Cover Story: New York City's New Landlord, a City Limits Q & A with tax-foreclosed residential properties manager Joseph Shuldiner.
Other stories include Reverend Donald Sakano's opinion piece on the slow, drawn out death of the Section 8 housing program at the hands of the Reagan administration; Julia MacDonnell Chang on the racial divide between two new developments in the South Bronx; Simon Lerner and Susan Baldwin on the waiting lists for repairs at Mitchell-Lama housing and the Middle Income Residents Association; Susan Baldwin on the West Harlem Community Organization; Richard Schrader on organizing for conservation in preparation for further deregulation of the energy market by the government.
Cover Story: New York City's New Landlord, a City Limits Q & A with tax-foreclosed residential properties manager Joseph Shuldiner.
Other stories include Reverend Donald Sakano's opinion piece on the slow, drawn out death of the Section 8 housing program at the hands of the Reagan administration; Julia MacDonnell Chang on the racial divide between two new developments in the South Bronx; Simon Lerner and Susan Baldwin on the waiting lists for repairs at Mitchell-Lama housing and the Middle Income Residents Association; Susan Baldwin on the West Harlem Community Organization; Richard Schrader on organizing for conservation in preparation for further deregulation of the energy market by the government.
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Cover Story: New York City's New Landlord, a City Limits Q & A with tax-foreclosed residential properties manager Joseph Shuldiner.
Other stories include Reverend Donald Sakano's opinion piece on the slow, drawn out death of the Section 8 housing program at the hands of the Reagan administration; Julia MacDonnell Chang on the racial divide between two new developments in the South Bronx; Simon Lerner and Susan Baldwin on the waiting lists for repairs at Mitchell-Lama housing and the Middle Income Residents Association; Susan Baldwin on the West Harlem Community Organization; Richard Schrader on organizing for conservation in preparation for further deregulation of the energy market by the government.
Direitos autorais:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Formatos disponíveis
Baixe no formato PDF, TXT ou leia online no Scribd
Opinion Section 8: R.I.P. . ... . ...... . .............. . . 4 Small Buildings Need Protection .. .. . .. .. . . . .... 6 Letters . . .. . .. ... . . ..... . .. .. .. ... . .. . .. . .. .. 8 Short Term Notes City Building Shutdowns Challenged by Suit .. ..... . .... . . ... ... .. .. 10 The UDAG Jersey City Won't Spend ..... .. . . ... U Homeless Shelter Plans Readied ... . . . . . . . .. . . . 13 First Grants for Partnership .. .. ... . .. .. .... ... 14 42nd St. Sale Looms ... ... . .... .... . . .. . .. . . . 15 New York's Newest Landlord . . ... . . . .. . . ..... . . 16 An interview with the manager for NYC's 37,000 in rem tenants. The Troubled New Homes of the South Bronx .. . . 21 Has master builder Ed Logue redivided parts of the South Bronx? Who's Watching the Waiting Lists? ..... .. ... .. . 26 A recent study and upcoming legislative hearings raise the issue of monitoring the city's main stock of subsidized middle income housing. Community Profile Managing West Harlem ... . ......... . . ... . . .. 28 People West Harlem's Margaret McNeill .. .. ..... . .... 32 Resources / Events . . ..... . ......... ... ..... . . 33 Energy Organizing for Conservation .. .. .... . ... . ... . . 34 Organize! Outdueling the Speculators . ..... . ....... . . . .. 36 Workshop . . . .. . .. .. . . . .... . .... . ....... .. . . 38 The South Bronx's Troubled New Homes / Page 21 ?- CITY LIMITS/May 1983 2 "" z < :E < o < WHCO Chairmall Leo Fill alld A.ui.,(w/l Dire/ 'wr Galien Kirklalld. Volume vm Number 5 CilY limilS is published ten times per year. monthly except double issues in June/July and August/September, by the City Limits Community Information Service. Inc . a nonprofit olganization devoted to disseminating infonnation concerning neighborhood revitalization. The publication is spon- sored by three olganizations. The spon sor.; are: Associalion of Neighborhood Housing Developers. Inc . an association of over hYO dozen community- based. nonprofit housing development groups. developing and advocating programs for low and moderate income housing and neighborhood stabilization. Prall Inslilult Center for Community and Environ- mental Development . a technical assistance and ad- vocacy office offering professional planning and ar- chitectural services to low and moderate income community groups. The Center also analyzes and monitors government policy and performance. Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. a technical assistance organization providing assistance to low income tenant cooperatives in management and sweat equity rehabilitation. City limits welcomes comments and article contribu tions. Please include a stamped. self-addressed envelope for return of manuscripts. Material in City limits does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the sponsoring organizations. Send correspondence to: CITY LIMITS. 424 West 33rd Street. New York. N.Y. 10001. Postmaster send change of address to: City Limits. 424 W. 33rd St . New York. N.Y. 10001. Second-class postage paid New York. N.Y. 10001 City Limits (lSSN 0199-0330) (212) 239-8440 Editor . ................. . ...... Tom Robbins Assistant Editor ....... . ....... Susan Baldwin Marketing Director ..... . ....... Jim Mendell Design and Layout. . ............ Louis Fulgoni Copyright 1983. All Rights Reserved. No portion or portions of this journal may be reprinted without the express permission of the publishers. No Trades in Albany Vital issues of tenants rights and neighborhood preservation will soon come surging out of the the New York State legislature. In the weeks remain- ing of the 1983 regular session - with some observers predicting recess by mid-June and others July 4th - legislators will be weighing an extraordinary number of housing issues, from J-51 to the Emergency Tenant Protection Pet, many of which are likely to become entangled with each other in negotiations. For starters, the future of New York City's J-51 tax incentive program for housing rehab is by no means assured. Thoughtful community people are in a bind: on the one hand renewal of J-51 is essential to low income housing development, but an extension without structural reform will continue an un- needed and dangerous public subsidy for the lUXUry conversions and tenant harassment that have accelerated residential and commercial displacement. The Assembly has passed a watered-down reform bill supported by Governor Cuomo and Mayor Koch, which extends J-51 for four years with a formula for curtailment of benefits to for-profit projects which many consider still to be too generous to developers. Even this version may not be passed by the State Senate, which remains as ever in the thrall of the real estate in- dustry. After months of stating that J-51 was a local matter and that the Senate would pass whatever legislation the city adrninistration.wanted, Senate Housing Committee chairman John Daly changed his tune once Mayor Koch signed off on the Assembly bill, and started demanding further substantial pro-real estate amendments. Lately, Daly has raised the ante even more by insisting that the Senate will pass a J-51 bill (which bill is unclear) only if the Assembly agrees to pass a couple of pro-landlord measures. One bill sought for the trade would restore the unlimited right of landlords (accidentally repealed last year) to evict a rent stabilized tenant when an apartment is sought for the owner's "personal" use and has been strongly opposed by tenant groups. Another measure would curb tenants' right to sublet, finally established after years of court cases. Daly and his boss, Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson, are thus trying to drive a wedge between organized tenants on the one hand, and nonprofit community organizations on the other who desperately need J-51 extended to make their local low income housing projects affordable. Neither community organizations nor tenant groups can afford to fall for this divisive ruse. There is an equal stake for both groups in protecting tenants' rights and providing new and rehabilitated affordable housing. Hous- ing rehabilitated without assurances of adequate rent and tenure protections can only spell displacement and gentrification. And protecting the rights of tenants to remain in substandard housing is also only half a strategy. The joint efforts of tenants and community organizations to extend rent protections to small buildings with less than six units is one current and ex- citing example of the unity that this situation demands. That unity is being tested in Albany this year. It is essential that we make conscious efforts to mobilize both constituencies and work cooperatively to achieve the passage of crucial housing legislation this spring. We can hang together, or we can surely hang separately. Cover photos by: Jim Mendell (pickets and Shuldiner) and Barbara Pacheco (Community Management building). 3 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 SECTION 8: R.I.P. By R e v e r e n ~ Donald Sakano T HE SECTION 8 HOUSING program is dying one of those slow, drawnout deaths that makes it particularly hard for family. The loved-one in this case was not perfect but it's hard to kick a fellow when he's down. The Lord only knows that Section 8 was a bit too indulgent, a little overweight and, perhaps, spent too much time cavorting with real estate developers and tax syndicators. But you will have to admit it rarely ever got into any real trou- ble and did manage to keep out of default scandals. So, now near the end of its brief life, one thinks of the good times and wonders what life will be like without it. In 1974 the Congress authorized the Sec- tion 8 program as an amendment to the U.S. Housing Act of 1937. Conceived under a Republican Administration, the "housing assistance payments program" was herald- ed as the key that would open the door for private and nonprofit developers to pro- duce housing for low and moderate income people. Except for public housing, the federal programs up to that point were designed to serve people in the middle income range. However, the Sec. 236 pro- gram, a subsidy that reduced the developer's mortgage interest rate to I per- cent , proved to be insufficient to come out with rents that were affordable even to middle income households. Mortgage defaults and "troubled projects" were com- mon, especially as construction costs and operating expenses spiraled upward during the 1960s and 70s. The Section 8 program was a bold new response to a systemic problem - the gap between what a tenant can afford for hous- ing and what it cost to build it . Section 8 authorized HUD to pay that gap, the dif- ference between 25 percent of the tenant's income and the "fair market" rent of the unit. Developers who were awarded Sec- tion 8 Housing Assistance Payment con- tracts for new construction found little dif- ficulty in securing a bank loan. The federal CITY LIMITS/May 1983 government guaranteed pay-back of the mortgage through the Section 8 HAP. Sec- tion 8 solved the mortgage default problem, but immediately became well known for its "extravagant" cost. Critics claim that Sec- tion 8 developers are not encouraged to economize and tend to build right up to the maximum mortgage limits allowed by HUD. However, the most damaging "cost" fac- tor has nothing to do with the Section 8 program at all , but in the way Congress prepares the federal budget. Government assisted housing is virtually the only item in the budget that is reported out in terms of "budget authority". This is an ac- cumulative figure that represents the federal government's obligation over the en- tire length of the HAP contract which can run as long as 40 years. Other federal pro- grams are reported in terms of "contract authority", the actual outlay of funds for that fiscal year. The housing programs, therefore, are always sticking out like sore thumbs. In the last year of the Carter Ad- ministration, the spending levels for low anQ moderate housing programs were 30 billion dollars in budget authority. Death Blows The combination of a low income con- stituency and a fiscally conservative Con- gress made it easy for the Reagan Ad- ministration to aim its guns at the heart of the Section 8 program. The infamous Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 was the 4 first real death blow to the low and moderate income housing. Not only was life made more difficult for the occupants of Section 8 housing by raising the rent standard to 30 percent of income,but the ceilings on overall federal spending for new construction and substantial rehabilita- tion for FY 1982 was reduced by 42 per- cent from the previous year. Last Spring, the 97th Congress voted in a budget resolu- tion for FY 1983 with a ceiling so low - $11.4 billion - that bipartisan negotiations on the housing authorization bill ended in a deadlock. This February, President Reagan presented the nation with a budget 'package that called for a 94 percent cut in new budget authority for low and moderate housing and would eliminate all production except for 10,000 units of Sec. 202 for the elderly. While there may still be a will in Congress to fight for a modest production program consisting of some new public housing, and Sec. 202 units, it is clear that the anxiety over the huge budget deficit has cast a pall over the future of low and moderate rental housing construction in this country. Nobody seems to know what to do about new construction. If you are inclined to take seriously the Repon of the President's Commission on Housing, you would believe there is little need for a subsidized production program because there is an adequate supply of rental housing in the country as a whole. While a convoluted "voucher" program is proposed to deat with the problem of the affordability of existing units, even the Reagan Administration ad- mits that some communities lack sufficient rental resources and need some help. But the solution they offer can only be describ- ed as a cruel joke - allow new construc- tion as an eligible activity in the Communi- ty Development Block Grant and create a $30 million rental rehabilitation block grant program. Heirs Apparent? Meanwhile, the Housing Subcommit- tees in both the House and the Senate have permitted themselves to be a bit more dar- ing. On the House side, a program that was proposed last year as part of the ill-fated housing bill, H.R. 6296, is moving along nicely as part of this year's bill, H.R. 1. The measure, commonly known as Dodd- Schumer after its chief proponents Rep. Charles Schumer of Brooklyn and Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, works something like the competition proposal program of the Ur- ban Development Action Grants. This "ren- tal housing production program" would be authorized at $1.3 billion and would be available to states and local governments to build new or rehabilitated rental housing, employing an "anything goes" flexibility- capital grant write-downs, participation loans, interest reduction payments, etc. HUD would select regions that have a demonstrable need for rental housing. Other selection criteria are the extent to which non-Federal or private dollars would reduce project costs; displacement would be mitigated and neighborhoods enhanced; and the maximum number of units that would be produced for the lowest cost. Developers must agree to set aside at least 20 percent of the units for households with incomes that are below 80 percent of the median for the area. The rents are to be set at 25 percent of adjusted income, an oldie but goodie. Oh yes, Davis-Bacon con- struction wage scales would not apply here. The Senate Housing Sub-Committee also salvaged a concept that was part of last year's housing bill (S.2607) and is now part of their bill this year. This multi family grant program is authorized to spend $300 million in a flexible manner similar to the Dodd-Schumer proposal. However, funds would be distributed to states and localities through a needs-based formula and there would be no direct application to HUD for project funding. Also, this block-grant type program requires that the projects be located in low and moderate income neighborhoods; federal aid would be limited to 50 percent of project costs; and 80 percent of project rents must fall within the Section 8 payment standard. Events are moving quickly with housing authorization this year, and by the time you read this, the bills may have moved through the respective houses and into Conference Committee where differences between the bills will be resolved. A coalition of non- government housing groups have drafted a "compromise" that they hope will be helpful to the principle actors, especially the members of the Conference Committee. The proposal calls for $1.3 billion to be us- ed to produce new or substantial rehabilita- tion of multifamily rental or cooperative housing. The funds would be distributed in the following way: 50 percent to cities, 25 percent to states based on a needs formula. The other 25 percent would be ad- ministered directly by HUD. At least 20 percent of the units in each project would be reserved for low income households and at 70 percent of the total funds to any city, state or HUD funded project, must be for people with incomes below 80 percent of median. Section 8 certificates would be us- ed for these units. Again the emphasis is on flexibility with assistance in the form of either a loan or a grant but primarily would go to projects with a payback mechanism. And here Davis-Bacon restric- tions would apply. While the delivery systems of these pro- posals vary between the UDAG application approach and the block grant distribution method and while the debate goes on con- cerning the "targetting" threshold for the benefit of low and moderate income peo- ple, it is clear that a new breed of produc- tion program is in the making. The con- cept of using federal dollars to subsidize the upfront construction costs through capital grants or to reduce the project's debt service to manageable proportions is attrac- tive. But already, a ghost has taken up residence in the hallowed halls of Capitol Hill that is prepared to take us back to view the mistakes of the past when foolhardy people tried to build housing for low in- come people without a built-in subsidy to bridge the gap between affordable rents and total project costs. The leaders of this na- tion have put housing on a merry-go-round and have resorted to stop-pause-go-stop ap- proach to policy and programs. The Sec- tion 8 production program could have been saved by introducing cost saving mechanisms and by changing the way Con- gress reports the housing budget . But , all we've done is to pull the plug on a program that was too young to die. Now there is lit- tle to do but make way for the new kid on the block.O Reverend Donald Sakano directs the Office of Neighborhood Preservation for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York and is a board member of the National Low income Housing Coalition. , , \ lllL .. \...., .. l'-:" ....("'t :,v: . ... ,-.- - -.- .... . . - .- .... . 5 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Protections Needed for Small Building Tenants (and Owners!) By Raymond Rodriguez T HIS JUNE THE EMERGENCY Tenant Protection Act (ETPA) once again expires. The ETPA exclude from coverage tenants in buildings with fewer than 6 units - they are the most unprotected tenants in New York State. When this Act last expired two years ago, legislators simp- ly renewed the existing law. This year there is a strong possiblility that the ETPA may be replaced by the Flynn-Dearie Bill. But, regardless of which bill is passed, it is vital that tenants in buildings with fewer than 6 units also be included in all protections. This will not be an easy task. As happened in the past, the real estate lobby will try to weaken rent controls. There may well be an attempt to expand exemptions in whatever bill is passed so that no buildings with fewer than 10 units will be covered. Excluding any group of tenants from pro- tection from inordinate rent increases is an attack on the integrity of a community. Members of the Housing Court Task Force have seen that a great number of tenants who go to Housing Court live in buildings with fewer than 6 units; when landlords try to evict them the tenants have no other recourse than to move. The most that an attorney or a skilled housing advocate can do to help these tenants is to get the judge to grant them a six-month extension in their apartment until they find another one. To correct this situation staff and volunteers from different housing and ad- vocacy organizations in Brooklyn met to find a solution. A major part of the solu- tion lies within the political arena. Tenants in small buildings currently are not organized as an active force fighting for this. Since they have had little legal recourse, few of the housing groups work with these tenants other than providing in- dividual counseling. Members of the Brooklyn Housing Court Task Force have joined with other groups to form the New York State Small Building Task Force and mobilize this constituency. This problem affects tenants in all five boroughs as well as the majority of tenants outside of New York City. One-Half Million Tenants Unprotected Twenty-one percent of all rental units in New York State are in buildings with under 5 units. In New York City,446,163 units are in buildings with 1-4 units. In Brooklyn alone there are 208,225 units in buildings with 1- 4 units. Many legislators have already embrac- ed the need for protection of tenants in small buildings through the endorsement of the Flynn-Dearie Act. We also support Flynn-Dearie and its protection of tenants in small buildings. Flynn-Dearie includes in its regulations protection for all tenants in buildings with 4 units or more and tenants in buildings with 2 or 3 units if the landlord owns a total of 4 or more units within New York State. The New York State Small Building Task Force supports legislation that would provide protection to both tenants and owners in small buildings. We cannot permit the passage of any rent regulatory legislation in June that does not provide protection for tenants in small buildings. It is not just a tenant issue, but a problem affecting the entire community. Communities with a preponderance of buildings with fewer than six units are con- tinUliIly experiencing an assault from real estate speculators. Homeowners are sub- jected to weekend ~ i s i t s and calls from anx- ious real estate salespersons wanting to know if their house is for sale. Blacks and Hispanics in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification are particularly vulnerable. They are informed that their new neighbors are white professionals who dislike them. They are encouraged to take the money of- fered for their homes and run to a neighborhood where they are wanted. We are working toward development of a "Community Protection Act" that would include, at a minimum, the following provisions: I. A ban on door-to-door solicitation by real estate agents of homes for sale. Energy Audits, Specifications and technical assistance, Investigated contr,ctors. Complete line of conservation projects at dis ount, Financing --- options. -- , / BROOKLYN ENERGY COOPERATIVE 562 Atlantic Ave. (near 4th Ave.) 858-8803 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 6 2. A tax credit for homeowners who rent at a reasonable rate to tenants in their buildings. This would encourage responsible and civic-minded homeowners to maintain the dwindling supply of housing stock for low and moderate income tenants. The Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption plan, if it can be proved constitutional , can serve as a model for the tax credit. 3. Protection for tenants in buildings with fewer than six units. Tenants need a) protection from huge and arbitrary rent . increases once their lease runs out (or whenever a landlord wants an increase, if they do not have a lease); and b) pro- tection from arbitrary evictions. As the law now stands, tenants in buildings with under six units without a lease can be evicted for any reason at all; the landlord only need want them out. 4. An anti-speculation tax that would discourage the rapid turnover of build- ings solely in the interest of making huge profits. One alternative would be a tax of, for example, 90 percent on the profits made on a building sold within one year, 80 percent on a building sold within two years, 70 percent within three years, etc. Legislators may not move to support tenants in small buildings out of fear of of- fending the small homeowners, whom they assume to be more likely to be registered voters. Politicians must be convinced that this is a neighborhood issue that unites owners and tenants rather than divides , them. The Brookyn Neighborhood Improve- ment Association, with the help of the Fifth Avenue Committee, Accion Latina, and other groups in Brooklyn recently spon- sored an Emergency Hearing on Small Buildings. State Senator Marty Markowitz and representatives from Congressman UP TO DATE AND D
You can combine a City Limits subscription with a year of the Association of Neighborhood Housing Developers' Weekly Reader, Major Owens, Councilwoman Ruth Mess- inger, and State Senator Anna Jefferson at- tended the special meeting. The testimony from the audience was moving and anger provoking. Homeowners present testified that the forced displacement of low and moderate income homeowners destroys the social fabric of their neighborhoods. Similar forums are . needed in other parts of Brooklyn and in the other four boroughs. We are urging neighborhood organiza- tions to sponsor special hearings on the problem of small buildings and to invite their legislators to these hearings. Even past friends of the housing movement need to be convinced that the issue of rent protec- tion for tenants in small buildings is critical. 0 Raymond Rodriguez works at the Pratt In- stitute Center for Community and En- vironmental Development and is a member of the Small Buildings Task Force. a digest of late breaking information on: Legislative Developments, Housing, Budget News, Neighborhood issues, Economic Development and Fundraising. Each weekly issue also carries a calendar listing critical hearings, demonstrations, conferences and workshops. If you are already getting City Limits, we'll just add on to your current sub-please include mailing label. Please send me a subscription to City Limits and/or o Weekly Reader : $20/Iyear, 0 City Limits: y,ea:. o Combined subscription-Weekly Reader & City Limits: $2511 year (a savings of almost 15 percent). . Citywide Nonprofits, Banks, Foundations, & Government Agencies: o Weekly Reader : $35/1 year. 0 City Limits: o Combined subscription-Weekly Reader & City Limits: $50/1 year (a savings of over 15 percent). the Weekly Reader. I am a new City Limits Subscriber O. I am currently a City Limits Subscriber O. (Please include label). Name AddresslZip Make check payable to: City Limits. Send to: City Limits, 424 West 33rd Street, New York, NY 10001. 7 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 The Real Northwest To the Editors: I think the emphasis in your articles on the Northwest Bronx Community Clergy Coalition was misplaced. The Exxon cam- paign is good public relations for the organization and enlarges the public's awareness of housing issues. It may even yield some money for weatherization at some future time. But that campaign is a minor part ofNWBCC's work and accomplishments. Its real work is rescuing buildings through tenant organizing and resident management. I had the pleasure of dealing with several organizers and building managers from one of NWBCCC's affiliates, Fordham Bedford Community Corporation, in connection with ANHD's Emergency Fuel Loan program. Not only did the buildings pay off their loans promptly, despite the fact that many of the white, black and Hispanic tenants were on welfare, but I found when visiting the area that the Fordham Bedford staff were not just employees, but friends and neighbors of the tenants. Fordham Bedford manages many buildings and must have a considerable budget and staff, yet it is still a neighborhood group. It was the quality of the rela- tionship between the NWBCCC groups and their neighborhoods which was missing from your articles. Good public relations, important as it is for fund raising, is merely a set of skills which can be learned in the profit or non- profit world or purchased from a consultant . Being truly connected to an integrated community (another fact missing from the articles) is a different order of accomplishment. Toby Sanchez Housing Director Junction-College Development Corp. Lincoln West 7, West Side 0 To the Editors: The article, "A People's Housing Tool ," by Paul Davidoff and Phil Tegeler of the Metropolitan Action Institute in your February, 1983, issue contained two inaccuracies which I would like to correct. First, I did not vote against the Lincoln West project, and the quotation attributed to me was taken from a concurring, not dissenting, statement that I appended to the Commission's final report on the project. Second, no members of the Commission voted against Lin- coln West. The project was passed seven to z e ~ o , not four to three as the article stated. Thank you for this opportunity to set the record straight. R. Susan Motley Commissioner City Planning Commission CITY LIMITS/May 1983 8 Long Division Still a Problem To the Editors: Re City Limits' article "How to Research Your Landlord" in the April issue-how to calculate the selling price based upon revenue stamps (55e per $500 or $1.10 per $1,000). There has been an obvious error in calculation as presented, to wit: $49.50 divided by $.55 = 90 x $500 = $45,000, not 81 x $500 = $40,000 as suggested. The easier method is $49.50 divided by .00110 = $45,000. I would be glad to donate a calculator should one be needed. Ivar Opsis Bronx, New York 1# would appreciate that. One with clear instructions please . . Thanks. JASA's Version To the Editors : Susan.Baldwin's article in the April issue, concerning JASA's plans for housing for the elderly at Cooper Square, contains a number of inaccuracies that are in need of correction: From the very outset of the project-and not "moments before" the Board of Estimate hearing on March 3-JASA has sought to involve the community. At the public hearing of Community Board #3 on October 21, 1982 , JASA announced that it was seek- ing priority to 49 percent of the apartments for eligible elderly residents of CB #3, and that it was committed to a vigorous com- munity outreach. This was evidenced by JASA's announcement of its fair marketing plan, submitted to HUD, which included information bulletins in all languages spoken by the elderly of the community, to be distributed through more than 100 com- munity organizations. . The fuir marketing plan/outreach effort, and the priority plans, were repeated at the hearing before the City Planning Commis- sion on December 8, 1982. This formed the basis for the com- mission's unanimous approval of JASA's sponsorship of the project. At a meeting of JASA's Community Advisory Committee for the Cooper Square housing for the elderly, on February 15, 1983, JASA announced plans to employ an outreach worker fluent in Spanish, to inform Hispanic elderly of the Lower East Side about the availability of apartments. Under the agreement approved by the Board of Estimate on March 3rd, this worker is not sub- ject to the approval of the Cooper Square Community Develop- ment Committee. The same agreement stipulates that the Cooper Square Com- mittee may send a representative "if available" "with respect to home investigations of the 49 percent" of apartments reserved for residents of CB #3, and not "on all home visits; as your arti- cle stated. IS YOUR INSURANCE TOO EXPENSIVE? Let us evaluate your insurance program to see if you are getting the most for your dollars. "Specializing in lYon-Profit and Community Organizations" Contact: PaUl Sourifman (212) 6844770 9 JASA has to date a mailing list (not a waiting list) of 3500 names. We welcome requests for applications from ail in- dividuals age 62 and older. Requests may be sent to Housing Department, JASA, 40 West 68 Street, New York, NY 10023. Formal applications for apartments will be sent to all names on the mailing list on a date three months before the building is ready for occupancy-now scheduled for late 1984. Mimi Koren Director of Public Information Jewish Association for Services for the Aged The agreement arrived at "moments before" the Board of Estimate hearing was fundamental. The key to that agreement was JASAs acceptance of community monitoring - via a representative of the Cooper Square Committee-of its home visits to local ap- plicants as a means of insuring equal access to apartments in the project. This, in addition to JASAs agreement to allow communi- ty review of rejected local applicants, and to hire a local Spanish- speaking outreach worker, formed the basis for the Boards ap- provaL. Those pieces were not in place as late as the morning of the Boards meeting. Koren is correct on two points: our article did not cite JASAs earlier commitments to the 49 percent figure; and, although the Cooper Square Committee focused the pressure which resulted in JASAs commitment to hire a minority outreach worker, JASA will solely select the individual. JASA apparently still does not understand why, in spite of its pronouncements, community groups would continue to doubt this agencys word. Somehow, JASA does not make the connection bet- ween its current tenant population -only five percent minorities in its more than J,OOO units of senior citizen housing -and its stated goals for aggressive minority outreach on the Lower East. S d Editors I e. MICROCOMPUTER SERVICES 639 carroll street bklyn ny 11215 (212) 857-9157 a reasonably priced data processing service for the small to medium sized professional office deSigned to save time and provide accuracy time accounting ... accts receivable ... blliing statements ... project reports ... mailing lists call or write for our free brochure CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Suit Challenges Shutdown of City Buildings ---..--- T ENANTS IN FOUR CITY-OWNED buildings threatened with closing under the city's controversial consolidation program \ave brought suit in New York State Supreme Court against Mayor Koch and the city's housing department charg- ing that their rights to due process of law under the state Constitution and city charter have been violated. The plaintiffs, by this action, are seek- ing to enjoin the city from closing oc- cupied, tax-foreclosed (in rem) buildings without first establishing "ascertainable standards" and rules and regulations to govern this decision. This action, if implemented, would also enjoin the city from withholding necessary repairs and essential services to plaintiffs' buildings and apartments as guaranteed under the warrant of habitability in the city's housing code. The lawsuit calls on the city to provide in rem tenants with "prior written notice of an intent to close a building or to issue a vacate order." It also asks for an explana- tion for its action. CITY LIMITS/May 1983
{f "( In addition, it insists on providing the tenants "with a meaningful opportunity to be heat;d prior to a final decision to close a building or issue a vacate order." In October, 1982, tenants of city-owned buildings won a round in state court when Judge Sheldon S. Levy found that rent in- creases imposed by the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development in four Bronx buildings were illegal and made a mockery of the tenants' due pro- cess rights. (See "Judge Voids City Rent December, 1982.) The proJ}erties involved in this latest court action are also located in the Bronx and are currently in the city's central management program. They are 1961 Trini- ty, 1104 Elder, 1325 Lafayette, and 1244 Grant Avenues. . Bronx Legal Services brought the lawsuit on behalf of the tenants. The Union of City Tenants, a citywide association advocating decent , affordable shelter, is also a party to t}le suit. 10 z
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Iii
In addition , the Assoc'iation of Neighborhood Housing Developers, which represents more than two dozen nonprofit community groups, plans to file an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs. "The problem with this lawsuit is that it's five years too late," said Andy Scherer, one of the legal aid attorneys handling this case. "For too long, the city has been closing buildings citing the existence of hazardous conditions, but there are no established standards, no criteria to refer to . . . The tenants need protection and they need it now before this affordable housing stock disappears." Many Buildings Are Sound By last year , some 1600 buildings were consolidated. Often, critics of the pro- gram contend, these buildings are struc- turally sound and would make good resource housing for relocatees from pro- perties with serious structural problems. Some have also charged that buildings are willfully vandalized so that vacate orders can be placed on them and that no one takes responsiblity for supervising this housing inventory. In addition to pointing out the lack of consolidation criteria, Scherer said that these decisions to close down or con- solidate buildings should first go before the local community boards as they involve land use decisions covered under the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, one of the charter-mandated responsibilities of the local boards. Dave Robinson, an organizer with the Union of City Tenants, echoed Scherer's concern about the lack of due process con- sideration in the implementation of the ci- ty's consolidation of buildings. "This low income housing is the last resort for shelter, and to close these buildings without even a written note or hearing, in addition to be- ing unconscionable, is a violation of the city's responsibility as outlined in the state Constitution - to provide shelter for low and moderate income tenants as well as for the homeless," he said, noting that there are vacate orders on each of the four buildings, New Rent Board Member Eugene 1. Morris, an attorney and a member of the Real Estate Board of New York, Inc., has been appointed as an owners' representative to the city's Rent Guidelines Board by Mayor Edward Koch. The Rent Guidelines Board is a nine- member group which sets the maximum possible rent increase for the 956,000 apart- ments in the city's rent stabilization system. It includes two representatives each for tenants and owners, and five public members, including the chairman. Morris, a partner in the firm of Demov, Morris, Levin and Shein,has been a vocal member of CONTINUE, a Manhattan West Side group that has opposed comple- tion of the city's urban renewal plan and any further accommodation of low income housing on the Upper West Side. Morris replaces William S. Brennen, who recently resigned to head the city's Of- fice of Business Development. 0 which, to date, have not been implemented. According to Robinson, if the current policy is reversed, these four buildings could easily be fixed up and rented for a modest sum of money. A recent inspection and report by the Pratt Center for Community and En- vironmental Development of 1061 Trinity Avenue revealed that these apartments could be made habitable by the expenditure of $3,100 a unit. In the case of 1244 Grant Avenue, even HPD in August, 1981, (when a 7-A ad- ministrator was put in charge prior to the foreclosure action) had estimated then that this 84-unit building could be made livable by spending $58,000 for repairs. Citing the histories of all four buildings, the lawsuit stresses that they were all in much better and repairable shape before the city foreclosed on them, after which it allowed them to slip and become vandaliz- ed by not providing basic services and repairs. Commenting on the tenants' lawsuit , Joseph Shuldiner, deputy commissioner of Lost in the Residents of the Rockaways peninsula of Queens have battled banks and institutional redlining for years, but have at least manag- ed to stay on the map. No longer, however. "The Wave", a weekly newspaper publish- ed in Rockaway Beach reprinted on its front page last month a portion of a new Hagstrom's map printed for a large map club. The map shows the Atlantic Ocean 11 property management at HPD, said, "This suit doesn't really contest our criteria for consolidation." He also emphasized the ex- pense of repairing apartments, suggesting that it could cost as much as $20,000 a unit to fix them up. But, the commissioner added, in terms of notice to tenants, "I think we should give tenants the opportunity to come back to us with a plan." Maybe, he explained, they could offer cheaper repair suggestions. Admitting that the city has no standar- dized requirements for closing buildings, Shuldiner also suggested that it should en- force a certain, minimum occupancy rate perhaps "under 30 percent;' and enforce this as a cut-off point for instituting con- solidation proceedings. Although the lawsuit only applies specifically to conditions in the four Bronx . buildings, Scherer said it could be amend- ed to include broader implications for a class action suit. In addition, the option re- mains to bring a similar action in Federal court if the state hearing proves fruitless.OS.B. where the peninsula and the Jamaica Bay islands are normally considered to lie. It wasn't a goof, either. Indignant letters from the Rockaways Chamber of Commerce to the Hagstrom Map Company in Maspeth, Queens brought the response that the Greiner-Maltz Map Club of Long Island Ci- ty, also in Queens, has specifically requested the deletions from its maps. 0 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 The UDAG Jersey City Won't Spend G OOD THINGS HAVE BEEN coming in bunches for the two-year- old administration of Jersey City's pro- Reagan Democratic mayor Gerald McAnn. On March 31, the same day that his Hud- son County city snared a $9 million federal Urban Development Action Grant , it also scooped up 700 jobs which the Bankers Trust Company shifted out of New York City. The $9 million grant,which will be loaned to a private investment group to develop offices and a parking garage, comes atop a $40 million UDAG (the largest ever) made by the department of Housing and Urban Development to Jersey City last fall. That funding is to create "Harbor City" - a huge luxury con- dominium and commercial mall develop- ment along the city's Manhattan-facing waterfront. Curiously, this massive injection of federal funds comes in spite of Jersey Ci- ty's refusal to follow through on an earlier P million UDAG. That 1978 grant commit- ted the city to build, among other things, 140 large fumily public housing apartments in its downtown Montgomery Gateway area, a project it has vigorously resisted. The almost $50 million in grants are also being bestowed upon a city hall which a federal judge recently described as suffer- ing from a "plague" of racism. The dernult on the city's first UDAG came soon after the McAnn administration came to office when it balked at finishing off the city's Montgomery Gateway revitalization plan. The large rnmily public housing, the project's last missing piece, was to house some of the nearly 500 minority rnmilies whose homes were raz- ed to make way for new development in the neighborhood. [Set: City Limits, August- September 1982, "Jersey City'S Redevelop- ment Battle."] The public housing, promis- ed by the previous mayor, Thomas EX. Smith, became an embarrassment to McAnn because of its close proximity to Jersey Ci- ty's brownstone belt which was beginning to pick up those middle income families priced out of Hoboken and Manhattan. McAnn's housing and planning departments CITY LIMITS/May 1983 City Hall - Jersey Cit)'. stalled necessary zoning approvals and financing applications for the project, even switching sites for the housing at the last minute, in the apparent hope that HUD would recapture the Section 8 funding reservation in a cutback move. The administration's efforts to scuttle the public housing would have buried the issue long ago, had it not been for the dogged pursuit of former residents and their allies in the Montgomery Gateway Residents Coalition. In their latest countermoves to force the city's hand, the group filed suit in federal district court to get the project started as well as an administrative com- plaint at HUD. Although HUD turned a blind eye to the complaint, McAnn's administration declin- ed to contest the contention of the displac- ed residents' federal suit that their civil rights were being denied by the city's refusal to allow them to return to their neighborhood . Civil rights is not a topic which Mayor McAnn's administration enjoys hearing in court. Last September, Judge H. Lee Sarokin, in the same federal court, stated that the "disease" of "racism ... has ap- parently attained plague proportions in the municipal halls of Jersey City," after the city refused to comply with his directives to in- crease the number of minorities in the ci- ty's fire department. Jersey City'S attorneys clearly didn't feel up to another civil rights 12 action before one of Judge Sarokin's col- leagues on the federal bench. Although the federal court ordered con- struction on the project to begin by March 1, a suit filed by a brownstone homeowners' group in state court sought to block the start-up. The final decision still awaits word from the New Jersey Supreme Court . Praise from 'The Times' Meanwhile, none of these maneuvers by McAnn's City Hall made it into two lengthy New York Times appraisals of Jersey Ci- ty's success which appeared in March and April. The Times' first story, while prais- ing the city's "classic row houses" and af- fordable brownstones, so overplayed McAnn's pro-Reagan bent that it listed him as a Republican which he is not. The 31-year-old mayor did, however, chair the statewide Democrats for Reagan group and, upon his election, praise Reagan's welrnre cuts as the "greatest thing in the world" because Jersey City's poor "would just have to go back to wherever they came from." The Times' second article got the mayor's party affiliation correct and quoted him as saying that his unsuccessful attempt to get rid of rent control last year was an attempt "to get the attention of the financial community." That, plus an aggressive pursuit of high- tech industry in a city of 225,000 with an Il percent unemployment rate primarily among blue collar workers, grabbed the Times' attention in a way that McAnn's other antics have not. These have includ- ed one instance of fisticuffs with a citizen in the city council, and a steady flow of in- vective against those with the temerity to oppose him. Those who contest McAnn's vision of a reshaped Jersey City are not about to disap- pear, however. A well organized tenants' group defeated the anti-rent control move and the coalition that has fought the city on the public housing issue has outlasted numerous stalls and maneuvers and say they will press on with their federal court suit and hold City Hall good to its pro- mises. ORick Cohen and Tom Robbins Homeless Shelter Plans Readied I F EVERYTHING FALLS INTO place as planned, applications from nonprofit groups and municipalities around the state interested in providing permanent housing for the homeless may be accepted in AJbany, beginning as early as late June. According to Elizabeth Searles, at the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the state is still working out the details for administering Governor Cuomo's ambitious, four-year, $50 million plan to provide permanent housing and solutions for the state's homeless that number over 50,000. Part of the budget passed by state legislators in the early hours of March 28 included the first $12.5 million installment which could conceivably cover the rehabilitation or construction of 1,200 to 1,500 units next year. Its prime sponsors in the legislature were Assemblymen Pete Grannis, Democrat- Liberal of Manhattan, chairman of the Assembly Housing Committee; Angelo Del Toro, Democrat-Republican of Manhattan, chairman of the Assembly Social Services Committee; and Steve Sanders, Democrat-Liberal , Assembly representative to the state Task Force on the Homeless. Supporters in the Senate were Senators Frank Padavan , Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Right-to-Life representative from Queens, and majority Leader Warren M. Anderson, Republican, from Binghamton. Commenting on the bill , Grannis said, "This is a significant achievement which represents a four-year commitment on the part of the state ... Previous actions on behalf of the homeless, however worthy, have only been 'band-aid' attempts to stop the flow of homeless persons onto our streets, aggravated largely by the severe shortage of low income housing." According to Searles, proposed regula- tions for administering the program will be circulated for public comment during the next month . Preference will be given. she noted. to groups submitting proposal applications that include sources of other financial support-federal, city, other state, or private- in determining the recipients. The newly appointed assistant commis- sioner for this special program at the state Department of Social Services is Nancy Travers. Formerly director of policy in the division of property management at the ci- ty's housing department, Travers also work- ed on developing a permanent model for SRO housing at the Vera Institute in New York City. Supervising the state's program for the homeless is William Eimicke, deputy secretary for policy and program and chair- man of the state's 15-member Emergency Task Force on the City's Homeless. Eimicke formerly served as deputy direc- tor of the City'S division of property management. Each year, $200,000 will be used to ad- minister the program at DSS, leaving $12.3 million to fund the program at the municipal level. No more than 50 percent of the funds can go directly to anyone municipality, although this does not include funds channeled to nonprofit groups within the municipality. Funds ~ i l l be appropriated from the state treasury and general fund into a homeless housirtg and assistance fund to be distributed by DSS. No more than 25 percent of the amount 13 awarded to a participant can be used for ad- ministrative costs. One group that has already submitted a proposal to the state outlining plans for rehabilitating 1200 units of city-owned, tax- foreclosed housing is the Coalition on the Homeless. In related homeless news, Searles reported that the 14 groups, originally designated to receive funding from the ' s t a t ~ s $2 million direct allocation category of the Special Needs Grant, have been reapproved. Also, the three nonprofit groups participating in the $2 million municipal match part of this total $4 million special grant were reapproved. This included the 300-block of the West l39th Street Block Association for two rooming houses, the St. Francis Residence II for the Homeless, and the Washington Heights, West Harlem Inwood Coalition proposal for the Hudson Hotel . All these contracts, administered under DHCR, not DSS, as is planned for the new homeless plan, were held up with the political changeover at DHCR from Carey's Commissioner Richard Berman to Cuomo's new head-Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich. The latter had asked for time to review these Vl contracts in order to see that the proposed recipients were qualified and their pro- posals, valid.OS.B. CITY LIMITS/May 1983 :; o ..J I;; Z '" w First Grants are Made to Partnership T HE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT has given approval to preliminary plans submitted by a "partnership" of the city and some of the world's most powerful banks, corporations, and trade unions and awarded $4.87 million as a first phase grant to assist in the construction of 325 middle income homes on five sites. Using the federal Urban Development Action Grant program, the New York Hous- ing Partnership Development Corporation-a spin-off from banker David Rockefeller's New York Partnership-has applied to HUD for a total of$52.5 million to write down the cost of 5,000 homes over a five-year period. If approved, this will be the largest UDAG ever granted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Of the first five sites to be developed, two are in Brooklyn, two in the Bronx, and one in Staten Island. Also contributing to this first phase of development are Chemical Bank with $17.67 million and Manufacturers Hanover, $87,750. New York City's share is about $1 million, in addition to the price tag of $500 each it will charge for each structure on city- owned sites. According to city housing officials, the lion's share of this first grant money - about $4.1 million - will go towards bailing out the ailing Section 235 housing on the Marcus Garvey urban renewal site in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn where the cost of the proposed m town houses is be- ing driven up by additional construction costs for rebuilding sewers, streets, and sidewalks in this urban wasteland that was leveled 15 years ago. (See "New York's Part- nership Selects Its Sites," April , 1983.) By using the UDAG to underwrite costs, the project, will be revived, and the Section 235, low-interest mortgage subsidy will also be saved. A smaller amount-$540,000-will serve to underwrite the construction of 18 two- family homes in Windsor Terrace in Southwestern Brooklyn. The remainder of the grant money will go towards developing home models for the other three sites. In the Bronx, these two sites are Morris CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Banker Da,'id Rockefeller Park in the northeast section near the Westchester line and Soundview, near Com- monwealth Avenue. The plans call for 16 at- tached, three-family houses with a total of 48 units, and 21 two-family homes, totaling 42 dwelling units, respectively. At the one site on Staten Island - Eibs Pond in the Community Board #1 area, the board had originally been concerned that the Partnership's proposal for 160 attached, three-story town houses would be too dense and too high given the available open space. But , according to George Doyle, who serves as chairman of the Fox Hill-Park Hill area where this site is located, the board is satisfied after meeting with the Partnership that attractive, affordable housing is being offered. Residents of this area were first suppor- ting plans for 130 more inexpensive models because of the density question and their in- c o m ~ constraints. The Partnership has now promised to use the UDAG subsidy to bring down housing costs. Hence, a three- bedroom house that would cost $108,000 and require a minimum $45,000 income without the UDAG subsidy will come in at $68,000 and call for a $33,()()() income with the UDAG write-down. 14 At this time, the Partnership is only plan- ning housing in its home ownership program that makes use of the UDAG support. This means that the income level for a family of four qualifying for this housing under the grant will range from $26,000 to $38,000. The income needed for the same-sized fami- ly to carry the expenses of the same hous- ing without the UDAG would range between $42,000 and $50,000. The Partnership'S plans have not met with the same favorable response in other parts oftown where sites are being referred to the local community boards for disposition via the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. The Partnership had hoped to submit some of these alternative sites for the next UDAG funding round in July. In Manhattan, in the case of two parcels of land - Douglass Circle 1 and 2 - on the Upper West Side and in West Harlem, the two community boards - #7 and #10- have sent a joint letter to Herbert Sturz, chairman of the City Planning Commission, calling the notice "not in the spirit of ULURP." In particular, they charge, none of the regular, necessary information needed, and usual- ly required to make a sound land use deci- sion,have been provided. Among the questions the boards seek answers to are the kind of housing to be built, how developers will be chosen, the ex- istence of commercial space and the availability ofUDAG assistance. The boards also seek to understand the role of the Par- nership in the project. Both boards also demanded that the Harlem Urban Development Corporation's involvment in these sites be spelled out. A state agency whose parent organization is the Urban Development Corporation, HUDC had originally been designated by the city's housing department to develop the smaller, less attractive site on the northern side of Douglass Circle in the Board #10 area, known also as the Gateway to Harlem. The other site - in Board #7's area - ten years ago was scheduled to house 340 units of low income housing, but the funding never materialized during the Nixon hous- ing freeze. Most recently, however, the Partnership has informally approached the Manhattan Valley Development Corporation, a local, nonprofit organization involved in housing development in the area, and the Morn- ingside Renewal Council, the city-approved Project Area Committee that nominally controls this urban renewal site, regarding development possiblilities. But, according to Ethel Sheffer, chairman of Board #7, her board has never had a for- mal meeting with the Partnership to discuss the development of this site. Board #10, on the other hand, she pointed out, has had several informational sessions with the representatives from both the Partnership and HUDe. Stressing that the Board #7 does not want to "hold up progress," asserted, all, we've been very eager to develop this site for 20 years but not at the expense of our principles." Board #7 is on record favoring MVDC as the sole developer for the site with express- ed plans to build low and moderate income housing. Rockefeller Family Role On the other hand, Gene Norman, ex- ecutive vice president of HUDC, recently told City Limits that his organization was in the process of working out a memorandum of understanding with the Partnership detail- ing its role in the development of both sites. Commenting on the Partnership'S role in bringing more sites into its development schemes, Cathy Wylde, ice president in charge of housing, said,"What we're doing, if we have the opportunity, is to discuss our program and involve as many [community boards] as we can. But, if there is resistance to our program, we are pulling it out." Asked about Boards #7 and #10's refusal to comply with the terms of the ULURP notice from city planning on the grounds that it is defective, Wylde said, "We are put- ting together a meeting to answer these questions." Queried about HUDC's role in the mat- ter, she added, "We're working with them. We work cooperatively with whoever is there. But we haven't structured what we're doing with them." She also said that a great deal of adverse and confusing publicity was emanating from the Harlem community regarding the rela- tionship between the Partnership, HUDC, and another arm of the Rockefeller 42nd Street Sale Looming T HE EMBATTLED TENANTS OF three buildings on West 42nd Street may enter a new phase of their struggle to hold on to their homes if a planned mortgage foreclosure sale on the buildings takes place as scheduled this month. Brooklyn developer Henry A. Roth has quietly moved in state Supreme Court to sell off the defaulted mortgage held by his Tenth Avenue Development Corporation. Over $1.7 million is now owed on the mortgage. Title to the buildings is held by convicted ar- sonist Joseph Bald. The purchaser of the mortgage will consolidate ownership of the property, and some tenants of the buildings believe Roth himself is a likely purchaser. Roth was recently removed by the city from two subsidized renovation projects follow- ing findings of harassment against him at the buildings at 500-506 West 42nd Street. Roth, who was one of four along with Bald and two others found guilty of harass- ment and fined by the city's Department of Rent Control (see "Harassment Fines for 42nd St. Owners;' February 1983) has sought in court to overturn the findings against him. Roth named Joseph Neumann, a partner, to step in for him on the Section 8 rehabilita- tion projects from which he was barred. The city's development department has been troubled, however, by the apparent identity of interests between Roth and Neumann. Also, an investigation by the Building Department's inspector general into a mysteriously issued demolition permit that was used to illegally demolish two other ad- jacent buildings at the southwest corner of 42nd Street and Tenth Avenue has determin- ed that issuance of the permit was "a mistake." The buildings demolished were also owned by Bald's Third Avenue Manage- ment Corp, No other charges have been levied since the November incident. The demolition, as well as the current foreclosure sale, highlights the continued high stakes being played to gain develop- ment control of the valuable property iD Mid-Manhattan's West Side. Real estate observers of the land boom in Clinton maintain that this corner will be pivotal in this area's future as it is a choice candidate, with proper zoniD.g variances, for selling lucrative air rights. 15 empire-the Rockefeller Brothers Fund- "which has nothing to do with us." The lat- ter in mid-April proposed a grant of $225,000 that was subsequently approved by HUDC's board to fund a special liaison bet- ween the Partnership and HUDe. According to published reports, this liaison-Jerry Davenport , a former Rockefeller staffer with 17 years' experience serving the family-would serve in this $58,OOO-a-year post taking on the task of "identification of private financing for the redevelopment of Harlem," in the words of HUDC chief Donald Cogsville. Meanwhile, at a public hearing April 19 on the proposed ULURP for Site 2 in the Seward Park urban renewal area which is advocated by the Partnership, the Housing Committee of Community Board #3 on the Lower East Side voted overwhelmingly to reject this proposal on the grounds that not enough information regarding its develop- ment was being provided. "They tried to emphasize the number of responsible people involved with the Part- nership, but they couldn't answer our ques- tions. They really had nothing to say to us," said Lisa Kaplan, a board member.OS.B. They also have noted that its value increases as fewer buildings are left standing and fewer tenants, particularly ones cover.ed by rent control , are in residence.OS.B. , , New York City's New Landlord Joseph Shu/diller J OSEPH SHULDINER, a ten year veteran of the city housing depanment, was appointed in January to take over the management of the city's tax-foreclosed residential proper- ties: That real estate domain is the largest in New lVrk, com- prising both the city's most neglected and difficult to maintain housing as well as some of its potentially most valuable. It also represents, sometimes to the city's chagrin, the single biggest resource for iow income housing. Under Shuldiner's direction as Deputy Commissioner for Pro- perty Management are /0,000 occupied units in community, CITY LIMITS/May 1983 tenant or private management tlwt are working their way towards sale, most as low income housing co-ops. There are also some 25,000 apartments which his property management office directly manages, for which the future is wholly unclear. In addition , there are 6,000 vacant buildings which are slated for disposi- tion via a number of routesincluding open auction. There is also a steady inflow of more properties as landlord abandon- ment continues. To get an idea of his concerns and priorities, City Limits in- terviewed Shuldiner last month. Following are excerpts from that talk. 16 City Limits: How are you different from other people who have served in this position before? Shuldiner: Neither of my two predecessors actually had hous- ing backgrounds before they got the job which is an advantage I do have and I guess everybody has their own style. I feel that I'm more familiar with housing and more familiar with this specific housing as well, not just housing in general. For exam- ple, the buildings we worked with in 7-A are the same or very similar to the buildings that will go into DAMP. So I feel a familiarity with the buildings and the kind of problems they have. I also know the people. Prior to reorganization, prior to June of '78, what was then the alternative management programs was part of what is now the Division of Evaluation and Compliance. People like Joan Wallstein, Bob Moncrief, Dom Catania, they all were part of the same division. So that's an advantage in that we all worked together before. It makes the transition a lot easier for me, I'm not an outsider. CL: Do you think there is a different perspective brought about by working with the housing to prevent foreclosure, to work with the private side. Now the private side is gone, and you're left w i ~ just the housing. Does that change your perspective? Shuldiner: I like to believe that with the other job our real in- terest was in providing services for the tenants. Whether you do it by trying to help the owner stay and survive, or you do it by providing the services, it's pretty much the same thing. It's' basically understanding housing and the need of the tenants and the financing. The difference here is you actually have the buildings. To some degree this is a better job because you ac- tually have more control, you can effect change. You can get concrete results. CL: So actually you don't see a real difference between the work you were doing before? Shuldiner: This is a lot bigger ... more money . . . more buildings, more of everything ... The overall housing problems are the same and from whatever perspective you are dealing with them, you are dealing with the same problems. The other thing is, my biggest initial problem, is determining what the role of a deputy commissioner should be. As an assistant commissioner, I had more line responsibilities for the programs. CL: Since 1978 when the fast vesting law started, there have been a substantial number of buildings that did not get into any of the DAMP programs that are still there. There are about 25,000 occupied units. Are you starting to look at what this means for the long term responsibility of your department? What are your options? plementation. That's for two purposes; one, to make sure that every program had selection criteria, procedures and second, to be able to review them, to see that there's basic similarity in policy on our programs. CL: When you asked for them, were they there? Shuldiner: Well, it doesn't really matter - they were provid- ed. If they didn't exist at the time that I asked they were thereafter written so that I got them. I haven't had the time to go through everything in detail and to sit down with the assistant commis- sioners and to discuss where the procedures might be lacking, or where they may not reflect the actual goal of the program. So those are things that have to happen over time. The other thing of course that we are looking at, is long term manage- ment. This Brooklyn vesting is very large, we project 1,181 more occupied mUltiple dwellings, 535 one and two family houses, 8,051 occupied units and 1,313 vacant buildings. If owners redeem at a heavier rate or a lowered rate it will of course affect the numbers. This, followed by a very small Queens and Staten Island vesting will be our second sweep through every borough since the law was changed. If these numbers are still there when we go through them a third time, I think there will probably have to be some kind of rethinking of OPM. We have between DAMP and DPM and this Brooklyn vesting almost 5,000 occupied buildings. Maybe 6,500 - 7,000 vacant buildings. No matter how accelerated our sales policy might be it wiJl take us ten to fifteen years to sell all those buildings. So long term management is a reality we have to consider. Whether we are interested in it or not. I have already asked [Assistant Commissioners] Bob [Moncrief] and Terry [Krueger] before him and Joan [Wallstein] to consider what programs might be most appropriate for long term management. Now there is actual disagreement over that. Terry Krueger believed very strongly that central management was the cheapest program, and could do the best job. Joan of course feels that some studies show that TIL or possibly an extension, or a different direc- tion, in community management, might be better. Community management is right now very heavily rehabilitation-oriented so that the groups have few buildings. We would consider the possibility of having them playa more management role. Thats one of the options. I have lots of questions, but no answers. Everybody sitting at the table has loads of questions ... CL: Some people would say those questions took a long time getting there. Shuldiner: OPM should not become a rival of the Housing Authority. That 's not what it was designed to do and we don't have the advantage of their housing stock: They have newer better buildings, huge buildings where they can have economy of scale. Shuldiner: When I first saw the organizational chart for OPM, One of the things that really makes us nervous about the Brooklyn I asked myself what I was getting into. Everything is so large vesting is that the average building is about six units. ~ o s t of the that all you can really do is try to set priorities and respond on buildings are threes and fours to balance out the 20's and 30's. a daily basis one thing at a time. The first thing I did after I Managing threes and fours presents a big problem. If a manager got here was to ask all the assistant commissioners to have their is supposed to have 250 units and you give them 250 units in threes program directors send me a copy of all written procedures and and fours it means the person has to manage 60-70 buildings which guidelines and criteria for program selection and program im- is impossible. We've avoided it in the ones and twos by going to 17 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 raw Hon . 1$. of Mardl31, 1983 &> ..... '_ ., " _,' ,, '\ , JJ? " :;;t :jp84 m. - .. 5,95fi, :, ..... (BUildi nits) + 3.b!13i,l70 "'(25.866 occ.) Jltivate Ownership D 44/1;601" ooc.) Homesteading: 15/125 (under constrUction) ;t.;: @ Total DAMP: a lot of net leasing. That's not as useful in the threes and fours. There's just too much of a problem if you lease to one of the two or three tenants and he or she doesn't give services it's very em- barrassing. We would probably not do that. CL: Is the financing for OPM secure? Shuldiner: Fortunately, the timing is such that at least central management is perhaps the number one priority for the city in terms of CD monies. One of the things I've been trying to stress is to take a policeman off the street is terrible, but you have to do that before you don't give fuel to a building. Among horrible tradeoffs, we are the owner ofthe building we have to service it. I don't advocate selling our buildings but from a moral standpoint I would prefer to sell the buildings than to run them poorly. I'm only a housing person, not a philosopher . . . CL: The office will go through with the Brooklyn vesting on time? Shuldiner: Yes, delay is no benefit, it's a di'Sadvantage. Unless you're talking about an entire year.To get the buildings later in the summer just means you have less time to prepare them for the winter. . . CL: What would a year's delay mean for you? Shuldiner: Well, in central management the average expenditure is $1,561 a unit so it would save us $12 million. CL: But when you were at Evaluation and Compliance, many of the same buildings you dealt with were caught in that limbo. Shuldiner: Okay, I don't advocate not vesting. The other agen- cies say you have to vest because vesting is the only enforcement we have for real estate tax collection. If we have no enforcement mechanism other people might stop paying. That's not my interest. Yeah, I want the city to be fiscally healthy, but I'm not so over- CITY LIMITS/May 1983 whelmed by the need to enforce this law. But on the other hand, I know from my experience before, by not taking the buildings we are really leaving the tenants out there hanging . CL: There's a cost to that too, right? Shuldiner: There's a cost to that long term. ERP spent $13 million a year which you could say is comparable, but that $13 million wasn't spent on only l,tOO buildings. They've done work in over 60,000 buildings. So it's a little different. I think the thing that would concern me is the suffering of the tenants ... expecting to be taken. They've organized around it - whatever their budgets are, they've tried to make it this far until we come in, and it would be sad if we couldn't take. CL: While you're waiting for these evaluations,what's going to happen with those buildings waiting to come into the pipeline. Particularly TIL. Shuldiner: I would like to be able to avoid these problems by hav- ing clear criteria for TIL. Any building that qualifies gets In. CL: Do you have that criteria now? Shuldiner: There are criteria that have been submitted to me. I'm not going to say that they are criteria that I'm comfortable with or that I'm convinced that we follow those criteria in every case. That's the whole purpose of having criteria. Once you have the criteria that you are comfortable with, and you impose them uniformly, then even in an area like Clinton,there will be buildings that will get in there and there will be others that don't. 18 CL: What's the future of community management? Shuldiner: On the eve of its tenth anniversary I wouldn't suggest that it was less than a perfect program. I would not single com- munity management out for anything. It's just natural I would want to review all programs. Especially a program which spends as much money as community management. I also may have some preconceived notions just from my original experience with com- munity management, but I would perfer not to discuss that unless I discussed it with the groups, and the people running it. Com- munity management is always a struggle to get them the budget they need, but we are looking to get it to them. Should there be new directions in community management? Maybe so, maybe in terms of what we've been talking about. If OPM itself needs new directions, then I would assume that would be passed on to all programs. CL: Speci fically, are groups being permitted to take in new units when they buy? One Clinton group has been told they cannot. Shuldiner: The question really is if you're talking about units for rehabilitation then it's a budgetary decision. I'm not sure that deci- sions reflecting Clinton reflect program wide decisions. Clinton is Clinton, hopefully that won't be the situation and everything will be uniform across the board. But I wouldn't necessarily think that something that happened in Clinton represented a citywide policy. From either side, by the way. 1 CL: But that's where the $250 policy found its sharpest point and that's where the battle was fought. That is where the real estate market is increasing, and that's where you have a high number of bUildings. Shuldiner: I don't have any reason to expect that if they qualify they would not go into TIL ... That' s the thing in terms of com- ing here, I have to do two things at once. I have to deal with the uniformity of policy and I have to deal with individual problems that already existed. CL: The shadow question behind that is the potential real estate value of the land and the buildings. It might not just be Clinton. Shuldiner: Okay, but I'm hopeful that whatever went on with the Board of Estimate, with the $250 and the restrictions, would get us beyond that . I hope that was one issue that was somewhat resolved before I got here. That the policy will enable us to get over that. CL: And the criteria which you will be promulgating at sometime in the near future would be applied uniformly to those areas as well as to others? Shuldiner: Right. Once again, every area might have specific target areas for something else, there are always development plans. But in general, buildings in TIL should be sold to the TIL people if they're interested. We have a policy as to how the price is set. CL: There were some 1,600 buildings consolidated - closed down - at the end of the last fiscal year. There is now a suit con- testing the criteria for consolidation. It seems like a funny business for a housing agency to be in. Shuldiner: I think the major thrust of the suit in the Bronx is the tenants' [contention] that consolidation is the equivalent of disposi- tion of property and that therefore have to go through a quasi- ULURP before we can consolidate. I think that's a little extreme. We are certainly internally considering giving more notice to tenants and boards. Xes, consolidation is not what one would consider in terms of housing preservation Nobody would question consolidating buildings which really are in poor shape and are a hazard to the tenants. The building department vacates because the building is structurally unsound. The rest of consolidation real- ly has to do with our budgetary realities. I do think we should give tenants an opportunity to come back to us with a plan. If cost is what the problem is, then they should be given an opportunity to find alternative financing. I also think that if there wasn't so much fear among the people, if we were able to provide good housing in the neighborhood, tenants wouldn't reject consolidation so much. We also have to deal with the homeless, the people in hotels. Since these are not necessarily permanent tenants they are not brought up to permanent standards. Also, we don't have off the street rentals anymore. That's how bad the problem is. HRA said they were completely overwhelmed with requests and they didn't want us renting off the street, when we could give them the apart- Repairing parapelll"olls all a communi/) managemenl program bllilding a/ 212 Wesl I08lh SI. in Manhallan Valley. 19 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 ment to deal with their clientele. At this point we rent either to consolidation tenants, HRA or to other special programs we've made commitments to like child abuse or the witness pro- gram or something like that . The homeless issue is a big one. To some degree just not doing off the street rentals and just do- ing it through HRA doesn't really address the problem because even if we rent to the homeless, the people who we are not ren- ting to, who we would have rented to otherwise, will be next year's homeless. For me there's no distinction between the homeless and the not-as-yet homeless, or soon-to-be homeless. The key is pro- viding more housing for low income tenants. If there was more housing there would be less homeless. CL: Have you complied with the order in the Laureano vs Koch case and promulgated regulations? Shuldiner: It was ordered that we have a procedure. We have, in fact, a procedure. I don't know that we have in fact issued any regulations. Basically, the court wanted to see that the tenants had a chance to challenge the statistics which we were using for rent restructuring. That has been We have not restructured any buildings since that decision, so we have not yet implemented the procedure, but ir"s there ... The Laureano deci- sion doesn't disturb me. It's probably right. I don't see a problem with giving tenants an opportunity to challenge our figures. CL: Many buildings sold as low income co-ops going into after- sales, expect to have Section 8 assistance, some are two years behind . .. Shuldiner: That has been a problem. Fortunately in our examina- tion of the problem, it has not yet been as serious as we had thought. We looked at all the buildings that had been sold. We found that only Z7 buildings had shortfalls of more than five per- cent [in their rent roll] due to the Section 8 not having come through. Those Z7 buildings are going to be our priority in terms of processing. Obviously, you have to speed up processing and we are discussing that with development, I'm hopeful that to the extent there are Section 8 certificates we can process them more quickly. CL: Will you be able to provide the Section 8 certificates that are not being promised to buildings that are soon to be sold? Shuldiner: I think we should be able to provide Section 8 as needed buildings already sold. I don't know that anyone can IS the future of Section 8. We're hopeful that we will get slgmfrcant numbers [of units] through this year. I don't know what to say about next year. The need is very great. 1;0 me, thars the number one problem in housing - people's inability to pay the rent that's necessary to carry a building. Who subsidizes the dif- ference? as it may sound, the voucher system may help DAM: bUlldlOgs - for non-major rehabilitative buildings, it's conceIvable that a voucher could be sufficient. CL:.There's been a lot of criticism, much of it in City Limits. about auctions ... One out of every two buyers close, of those who close, less than 50 percent get a certificate of occupancy. CITY LIMITS/May 1983 20 Shuldiner: We are obviously increasing the use of RFP's [Re- quests for Proposals]. But RFP's are tremendously labor inten- sive. You have to write the darn things, you have to read all the proposals, and it's not enough to read them, you have to have them evaluated for design and for financial proposals. We already have 5,000 vacant buildings .. . If there was ever any hope of selling a lot of [them] you can't do it all through RFP. The first round of dollar buildings was basically all not-fur-profit so it could just be community groups ... We have that [problem] all the time [with] urban homesteading . .. A group says 'We're interested in urban homesteading, would you include it in an RFP?' Once again, in terms of having things open and with strict criteria, it sometimes hurts a group, but in the long run [an RFP is] better. Normally, in the past, a group would come in and say 'We're a good group, here's our letter from the community board and we have these churches backing us, we want to do this building, let us in.' And we would say, 'Okay, go in and we'll try and help you out.' Realistically, that's not the way things should be done. Our policy is everything is done by open RFP. Maybe there's another group just as good that would be interested in that building if they knew it was available and knew what we were prepared to do to help them. I think that's a good policy and once it becomes clear that's our policy we won't have problems and it makes sense. General- lyon auctions, I think what you say is true, there are definitely situations where people lose their money or they don't really understand the costs at auction. There are several ways we are looking to address it. One of the things we are considering is ask- ing for a larger deposit. Now that would preclude people who are less financially able so that at least the people who are going into this have the resources to see it through. On the other hand, one might argue that that might cut out poorer people. The other thing is determining a situation in which we would return the money. There could be certain amount of time in which we would return the deposit and the money. That would also be something in the RFP as well I believe. The about not doing the work is ... you're looking at the harm It does to the prospective purchaser, we also look at the harm it does when the building doesn't get developed when we thought it would. It isn't providing housing, the building continues to decline. We have been negotiating with corporation counsel to get the ability to foreclose on these ourselves. Those are the two alternatives: you either let people get in, knowing that they are and are going to have problems, or you set a which keep the people who don't have the adequate out. 10 which case we are discriminating against com- mUOlty people and poor people. You have to have clear criteria and then stick by it. You try to come in somewhere in the middle. 0 The South Bronx's Troubled New Homes First-time homebuyers are just beginning to move into their piece of "the American dream"- in the the South Bronx. But a few blocks west of the Bronx Zoo, two new settlements are racially divided. Was an opportunity missed by South Bronx planner Ed Logue to bring two divided communities closer together? , .---" .j
i By Julia MacDonnell Chang M ASTER BUILDER EDWARD 1. WGUE, WHO of homeownership. To accomplish this, Logue had to overcome pledged to rebuild the South Bronx through his significant financing obstacles and set the projects in the ground multi-million dollar South Bronx Development one step ahead of Reagan's budget axe. Organization, offered dwellers what he But in planning its two northernmost sites, just west of the Bronx calls "a piece of the American dream" by including four Zoo, Logue's much-lauded development scheme faltered. There, developments of subsidized single family homes in his grand Logue redrew neighborhood boundaries between Italian Belmont scheme for revitalization. and black and Hispanic Crotona, thus reinforcing existing racial These sold-out developments of brick-fronted townhouses, barriers. Moreover, when some black and Hispanic homebuyers located in some of the most devastated regions of the borough , in Crotona became anxious about significant design changes in gave 250 first-time homebuyers what is likely their only chance their homes, Logue's office said it was powerless. 21 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Logue, in interviews, conceded the so-called Section 235 pro- jects are poorly integrated. But he attributed the apparent segrega- tion to the South Bronx's reputation as blighted and dangerous. The demographics of each development, he said, reflect the demographics of the surrounding area. But at the Quarry Road site, nestled just below East 182nd Street, Belmont's southern border, uncontrollable demographics appear to have little to do with the project's racial composition. There, Logue annexed a barren, trash-strewn four-block sec- tion of the racially mixed Crotona neighborhood which had once held a populace of whites, blacks and Hispanics, and gave con- trol of it to a group of sponsors from Belmont's Italian-American community with direct ties to the Bronx Democratic machine. Thirty-four of the homebuyers are white. Eight are Hispanic. "I gave Quarry Road to Belmont, and I make no apologies to you or anybody else for i t , ~ said Logue when questioned about the site. "Our primary goal is stabilization. [The development] will stabilize Belmont." Yet Logue's own 1980 South Bronx Revitalization Program refers to Belmont as the Little Italy of the Bronx, "a cohesive communi- ty ... with very little abandonment ... and therefore, little room for new construction .. :' A chief beneficiary of Logue's planning is lawyer Paul Victor, law chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party and parliamentarian of its executive committee. Victor, a former Belmont resident who now has homes in Westchester and City Island, founded and now serves as counsel to Fordham Save Our Neighborhood, the chief community sponsor of the Quarry Road homes. The group is a Financing the South Bronx Homeownership Project The Section 235 single family homes being developed by the South Bronx Development Organization will pro- vide 250 homes at $51,000 apiece. A $3.7 million Ur- ban Development Action Grant was made especially available to Logue's development unit to reduce the sell- ing cost of each home by $14,500. Chemical Bank has made a mortgage commitment of $18 million. The federal government's Section 235 program, which has been defunded by the Reagan Administration, pro- vides a mortgage interest subsidy that reduces the market rate charged by the banks of approximately 121h percent to an affordable four to six percent depending upon the buyer's income. The buyers must pay at least 20 percent of their adjusted monthly income and no more than 35 percent for the mortgage payments. Income ranges in New York City are from a maximum $21,750 for one person, $31,000 for a family of four, and up to $38,900 for eight or more. The buyers also receive a Section 421-B tax abatement from the city which ex- empts them from their first two years of real estate taxes and reduces the tax for the next six years.O CITY LIMITS/May 1983 22 small association of Belmont businessmen. At the same time, Victor doubles as attorney for the builders of both the Quarry Road development and the troubled near-by Crotona-Mapes site, Quarry Crotona Homes, Inc., whose principals are Abram Shnay and Sol and Allan Arker. Directing Fordham Save Our Neighborhood and coordinating the Quarry Road development is Joe Cicciu who headed Logue's Section 235 effort at SBoo before leaving, just as the homes were being sold, to take a $30,000 a year post at Fordham S.o.N. Cicciu is a member of Community Board #6 and is currently a school board candidate as well. Logue termed as "nonsense" suggestions that political alliances played any role in the selection of Fordham S.O.N. as sponsor. "Call [Bronx County Democratic leader Stanley] Friedman and ask him what he ever got out of Ed Logue," he said. "He'll pro- bably snarl and hang up." To achieve the mostly white makeup of the Quarry Road site, Logue's office submitted ethnic data to HUD on only those cen- sus tracts from the southern side of Quarry Road, a largely black and Hispanic area. Based on those figures, SBDO said in its federally mandated Affirmative Fair Marketing Plan that whites were the group least likely to apply. Its marketing strategy was based on that calculation. But in the census tract immediately north of the site, whites make up 76 percent of the population and blacks seven percent. The East 187th Street marketing office for the homes is in another northern tract where whites are 79 percent ofthe population and blacks three percent. And census maps show that whites are an overwhelming majority throughout Belmont, an area larger than that submitted in the SBDO plan. Estelle Guzik, director of Fair Housing and Equal Opportuni- ty for HUD's New York Regional office, said she approved SBoo's plan because "based on the data I had, whites were the least like- ly to apply." In a subsequent interview, Guzik described Belmont as a "small pocket" of whites totally surrounded by minorities. It would have made no difference" she said, if SBDO had submitted the north- ern census tracts. Logue said he did not know what census tracts had been used. He conceded that whites "were more likely to apply" at Quarry Road than in the other Section 235 developments, but insisted they were nonetheless "the least likely" of all racial groups. Cicciu defended the development's marketing plan on the grounds that it was HUD-approved. "We must have hit things right on target," he said, "because they approved us the first time around. We didn't have to change a thing." To carry out the marketing of the homes, Catherine Macri, a City Island resident and Paul Victor's sister, was hired as sales representative. She was hired because of her fluency in three Italian dialects, said Cicciu ,who is also fluent in Italian. In payment for marketing the homes, Cicciu said $1,000 per home was available from the builder. However, both he and Victor declined to detail the amount paid to themselves, Macri or Fordham S.O.N. A new/ami/." in residence at Crorona-Mapes Secrion 235 sire: Maria, Gregory and Dororhy (and child) Rodriguez. Redividing the Neighborhoods Q UARRY ROAD HAS BEEN THE CENTER OF difficulties for nearly two decades. As part of a long discarded Urban Renewal Plan, more than 400 families, who in- cluded Italians, Jews, Haitians and Dominicans, were forcibly evicted from homes there to make way for a hospital that was never built . Its neat rows of single family homes, its well-tended apartment buildings were gradually demolished throughout the 1960s. The last recalcitrant residents fled in 1969 as repeated fires struck the remaining homes. Plans for the hospital were quickly scrapped. Then, garbage trucks pulled in to dump their loads. The city's Sanitation Depart- ment has used the area as an interim dump site ever since. "It ruined the neighborhood,n said Frances M. FuseUi, who for 19 years lived across from the site at 611 East 182nd Street. Her sentiment was repeated in conversations with many longtime residents. Fuselli , 28, has been an organizer with the Crotona Community Coalition for the past eight years. Her most vivid childhood memories, she said, include the demolitions, the fires and the friends and relatives who fled one step ahead of them. "There had been no deterioration," she said. ''After that, everything fell apart. People were afraid and sold their homes. The landlords stopped caring.n St. Martin of Tours R.C. church on East 182nd Street im- mediately spearheaded a campaign for new housing - no sur- prise since the Quarry Road residents had been its parishioners. The nascent Crotona Community Coalition soon joined the struggle. "We had to get housing there to bring the neighborhood back together," said Astin Jacobo, the unpaid vice president of the coalition. A committee of Crotona residents, including Jacobo, Fuselli . and St. Martin's pastor, the Rev. John Plo, suffered a frustrating series of defeats. Several Section 8 proposals were defeated. Plo's bid to have Belmont co-sponsor housing on the site - an effort to create an integrated development - was rejected by Belmont. The Crotona group believed a racially mixed development would help ease the area's sharp racial tensions which they said culminated in 1971 when racial incidents occurred throughout the neighborhood. Since that time the black residents now living on the blocks south of 182nd Street say they have accommodated themselves to the situation. They say they keep their children out of Belmont's playgrounds, and do not venture into Belmont after dark. 23 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 '" z < ~ < :l < The Development Sites Morrisania - Community sponsor: East 163rd Street Improvement Council. 80 homes. East 169th Street and Tinton Avenue. Buyers are 60 percent black and 40 percent Hispanic. Under construction. Tiffany-Fox - Hunts Point section. Community sponsor: Father Louis Gigante's South East Bronx Community Organization (SEBCO). 24 homes. Buyers are 95 percent Hispanic and five percent black. Occupied. Crotona-Mapes - Sponsor: New Crotona Hous- ing Redevelopment Corp. 109 homes. Buyers are 63 percent black, 35 percent Hispanic and two percent white. Three are occupied, 106 are under construction. Quarry Road - Sponsor: Fordham Save Our Neighborhood. 42 homes. Buyers are 81 percent white, 19 percent Hispanic. Construction to begin in May. But , by 1979, when the group learned that Logue intended to build private homes on the site, it was ecstatic. Their joy was short lived. Logue announced the homes would go to Belmont. "It happened from night til morning," said Jacobo. "We woke up and the land was gone. No negotiations, no nothing. We had fought for so long and in one moment, they took over." Logue, however, offered the group this irresistible prize: 109 homes to be built on small scattered sites along Prospect, Mapes and Clinton Avenues between 180th and 182nd streets." "We felt he was buying us off, but the point was to get hous- ing," said Fuselli. "It didn't matter where it was." It was not until late January, as the first homes neared comple- tion, that construction changes, SBDO's indifference to them and Cicciu's apparent dual role aroused the old angers. T HE QUARRY ROAD SITE, WHERE 42 HOMES AND an athletic field are to be built, sits at the mouth of Arthur Avenue, Belmont's bustling commercial strip. It is in easy walk- ing distance of some of the borough's finest shops and restaurants. Fordham S.O.N.'s commercial revitalization entity - the Arthur-Belmont Local Development Corp. - just won a $200,000 Community Development grant. Liz Marrinan of the city's Public Development Corp., said the money is to be used to "create a mall- type environment" along 186th Street between Arthur and Hughes Avenues and to rebate shopkeepers who upgrade their storefronts $1 for each $3 they spend. Last year, a group of Belmont merchants won $500,000 in Com- mumty Development funds to renovate the Arthur Avenue Retail Market. CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Daniel Garcia . er%na-Mapes homebuyer. By giving Quarry Road to Belmont , Logue helped the econom- ically strong and politically powerful community colonize a vital tract from poorer, weaker Crotona. The traditional boundary be- tween the neighborhoods, meandering East 182nd Street, has been pushed two irregular blocks south to East 181st Street. Quarry Road's three and-a-half acre soccer-baseball field, to be built with $331,000 in Community Development money, will provide a buf- fer between Belmont and the black and Hispanic neighborhood beyond it. Yet, Logue says the Crotona community has nothing to com- plain about in all of this. "They have a project," he said, "and it's a hell of a lot bigger. "You have to understand," he added, "Quarry Road was part of Belmont before the city tore those houses down. It was a white Italian community."
Homes Without Stoops A ROW OF RED BRICK-FRONT TOWNHOUSES BEGAN to rise from the rubble of Prospect Avenue in January. To the home buyers - they'd each put down $2,500 cash - the houses seemed like a miracle, filling that bleak landscape with what one called "downtown Park Avenue-type houses." The buyers took an immediate proprietary interest. They'd stop by before or after work just to monitor the progress. Within weeks the buyers noticed something terribly wrong: The houses being built were not the houses they believed they had bought. These had no stoops or front stairs. Instead of aluminum siding in back, these had gray cinderblock. Instead of four-inch concrete blocks between units, these seemed to have only sheetrock. The gas cables and meter, closeted in the model. appeared here as an unwanted embellishment beside the front door. 24 "These changes were so obvious," said Loretta Southerland, a buyer, "It made us wonder what the hell was going on inside where we couldn't see anything." At the same time, three buyers moved into the models and com- plained of sporadic heat, flooding, rats, broken windows and the failure of either SBDO or the builder to respond to their complaints. Meanwhile the builders announced that hidden rock formations were stymying construction. One-third of the buyers could lose their basements, they said. Plo's newly created organization, the New Crotona Housing Redevelopment Corporation, was to receive $500 per house upon closing as its sponsoring fee. New Crotona, in turn, was to pay Fuselli $100 per home for her role as sales representative. Furious about the changes, Plo and Fuselli vowed to stall clos- ing until the buyers were satisfied. One frigid night in February, anxious buyers met with Plo and Fuselli in the basement of St. Martin's. "I'm under the impres- sion that because (builder Allan Arker) is dealing with blacks and Hispanics, he thinks he can throw up any kind of junk," said Raymond Campbell who lives in one of the models. Plo reiterated that theme and blamed SBDO for its failure to monitor construction. Cicciu, then in his final weeks at SBDO, said the builder had the right to make many construction changes. He described SBDO as "powerless." "As long as Arker is within the law, our hands are tied," he said. SBDO's apparent lack of concern galvanized the buyers. Within the week, the Crotona Mapes Homeowners Steering Committee had formed and its members - buyers of the first 33 homes - voted unanimously not to close until the homes met their standards. During many long, heated meetings in February and March, the buyers, with help from Barry K. Mallin, Emily Simon and Fred Brewington of the Community Development Legal Assis- tance Center, drew up a list of 30 major concerns. They met with Rep. Robert Garcia and other elected officials and advised Attorney General Robert Abrams of their plight. Two interwined themes emerged during the buyers' meetings: the belief that they were receiving an inferior product because they were viewed as poor and/or uneducated minorities with no polit- i c a clout ; the belief that Quarry Road shared no such problems because of its powerful sponsors and Cicciu's ties to them. Logue said the perception that Cicciu had arranged a better package for Quarry Road was "inevitable." He insisted it was nothing more than an empty perception. The Quarry Road home, he said, would be identical to that of Crotona-Mapes. Logue at- tributed the difficulties at Crotona-Mapes to a "lack of com- munication" between builder and buyers rather than any construc- tion problems. As for the changes noticed by the buyers, Logue said some, like the reinforced steel dividing walls between units, were improve- Plents made to cut the time of construction but not any costs. Some, like the stoops, have been put back on the homes, he said. The builders, Logue pointed out, are working against a deadline. If all the Section 235 homes are not closed by November 30, the UDAGs will be lost. Without the UDAGs, he said, nobody could afford the homes. Now, Fuselli and Plo believe the homes will be sound and com- fortable because of the well-organized demands of the buyers. But LorellO Southerland. erotona-Mapes homebuyer. the buyers are taking no chances. Southerland said the steering committee has hired an engineer to perform an inspection. The decision about closing will be made after he reports on his findings. "The trust is gone," she said. "There are little things you can start to look at and say, 'Yeah, this is segregation.' But I prefer to be optimistic." Estelle Guzik of HUD said no complaints have been filed by minorities in connection with applications for housing at Quarry Road. And Cicciu maintains the homes were marketed in strict ac- cordance with HUD regulations. He said he personally manned the East 187th Street marketing office with Catherine Macri. But blacks in Crotona say the homes were sold before they even knew where the marketing office was or when it was open. "I never saw any signs on that site," said one who lives across the street. 'i\nd I was looking. How can people apply when they are told nothing?" Says Astin Jacobo: "Blacks did not have the opportunity to buy there because everything was kept secret. When people found out and went, it was 'Sorry. All sold out.' We have been tricked. And that was a big insult, a big discrimination." In an interview at his East 149th Street office, Logue reiterated an oft-stated theory - that the devastation of the South Bronx resulted from the loss in one decade of thousands of middle class white families. Logue theorized that the families, who "had a toe up on the economic ladder;' left in search of private homes with backyards, their own small piece of turf. 25 "They weren't fleeing blacks and Puerto Ricans," he said. "They were following the American dream." The Quarry Road houses, he said, will give them that dream right in the heart of the city. "Belmont is good for the South Bronx," he said, "and this will help stabilize it." Logue cut short the interview to meet Rep. Robert Garcia for lunch at Mario's on Arthur Avenue. 'i\rthur Avenue is wonderful," he said as he prepared to leave. "You just walk down it and you feel better ... To say those people should continue to retreat is crazy . . :'0 Julia MacDonnell Chang is a freeLance writer who lives in the Bronx. CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Mitchell Lama Housing Who's WatchiDg the WaitiDg Lists? By Simon Lerner and Susan Baldwin S PURRED ON BY NUMEROUS COMPLAINTS FROM city residents seeking housing and an indepth investiga- tion of housing department files revealing serious record- keeping lapses, the Mitchell-Lama Subcommittee of the state Assembly will conduct special public hearings early in June to begin its own probe into this system's defective, and in many cases, missing, waiting lists. Under regulations governing Mitchell-Lama housing, these complexes, are required to maintain chronological, up-to-date waiting lists at both the project site offices and the special ci- ty supervisory unit headed by Assistant Commissioner Ruth Lerner at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Built primarily in the 1960s and 1970s for moderate and middle income persons, these housing complexes were financed with low-interest, government-insured mortgages. At the public hearings, subcommittee members will invite comment from the public as well as from government and project officials and owners. In addition to gathering informa- tion regarding the waiting lists, this group, headed by Assemblyman Eliot Engel, Democrat-Liberal of Co-op City in the Bronx, will listen to other complaints, including un- warranted rent increases without public hearings and other unfair or possibly illegal charges. In September and October, 1982, prompted by complaints from its membership and disgruntled apartment seekers, the Middle Income Residents Association, an organization of both renters and co-op apartment owners of Mitchell-Lama housing, examined the city's waiting list files at HPD's 100 Gold Street office and found that 42 percent of the sample group had no list or an out-of-date list filed before 1979. M.I.R.A. is a citywide coalition of primarily moderate and middle income Mitchell-Lama renters. The test survey included an analysis of records from 84 of the total 156 Mitchell-Lama projects supervised by HPD. It did not involve examination of any records for the 117 Mitchell-Lama projects that are located in New York City but supervised directly by the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal . Early in March, 1983, M.I.R.A. sent a copy of its final report, complaining about the condition of the files and waiting lists to HPD. David Riegler, an assistant in HPD's housing supervision unit, said that requests for updated lists had gone out to about 36 delinquent projects after HPD received M.I.R.A.'s report . CITY LIMITS/May 1983 26 Problems at YorkviUe Project One of the six complexes that did return a waiting list was Ruppert-Yorkville. Managed by 1.1. Sopher, the city's largest rental agency, this 1,200-unit middle income development is located on the upper East Side on the urban renewal site that once was home to the old Ruppert Brewery. Originally, Sopher was allowed to charge a commission fee of 15 percent to prospective apartment dwellers because, ac- cording to the management office, it had problems attracting potential renters. This problem no longer exists at the nine- year-old complex where rent for a two-bedroom apartment begins at $1 ,300 a month. Although it could not be confirmed by telephone, several persons who inquired into the availability of the housing at the site office reported being told that a minimum annual in- come to be eligible for a one-bedroom apartment was $36,000. Even though this site office claimed to have a list that was two-and-one-half to three years old,efforts to get it , in- cluding by staff members in Assemblyman Pete Grannis's of- fice, had proved fruitless. But, following several meetings with the assemblyman and his staff, a compromise agreement for renting and a waiting list materialized. Head of the Assembly's Housing Committee, Grannis, a Democrat-Liberal, represents this district in Albany. In the past, M.I.R.A.'s research found prospective renters had given their names at the satellite office and never heard from management regarding the availability of apartments nor confirmation of their placement on the waiting list . But those who had gone to Sopher's main office in the East 60s and had routinely paid the 15 percent commission fee had reportedly received apartment assignments anywhere from several weeks to a few months later. In one documented case, where the applicant asked for anonymity, the fee was paid .;il a Friday afternoon, and the apartment was assigned two days later. Under the Grannis-negotiated compromise, the complex is to maintain an on-site waiting list, and when an apartment becomes available, it is to be offered to the first five applicants on the list. If they refuse within two days, the apartment is then to be referred to Sopher's main office where it can be rented to an applicant who will be charged the 15 percent fee. Prior to the list's arrival at HPD, a call to the main office of Long Island developer Fred DeMatteis whose organization built Ruppert-Yorkville elicited an angry response from his administrative assistant -Tony Vaccarello, the city's former sanitation commissioner. He refused to discuss any of the allegations against the complex and claimed to be offended by the questioning. have a list," he said. It is absolutely in compliance ... Just ask to be put on the list." His response to the 15 percent commission fee was, "I don't like discussions over the phone. Put it in writing. This is not the proper place." Ruppert-Yorkville also has rented out six corporate leases to Chase Manhattan Bank and does not collect rental surcharges for over-income residents, as required by state law. In addi- tion, a large portion of its commercial space remained unrented since 1974. Robert Woolis, a long-time Mitchell-Lama resident and te- nant leader, said, "This does not surprise me. Ruppert- Yorkville operates like it is not regulated by any public agen- cy; and, on the other hand, HPD operates like it does not have any regulatory function ... This is why we need the public hearings. I know for a fact that apartments are being sold under the table. You know the super, the renting agent. Apartments get sold. Various people get bought off, and if there's a waiting list , no one audits it. But one thing is sure, HPD knows what's going on." Citywide Coalition to be Formed More than 200 Mitchell-Lama residents, meeting at Col- umbia University April 16, went on record supporting the for- mation of a citywide Mitchell-Lama coalition that would use its political strength to force the city and state into recogniz- ing tenant leadership in resolving conflicts at the various complexes. Among many things, this organizing group, composed primarily of Mitchell-Lama projects in Congressman Charles Rangel's district, is looking into the possibility of creating a tenant watchdog office that would have a full-time, paid director, and a small staff and budget. Alluding to the detrimental effects that the unsupervised Mitchell-Lama complexes have on surrounding housing, one conference participant, Estella Vasquez, said, "I live between East 95th and 96th Street in East Harlem. I just live in a tenement, but when those rent increases take place up there, the rents in these other buildings go up. Then there's displac- ment and gentrification ... I'm just a victim of Ruppert- Yorkville."O Simon Lerner is a student in the political science department of (he CUNY graduate center. 27 TENANT ORGANIZER Housing Conservation Coordinators has a position for a tenant organizer. A bilingual person preferred, fluent in both English and Spanish. Experience necessary. Please send resume to: HC.C. 777 Tenth Ave. New York, NY 10019 Or, call Rose at 541-5996. -Equal Opportunity Employer- Save 25% of Your Energy Consumption Windows For Any Purpose Personal Service g::: mont windoW dollar. But we want what's best
gUlranM from tho POint on tho frames to tho postinstallation clean COMMERCIAL' INDUSTRIAL CONDOS' CO-OPS fISCHER WINDOWS, INC. (212) 232-4100 __ ""ooLYII. 11284 7303 1 TH "' on No Job ToO Big contact Dave Fischer CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Ui>sr Harlem Communiry Organi::tJrion: (Front) Jacqueline fuson. Anira Knox. Olerhia SCOf{. (Back) Gaylen Kirkland. Margarer McNeill. Darlene McNeill. Mell'in Frazier. Rurh Brown. Srephanie Farleron. Jacqueline Logue. Leo Fif{. I T WAS ALMOST 6 PM ON A BLEAK, dusky Thursday evening in the cramped and cluttered storefront office at 226 West 116th Street in West Harlem. Leo Fitt had just arrived at his second job, the one he does for free and with so much conviction. Full of energy and enthusiasm, he round- ed up several tired office workers to go on a building inspection tour. Armed with his own carefully detailed blueprint for ----- rehabilitation plans in the city-owned building where he has lived for the past 34 years, he could be overheard, saying, "I think you'll really like this. It should work, and I think it will l a s t . ~ As he rushed past a visitor being regal- ed by an uncompromising account of all the unpleasant details in a nightmarish hous- CITY LIMITS/May 1983 By Susan Baldwin ing development tale, Fitt looked up and, interrupting this monologue, said matter- of-faclly, "That is a disaster, plain and sim- ple. It would never have happened if we were in charge. if it was our work. But we had no choice in the developer. The city said take this or forget any development plans." His remarks were reinforced by the pro- ject's housing manager-Olethia Scott. "That's right," she chimed in. "They didn't miss a corner, that is, in cutting corners." Leo Fitt, an architect himself, is chair- man 01 the West Harlem Community Organization. A nonprofit, community- based organization founded in the mid-1960s to fight Columbia University's expansionist plans to encroach on this 28 neighborhood, West Harlem serves as the community manager of some 600 units of low and moderate income housing along a narrow strip on the Harlem side of Morn- ingside Park. About 15 blocks long and several blocks wide, this territory runs from llOth to 125th Streets between Mor- ningside and Eighth Avenues, and at several places, over to Seventh Avenue. Fitt's once grand, 36-unit building at 353 West Il7th Street is one of 14 that West Harlem supervises under the city's decade- old community management program. What makes 353 - and Fitt - unique is that this building carried on a five-month rent strike against the city's housing depart- ment and its local managing agent - West Harlem Community Organization; Leo Fitt was the main protagonist. The plot was simple. The tenants paid no rent from Ju- ly, 1982, until the city, having removed their old coal burner, finally installed a new boiler sometime during the week before Christmas. In addition to serving as head of West Harlem's board of directors for the past eight years, Fitt is president of his building's tenants association and a com- munity activist who has witnessed and fought against Harlem's decline. Recalling the events that led up to the rent strike, Fitt said, "It was kind of hard to do, really awkward for me, going to court and withholding our rent all that time, but we had to do it, not because we didn't want to pay rent, but because the city wasn't providing services. Three, four, five weeks," he continued, "these guys didn't feel like working to restore the boiler. There was no hot water, no steam. We have a number of elderly, sick people. We took the bull by the horns and made a statement. The judge listened to the whole ordeal and awarded us two-and-one-half months' rent abatement. And we took it." Fitt sees no conflict between his role as West Harlem's chairman and tenant leader. . "We're doing the best we can at West Harlem with what we've got," he said, ad- ding, "We've come a long way since our in- ception, and it isn't easy providing hous- ing for people, being the community landlord. "But in times like this one with the rent strike, even when it involves your own board," he went on, "you have to do what is right. We had no other choice but to strike. The organization knows that. It was caught in a real bad place - between the tenants and the city." Community Landlords Margaret McNeill, one of the group's founding members and its executive direc- tor, refers to this strike and her organiza- tion's loss of two-and-one-half months' rent as symbolic of why West Harlem tries to steer clear of the city and its contract bid- ding procedure whenever it can. But she is quick to add ," I still don't see us as be- ing landlords in the traditional sense because we're on the tenants' side. I see us more as community landlords working with tenants." On a higher plateau, she sees West Harlem, in its management and now in its development capacity, as securing sound housing for the neighborhood residents while stemming the tide of urban blight in the only way it knows how. She also perceives its current policies as insurance against displacement when the much- rumored, and feared, gentrification of Harlem finally takes off. There is no doubt that West Harlem dif- fers dramatically from other community groups around town that are devoted almost exclusively to tenant organizing. These groups won't manage property for the city, much less participate in the city's owner- ship programs. They reject outright the role of community landlord. "As we look to the future, I see us getting more and more into this management role, especially through the 7-A buildings we keep taking in, and maybe even from having more of a financial share in any future housing development," said Joan Jones, deputy director of administration and finance. "I see this as a way for West Harlem to sur- vive without government subsidy. But I never realized how much time and effort goes into providing housing at the communi- ty level. But someone has to do it, and that's us," she added. West Harlem's largest government con- tract is the $1.2 million it receives in Com- munity Development funds from the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development to manage and rehabilitate 261 units of the city's tax-foreclosed housing stock. "This employs the majority of our staff, but we could survive without this contract," said Thelia Brooks, director of the group's community management program. "Our impact would not be as great, and we cer- tainly wouldn't have the funds to do the necessary repairs and rehabilitation in the buildings and apartments." A refugee from 12 years' experience in private industry, Brooks first came to work here as a CETA worker, then as a tenant relations specialist, before she assumed her current position. According to Brooks, the key to good housing, in addition to offering a solid repair and rehabilitation program, is building strong tenants associations. "We encourage them to get formed, to hold monthly meetings," she said, adding, "I, for one, try to give the tenants the idea that we're really trying to serve them - work with them, not against them. I think it's understood that we're not just here to collect rents. I feel worthwhile doing what I'm doing, and I 29 think it's clear that I wouldn't want anyone to live someplace I wouldn't live myself." Brooks moved here from her native Staten Island in 1974 and enjoys being an active Harlem community resident. "I really feel like I belong here," she says of her adopted neighborhood . Although West Harlem's rent collection rate has been extremely high recently - 98 percent, Brooks says she does not force tenants to pay rents without services. She went so fur as to say that she tells tenants it's all right not to pay rent until the repairs are done. In addition, although she does not in- itiate rent abatements (they are seen as taboo by HPD), Brooks honors them if a formal stipulation is hammered out between the te- nant and the group's attorney. When West Harlem first came together, it never envisioned itself as a housing manager. Rather, it saw itself as the main Harlem force - fighting Columbia Univer- sity's urban renewal plan. Had it been im- plemented, this expansionist plan would have resulted in the demolition of76 percent ofthis residential area to make way for col- lege dormitories and warehouses. Recalling the early days almost 20 years ago, Leo Fitt said, "The most important thing we ever did was fight that gymnasium in the park. If we hadn't stuck to our guns and organized this community, they woui<i have had everything, and we would be no where. There would be no West Harlem today." . In the mid-1960s, radical Columbia students joined with community activists in the three neighborhoods abutting Morn- ingside Park to oppose the gym construc- tion and force Columbia to abandon its ur- ban "removal" plan which would have resulted in the demolition of most of the ex- isting housing that West Harlem is now managing, rehabilitating, and even buying. To fight back, West Harlem developed an alternative to the Columbia plan that was unique for its time in that it called for rehabilitation, not demolition, of the ex- isting housing 'stock without massive displacement of the community. The plan, developed with the help of the Architects Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH) was accepted but never implemented by the city. But following several days of lengthy hearings before the Board of Estimate when many articulate community advocates spoke CITY LIMITS/May 1983 persuasively against Columbia's expansion, West Harlem gained recognition as a viable community group. And by 1968, it received its first funding - $72,000 from the Ford Foundation which gave Columbia $10 million to study ways to improve its com- munity relations. West Harlem at this time went from being an all-volunteer organization to one with a small paid staff of eight, with a complement of volunteers. In the summer, 1965, it also promoted a federally funded Headstart pro- gram for working mothers, which is still in existence and now boasts 72 pupils and a paid staff of 14. In addition, it ran a day care program with city monies from 1968 until 1975 when, responding to the fiscal crisis, the city phased it out. Learning Experiences Throughout these early years, West Harlem organized rent strikes, held even- ing and weekend housing clinics, helped found block associations, and sponsored block parties. Joining with groups it met during the Columbia struggle, it also began its monumental fight to open up the celebrated Morningside Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, to community use. The matter of the park, its redesign and use, is still being debated. West Harlem was also,after a great deal of lobbying, appointed administrator for three buildings during these early years. Following a successful picketing effort, a local bank - Washington Heights Federal Savings Bank - gave the group its first building - 310 West 113th Street - and, hence, helped steer it in the direction of community manage- ment. The relationship with the building was short-lived as the tenants turned on West Harlem when they realized they were going to be required to pay rent. According to McNeill, this was a pain- ful learning experience, but it did serve to reinforce the notion that buildings, in order to survive, needed rent rolls large enough to cover expenses. "The problem here with this building," McNyill recall- ed, "was that the tenants wanted a landlord who had money to come in and subsidize them." In 1971, West Harlem became formally involved in the city's receivership pro- gram under the tutelage of the late Bob Schur, who as an assistant commissioner at the then Housing Development Ad- ministration, developed the concept of CITY LIMITS/May 1983 community groups managing troubled housing. Unfortunately, the groups never held on to the property very long as, when it became city-owned through tax foreclosure, the city did not have a mechanism, like the current $250-a-unit sales policy, to sell the buildings to com- munity groups. From the early 1970s until 1978 when it suddenly received two large funding contracts - one from the Campaign for Human Development and the other, CETA VI, from the federal Department of Employment, West Harlem establish- ed its base in Harlem. It even attempted to work with Columbia University as well as the other institutions and com- munity groups in Morningside Heights and Manhattan Valley. They all, in turn, joined together to i m p r o v ~ neighborhood relations and establish development priorities through the creation of the Morningside Renewal Council, an ad- visory Project Area Committee set up by the city to monitor plans for the local ur- ban renewal area. Also, in 1978, Galen Kirkland, current- ly deputy director of housing, joined the staff following graduation from law school. A volunteer from the old days, Kirkland had grown up in the Hamilton Heights section which abuts West Harlem on the Upper West Side and worked with West Harlem as a volunteer with ARCH. He was drawn back to the community after two years' service in a midtown law firm. Kirkland is presently responsible for negotiating the group's contracts with developers' contractors and subcontrac- tors and has represented it in its efforts . to participate in federally subsidized housing development under the now defunct substantial Section 8 program. But the problem, as Kirkland sees it, is the disappearance of this federal subsidy recourse. He is now looking into other low-cost ways to provide affordable housing rehabilitation. To explore all the possibilities, West Harlem has teamed up with the Harlem chapter of the Urban Development Corporation - Harlem UD.e.-and is considering some other innovative development packages.
Last year, under Olethia "Lea Scott , West Harlem selected 108 tenant families from 2,250 applications for its long- awaited housing in a five-building 30 substantially rehabilitated complex known as Morningside I. It is located at the corner of Morningside Avenue and West 116th Street, right across from rock outcroppings in Morningside Park and a short distance from Columbia's presi- dent's house. It is here that the general contractor- Metropolitan Construction Company- did the shoddy work that includes uneven floors, paper-thin walls, and poorly secured public areas and outside doors. It's just cheap and a mess;' said Scott, adding that the contractors also stole or wrecked beautiful old wrought iron gates and trim, globes, marble pillars, and balconies that were original- ly supposed to continue to adorn the buildings. The group is hoping at the up- coming closing to negotiate a settlement with Metropolitan to cover substantial expenses this complex expects to incur to correct Metropolitan's poor work. Housing manager for the past five years, Scott was formerly a tenant organizer. A resident 'of Morningside Heights, she worked in the past in hous- ing relocation efforts in her neighborhood and on the west side after Lincoln Center was built. The group's other federally subsidized housing development project-the 86-unit Paul Robeson Houses now under construction at the corner of West l20th Street and Seventh Avenue-is scheduled to be completed and occupied by this time next year. . In other developments, West Harlem, which boasts some 60 paid employees, has been awarded a $115,000 economic develop- ment grant to rev itaIize the commercial strip between Seventh and Eighth Avenues on West 116th Street and holds a community consultant contract with the city to counsel private landlords on the availability of city subsidy programs. Last year also represented another management challenge for West Harlem. In addition to buying two more rehabilitated buildings from the community management program, West Harlem assumed control of four other buildings. These were formerly run under the now defunct management in partnership program (MIPP) by another Harlem community group - STRESS, Inc . - learning to manage the property under the "big brother" stewardship of an arm - STITCH - of Jerome Belson's management empire. STRESS's former director, Elizabeth Lemon, is currently serving as the on-site manager of three of these buildings located between West l20th and 121st Street at Mor- ningside Avenue. West Harlem is currently trying to set up prenegotiation sessions bet- ween the tenants and the city to sell them to the current residents as low income cooperatives for $250 each. Conceding that she is anxious about the effect of any future gentrification and displacement on this neighborhood , Margaret McNeill says her long range bat- tleplan involves fighting back primarily through pushing the concept of cooperative conversions for this area. "We hope we can establish some kind of ship and get as much of this housing as we can under the control of West Harlem," she said. Reflecting on her group's evolution to its present role in the community, McNeill con- cluded, "It bothers me that we're not directly involved in organizing anymore, particular- ly since we started out as a tenant organiz- ing group. We're trying to move more and more into management and development. I guess we've lost that [organizing] touch because we've had to concentrate" on the other two, "she added, stressing that she would still like to involve more buildings in the restorative housing process by bringing them into the 7-A program. Still, she asserts without hesitation that the group has not lost sight of its earliest 31 ..J ..J UJ o z UJ ::;:
Melvin Frazier, Superintendent at 20-23 Morningside Avenue, a WHCO-managed ' building. goals, that it has not deviated from its original priorities and principles. Chairman Fitt mainly w'ishes that West Harlem could exercise more control over the quality of work in its city contracts and part- nerships with outside developers. "If they continue to cut corners and use the cheapest of materials," he said, "all that will happen is that this work, no matter how costly, will just give out and have to be replac- ed in a very short period of time ... It would make sense to institute some standards and enforce them." In the long run, he explain- ed, this will mean better housing for the people of West Harlem. It would also be "cheaper and more satisfying for all con- cerned .. . It would be around fur awhile," Fitt concluded. 0 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 B _______________ _ West Harlem's Margaret McNeill The Lessons of 114th St. I N THE EARLY 1960'S, MARGARET McNeill, whose quiet but deliberate manner has been guiding the West Harlem Community Organization for the past 20 years, lived on West 114th Street between Eighth and Manhattan Avenues. She was, by her own description, a housewife with seven children, active along with her sister with some civil rights work, but largely uncon- nected to matters in her immediate neighborhood. A direct threat to"her own home, however, changed that. "Someone slipped a postcard under my door," she recalls. "It said we were about to lose our homes and called on everyone ~ o come to a meeting at the Church of the Mas- ter." The meeting, like dozens more she attend- ed over the next few years, was to confront the urban renewal scheme then being readied for the community. Called the Mor- ningside General Renewal Plan, it aimed at making way for the expansion of Columbia University, just to their west. "The plan call- ed for 76 percent of the buildings between llOth Street and 123rd Street to be demolish- ed. In place of the neighborhood's many ag- ing but sound apartment buildings, the Uni- versity would construct faculty housing and dormitories. That first meeting convinced her that the threat was real and couldn't be ignored if she wanted to remain in her home. Along with groups just forming in the Manhattan Valley area to Columbia's south and in the Morn- ingside Heights area just over the park which was to form a later battleground, she joined the struggle against the institution's plans. . That organizing led to the eventual defeat of the plan and Columbia was forced to back off. But there was a noticeable effect on the buildings within her area. With no clear pic- ture of what would happen in the neighborhood, services declined and many landlords left. McNeill's own apartment building was on rent strike when the first of two fires in two days occurred. "The second fire happened when I wasn't at home. It got CITY LIMITS/May 1983 too far out of control. Tenants saw two men going to the top floor. The fire started in the upper hallway. They came down and sat on the stoop until the fire was discovered. These were the same men who had been around the house the day before. The firemen said it was arson, but this was not put in the report. I lost everything I had. I had seven kids and a husband and no home all of a sudden. We were sent to a Manhat- tan hotel and given one room with two beds. "Fortunately I had relations who could come and take the kids. And friends in the neighborhood helped me find an apartment."
The nascent West Harlem Community Organization focused on providing manage- ment and organizing assistance for tenants. "Our main thing;' McNeill says, "was to organize the tenants and to get a 7A (ad- ministrator) appointed." There were no easy victories. Housing in West Harlem was in a downward spiral as increasing numbers of landlords walked away from their buildings, many, as in McNeill's apartment housing, taking a last fire insurance payment with them. The buildings that now make up the WHCO's Morningside I Section 8 rehabil- itation project started out as tenanted buildings in need of help which the group strove to provide. While the group's volunteers ,were helping to organize the tenants, suspicious fires "took down" each of the buildings. It took another ten years of planning to put the rehab funds together to bring the buildings back into the hands of housing needy local families. Slowly, she says, she began to understand how the city runs. Former New York Secretary of State Basil Paterson was then a community lawyer and McNeill cites him as a major influence on her during the strug- gle to resist Columbia's plans. The early days of the battle with Columbia were a combination of learning some political 32 Margaret McNeill ropeS and straight out confrontation. In the aftermath of a major city hearing over the renewal plan, all West Harlem was incens- ed after hearing Columbia officials describe them as a neighborhood of "transients." McNeill, and other mothers who were part of the WHCO, brought their children to the office of Columbia president Grayson Kirk, accompanied by a New York Times reporter, and demanded to see him. Told they could not, they allowed their kids the run of the plush office, to the consternation of staff, guards and officials. Soon after, Kirk issued a public apology to the people of Harlem.
Her organizing experiences did not make her intI? a firebreathing advocate, at least not outwardly. She has instead quietly pursued the consolidation of the neighborhood for those who live there, using the strategies of management aQd development. She has served as president of the Association of Neighborhood Housing Developers and as chair of the citywide Community Manage- ment Coalition. As a negotiator and com- munity advocate,she has made a formidable opponent to bureaucrats and politicians with whom she has disagreed. Her agenda has sometimes led to conflict with some within the community as well as from outside. But even these occasional opponents acknowledge her straightforwardness and determination. "I' ve had so many frustrations,h she says, "but I've grown a lot. I made some mistakes but I've learned. 1 had no formal training and I wasn't reall y an organizer. 1 was full of 'I can't do it' because 1 didn't think 1 had the qualities to do it."OT.R. ...J ...J UJ o z UJ :l! ~ At Home in the City - Photo and Print Show: Vintage photos and historic prints illustrate 200 years of New York's residen- tial history at a two-part exhibition. Begin- ning May 26, Part One of the exhibit at the City University Graduate Center Mall, 33 W. 42nd St. , will display pictures of 19th and 20th Century apartment houses and housing projects. Part Two, at the Municipal Art Society's Urban Center at 457 Madison Avenue at 51st St., focuses on contemporary residential housing pro- jects that are models for future dwellings. Admission is free. Call (212) 935-3960 for information. 0 Hispanic Housing Conference: The New York Hispanic Housing Coalition will hold its second annual conference June 2 and 3 at the Doral Inn, 49th Street at Lexington Avenue, in Manhattan. The policy and issues forum will be highlighted by presen- tations from Assemblyman Pete Grannis, Councilwoman Ruth Messinger, former HUD undersecretary Victor Marrero, and William Eimicke, deputy secretary to Governor Cuomo. Special workshops at the conference will be tax-exempt and bond financing, fundamentals ofhous- ing syndication, cooperative conversion processing, and tenants' rights. For more in- formation , cal1 Hector Pinero at (212) 460-095\.0 Basic Organizing Skills: Ecco, a network of community organizers, is holding a six- week series of classes to provide beginning and brush-up skills to human service workers. Classes include: Understanding Power and Resources in the Community (May 26); Glimpse into Grassroots Fund- raising (June 2) ; Fundraising through Grants (June 9); Media and Public Rela- tions (June 16) ; Leadership and Groups (June 23) ; Coalitions and Networking (June 30) . Classes are Thursdays, 4-6:30 p.m. Cost is $25 for aU six, or $5 per session. Call or write: T. Mizrahi - ECCO, Hunter School of Social Work, 129 E. 79 St. , Rm. 509. NY, NY l002\. (212) 570-5064, 5037. EL BOHIO 605 E9th ST. NOT FOR SALE Naf FOR SALE, A Project Against Displacement: Opens Saturday, May 21st at El Bohio, community cultural center at 605 East 9th Street and Avenue B. The art show, sponsored by Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PADD) , includes a coUective exhibit on displacement by PADD members, over 50 individual works (paintings, sculpture, installations, photography) on housing and the city. Come to the opening, Saturday, May 21st, 12 noon to 9 p.m. Show continues to June 18 and will be open Thursday through Sunday, 12-6 p.m. For further infor- mation call (212) 865-3076. SRO Housing Management Hand- book: A Portland, Oregon community- based organization called the Burnside Consortium, has published an operational manual for the management of single-room occupancy hotels. The handbook is aimed at providing some of the necessary tools for maintaining SRO's as low-cost housing. In a hard-cover, looseleaf format , the hand- book has chapters on Hotel Management , Rental Procedures, Defaults and Legal Remedies, Maintenance and Accounting. Handbook purchasers get annual updates for two years. Send $25 in check to The Burnside Consortium, 222 NW. Couch St. , Portland, Oregon 97209. Allow four weeks delivery. 0 33 Media Network's Jobs with Peace Sum- mer: This summer, the Media Network, media resource center for community organizations, is launching an educational campaign to inform people about the destructive impact of military spending on our neighborhoods, jobs and services. The Network will set up film and discussion programs around the city. Organizations can sign up now to bring a program to their meeting. Media Network can provide a film, a resource person, and information on options for action. If you want to spon- sor a program or can help set up programs around the city, call or write Media Net- work, 208 W. 13th St. , NY, NY l00U, (212) 620-0877. 0 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 ~ OJ ..J OJ ::E 9 Organizing for Conservation T HE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, in the languor of the Reagan regime, has abandoned all obligations to finance conservation and renewable resource pro- grams. By 1984, fJ7 percent of the conser- vation budget could have been quietly slic- ed into oblivion. The private sector, di splaying a profound free-market con- tempt for investments that are profitable primarily to the consumer, has responded with heroic indifference to the task of shap- ing a conservation market. With the lack of leadership so apparent on the main economic front, local govern- ments and community groups have been compelled to contrive a myriad of soft paths. Organizing over the issue has been dampened by the fluctuating price of #2 fuel oil which heats 66 percent of residen- tial homes in the metropolitan area. With the prospects for a mass consumer move- ment seizing the means of energy produc- tion (or even distribution) about as likely as Mayor Koch's moving to Albany, it might be instructive to observe a few projects elsewhere that have each prepared a light repast rather than a fulJ meal . CITY LIMITS/May 1983 By Richard Schrader Fitchberg, Mass. The Fitchberg Action to Conserve Energy (FACE), a creature of the federal anti-poverty agency, Action, and a coali- tion of consumer groups in Fitchberg, Massachusetts, launched an eight-week program in 1980 with a goal to retrofit as many homes as possible. Fitchberg is a community of some 40,000 residents, the vast majority of whom fall within a lower- than-moderate income bracket. More than three-quarters of the city's rickety housing stock was built before 1939 while 40 per- cent of the 14,000 units are heated with oil. Back in those halcyon days when activists assumed that energy self-reliance was the springboard to participatory democracy and decentralized mutual aid, FACE under- took a campaign to expedite the installa- tion of energy conservation measures through education and organized outreach. The principal activity of the group was the organizing of training sessions for local residents. FACE simply chose four neighborhoods, distributed material in churches, senior centers and schools and utilized whatever media was available. The pivotal figure for each workshop was a 34 local resident who gathered 20-25 neighbors together for a conservation par- ty. During the two months that the project lasted, some 3,000 residents attended train- ing sessions and about 7,500 conservation booklets were distributed. FACE unload- ed 1,700 weatherization kits ranging in cost from $15 to $30. Those were given free to low income homeowners. According to a survey of the program's impact, about 20 percent of the city's households participated directly while 60 percent of the homes sav- ed some fraction of energy cost due to the program's exposure and use of the media. Interestingly, more than one-third of the households that winterized their homes were renters, who did not pay separately for heating fuel. The success of the campaign rested on the creation of a network of neighborhood centers through which the program could operate. Minneapolis, Minn. The Minneapolis Energy Office has em- barked on an ambitious campaign to reach every block in the city over a three-year period. The MEO, using skillful communi- ty organizing techniques, conducts com- prehensive energy audits and offers workshops to demonstrate conservation techniques on a block-by-block basis. Organizers identify a block leader for each block, who is then trained in the pro- gram. The block leader then holds a block meeting. A block may participate if 50 per- cent of its households sign up at the meeting. Then several blocks combine to attend a weekend workshop for several hundred households at a nearby school or community center. Each participant is given a starter kit of caulking and block- ing materials. A "house doctor" who per- forms energy audits will visit the partici- pant's home to assist in a partial audit that includes inspection of the boiler/burner, heat distribution system, walls, roof, and any other corner where heat might escape. By setting the very high requirement of 50 percent participation per block, the pro- gram promotes the development of organiz- ing "skills" in local activists to attract par- ticipants while the staff of community organizers uses classic techniques to iden- tify leaders and rely on personal persua- sion rather than leaflets or advertising to pull people to the workshop. A Community Energy Corporation What would give these efforts the boost they need is an independent community- controlled source of financing for conser- vation investment. A nonprofit Communi- ty Energy Management Corporation (CEMC) could issue tax-exempt revenue bonds for conservation and renewable resource projects in every neighborhood. Initially, the CEMC's role could serve as the focal point for a community-based energy service business, providing energy audits, energy information services, loans, materials and installation of conservation measures. The CEMC could also contract major capital investments out with private energy service corporations. Conceivably, such an unusual structure could be equip- ped with condemnation powers much like public utility districts in Oregon or Washington. Con Edison would of course, be unamused. More immediately, the CEMC might be modelled after state or local economic development authorities, coordinating federal and local government energy financing subsidies and experimen- ting with novel financing techniques. High risk borrowers could have loans guaranteed by CEMC or participate in loan transac- tions whereby a portion of the interest would be subsidized by a percentage of the energy savings. A variety of existing revenue streams, such as CDBG and UDAG, could partially merge with the flex- ible financing machinery of a CEMC, which, in turn, could more readily leverage significant amounts of private capital with government assistance. Economic develop- ment, always an elusive pursuit, might become a more palatable policy when coupled with such inelegant improvements like storm windows,caulking, or generally tightening the building envelope. Study after study evaluating local conservation programs consistently cites the job creation capability of such investments. At last glance, unemployment, driving inflation out of the national psyche, had developed a rather growing constituency. The political . chemistry may be right for some public ac- tion, at least on the local level.D Richard Schrader is a regular contributor on energy issues to City Limits and hosts the program Power Politics on WBAI-FM. Free Insurance Appraisal Richards and Fenniman, Inc., specialists in insuring tenant and community groups for over 10 years, is offering to the readers of City Limits a free insurance appraisal of their building. We know your needs, your requirements, and how to help you get insurance financing. And most important, we can get you the best prices. For a free insurance appraisal of your building and an evaluation of your current insurance program call me: Ingrid Kaminski, Account Executive, (212) 267-8080. Richards and Fenniman, Inc. 156 William Street, New York, New York 10038 35 CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Outdueling the Speculators On the Upper East Side Telllllll Jalle Fo.>S By Rachel Sanchez T HE TWO APARTMENT buildings on the northeast corner of Second Avenue and East 92nd Street in Manhattan are among the few remaining moderate income homes in an area where rents and property values are steadily in- creasing. The two buildings are similar to many other old and new law tenements scattered around the neighborhood; many ofthese have been vacated and are quickly being renovated into luxury housing. CITY LIMITS/May 1983 Since March, 1982, the owner of 1772 Second Avenue and 305 E. 92nd Street has also been trying to empty them. But through organizing and successful court ac- tions, the tenants appear to be on the verge of taking control. Their experience is one example of how tenants can fight displacement. Offers to Move Early last year, both 305 and 1772, which contain 29 apartments, were sold by their long-time family ownership for $575,000. The buildings were then 90 percent oc- cupied and were brought under the control of the Harold Eskenazi Realty Corporation Inc. Richard Bie!, president of the 305 Tenant Association, recalled that, "The first fe ... days after Eskenazi took over, he broke our front door lock, then he went around to all of the tenants offering them $500-600 to move out in 4 to 6 weeks claiming the buildings were in a hazardous condition." A few tenants took the money offered to them and left , while others stayed, uncon- vinced about the hazards. "I've been living here for 14 years, ~ said Jane Foss, treasurer of the 1772 Tenants Association, "and bet- ween the two buildings, there are about 5 to 6 C major violations like falling plaster and cracked windows, but there are most- ly A and B violations, which doesn't make the buildings uninhabitable." According to tenants, when Eskenazi's initial vacate attempt failed, he stopped pro- viding heat and hot water. "Then the peo- ple with children left ," said Jane Foss. Thus, between the two buildings, only 15 tenants remained. Conditions worsened as Eskenazi refused to fix the growing problems. Asked about these complaints, Eskenazi claimed that all necessary repairs were made. He added: "All these tenants want to do is stay in a building and not pay." But tenants said that besides not pro- viding services, Eskenazi also hired a super, from the neighborhood, whose main job was to "break the plumbing and open the windows in vacant apartments to freeze the pipes," said Foss. 36 "Fortunately, we live in a tight knit com- munity and after a tenant spoke to [the super's] mother, who lives across the street, he quit;' noted Mary Jane DeFroscia, a te- nant in 305. Tenants Organize Angered by the continued lack of ser- vices, the tenants contacted Metropolitan Council on Housing and local Democratic Assemblyman Pete Grannis's office. Both advised the tenants to send a letter to the landlord listing the violations and ask him to a meeting to resolve the problems. Tenants obtained the assistance of two at- torneys, Gloria Bletter and Gene Prosnitz from Met Council. When that meeting took place in April of '82, Eric Lowenkron, a tenant from 1772, remembered Eskenazi' "came with a body guard, made several threats and promised that he'd take every tenant to court every day for the next year until we ran out of legal fees." Shortly after the meeting with Eskenazi, tenants went on rent strike. With their rent money in the bank, the tenants spent the summer purchasing oil, cleaning and repairing the boiler, and making other necessary repairs. When cold weather began, however, lugs were placed on the boiler's timer causing it to shut off regardless of the outside temperature. In November, 1982, tenants responded by filing an initial tenant action against the landlord for not providing heat and hot water. Foss said, "Fortunately, we had a good judge, Judge Sparks, who told Eskenazi, '1 don't want the blood of tenants on my hands; and he told us, 'this guy means business, get a 7A.''' A 7A is a court appointed administrator who is supposed to help make essential repairs and manage the building. 7A Training Foss called the Community Action Te- nant Assistance unit (C.A.T.A.), a part of the city housing agency which provides technical assistance for processing a 7A. C.A.T.A. conducted a cost analysis of the buildings and determined each would need $30,000 in repairs. "After C.A.T.A. inter- viewed all of the tenants and told us we were eligible for a 7A, I registered for the city's 7A Management Training course," said Foss. In January, 1983, this time before Judge Harriet George, tenants again complained of the illegal timing device and inadequate heat. Eskenazi was fined $250 a day for not providing heat and hot water and given 24 hours to Correct the condition. When he failed to appear at the next hearing, a $30,000 fine for contempt was added. Asked about his failure to appear, Eskenazi replied, that he was in the base- ment of the building trying to repair the boiler. "It's true I might not have been where I should have been," he said, "but if! didn't make the repairs the boiler would have exploded." Tenants expect Eskenazi to make the next court date, however, both to appeal his fine and for the hearing on Jane Foss's appoint- ment as the 7A administrator for both buildings. "We've got a good chance of win- ning," said Foss. "City inspectors are familiar with the buildings and Eskenazi has a very weak case since he is in con- tempt of court." --- Should the 7A appointment come through,it will probably eliminate the threat tenants currently fear from other Eskenazi legal tactics (see box). That move, they believe, could mark their ultimate victory. "We've remained in the building since Eskenazi took over a year ago and we've almost beat him," said Lowenkron. Mary Jane DeFroscia said:"We've learned to stick together and not be intimidated nor fooled by the landlord's Rachel Sanchez is a contributing writer for the Clinton Community Press. The landlord's Eviction loophole I N ADDITION TO OTHER court actions involving 305 East 92nd Street and 1772 Second Avenue, owner Harold Eskenazi has also filed to evict the tenants based on a rarely used section of the rent stabilization code. Citing that rule, Eskenazi has claim- ed that the cost of correcting those building violations which interfere with the life, health or safety of the tenants would be greater than the building's assessed value. Once vacated, the law says, the buildings can be withdrawn from the housing market, either through demolition or conversion fur commer- cial uses. Eskenazi's application, however, is in a kind of legal limbo. The rule that entitles such a landlord application is Section 540-3 of the Rent Stabilization Code. That rule, along with six other subsections of the code which give grounds for an owner to oust his tenants, lost all of their statutory basis when 23 words were inadvertent- ly omitted from the state's 1982 co-op conversion bill. A good deal of atten- tion has focused on the loss of the landlord's so-called "personal use" pro- vision, which has been common recourse fur owners wishing to take over a tenant's apartment for themselves or their family. The other provisions of the code, however. have received no notice. Although four days of hearings on E kenazi's application took place last October at the Concijiation and Appeals Board. the rent stabilization system's en- agency. it is only since then .. d\lCial omission in the enabl- ing legislation was discovered. In the words of the CAB's assistant counsel. Nathaniel Geller, "'1.ecImicalIy. as d this moment, there ain' DO such law." The agency is no looser accepting ap- plications based on the now nonex.isteDt statute. If, when the CAB sets around to a ruling on the application, the language has not been restored to the law by state legislators, the board would dismiss it, said Geller. Tenant groups and some lawmakers have been successfu1 thus tar in keep- ing the law from being reinstated. They seek to reform the rule as well as to link it to the debBie over the entire stabilization law which expires in June. Eskenazi insists that his buiIdinp are "hazatdous death traps," fur which repairs wouId cost more than $300.000. Tenants, however. have received estimates ofbetween $30000 to $3s.ooo in t'lecesSary repairs fur each of the buildings. The renant5 COUI1IIIRd that the buildings were detcrioraeed because of the landlord's misJnaDa&ement and abuse. Although Section 541).3 says tile build1ngs cannot be resold as housiilJ once vacated, tenants from 305 and I17l believe tbat Eskenazi would be able, to get away with selling them to a developer, "It's unlikely that the.previous tenants will file ifheJ1llJOld the buiJdiags .u. --If _1ft! cl around said, AccorditI& 37 never issued an opinion on the section of the code under which Eskenazi has applied, although he estimated that there have been half a dozen applications. Similar provisions for withdrawing apartments from the rental market ex- ist under the city's rent control code and were not affected by the change in the law. Eskenazi also filed before that agen- cy as well to vacate the buildings. A decision is pending. Daniel Joy, the city's Deputy Com- missioner for Rent and Housing MaiDtenance, said his office had receiv- ed a number of applications from owners under the law and some had been approved. "We use a simpJe test," said Joy. "1bose violations certified by city agencies are matched against reasonable cost estimates of repair. If the cost is more than the assessed value, the application is granted." Anthony Morenzi, an aide to state Assemblyman Pete Grannis who has worIc:cd along with the tenants, said that even before the CAB realized that the statute was missing, it may have been delaying its decision because of the precedent-setting implications of a vote either fur or against the owner. Those sections of the rent stabiliza- tion code now invalid cover the owner's demind for personal use of an apart- ment fur either re$idential or business putposes, applications based on a te- nant's refusal to renew a lease, the ex- c:essive cost of repairS, or a hospital or dIaritable institution's need for the space Aw charitable uses.DR.S. and T.R. CITY LIMITS/May 1983 POSITION AVAILABLE Tenant Relations Specialist Description: To act as liaison between tenants in Community Management buildings and CHDC. Responsible for development of tenant associations to participate in decision making for management and repair planning, assist in the resolution of maintenance and repair complaints and eventually form self sufficient tenant cooperatives. Provide information on coop ownership and maintenance/management, and coordinate tenant training activities. Preparation of various written reports on actiyities and maintaining building files. Qualifications: 2 years community organizing or social service experience required. College degree or equivalent experience. Clinton resident preferred, bil- ingual Spanish and English desirable. Salary: $14,000 per year. Send resumes to: CLINTON HOUSING DEVEWPMENT CO., INC. 664-6 10th Avenue New York, NY 10036 Attention: Sondra Thomas EASTSIDE SRO LEGAL SERVICES PROJECT Position Available- Tenant and Community Organizer An assertive self-reliant organizer needed to work with lawyers, social worker and another organizerto assist tenants in SRO hotels and rooming houses on Manhat- tan's East Side. Working knowledge of rent regulations, codes, and city agencies helpful. Position available immediately. Salary $16,000 plus excellent benefits. Send Resume to: Nancy Biberman Eastside SRO Legal Services Project 223 Grand Street New York, NY 10013 Action--- CITY LIMITS/May 1983 38 COMMUNITY OUTREACH WORKER Coalition of Lower East Side organizations seeks ex- perienced organizer to implement area-wide outreach regarding community based redevelopment plan. Will work with organizations, institutions, associa- tions, and individuals. Responsible for information dissemination, coalition building, and supporting ex- isting local groups with organizing on area-wide issues and planning. Writing and communication skills essential. Familiarity with housing issues and strategies necessary. Must be well organized and thorough. Three years organizing experience required. College degree preferred but not required. Bilingual (Spanish and English) Lower East Side resident preferred. Salary $15,000 per year plus fringe. Send resumes to: Joint Planning Council 61 East 4th Street New York, New York 10003 COMMUNITY ORGANIZER Establish tenant associations, community projects. B.A. plus one year experience or H.S. (High School) plus three years' experience. Night work required. Spanish and typing required. $12,000 plus fringe. PRESERVATION COORDINATOR Do historic surveys, research, housing planning. Must type. B.A. with background in historic preservation. $12,000 plus fringe. Send resume to: Cooper Square Committee Attn: House Personnel Committee 61 East 4th Street New York, New York 10003 Telephone: (212) 228-8210
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