City Limits Magazine, August/September 1982 Issue

THE NEWS MAGAZINE OF NEW YORK CITY HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOO
Clinton: Is this Neighfurhood for Sale?

Jersey Cityf s Redevelopment Battle
How New York Got a New Co-op Law
Shopping In HUDfs Bargaill Basement
The Neighborhood Front
The North West Bronx Community
and Clergy Coalition's newsletter
Action reports that 46 University
Heights and Kingsbridge homeowners
were rebuffed by the city' s Finance
Department in their attempt to get tax
assessments lowered. The challenges,
organized by the Kingsbridge Manor
Neighborhood Association, charged
that Bronx homeowners are paying
twice the citywide average in taxes. The
owners were referred to the new tax
assessment small claims court. The New
York Public Interest Research Group
which has cited neighborhood discrim-
ination in city tax rates, says one half
the Bronx's one and two-family homes
are assessed over the statewide average
of 18 percent or $8.95 per $100 of
assessed valuation.

A private company hired to manage
city-owned buildings in the Marble Hill
area of northern Manhattan has been
barred from buying two buildings
tenants say it mishandled. The Marble
Hill Neighborhood Community Im-
provement Corporation worked along
with tenants who said the company,
Tecra Management, has failed to make
needed repairs in the buildings. Some
$98,000 in city funds allotted for
building improvements never showed
up as repairs, the group charged. The
buildings, at 151 and 159 West 228th
Street are now scheduled to get new
windows. One will also get a new boiler.

In Brooklyn's Greenpoint section,
tenants of 119 Grand Street who have
made it through two tough winters in
their buildings will be able to begin
repairs on apartments damaged by a fire
two years ago with $10,000 loaned to
them by the city's 7A Financial Assist-
ance Unit. Tenants, working with the
People's Firehouse, hope to have apart-
ments ready for rent-up by winter.

Emily Margolis, a long-time activist
with the Park West Village Tenants As-
CITY LIMITS/August-September 1982
PHOTO BY J IM MENDELL
sociation and a member of the executive
committee of the New York State
Tenants and Neighborhood Coalition,
along with former state housing
commissioner and HUD under-
secretary Victor Marrero, have been
nominated by Mayor Ed Koch to serve
on the Conciliations and Appeals
Board. The CAB administrates and en-
forces the Rent Stabilization Law.
Margolis will serve as one of four tenant
representatives on the nine-member
board. Marrero, now a partner in the
law firm of city power brokers Peter
Tufo and John Zuccotti, will represent
landlords.

The Queens League of United
Tenants (QLOUT), a recently formed
coalition of tenant groups throughout
the borough, is currently making plans
for a two-day tent encampment October
2 and 3 in Flushing Meadow to drama-
tize the plight of the epidemic number
of tenant families that are being dis-
placed through condo and single faniily
conversions. In developments in the
borough' s many garden complexes,
tenants at Park Drive Apartments in
2
Kew Gardens are in their fourth rent
strike in three years to protest the lack
of essential services and maintenance.
They are still hoping to buy their
apartments as low-cost cooperatives,
but the case is still in bankruptcy court
.. . Across the street at Orin Gardens,
tenants have brought suit in state
Supreme Court against the landlord,
Orin Management, charging that they
are being deprived of their tenant pro-
tections under rent stabilization because
the complex is being divided up into
units ofless than six as the buildings'
common foundations and sewer lines
are being severed to make way for
conversion to single family homes and
cooperatives .. . In Forest Hills, the
remaining tenant families at Central
Gardens are going into the N. Y. Court
of Appeals against landlord-developer
Sol Gilman to stop his one- and two-
family conversion of their garden apart-
ments on the grounds that his flimsy
facelift to the property does not consti-
tute major demolition or gut rehab . ..
In the Bayside section, tenants at
Heather Gardens are putting pressure
on Jamaica Savings Bank to stop ware-
housing apartments for what they fear
will be companion conversions to the
recently opened garden apartments-
turned-homes adjacent to them that are
selling for up to $170,000 .. . The year-
long rent strike at GIUl Oaks Village
near the Nassau County line has ended
with the tenants turning over a sizeable
chunk of their bank account reported to
have swelled to $1 million to landlord-
converter Gerald Guterman. In return,
he is making repairs to occupied tenant
apartments, while continuing to sell the
vacant ones as cooperatives.

On the Upper West Side, Manhattan
Valley Development Corporation re-
cently dedicated its newly rehabilitated
Section 8 buildings and announced
plans for construction of Section 235
town houses at a neighborhood
celebration on .site of the new housing. 0
Contents
Volume VII Number VII
The Neighborhood Front
Short Term Notes
Brooklyn Homeowners
Face Foreclosure
Demolition Derby for
Lower East Side?
Arson and Rehab Study
Jamaica Savings
Looks for an Exit
Loans Boost Low Income Co-ops
New, once city-owned, low iricome
cooperatives are getting the first
low interest city loans.
Hot and Cold Running Uranium?
Sales Price for Clinton
Bulldings is Still a Secret
The city still has yet to tell
tenant-managers of Clinton buildings
the price of their apartments. Now,
the news must wait until after the
gubernatorial primary.
I '
The Big Payoff on Ninth ,Avenue
The city tl1p-flopped a couple of times
on whether it wanted to let go of this
tax-foreclosed corner lined with open
air markets, but some curious, but hefty,
back payment offers helped cure its qualms.
The Battle of Jersey Qty's
Redevelopment Project
Four years ago, Jersey City embarked
on a massive downtown renewal project,
but has balked all the way at re-housing
those it displaced. A vigilant group of
local residents have made it live up to its
promises.
An East Side SRO Figbts to Hang on
Despite growing focus on the prqblems
of SROs, this hotel's tenants art: just
barely holding on.
Shopping in HUD's Bargain Basement
Knocking around in HUD's basement are
an increasing number of FHA-foreclosed
multifamily buildings, many of them
potentially lucrative investments. Look
who gets invited to buy.
The Co-op Bank's Lending Dilemma
Can the Co-op Bank bridge the gap
between its social mission and its
fiscal restraints?
2
4
4
5
6
8
9
10
11
13
/
18 .
22
Public Housing: Fueling the Rumors 25
A recent HUD request for proposals
has added the latest fuel to per-
sistent rumors public housing will
be sold or demolished.
How New York Got a New Co-op Law 26
Did the new co-op conversion law
plug the loophole, or paper over
the problems?
Caught in the Middle on Manhattan Ave. 29
What happens when a neighborhood housing
group gets charged with removing tenants
from a soon-to-be building?
Letters 31
Hatching Tenant Strategy by the Pacific 32
Chicago Weatherization Plan 33
Cover photo by Adam Anik: Angelo Bono, owner of

the Sea breeze Fish Market, in front of tbe corner of
40th Street and Ninth Avenue.
Design and layout for this issue by John Lake.
C CITYUMI1S)
3
CITY L1MITS/AugustSeptember 1982
Short Term Notes
TaxSeizure
Looms for
Brooklyn Homes
By SUSAN REYNOLDS
I
N BROOKLYN, A NEW SEG-
ment of the housing stock is being
abandoned to the city for delinquency
in real estate taxes. Small buildings and
owner-occupied buildings form a signi-
ficant part of the next large City tax-
foreclosure action (Action 33a) occur-
ring in early August.
The numbers themselves are stagger-
ing. The city currently owns and man-
ages about 800 occupied residential
buildings in Brooklyn, with about 3,100
occupied apartments. By the current
Department of Housing Preservation
and Development (HPD) estimates, the
August taking will more than triple the
number of city-owned apartments in the
borough. These impressive figures
represent only a little over half of the
Brooklyn foreclosure problem. The
foreclosure Action 33, is occurring in
three stages: Action 33a includes most
of East New York (Community District
5), Bedford Stuyvesant (Community
District 3), and North Brooklyn (Com-
munity District 1). It also covers the
bulk of the waterfront community dis-
tricts facing Manhattan. In the fall,
Action 33b will take the Fort Greene-
Clinton Hill area of Community
District 2. Finally, Spring, 1983, will
witness foreclosures in the remaining
areas of Brooklyn under Action 33c.
What worries HPD and Brooklyn
community groups, however, is not
only the number but the type of
buildings being foreclosed. By HPD
estimates, 1,300 of the August occupied
buildings have less than five apart-
ments, and about 600 are one- and two-
family homes. To everyone concerned,
this looks like property management
disaster. Consider the problem of 16
families without heat in January. In a
large( building, HPD could restore heat
to all of them by repairing one boiler. If
CITY LlMITs/AugustSeptember 1982
these families are scattered in four
buildings, four boilers have to be
repaired. Building management loads,
delays, and paperwork multiply with
such small buildings.
Brooklyn community groups have
already responded to these forthcoming
difficulties. In some neighborhoods,
they have assisted owners in making
installment agreements to pay their
back taxes. A vigorous outreach effort
in Bushwick, coordinated by HPD's
Neighborhood Preservation Office,
removed sixty percent of the properties
from threat of foreclosure. Other
groups have contacted tenants in
buildings to be foreclosed, or are
organizing homeowners to fight over-
assessments.
The formation of the Brooklyn
Coalition on City-Owned Property is
another response to the Brooklyn fore-
closure action. Nineteen housing and
community groups have joined the
Coalition, which was initiated by the
Task Force on City-Owned Property,
with the help of the Community Service
Society. The Coalition is coordinating a
survey of the buildings to be foreclosed.
This information will help the Coalition
to develop new programs for small
buildings, which are excluded from cur-
rent Alternative Management pro-
grams, and to organize community sup-
port. The Coalition is also discussing
strategies for addressing other problems
in city management, including the
closing of "underoccupied" buildings.
Despite the potential power of the
Coalition and some HPD efforts, the
upcoming tax-foreclosure action still
threatens to be hard on Brooklyn.
Though the summer foreclosure will
increase the citywide holdings of
occupied apartments by one third, the
city's budget line for Central Manage-
ment is the same as it was last year.
Alternative Management programs,
such as Tenant Interim Lease and 7 A
Leasing, have received budget cuts. In
1982, it will take substantial organizing
efforts by Brooklyn community groups
4

Derby-::=: .. ..
It was a Sunday morning headline
to make housing activists choke on
their eggs and toast. The city could
find no way to deter rampant drug
traffic in nearly 200 Lower East side
tenements, so it intended to demolish
the buildings. This scorched earth
anti-drug proposal, noted many,
might discomfort the trade briefly,
but only until it found new quarters.
And what about the holes of blasted
rubble the policy would leave in its
wake? With no government funds
anywhere in sight for rebuilding,
they would most likely await a
private market construction.
The Lower East Side Joint Plan-
ning Council, along with other
community representatives, re-
sponded quickly to the story. The
Council, which has been organizing
to block displacement and create
decent, affordable housing in the
neighborhood, said at a press confer-
ence that it condemned the Koch ad-
ministration proposal to tear down
the buildings as a way to deal with
the area's drug traffic. Margarita
Lopez, Chairwoman of the Council
declared, "The mayor's proposal
makes as much sense as demolishing
the House of Representatives be-
cause drug sales take ,place there."
The group called on the administra-
, tion to seriously tackle the drug
problem by giving stiff sentences to
bigtime drug dealers and to help
renovate, not devastate, the neigh-
borhood.O
to win the resources needed for the
simple preservation of newly city-owned
housing. 0
Susan Reynolds is a policy analyst with
the Task Force on City-Owned Proper-
ty, a project of the Association of
Ne,ighborhood Housing
RING WE'RE
AFTER IS FOR
BURNING OF 30 INNER-CITY BUll-DINGS
-SLUMS, TRANSIENT /10'iELS AND SO
What community housing groups
have long been saying and City Limits
documented two years ago has now
been confirmed by a report reluctantly
made public by the city's Arson Strike
Force, a mayoral agency. The first lap
of a $120,000, 18-month study funded
by the National Institute of Justice
establishes a connection between arson
and suspicious fires and selected
housing assistance programs-the
federal Section 8 Substantial Rehabili-
tation Program and the city's Municipal
Loan and J-51 tax abatement programs.
The day after the report's release
Mayor Ed Koch announced he would
favor barring SRO hotels from
receiving J-51 tax abatements, a move
he opposed this past June when the
subject was being debated in the Albany
legislature.
The study will match buildings that
have received loan !ponies for rehab
with the incidence of suspicious or
arson fires in them.
The study cites an August/Septem-
ber, 1980, City Limits article as one of
the earliest indicators of the arson-
rehab link. Ttlat article, "Risen from
the Ashes-Section 8 Comes to Crown
Heights" , investigated some of the
same properties detailed in the study. At
the time of that article, most of the
buildings designated to get Section 8 gut
rehabs had not received final HUD
approval. The publication provided an
exhaustive list of Section 8 buildings in
the Crown Heights Neighborhood
Strategy Area and their fire history to
then HUD Area Manager Alan Wien-
er. Organizers at the Crown Heights
Progress Council mapped other build-
ings receiving city loans, including city
Participation Loans, that had also ex-
perienced suspicious fires. No response
was heard from the agency, although a
set of buildings belonging to convicted
arson ring head Joe Bald were later
yanked from Section 8 approval.
The Strike Force report, when first
completed in April and presented to its
advisory board was deemed too "incon-
Study
Confinns the
Arson-Rehab
Link
By HARRIET COHEN
clusive" to be disclosed by Housing
Commissioner Anthony Gliedman
whose agency is on the Strike Force
board.
The report, which provides some
building addresses and their fire,
financial and maintenance histories,
was only made public after pressure
from Manhattari City Councilmember
Ruth Messinger and Sydney Schanberg
of the New York Times. Messinger had
tried unsuccessfully to obtain a copy of
it to use in last month's Albany debate
on the renewal of the J-51 abatement
program. Subsequent to a newspaper
column by Schanberg and a press con-
ference by Messinger, both of which
detailed the report and its suppression,
it was released in full.
The report states that although
Neighborhood Strategy Areas had
Section 8 subsidies slated for vacant
city-owned buildings, in the Crown
Heights NSA, half of the 53 selected
properties were privately owned and 15
of these were occupied at the beginning
of 1978 when the program was first an-
nounced for the neighborhood. Almost
two-thirds of the privately-owned build-
ings experienced one or more suspicious
fires in 1978-79, compared with just
one-quarter of the city-owned proper-
ties. Close to half of the private build-
ings had a history of fires as
opposed to only four percent of the city-
owned dwellings.
5
Buildings in the now defunct Muni-
cipal Loan Program had the same type
of fire records. One landlord examined
in the study received 29 Municipal
Loans worth over $12 million, mostly in
the Crown Heights area. Twelve of his
buildings showed a total of 40 fires
during 1978-79, accompanied . by
increasing vacancies, code violations
and tax arrears.
The report also focused on SRO con-
versions on the Upper West Side that
were assisted by J-51 tax abatements.
Between 1975-1979,17 SRO hotels in the
area closed, raised their rents or were
converted to apartments or coopera-
tives. These buildings had a total of 15
suspicious or incendiary fires between
1977-19?9. In the case of one building,
. 425 West End Avenue, two serious sus-
pjcious fires required an official vacate
order from the city. Although the court
said the owners of the building were
engaged in a milking operation and
referred to their strategy as "rape", it
ruled that the substantial rehab of the
building was' 'in the best interests of the
city," thus precluding a declaration of
harassment which would have prevent-
ed its conversion.
Cbmmunity group activists com-
mended the Arson Strike Force for
undertaking the study but pointed out
that it remains for tenant and neigh-
borhood groups to watchdog its out-
come and pressure the city to live up to
measures now on the books that can
block an owner's benefitting from arson
and harassment. It was pointed out that
although investigation is made of a
project participant's financial history,
potential developers are usually only
barred where a substantial loan default
is in evidence. Poor management,
building code violations and even
harassment are frequently overlooked.
They stressed that an owner with a
history of deteriorating properties and a
'history of suspicious fires should not be
rewarded with a rehab loan that
increases the value of his property as
well as his management profits. 0
Jamaica
Savings Bank
Looks
for an Exit
That may also explain why, when the
bank decided to escape state regulation,
it chose to represent it Warren Dennis, a
Washington-based former Justice
Department Civil Rights attorney who
as a private consultant wrote back-
ground papers for the Community Re-
investment Act.
At the June hearing, Dennis offered a
soft-spoken rebuttal to the protest,
115 insisting Jamaica was "in sympathy
with the goals of the community
The real question, he sug-
___ ..a.a. ________ m.;. ___________ ............ _.a.Io ..... _ ...... gested, was how to apply the Reinvest-
D
OES THE COMMUNITY RE-
investment Act have any meaning
in the era of high interest rates? Are
anti-redlining activists being even more
unrealistic than usual when they insist
banks shouldn't use those high interest
rates as an excuse to avoid neighbor-
hood investment? Those questions were
raised by both sides of the issue at a
recent regulatory hearing.
The hearing was prompted when a
New York City savings bank, which two
years ago was barred from opening a
suburban branch after reinvestment
activists charged it had abandoned its
metropolitan base in favor of greener,
suburban pastures, sought an exit from
state regulation. When the Jamaica
Savings Bank, of Jamaica, Queens,
sought Federal Home Loan Bank Board
acceptance, it was promptly challenged
by the City Commission on Human
Rights's Neighborhood Stabilization
unit. They charged that the Jamaica
bank had changed little since the New
York State banking department said the
bank's policies "tended to foster a
belief that the bank has a hostile and
arrogant attitude towards those in the
community. "
CITY LlMITS,/AugustSeptember 1982
In addition, said Eileen Murray of ment Act when the future for savings
the Human Rights Commission, banks was so gloomy. "Like the con-
Jamaica had been out of the mortgage sumer," said Dennis, "the savings
market "earlier and longer than any banks are victims." Pointing to the
other 'Queens-based savings bank." bank's multifamily investments, he
Murray's protest was aimed at blocking suggested that "If one-half of those
the bank's application to convert from a funds had been put into a JamaiCil
state to a federally-chartered mutual Savings Bank CRA fund and had a
savings bank and to relocate its main press release put out, this protest might
offices from Jamaica, Queens, to never arise,"
Lynbrook in Nassau County. Speakers at the hearing pointed out
Presumably, Jamaica is still smarting that Queens residents and depositors
from the state's refusal two years ago to had been consistently shortchanged by
allow it to open an East Meadows, the bank: with 81 percent of its deposits
Long Island, branch. That decision, originating in the borough, Jamaica
however, may have been sparked as invested only 27 percent of those
much by remarks made by bank officers sa vings in Queens pr operties.
at a hearing on a similar challenge fIled Juxtaposed to Nassau County, which
against the bank at that time as its has 11 percent of deposits, 72 percent of
actual lending record. Bank president which is invested in the county, and
Park Adikes said those challenging his Suffolk County, which with just 2 per-
bank suffered from a "Gimme syn- cent of deposits gets 154 percent back in
drome:' and" Free lunch philosophy." investment, challengers asserted there
Oral arguments on the bank's appli- was a clear record of geographic dis-
cation and the protest were heard before crimination.
a Home Loan Bank Board supervisory The challenge also claimed that all
agent in June, but after regional and other savings banks in Queens County
central offices finish weighing the were presently making loans for one-to-
application, it could be well into next four-family homes, while only Jamaica
year before the bank knows the decision. was not; and that whereas banks and
6
savings institutions throughout the five
boroughs were involved in one or more
programs to provide government subsi-
dized or insured loans to multifamily
buildings, Jamaica was noticeably
absent from the efforts.
With the advent of adjustable rate
mortgages, which allow banks to peg
. their interest rates to any of several
escalating indexes of costs, Murray
suggested that there was really little
reason for Jamaica to fear the mortgage
market. Dennis, speaking for the bank,
whose officers remained silent almost
throughout the hearing, responded that
the new mortgages carried a trap within
them and that they would bring back
the "depression-era stereotype of the
greedy banker foreclosing on the help-
less widow" because they were unreli-
"TEDCO MUST GO," and "HELL
NO WE WON'T GO," shouted over
100 angry tenants and supporters as
they marched up and down their
Lincoln Place block in the Prospect
Heights Area of Brooklyn on Saturday,
July 17th in protest against their land-
lord's "negligent and abusive practices:'
The rally involved the Tenants Asso-
ciations of six buildings, 285, 291,292,
364, and 365 Lincoln Place, which are
working with the Brooklyn Neighbor-
hood Improvement Association
(BNIA), a community-based organiza-
tion. BNIA is assisting tenants in getting
control of their buildings from their
landlord. The six buildings are owned
by Theodore Countouraudas and his
agency, TEDCO.
At the rally, Adeyerni Bandele, an
official of BNIA, said that last year
several of the buildings went without
heat and hot water or no water at all. I
Bandele also said that the buildings are
rat-and-roach-infested, with poisonous
lead paint chips falling from ceilings
and walls. In addition, Bandele said
that there are plumbing problems, no
lights in the hallways, broken mailboxes
and that fIlthy conditions plague the
able lending instruments for bankers
and borrowers alike.
Twenty minutes later, Deborah
Rosado of Baisley Park Neighbors in
Action, who assists owners of FHA-
foreclosed small homes in her area, told
of how a widow she tried to help had
been foreclosed upon for a default of
$158. Usually, she said, banks are
willing to work with her to avoid fore-
closure. In this case the bank, Jamaica
Savings, insisted on foreclosing. The
depression-era stereotype was apparent-
ly closer than anyone thought.
Limited in scope by FHLBB rules,
the challenge seems unlikely to succeed.
And with a savings industry bail-out
awaiting a new Congress for a chance
for passage, there is clearly much more
sympathy for cash-strapped banks than
Block
Landlord
buildings on Lincoln Place.
Jarnilla Abdullah, secretary of the
364 Lincoln Place Tenants Association
told the rally, "Two of my children
were poisoned from eating lead paint
chips offthe walls."
Sharon Burns, another tenant, added
that her 2-year-old son was hospitalized
from drinking contaminated water from
a faucet that had rusty pipes.
Bandele said that five of the build-
ings, 285, 291, 364, and 365 Lincoln
Place, are presently in court with the
landlord. He said that these buildings
are trying to have the court appoint a
7 A Administrator to manage them.
At the rally, local representatives in-
cluding Democratic State Assemblyman
Roger Green and. State Senator Major
7
investment-poor neighborhoods. In the
interim, advocates of neighborhood re-
investment may feel somewhat like
partisans who have taken to the hills
and, limited to an occasional sortie,
await their time.OT.R.
How to Lobby .
. A training conference for community
organizers on how to help plan candi-
date forums and do year-long lobbying
will be held on Wednesday, August 18,
at J.A.S.A., 40 West 68th Street. The
conference, called "Preparing the Ten-
ants Movement for the 1982 election" is
from 10 A.M. to 3:30. For information
call the Mobilization Against Displace-
ment at 636-3486.0
Owens who is running for Congress in
that area, addressed the tenants.
Assemblyman Green said that
Lincoln Place is "in a process of dis-
placement that has been taking place in
this area due to harassment of tenants
by landlords."
The majority of the tenants that
reside on the Lincoln Place Block are
Black and low income families with
many young and teenage children.
Gwen Stanley, Vice President of the 364
Tenants Association said "It is difficult
for children to learn in school with the
conditions that they live under." She
added that one tenant's new-born baby
was forced to sleep in a s.nowsuit last
winter because there was noheat.
Organizers of the rally said displace-
ment is occurring throughout the Pros-
pect Heights/Crown Heights areas.
They urged the tenants on the Lincoln
Place Block to organize and write their
local elected officials for support in
order to prevent displacement from
happening to them. 0 Debra Alston
Debra Alston is a Brooklyn tenant and
worksjor the Metropolitan
Action Institute.
CITY LIMITS/AugustSeptember 1982
F
LORA CRANE FIGURES SHE
has been fighting to save her
building, 676 St. Nicholas Avenue in
Harlem, for at least twelve years. Sitting
near 145th Street, Crane's 76-unit
building appeared headed for
abandonment during the early nineteen-
seventies; the original landlord was
foreclosed upon and the were,
in Crane's words, "letting the building
fall completely apart." Fortunately, she
and o'ther resourceful tenants decided to
fight for their building, thus entering a
bureaucratic maze that included initial
building ownership, tax foreclosure,
tenant interim leases and, most recently,
cooperative tenant ownership.
However, this decade-long struggle
exacted a toll on the building: the
boiler, windows and plumbing all
needed replacement. Though the
tenants had agreed to rent increases
previous to purchasing the building
from the City Department of Housing
Preservation and Development, the
cooperative's revised rent-roll and
scanty capital reserve fund barely
covered monthly expenses, much less
major new costs.
Fortunately, a potentially untenable
situation was again averted, thanks to
the housing department's approval of a
low-interest (3 ' percent), fifteen-year
loan. Traditionally geared towards
deals with private landlords with
standard amounts of capital reserves,
these so-called "Article 8A loans" have
recently been used for formerly city-
owned, low-income tenant coopera-
tives: five low income coops received
loan approvals totalling $394,552 and
another ten cooperatives have submit-
ted applications. With the help of the
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board,
a citywide technical assistance
organization for low income tenants,
most of the tenant cooperatives secured
commitments "in principal" for 8A
loans prior to purchasing their buildings
from the city. This comparatively new
tack by HPD's generally conservative
loan departments reflects what Joe
Loans Boost
Low Income
Co-ops
By MICHAEL HENRY POWELL
Shuldiner, Assistant Commissioner for
Evaluation and Compliance, calls, "a
priority commitment to what the legis-
lature intended when it set up the 8A
program-.namely, to give loans in
areas where banks would not go and to
low income people."
The 8A loan program has, for several
years, been a major tool in HPD's
rehabilitation strategy. Providing up to
$5,000 per unit, the loan is aimed at
costly, one-time replacements of
building-wide systems. Before applying
for an 8A loan, a landlord or tenant
cooperative must produce two bank
rejection letters, thus establishing the
non-bank ability of the buildings. In
addition to the 3 percent interest rates,
the cost of servicing the loan is further
offset by J-51 tax abatements; these
abatements, granted for major im-
provements in the building's infra-
structure, frequently result in little or no
tax payments for up to twelve years.
However, even with these advantages,
most landlords and cooperatives still
face an increase, albeit a moderate one,
in their monthly management and
operation costs.
Some housing activists have
expressed the concern that increases
necessitated by the 8A loan program
could result in hardships for low income
cooperative owners. While not dis-
counting this fear, Theresa Kilbane of
UHAB said, "As it stands now, all of
the co-ops that have received loan
approval or that are in the pipeline
8
should be able to negotiate an accept-
able monthly payment." This view is
echoed by Flora Crane, who stated,
"Yes, we've had to raise the rents by
about $13 a room but this is a fair
figure. All the tenants saw the books,
negotiated and agreed that 'a rent
increase was acceptable."
T
HESE NEGOTIATIONS ARE
frequently difficult due both to the
tenant's limited funds and the 8A loan
department's reluctance to stretch their
usual standards of bankability. How-
ever, Joseph Shuldiner believes this
process is generally a positive one.
"Look," he said, "If you've got a
program that is taking the place of a
lender you have got to be prudent. The
tenant cooperatives have much less cash
flow than we have historically allowed.
There are frequently compelling reasons
for doing the loans but that is my role to
decide-I want my staff to do what they
should, which is to behave as lenders."
While Kilbane said that "the negotia-
tions can frequently get confusing due
to different HPD departments using
conflicting figures," she also views the
loans as a learning process for HPD.
She commented, "As more loans like
these are processed, I expect that the
problems will start to disappear."
For their part, the 8A loan
departments expect to close an
increasing amount of loans to low
income cooperatives during the next
year. As Paul Feder of the 8A loan
department said, "These loans are a
definite priority. We are doing every-
thing possible to bend 'over backwards
to help the tenants." While some
tenants have not found HPD's fiscal
gymnastics that exceptional, the
cooperative leaders generally agree with
the assessment of Ida Robbins, the se-
cretary and manager of a 36-unit co-op
at 2025 Valentine Avenue in the Bronx.
Robbins said, "The increases were very
significant but manageable. I am satis-
fied they (HPD) listened to us. Most of
the apartments were paying very, very
low rents and we simply make
it the way we were."
Though the tenants, UHAB and
HPD all agree that the SA loans will not
work for every low income tenant
cooperative, they appear to believe that
the loans provide a path away from
what the late Bob Schur, a housing
consultant, called "lemon socialism", .
the much criticized process whereby the
city was accused of unloading finan-
cially and physically insolvent buildings
on a low income tenancy. While
Kilbane would prefer to see many of the
major repairs taken care of before the
city sells the buildings to the tenants,
she pointed out that, "Obviously, the
fiscal and political realities prevent this.
So, if approached cautiously, SA loans
can provide an alternative means of
funding. "0
Michael Henry Powell is a housing
organizer in East Fla/bush, Brooklyn
and writes frequently on tenant issues.
Hot and Cold
Running
Uranium?
By PmLIP DEAN TEGELER
R
IGHT N O W ~ 75 miles northwest
of TImes Square, Gulf Oil is pros-
pecting for uranium deposit that runs
through Sullivan, Orange and Rockland
counties-right in the midst of the pris-
tine watershed that feeds the New York
City reservoir system.
This imminent threat to our city's
water supply was the focus of public
hearings held in June before the Envi-
ronmental Protection Commitee of the
New York City Council. The hearings
were held to consider a resolution intro-
duced by Queens Councilman Arthur J.
Katzman in support of a statewide
uranium mining ban.
Whether they know it or not, New
York City residents are accustomed to
drinking some of the cleanest waters in
the United States. But if uranium ex-
ploration and mining is allowed to
continue, there may be irreversible
contamination of the city's water
supply. The chief danger lies in
releasing the water-soluble element
Radium-226, a decay product of
Uranium-238-the major radioactive
component of uranium ore. This water-
soluble radium has a tendency to
accumulate in human bone tissue when
ingested and can cause cancer.
Uranium exploration and mining also
releases Radon gas, which has caused
lung cancer in uranium miners and
famUies living close to the uranium mine.
Radioactive drinking water also poses
the threat of possible genetic birth
defects. At the June 25th hearing, Dr.
Walter Bernstein, a pediatrician,
testified that while there was no "safe"
level of low-level radiation, there is a
point at which radiation merely
deforms-rather than kills-human
cells, thus postponing the visible effects
of radiation for several generations.
The best known area of uranium ex-
ploration in New York is a 164-acre tract
of land in South Fallsburg in Sullivan
County,leased for mineral exploration
by Gulf Oil. This area is located along
the Neversink River, 10 miles south and
downstream from New York City's
Neversink Reservoir. At least 30 other
9
"oil and gas" leases on thousands of
acres have also been discovered in the
area of the uranium deposit. According
to testimony at the hearings by Al
Gedicks of Wisconsin's Center for
Alternative Mining Development
Policy, which confronted uranium
mining in that state, such leases are
frequently a smokescreen for
uranium mining.
Tho years ago, a similar threat to
Newark's water supply from uranium
exploration in northern New Jersey led
to local mining bans in several commu-
nities as well as protests from Newark
Mayor Kenneth Gibson. Eventually,
New Jersey passed a 7-year ban on
uranium mining and exploration. Ver-
mont has also passed a uranium mining ban.
New Yorkers are finally mobilizing to
ban uranium mining. Several upstate
towns have already passed a local
uranium mining bans. A statewide co-
alition, "New Yorkers Against Uranium
Mining," has formed to publicize the
issue and to push for a statewide
uranium mining ban. The coalition
includes, among others, Friends of the
Earth, Physicians for Social Responsi-
bility-NY, N.Y. SHAD, Brooklyn Anti-
Nuclear Group, N.Y. Audubon, Sierra
Club, Appalachian Mountain Club,
Columbia Lawyers Guild and the N. Y.
Public Interest Research Group.
Already two bills have been intro-
duced in the New York State Legislature
to ban uranium mining.
The momentum for a statewide ban is
growing rapidfy. As Anne Spanel, a co-
ordinator of the coalition, observed,
"This issue is going to hit the fan in the
fall." But strong support from New
York City community groups will be
essential to protect our drinking water.
Groups are urged to contact council-
members and legislators to pass
resolutions supporting a permanent
version of the unconditional uranium
mining ban in Senate Bill S. 8879.0
Philip Dean Tegeler works with the
Columbia Lawyers Guild and the Met-
ropolitan Action Institute.
( Sales Price
) for Clinton
Buildings Is
.. Still A Secret
T
HE MID-JULY SWELTER Mutual Housing Association, a self-des-
broke long enough to allow the cribed "cooperative of cooperatives
city's Board of Estimate to bury a hot providing security against displacement
political item before it could interfere through home ownership.'{ The associ-
with an even hotter political primary. ation contains buildings which have
The Board used a much-favored tactic already been sold (at the $250 price) as
-non-decision and delay. It didn't even well as some-known as the Conven-
work up a sweat doing so. tion Center Six because of their prox-
The nagging question of what sales irnity to that rapidly rising complex-
price the city \\;ill demand of tenants which have been told by the city that
who have been managing their tax-fore- they are not for sale, at any price.
. closed buildings came before the Early this year when the twelve build-
board's July 22nd meeting for the first ings were submitted to the city's
time since that body approved a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure
policy of sale for such buildings over (ULURP) for sale to the tenants, with-
three years ago. A $250 price tag, ac- out the critical price tags attached, the
cording to the board's 1979 decision, association went to work. The group re-
should be a general figure; the housing hearsed a careful presentation of back-
commissioner would be allowed discre- ground facts and personal testimony
tion in determining exceptions. and pursued political support.
Since that time the board has Residents who had never spoken
approved housing department plans to before a public meeting were coached
sell some 1,932 apartments to tenants, and encouraged. Being Clinton and
au for the price of $250 or less apiece. skirting Broadway's theatre district, not
. But the "discretionary" loophole has a few of the tenants had some involve-
grown big enough to accommodate ment with the theatre world. Mock
buildings in several Manhattan neigh- hearings were held to gird themselves
borhoods, inciuding Harlem, where real for the real thing, using lamps for
estate values have swelled. microphones and family and friends for
The buildings closest to a showdown spectators. Economic and demographic
on the sales price issue are 12 tenements data were compiled for review, and
. full of low income tenants' in the building management and rehabilitation
Clinton area of Manhattan's increasing- experiences documented in a slide show.
ly expensive West Side. Those ethnic- Three times-before a community
ally-diverse residents, with a median board housing committee, the board
income among them of $5,100, have itself and in front of the City Planning
formed the cutting edge of the sales Commission (which was convinced
price dispute. Their fate, it is widely enough to recommend the apartments
perceived, will determine that of other be sold to the tenants at an affordable
buildings approaching the point of sale price)-the tenants made their lengthy
to tenants, as well as of those ailing and elaborate presentation. Each one,
buildings just entering the city's alter- however, was really just a dress rehear-
native management programs. sal for their eventual date with the
Tenants last year formed the Clinton Board of Estimate.
10
Laid over from the June 24th calen-
dar, the sales item was placed on the
board's July agenda still lacking a
specific price. Nor were there any break-
throughs in the political maneuverings
to obtain one. Part of the tenants' suc-
cessful politicking was the wooing of
their local Democratic district leader,
James McManus, who heads the may- .
or's county gubernatorial campaign.
McManus, it was hoped, would get a
deal with the mayor.
Instead of a price tag, the best the
tenants got was a "sense of the Board"
resolution introduced by Manhattan
Borough President Andrew Stein to
back the $250 sales figure. Stein became
the most vocal supporter of the price
after City Council President Carol
Bellamy began muting her previously
strong support sometime after the
mayor announced his gubernatorial
candidacy, and she became his hopeful
successor. Because, under the city
charter, only the city housing
department can introduce a sales
resolution, sympathetic board members '
were limited to this symbolic vote.
Yet even this symbolic affirmation of
the right of low income New Yorkers to
live in neighborhoods with escalating
real estate prices wasn't allowed to
happen. Instead, the board, impotent in
the face of the mayor's intransigence,
approved the idea of selling the
buildings to the tenants, without saying
for how much. At the behest of the
mayor's representative, the board
dropped the price' tag until
October 28-well after the September
gubernatorial primary and presumably
far away from whatever political fallout
the eventual sales terms might raise.
The board's move came after more
than three hours of testimony in a
chamber packed with over 200 tenants
and supporters. The Clilltan residents,
joined at this parley by six Upper West
Side tenant-managed buildings in the
same fix, rolled out its prearranged
speakers list and its purple and magenta
"$250 for Clinton Too!" signs.
This fourth presentation was, as the
occasion merited, the longest and most
elaborate yet. It included, foremost,
Politics (Manhattan Council members
Ed Wallace, Carol Greitzer and an aide
to Ruth Messinger spoke; so did State
Senators Manfred Ohrenstein and
Frantz Leichter, State Assemblyman
Richard Gottfried and a representative
of Congressman Ted Weiss.); Law
("The [original board resolution]
allowed for discretion by the commis-
sioner, not this blatant discrimination. "
-Bonnie Brower, director of the Asso-
ciation of Neighborhood Housing
Developers); Religion (Why don't you
sit down with Billy Graham and make a
decision for Christ's sake!"-Father
Thomas Farrelly of Sacred Heart
Church); Economics ("The average
income of a tenant in a city-owned
building is $6,865."-Ron Shiffman,
Pratt Institute.) Most notably, the
tenants provided a steady stream of
human survival and success stories,
from mothers speaking with their babies
slung over their shoulders, part-time
actors describing their victory over the
The corner oj 40th Street and Ninth Avenue.
plague of burglaries that had followed
them from apartment to apartment,
and life-long Italian residents of an area
once known as Hell's Kitchen, who told
of heatless winters before they took
over building mana.gement themselves.
This time around, the testimony had
a rougher edge. Frustration was more
visible in the words of the tenants than
it had been -two months before in the
same chamber as they told their story to
the planning commission. Several
shouted vehemently, and one slapped a
fallen piece of corroded roof facade in
front of the discomforted board mem-
bers. His building needed money for
repairs, he shouted, not for mortgages.
At the close of the hearing, the
mayor's representative cooly an-
nounced that "The proper time to
consider a sales price is when there is a
sales resolution before us," and the
orderliness that had marked even the
earlier foot-stomping and cheering dis-
appeared. A chant of "We want Koch"
dissolved into a general chaos of
hooting and yelling. After a few min-
utes, . board members left the chamber.
11
Jesse Masyr, Borough President
Stein's representative, eventually carne
out onto the floor to remonstrate with
the crowd. Since there wasn't any sup-
port for the "sense of the Board"
resolution from his peers, Masyr said, it
would be withdrawn but reintroduced at
a later date with a sales
disposition from the housing depart-
ment. Could he assure them the sales
resolution would come soon? No.
Before the primary? No promises.
, Twenty minutes later, the board
reentered and, with short shrift, agreed
with the mayor's representative's re-
quest to table Stein's resolution until the
housing department produced a sales
price-within four months' time.
Joe Restuccia, head of the Clinton
association, who had shepherded
tenants, community and political sup-
porters alike through four hearings,
stood off stage and shouted that the city
sales unit had told him it could have
sales dispositions within three weeks.
Why should they wait four months?
There was no response as the board
went on to other business.OT.R.
The Big Payoff
on Nintli Avenue
S
OME 40 FAMILIES, MANY OF
whom have lived and worked for
decades in the bustling, colorful neigh-
borhood of sidewalk fruit stands and
meat markets a stone's throw from the
city's Port Authority, stand to lose their
homes and businesses because the city,
in hot pursuit of fugitive real estate
taxes, at the eleventh hour has agreed to
permit tangled real estate interests to
reclaim a property in the Clinton
district.
The corner property in question-
541-47 Ninth Avenue and 401-5 West
. 40th Street-was owned for many years
by Sam's Ninth Avenue Meat Market
but became city-owned in May, 1978,
after the owner, who died more than a
de,cade ago, ran up almost one-half mil-
lion dollars in unpaid real estate taxes.
Italian bakery at 40th Street and Ninth Avenue.
"From the time we heard about the
market's bankruptcy in 1977 we were
interested in saving this property, and as
soon as the city took the property [for
nonpayment of taxes], we-all of us on
the block-started putting in applica-
tions to keep it, but no one ever told us,
you have to put down a fee-$I00-to
do this," said Alice Daddi of the Casa
Italian Bakery at 545 Ninth Avenue,
one of the commercial tenants on the
tax-foreclosed property. "We were told
by the city that we would be the first to
be notified about getting the property
back. But, of course, we never did."
John D. LaGreco, a real estate attor-
ney acting on behalf of the estate's
trustee, filed to redeem the property
four years after the city's seizure.
Because of the late date, his request
became subject to approval by the city's
Acquisition and Disposition Commit-
tee, made up of representatives from the
offices of the mayor, comptroller, and
city council president.
On January, 1982, the Division of
Real Properties had recommended to
the Acquisition and Disposition Com-
mittee that the redemption be blocked
because the property is too close to the
Convention Center now under con-
struction. But then, after the applica-
tion was laid over on three successive
occasions by this committee, the Board
of May 27, 1982, voted to
, .
hold it' as an investment or sell it."
La Greco also refused to name the
principals holding the mortgages,
asserting, "That's not relevant to
anything you need to know." Accord-
ing to public records, however, those
listed as mortgage holders are Leona M.
Gibbs, Albert Sobel, and Joseph Gala-
brese. Sobel also served as accountant
for the bankrupt Sam's Meat Market
and in this capacity was charged with
handling the Internal Revenue Service's
C!i claim to taxes owned in the amount of
-.:
i:; $2,644,150. It was through Sobel's
12 interest in the property that LaGreco
first attempted to redeem it in 1979.
approve it. having abandoned the'
earlier concern regarding the property's
proximity to the Convention Center.
Explaining the city's rationale for ap-
proving this redemption application,
David Singer, who represents HPD in
an advisory role on the Acquisitions and
Dispositions Committee, said, "Gen-
erally, we don't like to release property
in Manhattan, but we couldn't fmd any
compelling reason not to; " Asked
about the Convention Center stipula- '
tion, Singer added, "It's hard to tell
what [the area of] the Convention
Center is. If it [the property] were a
block west-Tenth Avenue, not Ninth
Avenue-, then this would be a prob-
lem, but we felt that this really was not
in the Convention Center area."
Just who LaGreco is and who he
represents is vague, but he has been suc-
cessful in using the trustee for the
estate's vague interests in the property
as his legal entree. Before acquiring title
to this trustee's interest for $100 in
April, 1980, LaGreco attempted to get
hold of these buildings in 1979 but
failed to ante up the $477,000' in back
taxes.
Protesting he has no "interest what-
soever" i,n the Ninth Avenue property,
LaGreco said, "I only represent the
people who own the mortgages, and
they just want to get our money back. I
am just redeeming the property to
12
In a reciprocal eleventh-hour effort,
local Community Board 4 communi-
cated in a special resolutiop. and a letter
to the city dated July 7 its concern about
the propriety of the impending redemp-
tion approval. '
According to Tim Taylor, chairman
of the board's hpusing . committee,
Assistant Corporation Counsel Hadley
Gold at a special meeting with board
and community representatives said
were no technical . grounds for
reversing the Board of Estimate's May
27 decision, stressing that when the city
takes title to property it is not required
to seek disclosure of the redeemer's
financial status or future interest in the
property.
The final date set by the city for
paying the lump sum of over $500,000
in taxes and penalties is August 24. If
this deadline is not met, LaGreco and
his clients will have forfeited their
claims to the -property, according to the
city's most recent quixotic ruling.
"It's a shame the city doesn't accept
the obvious possibility of specUlation as
good reason for denying this applica-
tion," said one insider who requested
anonymity. "Corp. counsel should
never have allowed this. But there is too
much pressure down here from the
mayor's and the comptroller's offices
always looking for the bucks. It's a lot
at stake here-over $500,000, but it's
also people's lives and homes."OS.B.
F
ROM THE SECOND FLOOR OF
City Hall, Jersey City's Mayor and
City Council members can see the
Montgomery Gateway redevelopment
project emerging in the southwest
comer of Downtown Jersey City. The
result of a $7 million federal Urban
Development Action Grant funded by
HUD in 1978, Montgomery Gateway
has not had an easy history.
Its fIrst crisis was the massive
relocation of over 400 households to
make way for low income Section 8 sub-
sidized rehabs as the City and its devel-
opers rejected opportunities to stagger
the development. Next came the fIght of
the displaced residents for adequate re-
location benefIts, which the multiple
interpretations of the federal Uniform
Relocation Act fostered. This was fol-
lowed by the issue of giving displaced
families a priority right to return to the
rehabilitated Gateway apartments and
the necessary preliminary step of track-
ing the displacees so that they could be
returned to the neighborhood. Subse-
quently, the debate was tenant selection
criteria and procedures. Only threats of
administrative complaints to the federal
Department of Housing and Urban
Development followed by a possible liti-
gation compelled the City to give on
each instance. And ultimately, the Gate-
way plan remains incomplete, marked
by a striking lack of political will on the
part of local offtcials.
A
s OF JUNE, 1981, THERE WAS
a different city administration,
one headed by an anti-machine Demo-
crat who had endorsed Ronald Reagan
for President, one who called the
Reagan budget cuts in welfare "the
greatest thing in the world" because
Jersey City's poor would "just have to
be forced out of this area and pl,ssibly
go back to where they came from."
Initiating his rule with a barrage of
supply-side municipal policies,
including vacancy decontrol of apart-
ment rents, Jersey City's new mayor,
31-year-old Gerald McCann, gave no
hint of relenting on Montgomery Gate-
way. And when it came to the fInal,
long delayed, phase of the Montgomery
Gateway residential development, the
construction of approximately 140
Section 8 apartments, many to meet the
unmet need of a signifIcant proportion
of the Gateway displacees for four-and
The Battle
of Jersey City's
Redevelopment
Project
By RICK COHEN
Photos by Ernst Louis
JERSEY eI'l'Y 0
fIve -bedroom apartments, municipal
obstacles turned into outright opposi-
tion.
Jersey City's original 1978
Montgomery Gateway proposal called
for approximately 70 units of new
Section 8 subsidized housing to be
sponsored by the Public Housing
Authority (PHA) in addition to other
scattered site Section 8 substantial
rehab and market rate for-sale
housing. The public housing site was
next to a gentrifying brownstone dis-
trict, Van Vorst Park, where the City
was luring upper income households
back to the Victorian-era neighbor-
hoods of Downtown Jersey City with
low interest rehabilitation loans. Letters
from ,ersey City offtcials at that time to
HUD declared the construction of new
Section 8 apartments "integral" to the
overall UDAG plan.
In September of 1978, the Jersey City
PHA got the go-ahead to build 66
Section 8 units in the Montgomery
Gateway UDAG area and in 1979,
HUD approved 73 more units. In Feb-
ruary, 1981, HUD offtcially raised the
number of units to 141.
The importance of these 141 Section 8
13
apartments was not their garden apart-
ment and townhouse design to comple-
ment the historic brownstone milieu of
nearby Downtown Jersey City historic
districts. In and of themselves they
would not nearly meet the need for low
income housing in the City: waiting lists
of eligible low income families stood at
1,129 families for PHA apartments and
5,400 for privately assisted Section 8
and Section 236 developments.
The Montgomery Gateway public
housing units would do what the other
Gateway units could not-provide
apartments for large families. The two
private Section 8 developers of the
Montgomery Gateway substantial re-
habilitation projects provided only a
handful of three-bedroom apartments
and only six four-bedroom units. When
the displacees, organized as the
Montgomery Gateway Residents Com-
mittee (MGRC), negotiated with City
offtcials for a guaranteed right to
return, they discovered that unless more
large family apartments were built, their
return would be unenforceable.
The PHA development, slated to
contain 44 two-bedroom, 65 three-
bedroom, 22 four-bedroom, and 12 fIve
CITY LlMITS/AugustSeptember 1982
Doorway in Downtown Jersey City.
bedroom apartments, represented a
victory for large families.
Even though normally everything is
supposed to be ready to "go" as soon as
a UDAG application is approved by
HUD, the Montgomery Gateway PHA
units languished on the drawing boards
for years, lacking the necessary
rezoning of a sliver of land from
commercial to residential. The City
Planning Department finally introduced
the necessary zoning amendment on
June 11, 1981. But consideration of the
amendment was postponed until July,
1981, at which time the opposition of
\ ... Mayor McCann's administl'ation
caused the 141-unit PHA development
to start its shaky slide into protracted
crisis.
Advocates of the project watched in
amazement as at the July 9th zoning
hearing, the director of the City
Planning Department requested that the
zoning amendment be tabled once again
to give the new municipal administra-
tion of Mayor McCann the opportunity
to reevaluate the proposal. Planning
Director Jerry Killeen said that the new
director of the City's Department of
Housing and Economic Development,
Mark Munley, would complete the re-
evaluation "probably ... within two
weeks." By the winter of 1981, the
McCann Administration had still not
responded with its decision, and the
Mayor, Munley, and other key officials
studiously avoided meeting with the
Gateway Committee to discuss the
matter.
The City Administration's opposition
to the public housing was never fully
explained at the outset. Off the record,
City officials offered numerous hints:
Downtown Jersey City had too much
CITY LlMITS/AugustSeptember 1982
subsidized low income housing; the City
had more than its share of low income
housing and low income people; the
McCann administration wanted not
more low income people, but new
residents who would "pay their own
way"; Gateway would harm the
potential development of nearby
historic brownstoning districts. And
fmally, lurking these reasons
was the knowledge that . if the City
delayed long enough, the Reagan Ad-
ministration would try to recapture the
units as part of its housing cutbacks,
thereby alleviating the City of having to
take responsibility for killing the
development.
B
y JANUARY, 1982, HUD HAD
feillen into the City's trap and
threatened to recapture the $8.5 million
funding reservation if the Housing
Authority did not submit its final
proposals in thirty days. The Jersey City
Authority responded by askihg the
HUD area office manager to interpret
various unclear provisions of the federal
Omnibus Reconciliation Act of . 1981
affecting the economics of public hous-
ing (issues which the acting area man-
ager could not address on his own
unless he were promoted several levels
higher in the HUD bureaucracy) but
never directly asked for an extension of
the recapture deadline. (Note: at a
February zoning hearing, the PHA
director, Bob Rigby, defended this
omission with the comment, "the tone
of my letter will suffice."). Fearing the
pr<?ject was soon to be lost, the Gateway
Coalition took the initiative, intervening
with HUD's central office and with
Congressional committees to block the
recapture.
T.he Gateway coalition then pressed
to put the rezoning amendment back on
the agenda of the Jersey City Planning
Commission. Lobbying with the Com-
mission and the City Council, the
Committee rescued the amendment
from its eight month tabling and
brought more than 200 supporters to
. speak before a March 16th hearing.
Despite much grumbling that the
rezoning would not necessarily mean
the construction of low income housing,
the Commission passed the amendment
unanimously, over the virulent oppo-
sition of a segment of Van Vorst Park
brownstoners.
14
Still, the stall far from over.
Zoning amendments in Jersey City
require the approval of the City
Council, but this one had trouble
reaching the Council's docket. After
numerous delays, the City's Corpora-
tion Counsel and the attorney for the
Planning Board determined that there
had been insufficient notice for the
March 16th Planning Commission
hearing, blaming staff planners for the
miscue. Another hearing was then held
on May 17th, the Gateway coalition
trotted out dozens of supporters, and
the Planning Commission once gain
gave the rezoning a unanimous, though
lukewarm endorsement. Fifteen days
shQrt of one year of the first tabling of
the rezoning amendment, the City'
Council passed the ordinance, and
made surprisingly explicit the direct link
of the rezoning to the new units of
public housing within the Montgomery
Street redevelopment area. The Council
also urged the McCann Administration
to move full speed ahead with construc-
tion.
During this time, HUD had not
moved on recapture. The zoning had
been passed. The responsibility for
blocking the PHA units then shifted to
the Housing Authority itself. The PHA
director then raised several issues
related to the effects of Reagan cut-
backs on the future of low income hous-
\
ing-inadequate operating subsidies,
inadequate construction fmancing, and
the elimination of economic mix of
tenants-as reasons to cancel the hous-
ing. This was solved by the willingness
of one of the private Section 8 devel-
opers to join the PHA as a partner
whose equity contribution and syndica-
tion proceeds would alleviate most of
the financial weaknesses of the develop-
ment.
But as the PHA's financial questions
receded, another obstacle emerged-
this time in' the shape of a shopping
center. The Mayor, the Director . of
Housing and Economic Development,
and the City's chief financial officer
jumped at the idea of tax paying
properties instead of tax-exempt subsi-
dized housing on the Montgomery
Gateway site. For several months, City
officials hinted at the idea of "K-Mart-
type" department store until in May,
1982, a City Councilman finally blurted
out that K-Mart itself was interested.
T
HE CITY PRESENTED THE
Gateway residents and displacees
with a draconian choice-the K-Mart
and its jobs or the PHA large family
housing. There was no guarantee,
however, that the jobs would actually
go to Gateway residents and displacees.
There were other problems: although
the K-Mart would also include a much
needed supermarket for Downtown
Jersey City, the City gave little thought
to the vehicular traffic which the shop-
ping center would generate on local
streets, particularly Montgomery and
Grand and its impact on the Gateway
residential housing already underway.
The City also contended that the depart-
ment store would , benefit rather than
compete with the small discount
merchants, predpminantly minority, in
Downtown's Newark Avenue shopping
strip.
On its own the Gateway coalition dis-
covered that K-Mart was less than fully
committed to the site. Rather, a shop-
ping center developer who builds
K-Marts had expressed some interest,
but K-Mart's own studies were incon-
clusive about the retail demand for a.
second Jersey City K-Mart. Still, the
Mayor could not drop such an attractive
alternative to subsidized housing (he
now claims "several developers" have
expressed interest in the site) and
ordered his subordinates to push for
alternative sites for the PHA housing
which would at least disperse the 141
units' and keep them out of Downtown
and away from the brownstone historic
districts.
His Housing and Economic Develop-
ment director first proposed moving the
PHA development to the Lafayette
neighborhood, a black low income
The Cost of Redevelopment
Jersey City'S original UDAG application for the Montgome.rY Gateway
development called for the displacement of 225 households from substandard
buildings slated for demolition or substantial rehabilitation. But a mid-1979
survey, after the UDAG was approved, raised the displacement total to 360
families and 83 individuals. A 1981 report from JCRA>s Relocation Division
counted 377 families displaced from Montgomery Gateway.
Another 65 residentiaJ households ' were pushed out by redevelopment
activities on the area designated for Ferris High School's recreation area which is
now being considered as an alternative for the PHA Section 8 units. Including a
block of homes razed to make ,way for convenience shopping, the total
Montgomery Gateway UDAG displacement figure stands at 474 families. Still,
these "official" displacement figures do not include the scores of residents who
were undoubtedly displaced in anticipation of Gateway by the previous owners
of the buildings, using techniques ranging from run-of-the-mill harrassment to
life-threatening arson.
. As expected, the original Gateway displacees were 99 percent minority: 92
percent Hispanic, 7 percent black. They faced average rent increases of 70
percent in their relocation apartments. One survey conducted by a Puerto Rican
organization found that 88.5 percent of 157 households asked wanted to return
to the neighborhood; the Montgomery Gateway Residents Committee's own
survey of 87 displaced families found that 73 percent wanted to return. ,A third
of the families were found to need large apartments, four and five bedroom
units.
As of June, 1982, the City admitted to having spent more than $3,200,000 on
residential and commercial relocation due to Montgomery Gateway as required
under the Uniform Relocation Act. During the fourteen months it took to
complete the relocation of the first 370 displacees, .onJy 25 percent were able to
find alternative housing in Downtown Jersey City; 46 percent settled elsewhere
in JerseY City; and 20 percent left Jersey City altogether.OR.C.
community which already had an over-
concentration of low income housing
compared to the gentrifying potential of
Downtown.
Then the Mayor hinted at transfer-
ring a significant portion of the PHA
units to Dwight Street, another black
neighborhood in the Greensville
section, to replace a conventional public
housing development which the Mayor
and his staff mistakenly thought was
dead.
But after
Committee would tolerate no further
destruction of its neighborhood, the
City then proposed a much more attrac-
tive choice, the imaginary K-Mart dev-
elopment would be constructed on the
original public housing site, and the
. ,,-
PHA housmg moved to three other
blocks within the Montgomery Gateway
redevelopment area: the Ferris high
school recreation area; a local baseball
field next to the Vo-Tech School; and
the block across from St. Bridget's
Church which had been zoned for con-
venience commercial uses.
The three alternatives, later reduced
to two due to private control of the
parcel across from St. Bridget's, repre-
sented an eleventh hour alternative. At
inidnight, the Residents Committee and
the City would face the loss of the PHA
units not because of HUD recapture,
but the pending August 1st expiration
of the Financing Adjustment Factor
(F AF)-a federal regulatory provision
-which lowers the otherwise excessive
interest rate on the construction for the
PHA and its private developer partner.
OrgC1!1izing
The; Montgomery Gateway Residents Committee never expected to still exist
four years after the approval of the Gateway project. It grew out of a concern
about the massive, thoughtless displacement of families promulgated by the
UDAG implementing agency, the Jersey City Redevelopment Agency (JCRA).
With the help of Stephen St. Hilare, a Hudson County Legal Services
attorney, Montgomery Street residents in the spring of 1979 confronted JCRA
with demands for phased, or staggered, development in order to minimize
displacement. The city protested but finally . offered a counterproposal,
claiming it would go along with phasing only if the Gateway completion date
were extended from 1981 to 1985 and both HUD and the New Jersey Housing
Finance Agency agreed to fmance additional construction costs. No agreement
was possible, but Montgomery Gateway was now front-page news.
The Committee then took on the issue of returning Gateway displacees to the
newly rehabilitated apartments. An administrative complaint to HUD fIled in
September, 1979, decried the City's lack of a marketing plan to ensure that all
Section 8 eligible families return to the development. Rather than negotiate in
good faith, the JCRA initiated massive eviction actions against the remaining
tenants.
The Residents' Committee then allied with the Hudson County Urban
League, Operation PUSH, the NAACP, and Puertorriquenos Asociados for
Community Organization (p ACO), and other community and civil rights
organizations to protect the remaining households on site and to ensure
adequate relocation benefits for those who left. The Committee then compelled
the City, due to deficiencies in its federal Community Development program
implementation, to initiate a citywide system of tracking displacees as part of a
comprehensive federally-funded Anti-Displacement Strategy.
Subsequently, the Committee helped generate tenant selection criteria for the
Gateway units, reducing subjectivity and guaranteeing fair administration
review. It also initiated and supervised the contacting of Gateway displacees to
fill out applications for the newly available Gateway units and monitored the
developers' tenant interviewing and screening at the Committee's headquarters
at St. Bridget's Convent (attracting 225 of 307 contacted families to apply for the
Gateway apartments), as well as watchdogging developers' home visits to
displacees' apartments to deter unfair r ~ p o r t s . DR.C.
CITY LlMtTSJAugustSeptember 1982
16
Although Congress and HUD were
working on an extension of the F AP
deadline to September 30th, President
Reagan could not be counted on to
move quickly enough on the next
housing appropriations bill to save the
FAP. In other words, if construction
were not already underway by August
1st, the interest rate subsidy for the
Montgomery Gateway PHA apart-
ments might end, potentially killing the
141 PHA units once and for all.
T
HE GATEWAY COALITION
listed numerous problems with the
proposed alternative sites, pointing out
that HUD's site selection criteria would
be difficult to pass. The Committee also
raised concerns about the planning and
political feasibility of the alternative
sites: taking the school's and the com-
munity's designated recreation eas;
truck traffic from a New Jersey Turn-
pike exit endangering the children of the
large families; potential opposition
from the Montgomery Gateway home-
owners across from the ball field who
never expected public housing tenants
as neighbors; the Turnpike as a visual
and symbolic divider between the bulk
of the PHA development and the rest of
the Gateway community; and, notably,
the increased construction costs due to
building the units on two sites instead of
on one large parcel.
The developers and the City promised
they would' 'walk the changes through"
to get HUD's immediate endorsements,
clear up all problems of site control and
recreation, and still begin construction
by the August 1st FAP deadline. On the
last day of June,the Gateway Coalition
was compelled to take a difficult stand.
It decided to neither endorse nor reject
the alternative sites. If HUD accepted
them and the developers could start
work in time, a semblance of the
original 141-unit development would be
salvaged. If HUD rejected the alter-
native, the Gateway coalition could
then initiate litigation to force the McCann
Administration, the Jersey City PHA,
and HUD to fulfill their joint housing
commitment on the original site.
At the same time, to ensure that the
City could not misrepresent the coali-
tion's non-rejection as endorsement
(which the City immediately tried to
do), the coalition took steps to fIle its
second administrative complaint to
The
Montgomery
Gateway
Plan
One of the early round of Urban
Development Action Grant applica-
tions, when kuD operated the
UDAG program like "Let's Make A
Deal", the Montgomery Gateway
Project was a $7 , O O O ~ O O O grant
designed to leverage over
$25,000,000 in local and private
sector resources. Over 800 dwelling '
units would be created, two -thirds to
be rent - subsidized Section 8, the
others to be sold with federal Section
235 interest-rate subsidies and
market rate for-sale housing.
The project was named Gateway
for its location along one of Jersey
City's few east-west corridors, con-
necting the Central Business District
and the Jersey City Medical Center
with Downtown Jersey City'S City
Hall, its three historic districts, and
the Hudson River waterfront (across
from Lower Manhattan). Abutting
the Montgomery Gateway develop-
ment is Van Vorst Park, one of the
City's top brownstoning areas, and
nearby are other "hot" Bowntown
real estate markets undergoing
rampant gentrification such as
Hamilton Park, Paulus Hook,
Exchange Place, and Harsimus Cove.
The City's planners envisioned the
rehabilitation of the Montgomery
Street corridor tenements as
removing a blighting influence
affecting the marketability of
marginal historic brownstoning
districts and Jersey City's prime
piece of real estate, the Northern
waterfront, now slated for a luxury
residential and commercial develop-
ment called "Harbourside. "
As of July, 1982, the Montgomery
Gateway project was completing 391
units of Section 8 substantial rehab
apartments. Nearly two hundred
units of market rate for-sale housing
west of the New Jersey Turnpike
spur to the Holland Tunnel are
underway or have been completed.
OR.C.
"
Jersey City's City Hall.
flUD on the PHA units. The first com-
plaint, submitted back in December,
1981, had caused the city much grief. It
temporarily blocked Jersey City's
"Homeowner Rebates" UDAG appli-
cation, which would have provided
homeowners 20 percent rebates on the
costs of home rehabilitation, without
any protection for tenants against cost
passalongs and subsequent rent
increases and displacement. The City
charged HUD with unfair treatment
when it rejected the rebate UDAG
application, but the Gateway coalition
held firm that the City's failure to
address the needs of larger families
displaced by a 1978 UDAG had to be
addressed before its plan to subsidize
homeowners could be considered. HUD
also stood firm that the City should not
initiate a new residential UDAG until
the problems of the Montgomery
Gateway UDAG, contractually in
default because of the failure lo build
the PHA Section 8 housing, were
rectified.
The latest administrative complaint
to HUD takes the City to task for its
failure to provide replacement housing
17
for large family displacees (violating Ti-
tle VIII of the Civil Rights Act) and for
breaking its own UDAG contract to
construct the Section 8 PHA housing on
the original site. The purpose of the
complaint is to prevent the City from
doing anything with the original public
housing site for its commercial develop-
ment plans before the status of the alter-
native sites have been resolved by HUD.
The key remedies asked by the coalition
are to freeze the zoning of the original
PHA site for residential uses and block
the City from entering into real estate
contracts there. Most importantly, it
would prevent amendments to the
Montgomery Gateway UDAG and sub-
mission of any new UDAGs to accom-
. modate the commercial development
until all 141 PHA units were approved
and underway.
T
HERE REMAINS NO GUARAN-
tee, even with all the organizing
and negotiating, that the Jersey City
Jarge family public housing apartments
will ever be constructed. The Reagan
Administration could easily shut off the
Section 8 pipeline and negate the
Gateway struggle. The developers'
confident statements about obtaining
HUD approvals, securing financing,
and starting construction could be no
more than bravado. And the wily
City Ball could possibly discover a
wholly. new method of stalling, throw-
ing the PHA development into the no-
win situation of prolonged federal liti-
gation.
City officials and other opponents
have assumed that the resilience of the
Gateway Residents Coalition would dis-
solve, their commitment waning as frus-
trations multiplied. As individuals
moved into their own apartments in the
development, it was expected that their
vigilance on behalf of building the
public housing would succumb to an "I
got mine" attitude. So far, the politi-
cians and administrators' looking up
Montgomery Street from the second
floor of City Hall must be sorely
disappointed. 0
Rick Cohen is a planner who has
worked along with the Montgomery
Gateway Residents Committee through-
out its struggles.
Tenants oj "One-Sixty-One ': an East 23rd Street SRO.
AN
EASTSIDE
S.R.O.
FIGHTS
TO
HANG
ON
By HANK PERLIN
Photos by Keith Boro
18
Despite growing efforts to save
single-room-occupancy hotels from
luxury conversions and protect tenants
from harassment and illegal evictions,
landlords are continuing, seemingly
unabated, to force tenants from their
h o m e ~ with an apparent total disregard
of the law.
One recent example is an East 23rd
Street SRO, where tenants have charged
their landlord with mUltiple offenses
including: breaking down doors,
threats, assaults, and withholding most
basic services.
Five of the rooms in the hotel, at 161
E. 23rd St. are four-by-seven foot
broom closets that have no heat,
windows or ventilation. There is only
one "working bathroom" in the 38
room hotel which has no door or light
and a broken window, according to
tenant organizer Mimi Rosenberg of the
East Side SRO Legal Services Project.
George Rolnick and his son Stanley,
who have owned the hotel for approxi-
mately 30 years, began to try to empty
the building approximately six months
ago, according to the tenants, some of
wl:tom have lived in the. building for up
to 15 years and pay $35 to $75 a week
for their rooms. Most of the 22 remain-
ing tenants are elderly or disabled,
although several work and go to school.
In May, two Supreme Court orders
were issued in a tenant initiated action
ordering the Rolnicks to stop harassing
or illegally evicting tenants, which had
no effect on the owners' behavior,
according to Rosenberg. A motion to
hold the Rolnicks in contempt is still
pending. On June 17, in an action
brought by the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development, Civil
Court Judge Harriet George appointed
a temporary administrator to take over
operation of the building and begin
making repairs and restoring services.
Six policemen had to accompany the
administrator into the building and
force the elder Rolnick to leave. The
Rolnicks are now back in court asking
that the administrator be removed and
that control of the building be returned
to them.
According to Rosenberg, the Rol-
nicks have told her and others that they
intend to demolish the building and put
up a luxury high rise at this desirable
midtown location, or sell the empty
building to another developer. "He's
told us on the phone that he would burn
the building down to empty it," said
Rosenberg. "He has not been at all
inhibited in telling us his plans."
The Rolnicks want to sell building
because it is run-down, in need of major
reconstruction and located' on a
valuable piece of propehy, said their
attorney, Benjamin Seigel, who denied
that any tenants were harassed, threat-
ened or illegally evicted. Maintenance
and services have been inadequate
because the George Rolnick
is old and infirm and no longer capable
of properly running the hotel.
If control of the b,uilding is returned
to the Rolnicks, Siegel said, the younger
Rolnick will assume the day-to-day
operation of the building, make tem-
porary repairs and initiate legal eviction
proceedings so the building can be sold
when empty. "They don't want to run
this hotel any more. They want to shut
down the place. The building is a
valuable piece of property," Seigel said.
"It's come to a point in the United
States of America where the word profit
is a dirty word. God forbid you should
say you want to make a profit."
According to court testimony,
George Rolnick and building manager
Jerry Rosado have banged on and
kicked in tenants' doors, telling them
that they must move. One of the tenants
living in a broom closet, Robin Mason,
was physically forced from her room
one morning with only one dollar in her
pocket and the clothes on her back, she
and other tenants told the court. Her
door was then nailed shut. The next day
she was found by tenant organizers in
the Bushwick shelter for the homeless in
Brooklyn.
Another tenant, Sandra Russell, said
she was threatened by Rosado, who was
frequently seen carrying a knife. Shortly
afterwards, her neighbor said he was
offered $100 by Rolnick to throw her
out the window or knock her down the
stairs, according to court affidavits.
Other tenants said they were asked l1y
Rolnick if they knew where he could
find an arsonist. There have been two
fires in the building, according to
Rosenberg, both of which the Fire
Department termed suspicious.
19
Since the Manhattan Bowery Project
was appointed as the building's admin-
istrator, the atmosphere there has
improved and repair work has started.
Light fixtures and bathrooms have been
repaired, the staircase has been
temporarily shored up, hot water
restored, halls painted, locks reinstalled
and the building exterminated,
Although the administrator has not
been empowered to rent out any of the
16 vacant rooms in the building, HPD
has set aside $50,000 to repair the stair-
case which is reportedly on the verge of
collapse. Two commercial properties on
the street level of the building produce
$4,000 rental income a month, in
addition to the rent from the tenants
who still live there.
"Clearly it's a struggle to keep the
building going," said Rosenberg. "But
there is a very positive environment
being created and real sensitivity and
people don't have to worry about being
evicted or their doors kicked in. If it had
not been for the appointment of the
administrator, I think there would have
'been a real tragedy." 0
By Invitation Only
Shopping

In,
HUD's
Bargain
Basement
By SUSAN BALDWIN
I
N THE AFTERMATH OF A CONTROVERSIAL
sweetheart deal that suddenly went sour this spring, 203
low and moderate income tenant families in HUD-fore-
closed, federally subsidized multi-family housing in the
Corona section o{ Queens now look to an uncertain future.
Touted initially behind closed doors at HUD as an exper-
iment and model for future quick disposal of the federal
government's enormous stockpile of unwanted housing, the .
proposed negotiated sale for $10.9 million of a total of 1,146
apartments from the 203 low income units in Sherwood
Village in Queens to lUXury units in other of the projects
located in Westchester, New Jersey, and Conne<;ticut was to
be with the first American Housing
Preservation Corporation of Suffern, New York, a real
estate entity created expressly for this transaction.
According to findings released July 19 in a detailed 95-page
audit from the government-mandated investigation by
HUD's inspector general, the sale, had it not been halted,
could have res\,llted( in a $4 million profit alone from the
cooperative conversion sale of two projects, in Newark and
Bridgeport.
The proposed sale to the First American came to light in
mid-May when a competing real estate investor-Krupps
Brothers of Boston-attemped to submit a bid on the
Newark property and was told that it had already been sold
even though the conventional public bidding announcement
had not been circulated.
At the same time on the New York front, Congressman
Benjamin Rosenthal, Democrat-Liberal of Queens, whose
local office has been working with the Sherwood tenants for
over three years, had been petitioning the New York area
HUD office with no success to make long overdue repairs to
these deteriorating properties. When he ' heard in
Washington of the alleged irregularities surrounding the
proposed sale of these properties, including the involvement
of a husband and wife team prominent in the Reagan
campaign, he called for the inspector general's investigation
into the matter.
"HUD's change in pqlicy is totally outrageous," said the
legislator. "It seems that every advantage is being given to
developers to buy HUD properties for a song. This is a
tremendous loss of revenue to the government, and it
CITY LIMITS/August.Septemb8r 1982 20
Congressm
an Benjamin 8. R
. osenthol
prevents tenant groups and local goverments
from exercising their options to purchase the buildings."
Within the next few weeks their housing will be sold along
with six other New York area projects owned by the Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development to the highest
bidder unless this sale is called off indefinitely because of
possible still to be documented irregularities.
Congressman Rosenthal's inquiry led a week later to a
request by Senator William O. Proxmire, Democrat of Wis-
consin, to include the General Accounting Office (GAO) in
the investigation of HUD's property disposition program,
focusing, in particular, on this policy of negotiated sales as
opposed to competitive bidding.
The President's Friends
Headed by Sheldon S. Goldstein, a major real estate de-
veloper and head of the Lynmark Group, also based in
Suffern, First American lists as a director Edward L.
Weidenfeld, counsel for President Reagan's 1980 campaign
committee, and as a member and 20 percent shareholder,
Sheila Rabb Weidenfeld, press secretary to former First
Lady Betty Ford. Sheila Weidenfeld also served as a
member of Reagan's transition committee advising the new
administration on preservation of historic property. She is
with arranging the sales package with HUD.
i A member of the Wasington, D.C., firm of McKenna,
Conner and Cuneo, Weidenfeld represented First AtDerican
as a lawyer in the negotiations for the unprecedented, low-
priced $10.9 million sales tag for the seven properties that
were to provide a first mortgage at 11.5 per cent and a
second one at 2.5 percent.
The sale was approved earlier this year by then Assistant
Secretary Philip D. Winn, who left this post to run unsuc-
cessfully as the Republican gubernatorial candidate in
Colorado. His replacement, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Housing Philip Abrams recently defended the proposed sale
at a public hearing, stressing that it provided an innovative
way to dispose of undesirable, hard-to-sell properties by
packaging them with more attractive luxury parcels.
At no time, however, did Winn or Abrams or any other
HUD official explain publicly why this form of Sale was
preferrable to the conventional public auction of foreclosed
properties. In addition, there was no explanation forth-
f..
coming from Washington as to why other methods of dis-
posing of the property-sale to tenants as low-cost
cooperatives, conveyance to municipalities or communities
for public use-were not offered.
In order to sell by negotiated sale this package of seven
projects, three of which are subsidized, the secretary of
HUD must grant a waiver for the unsubsidized ones. But
according to the inspector general's report, no waiver was
even sought.
Calling the proposed sales a "risky, ill-considered
venture," Inspector General Charles L. Dempsey said in his
lengthy audit of First American's proposal that the negotia-
tions for it were conducted without considering the "tax
advantages, possible syndication proceeds, profits from
condominium conversions and advantageous sales terms."
Asserting that the sale was not in HUD's best interest, in-
volved too little cash payment and inadequate overall
fmancing, the report revealed that First American would
stand to profit by at least 18 per cent after taxes by conser-
vative estimates and more likely by 35.5 percent following
moderate standards.
The inspector general also questioned the low figure of
$1.2 million for repairs on the package's troubled
property-in particular, Sherwood Village-and the pro-
posed low cash outlay of only $250,000 for this project,
which includes three buildings, two of which share the same
boiler.
Although the report did not mention it, Arco Manage-
ment Corporation, a subsidiary of Lynmark that is headed
by Jeffrey Goldstein, Sheldon Goldstein's son, currently
manages Sherwood Village and at least one other project in
the package. When asked to explain Arco's relationship to
First American, Jeffrey Goldstein refused to comment and
refetred all questions to HUD's Regional office. Attempts
for clarification from HUD were unavailing.
In addition, the report argued that no where had HUD
given a "meaningful determination of project value" or ex-
plained "why the demonstration program constituted good
cause for negotiating a sale."
According to Martin Lobel, a Washington-based public
interest attorney representing Krupp Brothers, his client,
after numerous attempts to secure important data, had to
sue under the Freedom of Information Act in order to get
records of the proposed sale to First American.
"When we wrote to them we said this had to be the big-
gest theft since Jesse James died," Lobel said, noting that
when Krupp fIrst learned of First American's offer of $10.9
million, it offered $11.150 million.
He also pointed out that his client makes a living buying
rental properties, fixing them up, and continuing to offer
them as rentals, not condominiums. "Right now," Lobel
warned, "there still is no internal independent evaluation of
what these properties should be worth ... The prices men-
tioned in this negotiated sale are way below market value so
that it still could be tailored so they [First American] will get
the sale." He also said that First American could end up
packaging the sale because of its prior knowledge of the pro-
perties and that few other outside concerns will bid because
First American still has the inside track.
Sheldon Goldstein confirmed First American's intention
to compete in the auction process but refused to elaborate
on any new or altered plans.
According to Deputy Secretary Abrams, 31 bid packages,
to date, have been sent out.
If the sale is held, bidding is expected to close August 13
with September 17 slated as the closing date. In other pro-
posed public auctions, some 700 units in Washington, D.C.,
are up for bid late in August and, according to a HUD
circular, 443 units in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn
will be sold later this year.
Examioe Past Sales
Asked to comment on his probe, Tom van der Vort of
Senator Proxmire's office, said, "One of the problems with
even opening this up to other bids is that it gives the inside
track to them [First American] ... We have to look into how
many negotiated sales there were in the past, how they were
done, how the deals were made-were there any other
sweetheart deals? We're asking GAO to look into this right
now and report back later in September." He also said that
the government cannot go foward with "any kind of sale
until this mess gets cleared up."
But van der Vort stressed the importance of finding a suit-
able mechanism for getting rid of the enormous number of
HUD-held properties, noting that one of the best buys and
solutions might be turning the "rights to them over to
tenants. We want to help HUD, not hurt it," he added.
"Getting rid of these properties the right way could be a
plus. But we don't want to get slumlords."
At present, HUD has a goal to sell 200 of the 247 fore-
closed properties it now owns by October 1 and to cut the
average holding period from 30 to six months. Hence, it has
embarked on a fire sale policy that, critics point out, could
result in the massive displacement of thousands of low and
moderate income tenants.
According to figures provided in a June 18 policy memo
on HUD-held mortgages froin Deputy Commisioner
Abrams, HUD spends between $8 and $10 per unit, per day
(not including tenant subsidies or lender payoffs) to main-
tain its empire which, according to statistics provided by the
Urban Conservation Report, numbers "28,425 housing
units now in its hands due to defaults on FHA-insured
apartment and "with an average holding period
of 30 months, holding costs on HUD's current inventory
could reach $260 million."
In ad'dition, Abrams's memo points out, a large portion
of HUD's outstanding debt estimated at about $1.125
billion can be attributed to delinquencies from mortgage
notes on troubled properties, many of them built through
HUD's subsidized Section 236 and 221 (d) (3) programs and
located in inner city distressed areas.
By tightening up the foreclosure process and selling the
properties to the private sector, HUD, it is clear, hopes to
cut down substantially on this huge debt in the upcoming
fiscal year.
But government insiders and observers who are concerned
about the possible disappearance of this substantial cache of
low moderate income housing stock are even more cynical
about the future.
21 CITY LIMITS/August-September 1982

"Under their new plans for quick sales, mortgage ser-
vicing will be provided by private banks, so what will HUD
have left to do," asked Lobel. "What they're trying to do
here is wipe out HUD without going to Congress" because
HUD and its programs are too popular to be dismalltled
there without a serious and time consuming political fight.
Many Managers
Meanwhile, tenants at the 20-year-old, deteriorated Sher-
wood Village are oblivious to the fact that their homes are
being sold as part of a much larger package. In fact, it was
not until First American's transaction was blocked that they
first learned of the sale of their own housing.
"It's hard enough for us to keep up with all the managers
this building has been through," said Steven Mayl, an
observant teenager who has grown up with constant changes
in his building at 60-10 Calloway Street.
"I just got a new refrigerator, they're painting the halls
for the first time in a long time, and the garbage isn't out
front anymore," said Hilda Vidal, a six-year resident of the
Calloway Stree"t building, which, tenants maintain, is far
superior to the other HUD-owned structUres in this project
several blocks away. "But there's still a lot that needs to be
done, and the tenants are afraid to go on rent strike to get
repairs because they don't know what will happen," Vidal
added, noting that she pays $215-a-month for five rooms
and that without Section 8 subsidy, her rent would be over
$500. "I would have to leave because that's too much
The second of two articles.
money," she continued. "And there's no place to go. That's
why people are afraid to complain."
According to Orlando Artze, Congressman Rosenthal's
housing specialist, about 90 percent of Sherwood Village
residents receive Section 8 benefits. Income levels, he
pointed out, range from about $8,000 to $20,000.
HUD took possession of Sherwood Village June 1, 1981,
in receivorship after a delayed foreclosure period of over
two years, and, according to reports from tenants and local
community board officials, HUD is much worse than the
former landlord.
A recent visit to 99-11 57th Avenue, the most poorly
maintained of the properties, said it all. Tenants complain
constantly about the security there, and yet the building
stands fully occupied with both front doors missing.
As children jumped rope at dusk in front of the building's
entrance, the superintendent talked about the future and
predicted that the only way the project would survive was by
allowing people to become owners. "The people want to
save this housing and they also want to feel safe inside," he
asserted." But how can they feel safe without these doors.
This is an emergency. I keep calling HUD to fix the doors.
There is either no response or they say it can't be done until
they sell the buildings. They're worse than when the former
owner was here. These buildings were milked since they
opened, and it's a shame because they could be beautiful
apartrnents."O
The Coop Bank's Lending Dilemma
. . By TOM ROBBINS
T
HE COOPERATIVE MOVE-
ment has had an historical inability
to resolve the inherent dilemma in being
both social movement and c6mmercial
enterprise, wrote Phil Kreitner, a co-op
advocate, in a recent issue of Moving
Food, a publication for food co-ops.
There's a contradiction between the
need to be radical to promote democrat-
ic and egalitarian change, he wrote, and
yet still "be conservative in order to
survive ... "
of that money is out in loans.
Bank officials figure that in order to
meet its payments to the Treasury,
which are to be spread out over thirty
years to the year 2020, it must have
amassed a loan portfolio of $1 billion.
Funds to make those loans will have to
be borrowed at two or three percentage
points below the bank's lending rate. It
also has to be able to sell its housing and
The National Consumer Cooperative
Bank's conservative imperative, in
terms of dollars and cents, is clear: By
1990, just ten years after its launching,
the Co-op Bank must begin paying back
the $200 million in U.S. Treasury funds
it got from the government as start-up
capital. So far, a little over $ 100 million
22
other loans on the secondary markets,
thus raising the capital to do it all over
again. To do so, loans must be sound,
not just in the bank's eyes, but also in
t!'tose of less idealistic brokers.
That proposition, say bank officials,
is the Billion Dollar Question facing the
institution and determining its future.
It's also the economic underpinning of
some rough decisions the bank has had
to make recently as it decides how and
where it can invest its funds and still
generate the needed margin
of fiscal survival.
The hidden question
(which doesn't stay hidden
very long) is, since the
bank is limited in the
places it can lend to,
where will it find the
consumer coopera-
tives in need of that
much financing?
Like so much else in
finance, it's a question of
making the numbers work.
So far, the numbers are working
for some but not for others.
Some of those who worked hard to
bring the Co-op Bank into existence are
already beginning to feel left out as the
bank weeds through its loan applica-
tions. Smaller, newer co-ops, whose
marginal existence, lean budgets and
frequently catch-as-catch-can acccount-
ing systems are becoming as anathema
to the Co-op Bank as they are to private
lenders. '
In the first year of its operation, with
over $91 million out in loans, housing
loans made up the lion's share of where
the bank put is money. At March 31,
1982, housing loans accounted for 72
percent, consumer loans for 23 percent,
and food loans for four percent, with
producer loans at less than one percent.
Those disproportionate figures reflect
a number of considerations: housing co-
ops are the most common, the largest
and the oldest type of consumer co-ops.
They are also frequently a good invest-
ment for a bank because their
mortgages can be resold on the
secondary market. To keep the bank
from solely investing in housing,
Congress stipulated an investment cap
on those loans, which will come into
effect in 1985. Whether the bank will be
able to comply with that cap remains to
be seen. If there aren't a whole lot of
other good investment opportunities
between now and then, it just may risk
Congress's wrath and go right on
making housing loans in order to build
its portfolio.
It's not that there's a shortage of co-
ops-producer and food cooperatives
proliferated in the late sixties and
haven't stopped since. Many of these,
however, need
only small loans, if they
need loans at all. (Some have conscious-
ly opted not to grow past a certain point
and not to burden themselves with
debt.) But some of those that would like
to borrow from the bank can't come
close to meeting the increasingly strict
criteria. To get there, they'll need a lot
of technical assistance, something in
short supply at the Co-op Bank these
days:
T
HERE'S A CATCH-22 SITUA-
tion lurking there for the bank,
and whil'e officials, board members and
shareholders know it, there is no
strategy yet to solve it.
"It's the new co-ops that we need to
seed," says Bank Vice President Mitch
Rofsky. For without developing them
into viable viable
loan applicants-there won't be much
to do for a bank that has lending to
as its reason being.
"The\"e are just not that many places
for the bank to loan to right now,"
agreed Charles Warner of a housing
23
group in Minneapolis, who was elected
as of nine new board members last
fall. "Our job has to be to create
them."
The bank's number one tool to assist
small low income co-ops was,
originally, its Office of Self-Help
Development and Technical Assistance,
a unit created in the bank's enabling
legislation and then shelved last year
when Congress cut the bank loose.
The of the self-help
office-to nurture small
and low income co-ops
with low interest loans and
assistance-are supposed
to be revived when
the new board decides on
the operating structure
of a new development
fund which will be a
nonprofit arm of the
bank with an initial
capitalization of $25
million, according
to Rofsky. Newer,
smaller co-ops-
dubbed "New Wave"
cooperatives to distinguish
them from the last wave of
cooperatives, now older and more
establishea that swept the country in the
1930s-are looking to the new develop-
ment fund to help undo some of the
recent experiences small loan applicants
to the bank have had.
"So far the bank has been creating a
lot of -interest, where it's going to be
frustrated," said Ruth Nazario who
worked , in the bank's Technical
Assistance and Real Estate divisions
before being laid off last February.
"Unless they can figure out a way to
gear TA to the New Wave co-ops,
there's going to be a phenomenal failure
rate," warned Jeanie Hammond, who,
as President of the Consumer Cooper-
ative Alliance, speaks on behalf of a
large segment of the small co-ops.
"It's been like the movie 'Missing',"
said Hammond. "Everyone goes into
the Bank believing what they were told.
Then, they start finding out what's
going on, and they disbelieve
everything. "
At this point, the Co-op Bank is
admittedly short on technical assist-
ance, a service that fell victim to the
Reagan Congress. Northeast Regional
CITY LIMITs/AugustSeptember 1982
'\
Director Philip St. Georges says his
office is limited to offering T .A. only to
those applicants who are considered
viable. That situation left bank staff in
the lurch with some groups. One former
loan officer said' she was reduced to
"providing T.A. on the sly. Groups that
need the assistance aren't eligible
because they couldn't put in a good
enough application," she said.
over the country for products."
It wasn't because it found the plan
too ambitious that it didn't work out,
says' St. Georges. Instead, the Uhuru
application fell short on the ability to
provide the bank with documentation it
wanted to evaluate the proposal. Fiscal
records going back to the co-op's
beginning in 1975' were needed, and,
depending on whom is asked, the co-op
either didn't or couldn't comply. What
is clear is that the bank's ability to help
O
NE SMALL NEIGHBORHOOD the group meet the ciiteria was severely
food co-op that went through a diminished when its policy on technical
year of off-and-on-again negotiations assistarlce was changed. '
with the bank before ultimately having Bakr says she'recognized the need for
its application 'dropped because it improvement in their records system but
couldn't meet the demand for looked towards the loan for the
documents feels now it was had. breathing room in which to accomplish
"We provided a Black 'cover' for the it. "If you're dealing with a small, low
Bank when it needed us to get started in income co-op trying to survive," said
Congress," said Jitu Weusi, a founder Bakr, "how can you afford a book-
of the l!huru Food Co-op in Brooklyn's keeper? We can bareJy afford a clerk."
Bedford-Stuyvesant. Uhuru has 450 While the bank was meeting with
members and operates a for-sale, walk- them about the loan, the co-op was
in trade for vitamins, health food and having trouble paying its electric bill.
staples on Fulton Street, Bed-Stuy's One weekend was spent frantically
battered though active main thorough- transferring perishable good_s as Con Ed
fare. The co-op finagled a $44,000 loan pulled the plug. In the end, co-op
from the Small Business Administration members anted up the back bill; but
two years ago and a smaller loan from when the lights went back on, the
the Freedom National Bank, and claims possibility of a bank loan had dimmed
to have kept up payments on both. and gone out. Today neither Uhuru nor
Those loans allowed it to buy its the bank sees much possibility of
previously abandoned building and putting the deal back together, though
renovate two of the four floors. A the co-op is looking elsewhere for
Cornell Cooperative Extension mm funds. There is now a similar sense of
featured it in a "It Works for Us", loss projected when the loan application
as a model co-op. is discussed. The Uhuru members,
The group was steered towards the though, are the ones who are bitter.
bank by other co-ops, said Weusi, and "Food co-ops playa special role in
Joined in lobbying efforts to bring it the Black community," suggested Bakr.
into being. Atchudta Bakr, a full-time "We introduced a lot of people to
worker at the co-op, spoke at Congres- , tofu-a lot of health foods like that are
sional hearings about what the bank '
could mean to her co-op and neighbor-
,-
stretchers for the budget. There's many
people sick in our community because
they don't eat right. We got our
members taking vitamins and that has
made a difference. We're some of the
'healers' in our community."
"There's been a lot of naivete on the
part of a lot of people who believed in
the bank," said Bakr. "People thought
they were part of the reason Carter
signed the bill. That may have been the
reason it didn't work out."
I
F THE 'FUTURE OF THE CO-OP
Bank is not with small, grassroots
co-ops, .where is it? The moving force is
the bank's Billion Dollar Question,
which spells different, more substantial
types of loans.
On the horizon, the bank is looking
into subscriber-controlled Health Main-
tenance Organizations (HMOs) that
could use some cash injections, and the
Regional office is talking to at least one
large cooperative housing project that is
looking to set up a cogenerating station
for its power and needs the capital to do
it. Unfortunately, so are other financing
outfits, for cogeneration promises to be
a big new market. Worker-owned in-
dustries are another possible area of
investment. All of these hold the
promise of being large, bankable loans.
But they are a long way from the
$50,000 loans bank supporters talked
about when they were drumming up
support.
AIthoogh, as St. Georges says,"We're
still the only bank around making loans
to cooperatives," the National
Consumer Co-op Bank is very much
hung up on' the horns of the coopera-
tives' historical dilemma. 0
hood. After the bank opened its loan '
window, Uhuru submitted an ambitious \
loan application for $1 million to open a
food warehouse and wholesale market,
ARE yOU A NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION
,,' HELPING TO PAY ,
something Bed-Stuy, says Weusi, with
the largest concentration of Black
people in the country, noticeably lacks.
"We were looking for a way to \
develop business in the Black ,
community," he said. "We had the \
expertise, we had impeccable records
runDing a youth employment program
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24
- ;.I
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!PUBLIC HOUSING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
F 1 th R
By YVETTE MOORE
"When rumors spread, there's truth
somewhere, so use your head." That's a
line from an old song which many
public housing tenants are mindful of
these days. Because the truth behind
recent rumors that public housing
projects were being slated for conver-
sion to condominiums comes straight
from the nation's capital-the Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Develop-
ment, to be exact.
In March of this year, HUD circulat-
ed a document soliciting proposals for
ways to relieve the federal government
of the low income public housing
complexes which it built and continues
to subsidize. The ftrst part of this
document outlines general, nationwide
problems affecting publicly-owned
housing developments-poor manage-
ment, insufficient rent revenues coupled
with expensive operating costs, result-
ant large deficits and new limitations on
the amount of federal subsidies avail-
able. It goes on to request that agencies
conduct studies on the marketability of
present projects and the' 'feasibility and
likely consequences of alternatives
ranging from minor changes in regula-
tions, to selling off or demolishing some
projects, to removing all or most federal
regulations governing local manage-
ment." Translation: "What would
happen if we sold existing projects to
private companies, demolished the
structures or changed these buildings'
status from low income housing,
charging market rents for the area?
The object, the request-for-proposals
says, is to control federal expenditures
while meeting the housing needs of
ue ing e umors
"those presently served." There is no
mention of low income families not
presently served. '
Local Reaction
The New York City Housing
Authority has no current plans to
convert any of its buildings, a statement
which it has continually stressed in the
midst of the widespread rumors. "New
York City Housing Authority has sub-
mitted no proposal for conversion, said
Joe Lopes, public affairs officer at
H'UD's New York regional office. "This
(document) was issued primarily for
York metropolitan area were sold in
May this year. The statement further
noted that the Amsterdam Houses,
located near Lincoln Center in
Manhattan, would be a primary target
of this program should it be implement-
ed in New York: the buildings are
located in an area where the normal
rents can be as much as 400 percent
higher than those charged in the
projects. _However, according to the
Housing Authority, there are no current
plans to convert the Amsterdam
Houses.
housing authorities across the country Legislative Response
that are near bankruptcy. Some even In related legislative action, a housing
have projects that are abandoned. New bill amendment introduced by Rep.
York City doesn't have this problem." Schumer to restrict the sales and demo-
The NYCHA's denial of conversion lition of public housing was recently
plans is adamant. Still, the policy push passed by the House of Representatives.
away from public housing is coming The amendment would prohibit the sale
from a power stronger than the of public housing unless: the local
Authority, one which holds the purse public housing agency and government
strings for a large percentage of the New certified the sale; the project was
York system's operating budget. substantially unoccupied; and the cost
NYCHA tenants appear safe for now of the project's rehabilitation was
(aside from federally mandated rent greater than the cost of replacement. If
hikes now being implemented), but their . 'these requirements were met, the secre-
possible plight five years from now is , tary of HUD and the local housing
less certain. authority would develop a plan for sale
A press release by Rep. Chuck or demolition, as well as tenant relo-
Schumer, Democrat of Brooklyn, cation, after they notified and consulted
issued in response to the HUD request with residents.
for proposals, noted that a public Conditions for sale could be waived
development in Alexandria, Va., was under this proposal if the majority of
sold this past winter. All the tenants will tenants supported a conversion to
be moved to replacement apartments on private ownership.
less valuable land, the release said. It The bill has yet to make it through
also noted that three privately-owned, the Senate, which is not a very friendly
subsidized developments in the New place for lean cats these days, 0
25 CITY LIMITS/August-September 1982
O
N THE EVENING OF THURS-
day, July 1, New York State Senate
and Assembly negotiators came to a fi-
nal agreement on a bill to increase tenant
protections in the conversion of rental
apartments to cooperatives and condo-
miniums. The bill was drafted and
printed overnight, passed the State
Senate Friday evening, and the Assem-
bly on Saturday.
Sponsored by Republican Senator
Roy Goodman of Manhattan and As-
semblyman Pete Grannis, Democrat of
Manhattan, the bill sounds better than
its actual content. Its most notable
provision is an increase in the minimum
insider purchaser requirement for
eviction plans from 35 to 51 percent.
However, the bill fails to address the
major loophole in the New York City
law, the lack of an inside purchaser
requirement for non-eviction plans.
The bill is the product of weeks of
intense ne,gotiations between the
Assembly and the . Senate. ,The chief
negotiators were Pete Grannis, chair-
man of the Assembly Housing Commit-
tee, and Frank Rinaldi, housing counsel
to Senate Majority Leader Warren An-
derson, Republican of Binghamton.
Grannis wanted better pro-tenant
provisions than he ultimately got, and
Rinaldi gave more in pro-tenant con-
cessions than he wanted.
The negotiations were initiated in
mid-May by the Senate. While this
move suprised the Assembly players, it
soon' became apparent that the Senate
very much wanted a co-op bill because
Republican Senators from New York
City were under pressure from tenants
in their districts. Of course, the Senate
approach was to agree to essentially cos-
metic changes, while refusing to agree
to more substantive improvements.
The major goal of the Assembly
negotiators was a provision to require
15 percent qf bona fide tenants in
occupancy on the black book date to
purchase before non-eviction plans
could be declared effective-the one
thing the Senate absolutely refused to' Rinaldi, claiming that such a
grant. This very point had been the provision would stop co-oping in
sticking point the year before when Queens and Riverdale, resolutely
similar negotiations broke down. refused to consider it. The best Grannis
Anderson had made a personal commit- ' could achieve was language incorporat-
ment to Edward Sulzberger-a real ing the Attorney General regulations
estate mogul whose firm specializes in into statute.
HOW
'I'HE
I
CITY
GOT
A
NEW
COOP
lAW
By MICHAEL McKEE
conversions and an active fundraiser
for the Senate Republicans-that the
Senate would not allow such a provision
to be enacted. .
The reason is obvious. If a tenant
association could get 86 percent or more
of tenants to sign no-buy pledges (dif-
ficult as that might be), a non-eviction
plan could be blocked the way eviction
' plans can now be stopped with 66 per-
cent. A sponsor would be forced to
enter into serious negotiations with
,tenants over price and terms, whereas
without such an insider percentage
sponsors can ignore the tenants'
demands as long as there is a market for
outside purchasers, many of whom buy '
not beCause they want a place to live, but
for speculative reasons.
26
Thus, tenants will continue to be
largely powerless in the face of nOD-
eviction conversions. To the extent that
the new bill will make' eviction plans
more difficult to achieve in some
buildings, more sponsors will probably
me non-eviction plans. And the sponsor
will continue to have the option of first
trying an eviction plan, then a m e n d i n ~
it to a non-eviction plan if unsuccessful.
The bill will make eviction plans in
all-stabilized buildings somewhat more
stringent. But in "split" buildings-
with both ci?ntrolled and stabilized
apartments-eviction plans will now be
considerably easier. Overall, the bill
somewhat improves protections for sta-
bilized tenants and significantly
weakens protections for rent controlled
tenants.
For a while, Rinaldi held out the
promise of a true 15 percent insider
percentage for non-eviction plans-if
the Assembly would agree to a
provision automatically voiding no-buy
pledges 90 days after the black book
date. Grannis rejected this as taking
back with one hand what was being
given with the other.
Rinaldi also refused to agree to a
mandatory reserve fund requirement,
which would discourage "flippers"-
insiders or outside purchasers who buy
with the intention of a rapid resale, at a
profit-because it would be added to
the overall sales pri<;e. Such a provision
could be especially helpful to tenants in
non-eviction plans, where often the
sponsor will refuse to negotiate over the
amount of the reserve fund to be used
for future repairs.
Another item which Rinaldi rejected
was a tightening of the definition of
warehousing ("excessive long-term
vacancies"), the holding of apartments
off the rental market in order to reduce
the base from which the percentage of
sales must be reached in order to declare
the plan effective. The law essentially
allows the sponsor/owner to keep up to
ten percent of apartments empty prior
to the conversion.
Early in the negotiations the Senate
had demanded weakening amendments
to the Warranty of Habitability and the
so-called right to sublet law in return for
improvements to the co-op conversion
laws. But these matters .were ultimately
taken off the table.
That there is a bill at all is largely due
to the fact that Roy Goodman of
Manhattan's East Side actively pushed
his own party leadership. Unlike his
performance of the past several years
when he gave lip service to tenant bills
but made no legislative effort, this time
around Goodman participated actively
in the talks, at several points locking
,
noms with Rinaldi. Goodman's actions
are no doubt due to the pressure he was
feeling from the year-old East Side
Tenants Coalition, whose leaders
engaged in a broad outreach campaign
throughout the senatorial district and
who are too sophisticated to be.taken in
by Goodman's usual promises.
If tenant groups in Queens and other
Republican districts had applied half
the pressure to their Senators that ESTC
applied to Goodman, we could have
achieved enactment of a much better
bill.
However, Goodman undercut the
fight for an insider requirement for
non-eviction plans. A week before the
end of the session, he convened a
meeting in his New York City office
with Sulzberger and other real estate
industry representatives and attorneys
who represent sponsors including Frank
Karelsen and David Goldstick. At the
last minute Goodman summoned Scott
, c
I
I
u.
-
Greathead and Jane Rosenberg of the
Attorney General's office, both of
whom had been actively lobbying for
stronger tenant protections. '
G
OODMAN OPENED THE
meeting by reminding the industry
. representatives that it was he who had
helped them achieve repeal of the 10
percent tax on capital gains of real
estate transactions of more than one
million dollars. He then askecl
Greathead to explain why an insider
requirement for non-eviction plans was
so important. Greathead, who had been
.given no time to prepare for the
meeting, began his explanation but was
challenged repeatedly by the industry
attorneys, who had seemingly prepared
answers to all the points he made. The
meeting was obviously a set-up to give
Goodman a pretext to back off from
the one item Rinaldi would not allow . .
When he learned about this meeting,
an annoyed Grannis tried to get
Goodman to attend a meeting with
some tenant attorneys to discuss the
issue. Goodman, ' who could have
invited some tenant attorneys to his
meeting in the first place, claimed to be
too busy to attend.
In the end Grannis reluctantly gave
up the push for the 15 percent insider
requirement for non-eviction plans.
After consultation with tenant attor-
neys and tenant leaders NYSTNC (New
York State Tenant and Neighborhood
Coalition) neither supported nor
opposed the bill. Senate Minority
Leader Fred Ohrenstein, Democrat of
Manhattan, whose counsels John Allen
and David Sweet had participated in
some of the negotiations, criticized the
bill as "cosmetic" but nevertheless
voted for it, as did all other Democrats.
Afterwards Ohrenstein commented:
"I can't believe how we outmaneuvered
ourselves." He was referring to the fact
that the 51 percent provision, which
legislators and tenant organizations had
been seeking for years, would be seen as
a major advance in tenant rights, allow-
ing the Republicans to get away with
leaving the non-eviction loophole
intact.
So we end up with a bill which some-
what increases protections for rent
stabilized tenants while . decreasing
protections for rent controlled tenants
in eviction plans, and which fails utterly
to address the major loophole in the
law. 1 do not believe that the real estate
industry is unhappy about this legisla-
tion: the 51 percent clause gives the
appearance of major pro-tenant pro-
gress, while eviction plans in "split"
buildings will now be actually easier to
achieve, and the industry gives up
nothing in the area of non-eviction
plans. 0
Michael McKee works with the New
York State Tenant and Neighborhood
Coalition and has actively lobbied on
behalf of tenant concerns in Albany for
several years.
What the Law Says
The major provisions of the new co-op conversion bill are the following:
Fifty-one percent of bona fide tenants in occupancy on "the date the plan is
accepted for ftling ("black book" date) must purchase before eviction plans can
be declared effective. Eligible senior citizens and handicapped non-purchasing
tenants are excluded from the base meaning the sponsor must reach 51 percent
of the remaining units .
For the first time, the NYC law adds a definition of "non-eviction plan."
However, the bill does not require a percentage of tenants in occupancy to buy
before the plan is declared effective, but rather requires that 15 percent of the
shares or apartments to be sold, whether to insiders or outside purchasers, or
some combination thereqf. Outside purchasers must "represent that they or
members of their immediate family intend to occupy the unit ... " In other
words, you have to sign an affadavit that in effect says "I am not a specuIltor."
Senior citizens (tenants 62 years of age and older and their spouses) are
exempt from eviction and become non-purchasing tenants regardless of income
or length or residency. The law previously required residency in the building (not
the apartment) for at least two years and annual incomes no greater that $50,000
to qualify for this protection.
The definition of "eligible disabled persons" protected from eviction is
slightly liberalized to allow the tenant some gainful employment.
Sponsors will have a uniform 15 months after acceptance of the plan for
ftling in which to reach the required number of sales to have the plan effective.
This replaces the "split" periods under current law, where the sponsor must
reach 35 percent of rent controlled tenants within 6 months, and 35 percent of
rent stabilized tenants within 18 months.
Spohsors wll no longer have to achieve separate percentages of sales in
"split" buildings. Currently sponsors of successful eviction plans must sell to 35
percent of the controlled tenants and 35 percent of stabilized tenants; or must
ftle a "split" plan, typically an eviction plan for the stabilized sector and a non-
eviction plan for the controlled units in the same building. Under the new bill
sponsors simply have to reach 51 percent of the building as a whole. Elimination
of the "split" requirement will place many rent controlled tenants at a
disadvantage. This was a significant concession to the real estate industry.
Other changes in the legislation are a fifteen-month deadline for collecting the
set number of sales after the plan is deemed effective; a closing of the apparent
"personal use" loophole which seems to allow (although disputed in court cases)
purchasers to evict tenants for "personal use" in the case of a non-eviction plan;
an increased number of postings by the sponsors as to the number of dwelling
units sold. The bill also ups the time a non-purchasing tenant in an eviction plan
can stay for the length of their leases of three years, whichever is longer.
For the first time registered architects and licensed engineers hired by tenants
have the right to physical inspection (as do the tenants themselves) and,
significantly, the Attorney General is given increased powers to combat
harassment through court orders blocking the overall conversion-not just the
apartment sale where the harassment has occurred as presently. Evictions of rent
controlled tenants after the three year period has elapsed is simplified by
allowing the owner to bypass the Office of Rent Control and going directly
to court. 0
28
Caught

By SHARON McDONNELL tt
. a a an
Avenue
I
T WAS AT FIRST GLANCE AN
Upper West Side morality play: a
band of low income tenants were being
pushed out to make way for a federally
subsidized Section 8 housing develop-
ment. Upon closer inspection, however,
it became a tale with as many sides as
participants, and more rife with mis-
understandings and inconsistencies than
anything else.
The cast of West Side characters
includes ' the respected Manhattan
Valley Development Corporation, a
neighborhood non-profit group which
does development, management and
planning in the area; record producer-
turned-real estate developer Lew
Futterman, who has converted SROs to
luxury co-ops as well as built subsidized
moderate income housing on the west
side; the West Side SRO Law Project,
funded by the city to protect single-
room-occupancy tenants; the city's
beleaguered Department of Housing
Preservation and Development (HPD);
the Related Housing Company, Inc.;
and the hapless tenants of 22
Manhattan Avenue.
The tenants' apartment building at
Manhattan Avenue and West 101st
Street is slated for a federally subsidized
Section 8 gut rehabilitation of about 122
units, called North Park. Community
residents and city agencies agree the
project-where tenants would pay 25-30
percent of their incomes for rent and the
remainder would be subsidized-is
urgently needed for affordable housing
for the community. About 16 other
buildings or vacant lots on the block
between Central Park West and
Manhattan Avenue and 101st and 102nd
Streets will become part of the North
Park development, according toHPD.
During the past six weeks, tenants
havt: been pressured to move out from
22 Manhattan Avenue by July 31 by the
Manhattan Valley Development Cor-
poration, hired as interim managing
agent for the pr.operty by the developer,
Related Housing Company, because the
North Park deal reportedly must be
closed by that time. And, according to
the West Side SRO Law Project, many
of the about 30 tenants claim they have
been told to find their own apartments,
and that they stand to lose cash offers if
they don't leave at once.
As a result of negotiations, tenants
are now being offered $4,500 each to
depart-up from $1,000 to $2,000 ori-
ginally tendered-and assured the
Section 8 developer will find them
homes if all else fails. This agreement
came after charges from an organizer
for the West Side SRO Law Project that
two tenants who had been induced to
leave were living on the street.
All of the tenants were once
occupants of an SRO hotel owned by
Futterman called the Carlton Residence
at 362 Riverside Drive, who were
relocated by Futterman's agents and
promised permanent homes, they say,
at 22 Manhattan Avenue. The tenants,
all of whom are minorities, were given
one-year leases at their 20-unit new
home but never informed they would
have to vacate for renovations, accord-
ing to the SRO Law Project.
Considerable community discussion
ensued three years ago when Futterman,
the original developer for the North
Park project, proposed it. He trans-
ferred the project to Related Housing
Company six months ago. His titular
interest in the property will cease upon
completion of construction, according
29
to Will Baldwin, director of the Man-
hattan Valley ManageIl)ent Company,
an affiliate of MVDC.
"Futterman has been negotiating this
project for over two years. He's pulled a
double conspiracy-he knew when he
moved them to 22 Manhattan Avenue
they wouldn't be able to stay," declared
Councilwoman Ruth Messinger during
a tenants' meeting called by the SRO
Tenants' Rights Coalition. "There's a
public history that says that Lew Futter-
man revised his plans, pushed them
through, and got a huge amount of city
agency and community support to
secure approval for the renovation plan
for the North Park project."
Baldwin agreed, saying, "It appears to
be a completely cynical move" which
"boggled our tninds."
Futterman emphatically denied the
accusation. "My absolute intention was
to eventually be able to give the tenants
Section 8 housing." The decision to
evict the tenants was made by Related
Housing after he transferred the pro-
ject to them, he insisted.
Baldwin maintained the move from
Manhattan Avenue would be tempor-
ary and that tenants had an "absolute
priority" over other applicants for the
North Park, if they satisfied federal
Section 8 eligibility criteria. He was
uncertain how many tenants were
eligible bu.t added Related Housing had
made certain concessions to tenants in
their marketing plan-for example,
allowing singlejtenants under the age of
62 who are not disabled, in contrast to
standard HUD eligibility criteria, a
boon for the many single tenants. When
it took on the interim management, said
Baldwin, Manhattan made it
clear they would not "be a party to
eViction of th
case ot nonPa
e
.. except .
tenants wh Ylbent of raJt In the
leavebYth 0 had Signed The two
Nexandere end oflast llJonth De
JDents
to
d and Jo - &arab
acuments '. se Zavala_ .
were urgecJ WillIngly in his the
m not to . -.... .,ce and
, '
'If the te
project . lJaItts don't 1
build not beco ... - eave, and the
109 Will be . a realit
not meet th lUJinbabitab" y, the
ha
e buildi Ie and '11
Ve to p,l ng COde Th . Wi
b
. lace a . eCIlYI
.... d vacate ord Wi I
t
o,.... the t " er on h
bUilding th
.. status of "
-. Q D Pl'I ... ..:t
a rare and d JS loath to . -... y
hOUsi::;nar unless they had
USed e agreed that rangements, be
to Per pressure had
fOllOWing th suade tenants t been
the closin e develoPer.s insi 0 move,
July 31 M,' date for Nortb stence that
Valley h Park Was
by ent In'reL.--t. ad declined
o leave," he enants Will be t e
the bUildi a"din . forCed
Wint ng might not .' his fears
er tenanted sUrvIVe
develo
Pme
eSPeratelY_needed
ob nt for the . . """"011 8
servers noted CIty 10 an
The City . y Way,
rePort on Planning Co .
agreem 'U\:Ci JOn of tb
and ent With b I e tenants
relOCat' ated u
De Ion Was I . Qousin
Partment of R eft up to fIp g,
elOCation h D's
, e said.
dOUbt that . BaldWin also another
bUilt in 1.1 hOUSing WOUI;xpreSSed
least t an attan u.:th eVer be
ellJPor .... OUt "s
fIPD's Deary, relOCation" ome, at
who PartllJ .
Ich sent t ent of ReI .
A venue n . enants at 22 OCatlon,
prese . the NOrth p nurUSSion.s
nted 10 In ark Pr .
qualifj 780. in fact oJect. as
no .ecJ approval ' grants a \-I
tes 10 deta.l of the p" ery
. lav lans .... d
!n the pro' . anety of d .... .
109 airshaX:cr--:mcIUding no erJCiaJcies
light and . ' wmdows far n-COmply_
repOrt c aJr, SllJall bedroo aWay froOi
which d otices of relOCati
of not have the legal
n
m June_
notices_has compulsion
granted the
i_ oncludes ho ms, etc "rt.
.... Pelled 'wev . lie
beca to appro\ol er, that "Wear
dire ::c, of the city's ean:e apPlicatione
s for tbe bo
u
. COllJDJuniha
s
SlOg. "0 OJ
$6.00 to ezhDd your
aublcripdoD one year
($. off UIe regular rate)
$ 00 / one year .
$lS.OO/two yearl
for each trieJuI'l lubacrlpti-.
r-----------------------------------------------------------------------------,
Cut a10Dg the dottecllble aad mail with check to ,City
484 We.' SSrd .'reet,
lie. York, 1I.Y. 10001
________________________________________________________

______ __
-----------------------------------;-----------------------------------
. AdcInu

I 01-
...,------------. Zip Pai4, ____________ _

I

.... - ' _

30
fo the Editor:
It WIll with much interest that I read Susan Baldwin's
:eceat article (June-July 1982) "Community Boards in the
Buffer ZQne. It Given the role of the boards in our
<qbJMPlitiea. I think it would be worthwhile for a_I Limits
to foIlqw:.gp with more in-depth studies pn what
Boards do and how they work. Many issUe&.
were -.hed on, but only superficially. One such issue
iIMIt the selection of the community board members.
AI Rated in the article, all members are appointed by the
1IOtouah President, with half of these recomDleJlded by the
0!IiIaMiI members. Your article mentions one board con-
aiderina a lawsuit to bring more indisenous representation
to the board. Another representative of a community board
favors elections. There may be a way, outside of elections,
brina a fairer representation to the board and help 8$S1ft
tilt the.membership doesn't become static over time.
Presc::ntly, appointments are made from two lists, the
CounciImember's and the Borough President's. The chanae
I 1m ,sugesting would entail a thira list, made up of
community residents who participate on committees. Of
course, this would entail published attendance records and
minutes of committee meetings. And it could work with
very minor revisions to the charter For instance, after one
)III8r of committee participation (say, at a level above 70
percent), a resident would qualify and be placed on this
third list. At this point, of course, the Borough President
would still be under no obligation to appoint this person.
However, after that f1l'St year, ind given a continuation of
(any committee and/or different or changed
committees) participation at the 70 percent level, any
vacancy would automatically have to be ftlled from the third
Hat. In addition, after the second year of committee parti-
cipation, board seats would f1l'St have to be ftlled from the
third Hat ' before dividing the rest between the councilmem-
ber's and Borough President's choices. This would accom-
plish a number of things:
1) It would not exclude political favorites from
working on the committees and, thereby, beiDa part
of two lists;
2) It would encourage present board members, who
wish to retain their seats, to participate on at least
one committee;
3) It would allow community residents who are dis-
satisfied a mechanism for participation and a
guaranteed eventual participation in the board;
4) By the 1-2 year schedules it would disco\II"agC those
who wish to be on the board on account of one
issue or a momentary concern;

. . . . . . . . . .
5) It would take some of the politics out of appoint-
JPeDts;
6) It would make the community board and elected
offtcials more sensitive and accountable.

Conaunaer-Fanner Foundation
Member, Bronx Community Board If1.
To the Editor:
I am writing to ask whether you have any articles
available on women in tenant organizing. I believe that
women do.most of the grass roots oFpDizing, but do not get
involved at hiaher, decision-making levels in housing issues.
I also beIi4ve that housing for women should become more
of a priority issue in the womeos.' movement. I am looking
for statistics (if available) supporting these assumptions,
explainina them and some suaestlons on how to eliminate
some of the problems women face in housing themselves.
I am currently writing an article for which I need this
information. Any articles or ideas you can provide me
would be greatly appreciated . And, of course, I would be.
pleased to let you know of my progress.
Carol McCracken
Alexandria, Va.
To the Editor:
. Although I found Susan Baldwin's article on the
Community Boards informative and generally. accurate, I
feel compelled to correct two aspects of the statements that
Ms. Baldwin attributed 'to me. The Community Boards I am
workin& with are not "weaker" boards nor does the C.S.S.
project purport to "protect" or "coach" these boards. All
of the Boards involved with the C.S.S. project are
composed of strong and dedicated community members and
their staff are both professional and equally dedicated.
The intent of the C.S.S. project is to offer that technical
assistance considered necessary by the Community Boards
to assist them in dealing with the immense work with which
they are faced, and to support the Community Boards'
insistance that aty agencies give serious consideration to
the merits of Community Boards'
Eva Hanbardt
Planning and Research Specialist
Department for the Community
Community Service Society
31 .an LIMIl'SIAuguatoSeptember :t8I2
Hatching 'len ant
Strategies by
the
Pacific
SANTA MONICA,
CAL. - A cool sea breeze
swept past the beachfront
condos and into the high school audi-
torium. There, as part of the opening
festivities of the third annual National
Tenants Union conference, several local
politicos were conducting a panel
presentation about their rise to the call
of renters' rights since a coalition of
tenant activists assumed almost com-
plete political power here 15 months
ago. They related the progress of the
coalition since that victory, and their
story raised some unprecedented issues
about the prospects for Santa Monica's
-and America's-tenants.
Besides roller skaters, deep tans,
plastic restaurants, cars and cars and
cars, Santa Monica is home to a lot of
tenants. A clear majority of the
suburban community's 90,000 residents
rent, and that, among other things, led
to the Santa Monicans for Renters'
Rights dramatic electoral victory in
1980. In local elections that year, the
tenant coalition plucked a few plums
that most such groups in the country
haven't even dared to dream of:
CITY LIMITS/AugustSQptember 1982
the
mayor's seat, a
city council majority and
every spot on the five-member Rent
Board that passes judgement on rent
increases, condominium conversions
and other, equally touchy landlord/
tenant matters.
Out of Oppression
Santa Monica, surrounded by the
seemingly unending sprawl of west Los
Angeles, has an almost tropical land-
scape of vintage 1930's Asian and
Latin-influenced beach houses, newer
suburban homes and condominium
towers within earshot of the surf. As
such, it is an outwardly unlikely place
for America's tenants to commence
their march out of oppression. But the
renters' electoral strategy, which started
in 1937 and reached fruition only after
numerous defeats, has displaced the
role of various business interests that, as
one resident put it, "used to take turns
ruling the city."
Whether that success can be duplicat-
ed outside the rehltive affluence and
homogeneity of a few small cities in
California is, of course, an open ques-
tion. And it figured prominently in dis-
32
cussions among
tenant organizers from
around the country who gathered
for the NTU annual conference held
here in late July.
The answer remained elusive after
three arduous days Qf discussion that
alternated from the halls of Santa
Monica High to the sands of the nearby
beach. During that time, no less than 25
workshops were held on issues including
electoral strategy, lobbying techniques,
fundraising approaches, the process of
organizing for, getting and keeping rent
controls, and perhaps too much more.
By the gathering's end, representatives
from cities like New York, Detroit,
Chicago, East Orange, Philadelphia
and Oeveland had adjusted to the
bright sun and smiling strangers and
had helped adopt a comprehensive plat-
form covering issues from displacement
to housing discrimination. But for
many, the idea of taking over city hall
remained less a real goal than a wonder-
ful fantasy.
New Reality
In Santa Monica, where fantasy and
reality merge, electoral success has
brought on a new reality. Namely, the
real need tb respond to the community's
problems after the tenants have stormed
City Hall. "Now we have to address a
whole range of issues, from environ-
mental quality to nuclear power and
toxic waste control and renewable
energy sources," Mayor Ruth Y annatta
Goldway told the NTU conferees.
Trying gallantly to convince skeptical
midwesterners and northeasterners that
a place like Santa Monica can have real
problems, Yannatta framed the ques-
tions of development her government
faces this way: "You have uncontrolled
blight in many areas. We face uncon-
trolled growth. In many ways, the
effects can be the same-among them
displacement and a lowering of the
people's quality of life." To deal with
those effects, the mayor said, her
administration is requiring give-backs
for community people where upscale
development is allowed to proceed and,
in some cases, slowing or even reversing
growth where its human-scale effects
outweigh economic considerations.
(yannatta explained, for example, that
the city government hopes eventually to
close Santa Monica's municipal airport,
"which Ronald Reagan and 30 execu-
tives use," for quality-of-life reasons,
although this attempt to answer the
president's call for local control is
vehemently opposed by his Federal
Aviation Administration.) "Santa
Monica," the mayor concluded in her
progressive Chamber of Commerce
style, "is a city where people come
first. "
Keeping Honest
In many ways, that slogan seems
true, but along with the need for
responsiveness, the Santa Monica
experience has illuminated another
potential problem for other American
cities that may follow it down the path
of electoral victory in future years. The
simple question is this: Once a coalition
of activists is in office, who is left to
keep them honest? As one Rent Board
member put it: "Most of the active
people who were on the outside are now
on the inside-in City Hall. And now
the only people who show up organized
at Rent Board hearings are the
landlords. "
The landlords aren't the only ones on
the "outside," at least according to one
representative of Pico, an inland neigh-
borhood that features blacktop, not
beaches, and is home to most of Santa
Monica's black and Latino residents.
The representative, a board member of
the Pico Neighborhood Association
who spoke at the NTU conference,
acknowledged the progress made here
but spoke cautiously of the future.
"Has the Renters' Rights victory in
Santa Monica been a success?" he
asked. "Frankly, we're not sure. But
I'll tell you-five years from now, if
you walk through Pico and see black
and Latino families living in decent
One hundred and fifty Chicago-area
apartment buildings operated by neigh-
borhood-based groups will be weather-
ized over the next four years under a
$4.7 million program provided by the
Amoco Foundation. The foundation,
~ h i c h receives its funds from the Stan-
dard Oil Company (Indiana) estimates
that the project will save participating
organizations ' about $12 million in
energy expenditures during the next ten
years.
Nonprofit groups participating in the
energy conservation program will re-
ceive technical services from the Center
for Neig)1borhood Technology(CNT),a
five-year-old neighborhood-focused re-
search, development and demonstration
institution. CNT will conduct energy
audits of eligible facilities, prepare spe-
cificatiOns, review bids, provide con-
struction contract management, train
personnel in building maintenance and
operation, and conduct follow-up
audits to assure maximum energy sav-
ings are realized.
The Amoco Foundation will make
grants to participants to cover 90 per-
cent of the energy audit cost, 100 per-
cent of project management costs, and
50 percent of the actual construction
costs. The remaining 50 percent of the
construction costs will be covered by a
loan to the nonprofit organization made
by the South Shore Bank. Amoco
Foundation will provide funds for pay-
ment of all interest and fees.
The principle will be repaid by the
participating organization; utilizing the
~ 3
housing, you'll know it was a success.
But if you see a gentrified neighbor-
hood, you'll know the Renters' Rights
victory was just a lot of media hype and
jive. "
That's the next challenge this
politically vibrant city faces as it moves
through the uncharted territory of the
electoral process. 0
funds generated by energy savings dur-
ing the first five years. Some additional
cash flow benefits will be received by
the organization during the repayment
period, after which the total savings will
be realized by the organization.
Of the total cost to the Foundation,
$3.29 million will be used for audits, bid
fees, and construction. Another $1.39
million will be required for loan closing
costs, interest on the loans, and fees to
the bank.
The project is phased over five years
to insure that CNT will be able to man-
age the individual projects effectively.
At the peak of activity, about 50 pro-
jects will be underway at the same time.
Costs of energy retrofits are expected
to average about 30,000 each. Project
officials say the retrofits should reduce
energy expenditures by an average of 40
percent.
The South Shore Bank will perform
credit checks on applicants for the pro-
gram, make loans on approval of
Amoco Foundation, and receive pay-
ments on the loans. Participants in the
program will be selected on a fITst-
come, first-served basis.
For more information, contact ~ o b
Arganbright, Amoco Foundation, 200
E. Randolph, Chicago IL 60601,
(312)856-6111. 0
This article is excerpted from "The
Neighborhood Works," published by
the Center for Neighborhood Technolo-
gy, 570 West Randolph Street, Chicago,
Illinois 60606.
WorkShop
Paralegal Position
Community organization seeks housing paralegal to
assist legal department in all phases of tenant repre-
sentation. Responsibilities include: administrative
advocacy, landlord-tenant negotiations, office in-
take, and assistance to attorneys. Spanish language
ability required. Salary dependent on experience:
Send resume: Ken Rosenfeld, Northern Manhattan
Improvement Corp, 601 West 181 St., N.Y. 10033
POTENTIAL COOPERATORS WANTED-
CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN
1285 Dean Street Tenants Association seeks folk to
help make our building a cooperative. Rent now and
work to become an owner. One 6-room, one 7-room,
$300/month. . Two months security. Contact D.
Isaacs. 771-3839, evenings.
"Reclaim America"
Coming to Wall Street
HOUSING ASSISTANT
To assist building owners by organizing them into
associations and advising them how to upgrade
their buildings through government loan programs. /,
Qualifications: high school diploma plus two years
paid full-time experience; must be a self-starter
with good written, verbal and inter-personal skills.
Salary is in the low 'teens.
Send resume to:
Barry Wollner, Midwood Development Corporation
1416 Avenue M, Brooklyn, NY 11230
Associate Director
For Housing Conversation Coordinators. Duties are: to
advise on program, oversee, evaluate and monitor the
performance of all staff members; monitor the achieve-
ment of contracted goals; develop volunteer program
and assist in the training of volunteer personnel, espe-
cially youth; prepare annual and semi-annual program-
matic reports; coordinate required reports to funding
sources.
Salary in mid-teens, depending on experience.
Contact:
John Glynn, HOUsing Conservation Coordinators
m Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10019
541-5996
Those Fortune 500 corporations
headquartered in Lower Manhattan had
better get a good weekend's rest over
Labor Day because the following Tues-
day, on September 14, several thousand
demonstrators are expected to converge
on the area. The demonstration is to cap
a week-long cross-country series of
rallies organized by National Peoples
Action, centered on the theme. of
"Reclaim America." The demonstra-
tion will target' those corporations
whose profits have swollen as a result of
government policies while social ser-
vices have been cut back and interest
rates and energy costs have soared.
ASSISTANT HOUSING MANAGER
A New York City "Reclaim
America" committee is now being
organized and all community groups are
encouraged to participate. Call
9&:1--7200 for more information. 0
.
TO.MANAGE BUILDING IN FLATBUSH.
MUST HAVE SUBSTANTIAL EXPERIENCE.
34
Salary $14,500
Call Richard 469-8990
BROOKLYN ENERGY COOPERATIVE
Energy Audits, Specifications and technical
assistance, Investigated contractors. Complete line
of conservation projects at discount, Financing
options.
562 Atlantic Ave. (near 4th Ave.)
858-8803
IS YOOR INSORANCE
TOO EXPENSIVE?
Let us evaluate your insurance
program to see if you are getting the
most for your dollars.
"Specializing in lYonProfit and
Community Organizations"
Contact: Paul Sourifman
(212) 684-4770
CITY LIMITS HAS A NEW TElEPHONE NUMBER:
(212) 239-8440
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let us: maintain & update your
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reasonable rates extended to
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THE LONG DEFAULT
NEW YORK CITY AND THE URBAN FISCAL CRISIS
WIWAM K. TABB
In 1975, New York City approached the brink of bankruptcy. threatening to
default on its debts to the banki ng community. Here, Tabb reconstructs
the history of the city's economic coll apse, whose roots lay in decades of
overborrowing and budget manipulation to serve cynical political ends He
details the unfolding of the crisis: demonst rates the impact of the austerity
measures on the city' s residents: shows how the unions and welfare
reCipients were falsely blamed for the city's ill s: disl,; usses the process
of neighborhOOd decay and gentrification: explains how the solution Im-
posed on New York is being adopted nationall y: and outl ines an alternative
urban policy.
CL5716 $16.0019.45
Please add $1 lor the '''st book. 25 l or each additional book. when ordering by mall
Monthly Review Press
62 West 14th Sf.. NY. NY 10011/47 The Cut. london SE1 8ll
35
CITTL ITS
SUBSCRIBERS
K
HY.
t
I \'f\ I
City Limits is the magazine that for six years
has provided news and analysis of what is hap-
pening to our communities and why.
City Limits readers know why owner abandon-
ment has ravaged some neighborhoods while
long-time residents in others face displacement.
Why fair housing is still an issue in New York City.
Why city residents are battling for open space.
These are just a few of the stories City Limits
covered in the past year. In the coming months we
will continue to look at these and many other
issues. We hope you ' ll join us.
l .J

City Limits Magazine, August/September 1982 Issue

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City Limits Magazine, August/September 1982 Issue

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THE NEWS MAGAZINE OF NEW YORK CITY HOUSING AND NEIGHBORHOO

Clinton: Is this Neighfurhood for Sale?

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