Fax resume to Judith Anglin, 718-857-5984.
CDC EXECUT1VE DIRECTOR. The Mount Hope Housing Company (MHHC) is seeking
an experienced senior manager with a strong background in housing management
and community development and/or human services for the position of Executive
Director to head this dynamic Bronx community development corporation (CDC), which
manages over 960 housing units and is a participant in the Comprehensive
Community Revitalization Program. The position requires substantial senior level
experience within a nonprofit organization. Candidates must
possess: superior managerial capacity; excellent communication skills, both
written and oral; analytic aptitude; computer literacy; strong fundraising abilities;
iarity with affordable housing programs; and a bachelor's degree (master' s preferred).
Qualified candidates should submit resumes with cover letters to:
Mr. Jesse Davidson, President of the Board, The Mount Hope Housing Company, Inc.,
2003-05 Walton Ave. , Bronx, New York 10453.
Health Care for the Homeless Program seeks SOCIAL WORKER for 4 day/ week
position (Monday, Tues, Weds, Friday, 9-5). Provide full range of services to
homeless adults-crisis intervention; advocacy re: benefits, substance abuse
. Bankers Trust
Architects of Value
Community Development Group
A resource for the non .. profit
development community

Gary Hattem, Managing Director
130 Liberty Street
10th Floor
New York, New York 10006
Tel: 212,250,7118 Fax: 212,250,8552
CITY LIMITS
counseling, etc. Must have strong knowledge of public benefit programs and citywide
resources. Experience with homeless people, substance abuse and mental illness a
plus. Spanish-speaking desirable. MSW or BA/BSW with relevant experience.
Full benefits. Fax resume to: E. Wallman, Program Director, IUFH, 212-989-2840.
The 14th Street-Union Square LDC/BID is seeking a PROGRAM COORDINATOR
with interest in public affairs and community development. Responsibilities include
writing annual reports, grant applications and marketing material, coordinating
community events, and managing retail marketing projects. Send resume to:
14th Street-Union Square LDC/BID, 4 Irving Place, #1148-S, New York, NY 10003.
Or fax: 212-420-8670.
POLITICAL ORGANIZERS. Newly formed pol itical party composed of unions and
community organizations seeks committed staff persons to organize working and poor
people for better jobs, health care and schools. EOE. Fax: 718-246-3718, attn: Bill.
JOB DEVB.0PERIC0lINSB.OR. Bronx job development organization seeks dynamic
individual to place graduates of computer skills training program. Responsibilities
include developing effective job placement strategies, building relationships with
the business community, leading employment preparation workshops and individ-
ual career counseling sessions. BA plus, minimum 1 year experience with
proven track record. Resume and cover letter to: Maritza Owens, MBSCC,
900 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10451.
The Center for Urban Community Services (CUCS) seeks a PROGRAM ASSISTANT
for information and referral service. Responsibilities will include layout and distribu-
tion of bi-weekly newsletter, maintaining and developing databases, filing and record
keeping, and receiving and routing phone calls. Requirements: H.S. and profiCiency
with Windows 95 and Microsoft Word. Familiarity with MS Access and Excel preferred.
Bilingual Spanish/English a plus. Salary: high $20s plus comprehensive benefits.
Resumes and cover letters to: David Oliver, CUCS/HRC, 120 Wall St. , 25th Aoor, NY,
NY 10005. Fax: 212-635-2191. CUCS is committed to workforce diversity. EEO.
MANAGER, THRIFT STORE. Join a solid team committed to working w/ the people
of East Harlem. Nonprofit seeks energetic, community-oriented, creative person to
manage our neighborhood thrift store and develop on-site job training program.
Must have strong organizational and management skills w/ experience in
supervision and job development. Competitive salary & benefits. Fax resume to:
Amy Moose, Littie Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service, 212-348-8284.
Citywide notfor-profit seeks self-starter for position as HOUSING SPECIALIST/
TRAINER to assist residents of emergency and transitional shelters identify and
obtain permanent housing. Responsibilities: Develop & implement housing training
curriculum for shelter residents, create a database of affprdable housing, and
develop housing resource materials. Must have strong writing and verbal skills,
knowledge of housing subsidy programs and affordable housing in New York City,
experience with Microsoft Word and Excel. Other requirements: BA plus 2 years
experience in housing/community development. Salary to $30,000 with excellent
benefits. Send resume to: New Destiny Housing Corporation, 2 Lafayette Street,
3rd Aoor, New York, NY 10007. Fax: 212-577-7759. EOE.
Supportive Housing Network of NY is looking for TWO AMERICORPS VISTA
MEMBERS: The VISTA member would work in community outreach and employment
development. Emphasis on employment initiatives and welfare-to-work in New York
City. Community organizing, business experience, able to work with people from
diverse backgrounds, a 'self-starter,' able to work in a small busy office, and
knowledge of computer preferred. Yearly stipend of $9,500+, medical benefits and
educational reward. Send cover letter and resume to: Supportive Housing Network
of New York, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 250, New York, NY 10015 or fax to
212-870-3334 attn: Carolyn MacLaury.
Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) is a national intermediary not-for-profit
organization dedicated to expanding the quantity and quality of housing and services
for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. We currently seek an
ASSISTANT PROGRAM OfFICER who will be responsible for providing program and
administrative support to the President and other staff members in the areas of
resource and program development, board relations, advocacy, public education and
external affairs. Requirements: minirnum 2 years experience in low-income support-
ive housing development and/or finance. Graduate degree in a related field pre-
ferred. Excellent interpersonal, research, analytic, verbal and written communication
skills are essential. PC profiCiency a must (MSWord & Excel). We offer a competi-
tive salary and a comprehensive benefits package. Send resume and cover letter
stating salary requirements to: Roger A. Clay, Jr., Vice President, CSH,
50 Broadway, 17th Aoor, NY, NY 10004.
The Pratt Area Community Council (PACC) is a growing not-for-profit organization. We
combine tenant and community organizing, tenant and homeowner services, afford
able housing development and management and economic (continued on page 39)
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Game
Put the fun back in defunding! Match each group
with the phrase that led to its loss of Giuliani dollars.
1. ACORN
2. Abyssinian Development
3. Housing Works
4. Nehemiah Homes
5. Legal Aid
a. "Fran hates them."
b. "No contract, no work."
c. "Sacred cows make the
best hamburger meat."
d. "Housing for the needy,
not for the greedy."
e. "The mayor doesn't like
black people."
CITY LIMITS
lOAABi
(contillued from page 37) development to Improve the Brooklyn communities of
Ft. Greene, Clinton HIli and Bedford-Stuyvesant. PACC has the following positions
available: PROJECT COORDINATOR to develop and implement exciting new program
to improve public safety in Bed-Stuy. Work with a consortium of grassroots govern.
mental and law enforcement organizations to combat neighborhood drug and crime
activity. Community organizing experience helpful. Salary to $45K. ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR to Implement ambitious economic development strategy.
Develop and oversee commercial revitalization activities, including creation of a job
and business resource center. Candidate will have business or community develop.
ment experience and possess excellent communication and organizational skills.
Salary to $50K. HOUSING DEVnOPMENT DIRECTOR to Implement and supervise
affordable housing development projects. Self-starter w/ excellent organizational
and writing skills. Housing, financial packaging and supervisory experience required.
Salary to $55K. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply. Send
cover letter and resume to: PACC, 201 De Kalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205.
Fax: 718-522-2604.
5 AMERICORPS VISTA ATTORNEYS. Work with not-for-profit, legal services,
community-based organization In Washington Heights/Inwood, New York City. Areas
include: welfare-to-work, housing rehabilitation and development for
tenants. Bilingual English/Spanish, ability to practice law in NY State. Attorneys paid
directly by Americorps VISTA, $786 per month, free medical coverage, student loan
obligations suspended, receive $4,725 towards student debt. Resume, cover letter.
Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, 76 Wadsworth Avenue,
New York, NY 10033. Fax: 212-928-4180.
PUBlICIST ASSISTANT. Small, progressive, social issues PR firm seeks organized
publicist assistant. Good computer skills, WWW knowledge and excellent phone
manner a must. Excellent opportunity for recent college grad. Available ASAP.
Fax resume w/cover letter to: M. Pecorino at 212-265-0593.
Volunteers of America is a nonprofit organization serving the disadvantaged of
the Metro NY area. We now have two openings In our Bronx location:
CASE MANAGER. Duties: comprehensive management responsibilities.
Qualifications: BA preferred w/minimum of two years experience working w/
similar population. VOCATIONAU RECREATIONAL SPECIALIST. Duties: will
develop, coordinate comprehensive educational/job related and
recreational/social activities for residents. Qualifications: master's degree In
social work, human services or equivalent Is preferable; or BS and 5 years expe-
rience working with special needs population. Fax resume to 718-590-7548.
Mail: 1075 Webster Avenue, Bronx, NY 10456.
JOB DEVnOPER. Positions available with New 'lbrk City's largest provider of tran
sitional services to homeless families. Responsibilities Include: developing employ.
ment opportunities within private businesses, facilitating job search, performing
follow-up services. BA/BS required. Competitive salary plus health. Resume and
cover letter: Maureen Connelly, Homes for the Homeless, 36 Cooper Square,
New NY 10003.
T.O.P.S. FOR YOU seeks FUNDRAISING ASSISTANT to serve women and youth-
services agency In Bushwlck. Applicants may be experienced, part-time consultants
and fulHlme learning candidates who would receive training support. Primary
duties: research funding sources, write grant proposals and reports for public and
private funding agencies. Bachelor's degree, experience with community-based
organization preferred. Salary: $20,000-$25,000. Contact Sister Betty Nickels,
718-821-3821. Fax: 718-456-7068.
SOCIAL WORKERS. Catholic agency seeks several social workers for clinical work.
Must have CSW. Also for case management positions with MSW Bilingual Spanish-
English. Excellent benefits. 19 Holidays. Send resume, salary requirements and
Include job title In your response to 10011 First Ave., Rm. 1113, New York, NY
10022. Or fax to 212-826-8795.
ADMINISTRATOR. Judson Memorial Church, a progressive Protestant congregation
In Greenwich VIllage, seeks an able, energetic administrator to run Its complex
business operations, manage finances and fundralsing, interface with building con.
tractors and maintenance people, organize records and archives, allocate church
space to outside group functions, edit publications and webSite, upgrade office
systems, and supervise other administrative staff. Salary to $45K plus benefits.
Complete Job description available. Inquiries: Administrator Search, c/o Judson
Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012. E-mail :
administrator@judson.org. Phone: 212-477-0351.
Women' s Prison Association and Home, Inc. , a NYC nonprofit with $5.5 million
annual budget, is seeking a DIRECTOR OF FINANCE to manage Its fiscal affairs.
Oversees diverse governmental contracts, budgeting, cash flow, audits, credit
and banking relationships. Works for executive director and as a member of
senior management team. Fax resume and cover letter with salary history to
212-677-1981, Code OF.
o ..... e' PAe,
W38th Street DESK SPACE In designers' office: perfect for architects, graphics,
computers, planners, consultants. Shared conference, reception, copiers. Great
views, near Times Square. $300/desk. Michael: 212-366-5366.
Reasonable, flexible OFFICE SPACE for rent in Lower Manhattan. Progressive
organization seeks tenant(s) to share our space. Standard office equipment
Is shared. You must supply own computer and pay for long distance, large
volume copying, etc. Contact Michele at 212-964-3534, extenSion 23. Or by e-mail
at mjmaglione@citlzenactionny.org.
OFFICE SPACE. Three offices available, good transportation, conference rooms,
full facilities. 275 Seventh Avenue (25th Street), 15th Floor, New York, NY 10001.
Contact Irma Gonzalez at 212-929-7604. Ext. 3018.
LET US DO A FREE EVALUATION
OF YOUR INSURANCE NEEDS
APRIL 1999
We have been providing low-cost insurance programs and
quality service for HDFCs, TENANTS, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
and other NONPROFIT organizations for over 75 years.
We Offer:
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DIRECTOR'S & OFFICERS' LlABILTY
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ASHKAR CORPORATION
146 West 29th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10001
(212) 279-8300 FAX 714-2161 Ask for : 8010 Ramanathan
--
At MaT Bank.
we put our moneg
where our neighborhoods are.
We are now accepting applications for our Community
Action Assistance Plan (CAAP) Grants Program.
We believe that the continued success of M&T Bank is
directly tied to the quality of life in the neighborhoods
that we serve. That's why we are renewing our commit-
ment to community organizations that are committed to
making our neighborhoods better places to live and
conduct business.
We are offering grants of $500 to $5,000 to eligible orga-
nizations which provide essential neighborhood services.
Prospective applicants should be aware that in 1999 the
Bank will be focusing its community financial support
Brooklyn:
East New York (Atlantic and Pennsylvania Avenues)
Park Slope (Aatbush at 8th Avenue)
Bay Ridge (5th Avenue and 78th Street)
Manhattan:
Sutton Place (East 55th Street and 1st Avenue)
Lenox Hill (East 75th Street and 2nd Avenue)
Bryant Park (41 West 42nd Street)
Peter Cooper (East 20th Street and 1st Avenue)
Suffolk County:
efforts on projects related to housing and economic develop-
ment initiatives. Therefore, CAAP applications featuring
such activities will receive priority consideration.
M&T Bank's CAAP Grants Program for 1999 is open to
community-based, not-for-profit, tax-exempt organizations
located in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk
Counties. To obtain an application or further information,
stop by anyone of our branches or mail your request to-the
address below. Applications must be submitted
by April 16, 1999.
Madison South (Madison Avenue and 29th Street)
135th Street (498 Lenox Avenue)
Nassau County:
Great Neck (23-25 North Station Plaza)
Oceanside (12 Atlantic Avenue at Long Beach Road)
Queens:
Forest Hills (101-25 Queens Blvd. & 67th Drive)
Selden (Middle Country Road in Edwards Supermarket)
Amityville (Merrick Road in Edwards Supermarket)
M&T BANK Community Action Assistance Plan Grants Program
350 Park Avenue, 6th Floor
New York, New York 10022